HIAA members paid honor to King Kamehameha on the morning of Feb. 25 by offering hookupu at his statue and flanking the statue with the red and black Hawaiian Independence banners. They then proceeded to the palace grounds and the capitol building where they joined hundreds of others who had gathered to express concern re Gov. Lingle’s appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the Hawaii State Supreme Court’s decision to halt sales/transfers of what are called ‘ceded’ lands until Hawaiian claims have been settled.
No decision was made at the hearing, however a report from Leon Siu, who attended the hearing, provides some insight on what happened there.
[ watch the video ]
HIAA’s message was to call attention to Hawaii’s history and the story behind the fiction of ‘ceded lands’, those lands seized by the U.S. government following the so-called annexation of Hawaii by the U.S. in 1898. HIAA members and friends carried signs with the words “SEIZED NOT CEDED” and “NO TO AKAKA BILL” on Beretania St. in front of the capitol while others demonstrated in the rotunda. Eventually sign holders made their way to the second floor of the building for photos (and a warning from Capitol security). The point, as Leon Siu articulates in the video above, is to challenge a fictionalized history of Hawaiian lands becoming, somehow, U.S. government lands through some kind of cession that legally transferred title.
