Anne Keala Kelly has made a very disturbing documentary film entitled “Noho Hewa: The Wrongful Occupation of Hawai‘i” that all Hawaiians and Hawaiians at heart should see. It is so disturbing that at the end of last night’s screening, when the house lights came up and Keala asked the audience for questions, there was dead silence in the Paliku Theatre of Windward Community College.
“Noho Hewa: The Wrongful Occupation of Hawai‘i” is so disturbing that it won the Best Documentary 2008 Award of the Hawaii International Film Festival. That was last October. Now, ten more minutes have been added, and the DVD is now available for $20 to help the filmmaker recoup her expenses.
Our family bought two copies. You may go to nohohewa.com for information about future screenings or to purchase the DVD. Keala will take her guerrilla film to the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque on October 12, 2009, and to Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma on October 15, 2009. Admission is free.
For more information by the filmmaker, visit nohohewa.com
Quoting the DVD cover notes of “Noho Hewa”:
Hawai‘i, thought of by most as the 50th state, is, according to international law, an independent country under an illegal and prolonged occupation by the United States. Through this occupation, Hawai‘i has become home to the largest military command on earth. It also has more endangered species’ habitats per square mile and is the location of more open field tests of genetically modified organisms than anywhere else in the world.
Beyond the illegitimacy of the U.S. presence in Hawai‘i, “Noho Hewa” looks at the methodical removal of Hawaiians from their homeland. The film considers how the erasure of Hawaiian people and history through government sponsored acts of desecration is central to an ongoing agenda to ethnically cleanse Hawai‘i of the Kanaka ‘Oiwi, the indigenous population of Hawai‘i.
If you are alive at all, “Noho Hewa” will shock you. I am Hawaiian. I consider myself an activist. My Hawaiian friends, neighbors, citizens of Ka Lahui Hawaii, and my extended family are in this film. This piece of journalism—it’s excellent—has woken me up even more to the truth about Hawaii, my beloved home. If you can, share this information with others and decide what you will do. It will take all the courage you have. Mahalo to Anne Keala Kelly for hers.
Rebekah’s Studio 
Thanks for your mana’o.
It’s not journalism, it’s propaganda and bad propaganda at that. Your post talks of the endangered species; why doesn’t the State of Hawaii protect the species within the reef system by limiting off shore fishing? What would happen to the economy of Oahu without the military? If Hawaii had not become part of Hawaii at the turn of the last century, Japan would have taken control here. Your post and the “journalism” is nothing more than poor revisionist history.