The Hawaiian sovereignty movement (Hawaiian: ke ea Hawaiʻi), is a grassroots political and cultural campaign to re-establish an autonomous or independent nation or kingdom of Hawaii due to desire for sovereignty, self-determination, and self-governance.
Some groups also advocate for some form of redress from the United States for the 1893 overthrow of Queen Lili’uokalani, and for what is described as a prolonged military occupation beginning with the 1898 annexation. The movement generally views both the overthrow and annexation as illegal.
Sovereignty advocates have attributed problems plaguing native communities including homelessness, poverty, economic marginalization, and the erosion of native traditions to the lack of native governance and political self-determination.
They have pursued their agenda through educational initiatives and legislative actions. Along with protests throughout the islands, at the capital (Honolulu) itself as well as the places and locations held as sacred to Hawaiian culture, sovereignty activists have challenged United States forces and law.
The ancestors of Native Hawaiians may have arrived in the Hawaiian Islands around 350 CE, from other areas of Polynesia. By the time Captain Cook arrived, Hawaii had a well-established culture with a population estimated to be between 400,000 and 900,000 people. In the first one hundred years of contact with Western civilization, due to disease and war, the Hawaiian population dropped by ninety percent, to only 53,900 people in 1876. American missionaries would arrive in 1820 and assume great power and influence.
Copying my message from another thread:
Recently I watched an incredible documentary about US imperialism of the Hawaiian islands made by a native Hawaiian director, it’s called Cane Fire. Very very highly recommend.
This movie looks specifically at the colonization of Kaua’i, but your missionaries in this movie are Hollywood movie directors. He explores how cultural depictions of native Hawaiians drove their social subjugation, and vice versa.
The driving narrative of the movie is a search for a banned 1930s silent film about native Hawaiian laborers burning a Dole sugar plantation to the ground and killing their overseers, called Cane Fire
At times it was heartbreaking but it was a really beautifully rendered and staunchly film
