In 1895, Queen Liliʻuokalani spent nearly eight months imprisoned in an upstairs bedroom in Iolani Palace in Honolulu. She had been put there by American businessmen backed by the United States military, which had overthrown the Hawaiian Kingdom, an internationally recognized sovereign nation.
She spent her days in confinement translating the creation story of the Hawaiian people into English, line by line.
She would never be allowed to rule over her people again. The U.S. annexed Hawaiʻi over the protests of the Native people, and the islands became a territory and then a state. But now the work of the imprisoned queen is resurfacing in the international debate over whether to mine the seabed for minerals that could accelerate the energy transition away from fossil fuels.
Solomon Kahoʻohalahala, a Native Hawaiian activist from the island of Lānaʻi, has been poring over the queen’s t... Read more
