Aloha Betrayed: Native Hawaiian Resistance to American Colonialism

Abstract

This slender volume packs quite a punch. Noenoe K. Silva observes that “one of the most persistent and pernicious myths of Hawaiian history is that the Kanaka Maoli (native Hawaiians) passively accepted the erosion of their culture and the loss of their nation” (p. 1). The author argues forcefully that, to the contrary, Hawaiians offered spirited resistance to cultural, social, political, and economic colonization by Americans and other westerners. A revised dissertation, this study relies heavily on careful readings of Hawaiian-language newspapers and other Hawaiian-language sources to drive home this point. Covering the time from Capt. James Cook's “discovery” of the Hawaiian Islands in 1778 through the annexation of the islands by the United States in 1898, Silva's work argues that native Hawaiians simultaneously “consciously and continuously organized and directed their energies to preserving the independence of their country” and labored for “the perpetuation of their native language and culture” (p. 13). In her first two chapters, Silva discusses how native Hawaiians viewed Captain Cook, how they tried to maintain control over their political system and land in the face of western onslaughts in the early- and mid-1800s, and how some expressed themselves through the first Hawaiian-language newspaper free of missionary influence in the early 1860s. In her third chapter, Silva tells the better-known story of how King Kalakaua sought to reestablish Hawaiian culture and political authority during the 1870s and 1880s. Particularly valuable are her discussions of the transcription of the Kumulipo (an Hawaiian cosmological chant/ prayer), the publication of many mele (chants), and the performance of the hula. Silva's final two chapters examine how organized groups of native Hawaiians opposed the formation of the Republic of Hawai'i and its takeover by the United States. Resistance, Silva maintains, was broad and deep, involving thousands of commoners and nobles. Petitions against annexation in 1897 garnered 38,000 signatures, at a time when only 40,000 native Hawaiians remained in the islands. Even allowing for some overlap of names on the petitions, this was an impressive showing. Silva closes by tracing the varied efforts that Queen Lili'uokalani made to reestablish her kingdom until her death in 1917.