In 1897 more than 38,000 Hawaiian nationals (the total population was 40,000) signed petitions, that were delivered to and acknowledged in Washington, D.C., protesting annexation by the United States. A hundred years later in 1997 Noenoe K. Silva, a Hawaiian, educated present-day Native Hawaiians when she found the documents in the U.S. Archives and brought them back to the Islands.
I was reminded of this last night over dinner with two woman warrior friends, Karen and Pat, who told me of the demonstration this past Monday at the statue of President William McKinley in Honolulu, where he is holding a so-called “Treaty of Annexation.” The point was, there is no annexation treaty.
Karen and Pat also alerted me to a controversial bill, relating to government, in the current Hawaii State legislature that is already set to be heard in the Ways and Means committee on Friday, Feb. 25. Hawaiian sovereignty activists, take note.
You may head on over to http://kalahuihawaii.wordpress.com for my Feb. 23 accounts and links to details of each. One is “Kue petition revisited” and the other is “Akaka bill: now what.” Noenoe Silva’s article is most sobering. http://libweb.hawaii.edu/digicoll/annexation/pet-intro.html
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