Fashion Slate

The group of businessmen who came together to annex the islands formed as a direct response to Queen Lili‘uokalani’s new governance as a native woman, specifically her plan to put forth a revised constitution. Her action would eradicate the 1887 Constitution of the Kingdom of Hawai‘i, known as the Bayonet Constitution, a document prepared by those same white businessmen who had forced the former ruler, Kalākaua, to sign by gunpoint. The Bayonet Constitution stripped the monarchy of its legislative powers, extended voting rights to American and European noncitizens, and established wealth requirements, which disproportionately impacted Asians and Hawaiians. In keeping with the nation’s wishes, Lili‘uokalani’s proposal would restore the power of her people.

The businessmen called on American minister John L. Stevens, who ordered 162 uniformed U.S. sailors to disembark the U.S.S. Boston and invade Honolulu. The 13-member committee formally declared themselves the Provisional Government and appointed Sanford B. Dole, of the Dole pineapple legacy, as its president. Under Hawaiian law, their actions constituted treason and the queen had the right to apprehend and punish all involved. But due to the hostile presence of the armed U.S. military, whose visibility aimed to intimidate the kingdom, the queen was fearful that a confrontation would create bloodshed. Hours later, she chose to yield authority and issue a formal protest in an official written statement. Instead of resorting to violence, she led with diplomacy and the faith that this injustice could be remedied and reversed.

It never was. President Grover Cleveland ordered an investigation into the U.S. involvement of the overthrow, known as the Blount Report, and concluded “this military demonstration upon the soil of Honolulu was of itself an act of war,” but his sympathies to reinstate the queen stalled and were never realized. It wouldn’t be until a full century later that an American president would legislatively address his country’s actions against Hawai‘i. In 1993, on the 100th anniversary of the overthrow, President Bill Clinton signed the Apology Resolution, finally admitting the country’s role in deposing Lili‘uokalani and disenfranchising the Hawaiian people.

But what common American history still fails to capture is the hurt and sorrow that kānaka maoli endured at the time. In the aftermath of the overthrow, the American press were relentless in their racist caricatures of Lili‘uokalani and Hawaiians, depicting them as savages, prostitutes, sellouts, and passive to America’s capitalist influence. Under the newly recognized Republic of Hawai‘i, the Hawaiian language was soon banned from being taught in the public and private education systems, which resulted in a widespread linguicide of the native people.

American history also doesn’t detail the distinct and varied ways that Hawaiians continued to resist during the five years before they were officially annexed. The queen, who wrote extensively while imprisoned in her own palace, published Hawai‘i’s Story in 1898, an account of the circumstances that led to the overthrow told through her lens. Hawaiian musicians composed protest anthems about their unhappiness with the takeover of the Hawaiian Kingdom and voiced support for the monarchy.

The most evident displays of kānaka maoli distress and determination were in their mass petition drives against annexation, like the Kūʻē Petitions, a mass petition drive against the annexation. Island by island, its organizers collected tens of thousands of signatures by horseback, boat, and foot. Lili‘uokalani and four delegates hand-delivered 556 pages to Washington, D.C., and on December 9, 1897, a senator from Massachusetts submitted these petitions into the Senate record. This number of signees — 95% of the native Hawaiian population at the time — means that almost every kānaka maoli living today can trace an ancestor back to this petition (including the matriarch of this writer’s Hawaiian family line, Kaaikaula, who penned her dissent there, too). Displays of political dissent across literature, art, music, and government continue to inspire new generations to recognize the islands’ lineage of resistance and relearn Hawai‘i’s history from a decolonized perspective.

Aja Toscano

On the 126th anniversary of the Overthrow, kānaka maoli and allies march.

Still, present-day native Hawaiians face challenges. In 2018, Hawaiʻi’s governor, David Ige, signed a proclamation declaring it the Year of the Hawaiian to acknowledge “the value of Native Hawaiian cultural practices and recognize the Native Hawaiians' achievements and contributions to the arts, law, history, social work, education, business”; yet, also last year, a Hawaiian man was issued a bench warrant for his arrest during a court proceeding when he refused to speak English and addressed the judge in Hawaiian, an official language of the state. (The bench warrant was recalled the next day.) Also in 2018, Brett Kavanaugh, who opposed government programs designed to service native Hawaiians, was confirmed to the U.S. Supreme Court, and the Hawai‘i State Supreme Court ruled to build the 30-meter telescope on Mauna Kea, a contentious piece of land considered to be sacred by native Hawaiians. For decades, Native Hawaiians have been overrepresented in the state’s criminal justice system and are disproportionately affected by homelessness in their homelands.