The Rights of My People Liliuokalani's Enduring Battle with the United States 1893-1917

The Rights of My People: Liliuokalani's Enduring Battle with the United States 1893-1917 By Neil Thomas Proto
2009 | 252 Pages | ISBN: 0875867200 | PDF | 3 MB
Liliuokalani led two battles for Hawaii's sovereignty -- fighting the 1893 coup d'etat and to avoid outright annexation in 1898 and, through 1910, the taking of the Crown lands by the United States, a quarter of Hawaii's territory. The Rights of My People revisits these battles from a new perspective, against the backdrop of the harsh remnants of the Civil War, the missionary's disquieting view of race, and the emerging role of Hawaiian women.A lawyer who has represented the interests of Hawaii, Neil Thomas Proto examines court papers and other original documents that disclose new details of this historic confrontation. Woven into the story are threats of execution and assassination and the forces of bigotry, condescension, and deception Liliuokalani confronted. She challenged the United States before Congress repeatedly for complicity in taking the Crown lands. The author gives the first detailed and documented description of the seizure of the Crown lands, a quarter of the Hawaii islands, in 1893. This illegal move was contested aggressively by Liliuokalani for nearly two decades.With previously unexamined documents, court records, and correspondence, and with an engaging prose and graphic portrayals, author Neil Thomas Proto weaves into the story Liliuokalani's political, legal, and media maneuvering, and the exercise of her harshly learned wisdom and skill in forming and giving life to her claim that the taking of the Crown lands by the United States was immoral and illegal. The threat of execution and assassination and the continued use of religious and racial condescension and deception by her adversaries, old and new, unfold in Honolulu, Hilo, and on to the continent in San Francisco, Boston, and Washington, D.C. Over more than a decade, the queen took up residence in the nation's capital, often for months at a time, to challenge the complicity of the United States in the media and before Congress. The story ends with the lawyers' arguments and the final decision in Liliuokalani v. United States of America in 1910. In the grandeur of what is now the Renwick Art Gallery, the United States Court of Claims heard and decided the case and sealed the islands' fate; a fate that neither Liliuokalani nor her people accepted through her death in 1917. With an easily accessible but penetrating analysis, Proto demonstrates the deliberate effort by Liliuokalani's own lawyers to denigrate her claim. The epilogue reflects the queen's intent through the end of her life to ensure persistence among her people and discomfort among those who had taken Hawaii. There is no conclusiveness or note of warmth to the ending. Through Proto's new perspective and exploration, Liliuokalani's cosmopolitan character and her place in a larger history emerge with clarity as do the continued contentiousness within Hawaii and between its native people and the United States.