Call for Hawaiian Sovereignty

by Michael Kioni Dudley, Keoni K. Agard

This book has brought thousands to support Hawaiian Sovereignty. It gave the movement a calmly reasoned argument, detailing facts that cried for justice. Now in its eleventh year, it is recognized as "the Handbook on Hawaiian Sovereignty." In the hundred years after the American overthrow of the monarchy, generations learned a history revised to make the conqueror right and good. This is the first book to tell Hawaiian history from the Hawaiian point of view. It also discusses the present status of the Hawaiian people, and their need for both their own lands and their own government in order for their race to survive. It discusses the growth of the sovereignty movement over the last thirty years, and presents models of nationhood that have been proposed. The book is written by a non-Hawaiian and a Hawaiian.

Genres: Nonfiction

188 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 1990

Reviews

[RJ - Slayer of Trolls]

The authors' prior book, Hawaiian Nation : Man, Gods, and Nature, was merely the setup for this book in which an impassioned plea is made for the Hawaiian Sovereignty movement. Despite being notably one-sided, this book gives at least a partial history of the Hawaiian islands post-European explorer contact, focusing on details of how wealthy haole landowners used the US Navy to overthrow the monarchy and request US territorial status in 1893, despite President Grover Cleveland arguing at length about obvious malfeasances. Published in 1992 at perhaps the height of the Sovereignty movement, the text merely whets the appetite for a more even-handed (and better written) exploration of the events described within. (P.S. In 1993, a year after this book was published, a congressional resolution was passed formally apologizing for the United States' role in the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy.)