Hawaiian History

Hawaiian island all what comes in mind is blue beach and mountains, full history of volcano. However, Hawaii is more than that, its not marginal island that contain a people who have a passive view of American colonialism, much deeper than that a reason for everything.

To understand Hawaiians we need to know a bit of their historical events, Hawaii was discovered by the British Explorer Captain James cook he, it was the same place that he was killed in. by the nineteenth century cooks achievement was to reveal one of the most important islands back then that happen to be a central trans pacific trading world by Americans who benefited from the way station for fur plus trader, whaler.

However, it wasn’t only for unsustainable resources exploitation but also an exchange of dangerous diseases like small pox and typhoid. Therefore, said (Smith, 2019) “The Native Hawaiian population declined from perhaps 400,000 upon Cook’s arrival to just 40,000 by the 1890s.8 Imported weaponry, too, transformed the sociopolitical landscape. Shortly after Cook’s visits, the chief Kamehameha embarked upon a military campaign to unify the Hawaiian island group and its chiefdoms under a single monarchy”.

Across nineteenth century a strong central government, it was interesting to American protestant to missionaries to go deep in shaking the way things work, they have been successful to create a high percentage of literate Christian population and gain trust of Hawaiian monarchs by taking advantage from the sacred system the regulates Hawaiian life and native Hawaiians strong attachment to land and gods.

The Hawaiian monarchs in the late nineteenth century asked fro more power and to reinvigorate native Hawaiian culture, things got harder. (Smith 2019) In 1887, a secret haole society calling itself the “Hawaiian League” imposed the infamous “Bayonet Constitution” upon Kalākaua.19 When this still did not curb monarchical power to the desired extent, an alleged attempt to impose a new constitution by Liliʻuokalani in January 1893 was taken as the League’s cue to form a “Committee of Safety” and, colluding with the U.S. minister to Hawaii and troops aboard the U.S.S. Boston in Honolulu harbor, to overthrow the indigenous monarchy”. However eventually the island was annexed by the united states in 1898 and here Hawaii have become Americas fiftieth state. It is still hard for Hawaiian to hear Hawaiian history as an American one.

Indigenous people have suffered from ignorance of native Hawaiian culture like the usage of English language and texts even (smith 2019) “portraying Hawaiians as passive recipients of foreign initiatives, rather than agents within a cultural exchange”. Moreover, the ignorance of Hawaiian voice, the remained seen as passive for US colonialism also the resistance inefficient. Believed also that historian who used Hawaiian history as American history only served American imperial expansion by creating this illusion. (Smith 2019) “notion of consensual colonization, argues Adria Imada, reified the twentieth-century U.S. tourist industry’s image of Hawaiian hospitality, and of Hawaiians’ readiness to extend aloha (roughly translated as “love”) to Americans”

But modern Hawaii is settler society just like united states but now native people still suffer from massive depopulation and landlessness, Christianization, economic and political marginalization, and poor health. (Haunani 2000) “Today, Hawaiians continue to suffer the effects of haole (white) colonization. Our language was banned in 1896, resulting in several generations of Hawaiians, including myself, whose only language is English. Our lands and waters have been taken for military bases, resorts, urbanization and plantation agriculture”

Hawaiians believe that tourism companies that is controlled by American does not respect their culture, and use it as tourist artifacts for the worlds rich. For example, (Haunani 2000) hula, for example, an ancient form of dance with deep spiritual meaning, has been made ornamental, a form of exotica for the gaping tourist. Far from encouraging a cultural revival, as tourist industry apologists contend, tourism has appropriated and cheapened our dance, music, language, and people, particularly our women.