How the U.S. stole Hawai'i

Hawai’i’s Queen Lili’uokalani

The Hawai’i Solidarity Committee and the International Action Center sponsored a May 21 forum featuring Kai’opua Fyfe and ‘Ehu Kekahu Cardwell representing the Hawaiian Independence Movement at the Solidarity Center in New York City.

Speakers explained how the U.S. government illegally annexed Hawai’i back in 1898. Five years earlier, in 1893, the U.S. overthrew the reigning monarch of Hawai’i, Queen Lili’uokalani, on behalf of big business interests like Dole that wanted to super-exploit Hawai’i’s resources, especially sugar cane. This colonial domination laid the basis for the U.S. making Hawai’i the 50th state in 1959.

The film, “We Are Who We Are: From Resistance to Affirmation,” presented archival photos and footage of the legal and historic background to the annexation of Hawai’i and how the current independence movement, led by Indigenous people, is carrying out a struggle for self-determination. Go to www.FreeHawaii.info, www.Hawaii-Nation.org and www.HawaiiSolidarityCommittee.org for more information.

—Monica Moorehead