Aloha betrayed : native Hawaiian resistance to American colonialism /
Native Hawaiian resistance to American colonialism
Noenoe K. Silva.
- x, 260 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.
- American encounters/global interactions. .
- American encounters/global interactions. .
Includes bibliographical references (pages 241-251) and index.
Early struggles with the foreigners -- Ka hoku o ka pakipika : emergence of the native voice in print -- The merrie monarch : genealogy, cosmology, mele and performance art as resistance -- The annexation struggle -- The queen of Hawai'i raises her solemn note of protest.
In 1897, as a white oligarchy made plans to allow the United States to annex Hawai'i, native Hawaiians organized a massive petition drive to protest. Ninety-five percent of the native population signed the petition, causing the annexation treaty to fail in the U.S. Senate. This event was unknown to many contemporary Hawaiians until Noenoe K. Silva rediscovered the petition in the process of researching this book. With few exceptions, histories of Hawai'i have been based exclusively on English-language sources. They have not taken into account the thousands of pages of newspapers, books, and letters written in the mother tongue of native Hawaiians. By rigorously analyzing many of these documents, Silva fills a crucial gap in the historical record. In so doing, she refutes the long-held idea that native Hawaiians passively accepted the erosion of their culture and loss of their nation, showing that they actively resisted political, economic, linguistic, and cultural domination. Drawing on Hawaiian-language texts, primarily newspapers produced in the nineteenth century and early twentieth, Silva demonstrates that print media was central to social communication, political organizing, and the perpetuation of Hawaiian language and culture. A powerful critique of colonial historiography, Aloha Betrayed provides a much-needed history of native Hawaiian resistance to American imperialism.
0822333503 9780822333500 082233349X 9780822333494
2004003304
Hawaiians--Colonization Hawaiians--Government relations Hawaiians--Politics and government Imperialism--History
Hawaii--Annexation to the United States Hawaii--History--Overthrow of the Monarchy, 1893 Hawaii--Foreign relations--United States United States--Foreign relations--Hawaii Hawaii--Historiography Hawaii--History--Sources