Nearly 150 activists lined the streets of Lihu’e and O’ahu in Hawaii Dec. 26 demanding that Governor Linda Lingle abandon a U.S. Supreme Court appeal seeking to open certain public Hawaiian lands for sale.
In January 2008, a Hawaii Supreme Court ruling barred sale or transfer of more than a million acres of public lands that had belonged to the Hawaiian monarchy prior to the 1893 takeover by the United States.
A demonstration in late November brought hundreds of native Hawaiians to the Hawaiian capitol to protest the land grab. “You cannot sell our lands,” said Hawaiian activist Vicky Holt Takamine at that demonstration. “We are not going to allow them to take our ceded lands for their own selfish purposes.”
In 1993, 100 years after the overthrow, the U.S. government issued an “Apology Resolution” to the people of Hawaii. The apology did nothing to guarantee the basic rights of indigenous Hawaiians, who continue to struggle against the colonial legacy of oppression.
