A Critical Reflection on the 2025 Executive Order: “Restoring American Seafood Competitiveness”
1. Contextual Overview
President Trump’s executive order proclaims the intention to revitalize the U.S. domestic seafood industry, claiming overregulation, trade imbalances, and foreign influence have crippled American fisheries. It seeks to deregulate, open protected marine spaces to commercial activity, and center an “America First” strategy on domestic fishing and aquaculture.
While the order invokes sovereignty and competitiveness, its ecological, spiritual, and intergenerational implications require close examination. From an Indigenous perspective, the ocean is not merely an economic zone, but a living relative, an embodiment of life and spirit known by many Pacific peoples as Moananuiākea. This vast ocean unites and sustains us all.
2. Key Concerns and Potential Harms
A. Opening Marine Monuments to Commercial Exploitation
Section 4(h) directs a review of marine national monuments—protected areas established to conserve sacred marine ecosystems, including Papahānaumokuākea, a site of profound cultural and spiritual significance to Native Hawaiians. These monuments safeguard endangered species, coral reefs, and migratory patterns essential to the oceanic biome.
Indigenous Insight: Opening these monuments to industrial-scale commercial fishing contradicts generations of Native stewardship and violates the sacred covenant between humanity and the ocean. These are not “resources” to exploit, but sacred relatives to care for—ka moana he kupuna, the sea is our elder.
B. Deregulation and Commercial Incentivization
The order mandates rolling back “burdensome” regulations, often environmental protections, sustainable catch limits, or monitoring requirements under the Magnuson-Stevens Act and other cornerstone ecological laws.
Spiritual Balance: These protections were hard-won responses to decades of overfishing, species collapse, and pollution. Removing them from a Dakota or Polynesian lens would tip the natural balance (wówaš’ake) and risk greater spiritual and ecological consequences, including the collapse of life-sustaining fish stocks and the degradation of ocean consciousness.
C. Expansion of “America First” Seafood Strategy
The executive order proposes aggressive marketing, trade enforcement, and consumer education about U.S.-sourced seafood, emphasizing economic self-sufficiency and competition.
Cautionary Note: While ethical sourcing and sovereignty in food systems are indispensable, this approach disregards small-scale Indigenous fisheries, subsistence harvesters, and traditional practices. It frames food as a battlefield rather than a blessing.
3. Global and Indigenous Impacts
A. International Ramifications
The order includes provisions for targeting foreign nations for trade violations and IUU (Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated) fishing, some of which are real concerns, especially where forced labor is involved. However, it risks weaponizing trade law against smaller or Indigenous-led fisheries globally, particularly in the Global South.
Indigenous Solidarity: Many Indigenous coastal communities in Southeast Asia, Oceania, Africa, and the Americas rely on traditional fishing for subsistence, culture, and identity. Enforcement strategies must not criminalize these communities while favoring industrial fleets.
B. Marginalization of Tribal Nations and Native Hawaiians
The order makes no mention of Tribal Nations, Native Hawaiian interests, or consultation with Indigenous communities who have ancestral relationships to marine environments. This contradicts federal trust responsibilities and dismisses decades of co-management, treaty rights, and cultural resurgence.
Example: The Makah Nation in Washington, the Alaska Natives, and the peoples of the Pacific have been stewards of marine life through Indigenous legal systems that predate U.S. environmental laws. Any modern strategy must begin with free, prior, and informed consent and ensure co-governance.
4. A Vision of Sacred Restoration – A Better Way Forward
Instead of deregulating to promote industrial competition, what if the U.S. government embraced Indigenous-led ocean governance models that prioritize long-term ecological health, cultural sovereignty, and intergenerational responsibility?
Here are the principles of such an approach:
ʻAloha ʻĀina i ke Kai: Deep, spiritual love for the sea as a living ancestor, not an asset.
Wóuŋspe ečhúŋ: Learning and teaching based on observation, humility, and reciprocity with the natural world.
He wa‘a he moku, he moku he wa‘a: “The canoe is an island, and the island is a canoe”—a Polynesian teaching reminding us that Mother Earth is our shared vessel, requiring unity and care.
Food Sovereignty and Community Stewardship: Empowering Indigenous, subsistence, and small-scale coastal fishers to lead local food systems that feed body and spirit.
Conclusion
The Executive Order of April 17, 2025, is framed as an economic revitalization of American seafood—but from an Indigenous and ecological worldview, it raises deep concerns about returning to extractive paradigms under the cloak of deregulation and trade retaliation.
We must ask: What is true sovereignty without respect for the waters that sustain life? What is prosperity if it comes at the cost of sacred relationships with Creation?
A just and life-affirming seafood policy must begin not in the corridors of Washington but in the ancestral songs of the sea, the quiet prayers of the fisherfolk, and the enduring memory of the coral, the whale, the tide, and the stars.
Desecrating the Sacred: The Ocean Is Not Yours to Sell
What was signed on April 17, 2025, is not just another executive order. It is a cold, calculated declaration of dominance. It is the United States—again—planting its flag not on land, but on the sacred body of the ocean herself, as if she were for sale. It was as if Mother Ocean were some tired beast to be harnessed, gutted, and made to serve the hunger of a dying empire.
They write of "restoring competitiveness," but they restore the arrogance of Manifest Destiny, dragged out of the past and dressed in new legal language. This is not about seafood—it is about conquest.
It is about bulldozing the resting places of our ancestors beneath the waves, ramming through marine monuments like Papahānaumokuākea with the same brutal force they used to rip up burial grounds for pipelines, erasing the sacred songs of the whales, deafening the coral with sonar and propellers, and then telling us it's for our benefit.
It is an act of war against the Spirit of the Sea.
And they know it. That’s why they didn’t mention a single Indigenous Nation, not once. Not the Kānaka Maoli, the Makah, the Salish, or the Haida. Acknowledging our sacred governance over these waters means admitting they have no right to control them. So they erase us from the story. Again.
But we are still here. And so is the Spirit of the Ocean.
Ripping Out the Heart: From Mauna Kea to Moananuiākea
Just as they tried to desecrate Mauna Kea with their telescopes—digging into the sacred summit to install their eyes on the universe—they now attempt to desecrate Moananuiākea. This vast oceanic realm breathes life into our peoples. They rip the spiritual heart out of sacred spaces and call it "economic growth."
They bulldozed our most sacred shrines. They sank the canoes with policy. They poured toxins into our food and our future. This is not a regulation. It is desecration with a smile.
They are not just attacking a resource—they are violating our mother, our teacher, our ancestor. And yet, they think they’ve won. But the Fire Still Burns
They think they’ve silenced us. But the fire they thought they extinguished still burns in our bones. It is the fire of those who sang the stars into navigation. The fire of Queen Lili‘uokalani writing her prayers in captivity. The fire of the kūpuna who stood before bulldozers on the mountain. The fire of every Indigenous child rising to reclaim their language, their ocean, and their sacred right to exist.
This executive order is a desperate grasp by a fading empire. It is not strength—it is fear. They fear what they cannot control. They fear what is rooted too deep in the earth and sea to be torn out by paper laws.
Desecrating the Sacred: The Ocean Is Not Yours to Sell — A Declaration From the Pacific to all Humanity.
This April 17, 2025, Executive Order is not just a domestic policy. It is the continuation of an imperial legacy—a legacy that has violated the sovereignty and sacred relationships of the Pacific Nations for centuries. It is a brutal echo of the bulldozers that tore through sacred fishing shrines, of the ships that arrived uninvited and never left, of the treaties signed in bad faith or ignored entirely. This is not economic reform—it is spiritual violence.
Let us be clear: the Kingdom of Hawai‘i is not alone in this desecration. This is not just a Hawaiian story—it is the shared wound of the Pacific.
From Tahiti to Tonga, from Samoa to Fiji, from Vanuatu, Solomon Islands, and Papua New Guinea to Kiribati, Tuvalu, and Nauru, from the deep cultural guardianship of Palau, Marshall Islands, and the Federated States of Micronesia to the ancestral waters of the Māori of Aotearoa, the Kanaky people of New Caledonia, and the Torres Strait Islander Nations of so-called Australia.
All have been violated. All have been exploited. All have had their sacred relationships with the ocean, the sky, and the earth desecrated by colonial powers—whether British, French, Australian, American, or Canadian.
And it continues.
It continues in the waters poisoned by radioactive waste and military testing. It continues in the “development deals” that strip local fishers of their rights while offering foreign fleets open access to sacred marine corridors. It continues in Ottawa, where the Canadian government has ignored the calls of the Pacific Nations, just as it has long forgotten the rightful cries of its own Indigenous Nations. These are not isolated acts. They are part of a single, connected pattern of conquest.
This declaration now unites us: the Kingdom of Hawai‘i stands with her Pacific relatives—from Rapa Nui to Rarotonga, from the coral atolls to the volcanic highlands—linked together by the sacred ocean known as Moananuiākea, our mother, our ancestor, our home.
From the islands of the central Pacific to Standing Rock, our voices rise in unison: We were never defeated. Our sovereignty was never surrendered. Our sacred ocean is not for sale.
Spiritual, cultural, and political unity will no longer be ignored. And if the bulldozers return, they will not face a single people—they will face a sacred alliance of Pacific Nations whose time has come.
From O'ota ‘Awa to Moananuiākea: A Sacred Declaration of the Pacific Nations
This April 17, 2025, Executive Order is not merely a policy shift. It is an act of arrogance—a violation cloaked in regulatory language. It is the most recent wound in a long line of desecrations inflicted upon the sacred ocean realms of the Pacific. And it shall not pass unchallenged.
This declaration rises from O'ota ‘Awa, from the sacred waters that carry the breath of our ancestors across the great ocean. It is here, in this holy relationship, that the Kingdom of Hawai‘i now stands shoulder to shoulder with the great circle of Pacific Nations, not simply in solidarity but through formal spiritual kinship, like the sacred relationship between His Royal Majesty King Edmund Keli‘i Silva Jr. and his brother, Hereditary Chief Phil Lane Jr. of the Ihanktonwan Dakota and Chickasaw Nations.
This is more than an alliance. This is ancestral alignment. It is prophecy unfolding.
From Tahiti to Tonga, from Aotearoa to Fiji, from the Solomon Islands to Palau, from Micronesia, Kiribati, and Tuvalu, from Rapa Nui to Rarotonga, and all the island Nations who have held the ocean as sacred, it is now clear: the violation of one is the violation of all.
They have tried to destroy sacred marine monuments. They have ignored ancestral fishing rights. They have filled the sea with warships, pollutants, and sonar meant to dominate. They have used executive orders and trade deals like harpoons to pierce the heart of the sacred.
But the ocean is not theirs to divide. Moananuiākea is alive. She remembers. She resists.
This is not the resurgence of the Pacific. This is the resurrection of sacred governance—an ocean-spanning spiritual union rooted in the authority of ancient law, cultural prophecy, and the living lineage of Indigenous leadership.
A Sacred Partnership of Destiny: From the Pacific to the World
This sacred uprising—this call for restoring our oceans, nations, and sacred law—is not emerging from one island or one voice alone. It rises from the spiritual covenant between brothers, like His Royal Majesty King Edmund Keli‘i Silva Jr., Sovereign of the Kingdom of Hawai‘i, and his brother, Hereditary Chief Phil Lane Jr., of the Ihanktonwan Dakota and Chickasaw Nations.
This partnership is not symbolic, it is spirit-ordained. It is the manifestation of prophecy, sacred duty, and the blood and prayers of our ancestors rising again.
Through this alliance, the oceanic heartbeat of Moananuiākea now joins hands with the Four Worlds, the Union of the Condor, Hummingbird, Quetzal, and Eagle, and a great spiritual family stretching around Mother Earth.
This sacred circle extends from the Kingdom of Hawai‘i to the great island Nations of the Pacific through the holy lands and wisdom of Abja Yala across the sea bridges into Ireland, where Indigenous prophecy finds kinship with Celtic memory.
Ancestral knowledge is awakened and long-buried through the mountains and forests of Europe. Into the ancestral lands of Southeast Asia, where Indigenous traditions rise again in places like Thailand, the Philippines, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, and Indonesia
Beyond East Asia, into Mongolia, Japan, and the ancient wisdom traditions of Korea and China
Then southward through the great cradle of humanity, Africa, where the drums of sovereignty, justice, and healing thunder once more from Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, Ethiopia, and the Congo
And finally, back around Mother Earth, where all sacred directions converge in one unified purpose.
This is not diplomacy. This is spiritual resurgence. This is not policy. This is ancestral fulfillment. This is not an alliance. It is a sacred union born of a shared vision and eternal values—a world guided by love, justice, reverence for the Earth, and the law of the Creator.