Get educated. Save Hawai'i.

A Hawaiian traditional dance

This November, 18MR’s Campaigner Laura Li and I (Bianca Nozaki-Nasser) were welcomed by the Kia’i at Mauna Kea. As Asian Americans, we were honored to be able to support and lift up the Kānaka Maoli’s fight to protect this sacred place.

It’s been five months since the Kia’i (Kānaka Maoli protectors) set up camp to defend the sacred Hawaiian mountain, Mauna Kea. Since then, hundreds of Kānaka Maoli have set up a pu’uhonua (place of refuge) on the Mauna Kea access road complete with food, shelter, and provisions. Organizers have founded Pu‘uhuluhulu University to offer de-colonial education, and kūpuna continue to hold space for ceremony, song, dance, and announcements–all while blocking construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope.

ABOVE: View of the pu’uhonua from Puʻu Huluhulu by Bianca Nozaki-Nasser

After weeks of emails, texts, and calls Laura and I arrived on Day 114 of the protest to finally meet Yvonne “Von” Mahelona, a young activist who supports logistics coordination for Pu’uhonua o Pu’uhuluhulu. Von has been at the Mauna since July and spends her time making sure each station is stocked with necessary supplies, keeping everyone fed, healthy and warm, and working the information and welcome booth. She orients folks coming into the pu’uhonua for the first time, educates tourists, receives donations, and answers any questions people have about the pu’uhonua.

ABOVE: Yvonne “Von” Mahelona by Bianca Nozaki-Nasser

A post I made has over a thousand notes!! And most importantly it’s starting a conversation and spreading knowledge about what was done to my culture.

It is also so heartwarming to go in the notes and find people sharing more information and sources! And even more so to see that only two idiots decided to chime in with their misinformation.

President Grover Cleveland then refused to annex Hawaii and for five years it was a nominal ‘republic’ under the sugar barons and then the US annexed it under President McKinley.

But there were hundreds of years of monarchy in Hawaii before Kamehameha which didn’t accomplish shit for the Hawaiians but the usual round of everyone raiding each other and after Kamehameha, you got monarchs who fucked up to the point that when Queen Liliuokalani  tried to take back control of Hawaii, it was too late.

In short, monarchy sucks even if a few monarchs try to do the right thing.  Hawaii got fucked over by Kamehameha’s successors and other Hawaiian elites basically giving away the country to make themselves personally rich.

And of course, without Americans wanting control of Hawaii, it would haven’t have mattered, just like a thousand years of pre-Kamehameha useless local monarchs couldn’t do any permanent damage to Hawaii, but that doesn’t magically make monarchy better than democracy.

The “well you guys weren’t doing it right so SOMEONE would have conquered you!!” argument is VERY racist.

King Kalākaua was forced at gunpoint to sign the Bayonet Constitution in 1887 (which, for anyone too lazy to read the links, is what allowed plantation industries and sugar/pineapple barons to gain political power by shifting political rule to a puppet legislature that white Americans & Europeans could vote for, while poor & working class Kanāka and all Asian citizens of Hawai'i lost voting rights entirely— as also detailed in Queen Lili'uokalani’s autobiography, here). The King died in 1891.

By 1893, only two years into Lili'uokalani’s reign, the coup backed by US Marines & US Minister John Stevens deposed the Queen. By the time President Cleveland nominally offered the Queen reinstatement in 1894, one year later— which she had obviously requested immediately, though I guess that counts as trying “too late” to @bailesu— Sanford Dole (leader of the coup and first “President” of the “Republic of Hawaii”) refused to honor that reinstatement; and Cleveland did nothing.

So while Cleveland did not annex Hawai'i himself, neither did he support the Hawaiian people & the sovereignty he claimed to support in their time of need, in favor of preserving good relations with soldiers and plantation owners he was happy to leave instated and stationed exactly where they were, running the Kingdom unjustly and under constant threats of violence by the US military, backed with US funds, led by wealthy Americans.

By 1895, Queen Lili'uokalani was placed under house arrest at ‘Iolani Palace and charged with treason when an attempt by Hawaiian people to restore her to power & depose the corrupt government failed. She was initially sentenced to death for this “crime,” and was then pressured into signing an abdication of the throne to stay her own execution as well as that of all the loyalists who had been captured alive in the unsuccessful insurrection.

Lili'uokalani wrote of this: “For myself, I would have chosen death rather than to have signed it; but it was represented to me that by my signing this paper all the persons who had been arrested, all my people now in trouble by reason of their love and loyalty towards me, would be immediately released. Think of my position, – sick, a lone woman in prison, scarcely knowing who was my friend, or who listened to my words only to betray me, without legal advice or friendly counsel, and the stream of blood ready to flow unless it was stayed by my pen.”

All for American money, American agribusiness, and American control of Pearl Harbor.

It was also not the last time the Queen and her neice and heir, the Princess Ka'iulani (who had been publicly asking for the return of Hawaiian sovereignty since Dole’s coup), pled their cause to President Cleveland, to no avail.

Hawai'i was annexed by the US under the order of President McKinley in 1898. The Princess died in 1899, just 7 months shy of her 24th birthday. Queen Lili'uokalani died in 1917, at the age of 79— only 101 years ago. Hawai'i was not made a US state, and its people were not granted the rights of US citizens, until 1959— 18 years after the WWII attack on Pearl Harbor, and 61 years after being claimed as a territory.

So to claim democracy is inherently “better” than all monarchies really says a lot more about the person making that claim than it does the governments in question. Because who is it better for? Who was exploited by whom, left dead by whom, violently deposed by whom? Whose people suffered for the power and profits of the other? Whose hands bore the scars of picking sugar cane and pineapple for pennies under the sun every day, and whose hands pocketed the money for selling them? Whose bank accounts grew fat while others’ language and faith were made illegal?

Particularly to say all that in defense of a democracy whose dick @bailesu is sucking as if its flaws that we must grow past include fascism and slavery, but which is still somehow superior to indigenous autonomy & self-governance without a steady American hand to overthrow and “guide” it in the “right” direction.

It becomes a lot harder to argue the US’s seemingly divine greatness when faced with the torture, rape, and, yes, murder of the hundreds of indigenous cultures that was justified by manifest destiny. Deciding you are justified in these crimes simply because you have more fire power and you want the resources someone else possesses is heinous.

And to then launch a smear campaign against that culture designed to further justify yourself because you saved some “filthy, hedonistic savages” is a level of low that colonizers can and should be judged by for centuries. England was wrong, Spain was wrong, the Dutch, Portugal, the French, all colonizers were wrong, including the US.