my book starts and ends with my own narrative of growing up on maui and harbor lights and just trying to find out why we don't have land. and so instead of feeling like disempowered about that, having gone through the documents and

just being immersed in all that information, it, i feel more empowered to know that we knew what was going on then and we can figure out our way now in 1848, hawaiian king kamehameha, the third set aside 1.8 million acres of land on the islands known as crown land to be managed by the hawaiian monarchs. a group of businessmen assisted by the united states military overthrew through the monarchy and took control of the crown lands. in 1893, a five years later, it fell under territorial control by the u.s government. in 1910, queen lili oku lani sued the unite states, ciming her ownership of the crown lands. queen lili uokalani is our last reigning sovereign of the hawaiian kingdom. she was overthrown in 1893 and she passed away in 1917. so i look at all the legal issues that she incurred from

after the overthrow to the incoming territory. your government, her fight to get the revenues from the crown lands, which were rightfully hers as the reigning sovereign. and then up until the court case that challenged her trusted by prince kahil, which lasted after her until after she passed away. so i was doing my dissertation. you wonder, and i didn't know why. i was in the doing a ph.d. and then i ran across my great great grandfather's papers at the archives, and he was the queen's advisor up until she after she passed, even he handled all her private papers and he also was one of the first trustees to her estate who was monumental in having hawaii be recognized as a sovereign territory and nation state in his travels. so he was the second hawaiian to

go around the world to negotiate plantation labor for the sugar plant planters, and then later during the queen's reign, he was her right hand man in a lot of ways. and then after the overthrow, the illegal overthrow and the occupation, he was still the agent for the crown lands revenue. and so he went to her to ask if he should, what should he do? because an incoming government asked him to stand up position and he she told him to stay there to watch the revenues. so and then he was a part of the territorial government in many capacities up until his death in 1940. so he played a large role in both the kingdom, the territory and what was to become the incoming state of hawaii. so i look at queen lili uokalani narrative just after the

territorial governments organic act in 1900 and backtracking a little bit to the land act, the combined crown and government lands within the kingdom that were supposedly ceded to the united states. so i pick up her narrative as she goes to washington, d.c. to fight for the revenues from the crown lands because the crown lands are considered her private property as the reigning sovereign. and so i follow her narrative through that court case to see how she was set to get some of the revenue back. prince castle hill was the congressional representative in washington, and so in his documentation he told her that he would do what he could to help with the return of the revenues at the time, she wanted to be favorable to him but still stand her ground. and what ended up happening was

the crown lands revenue were not returned to her. that became part of the public doctrine. so it combined with the government lands and then it became public lands. so large military installations started using those properties. there was a large percentage that became national parks for the united states when the national parks started in the early 1900s, we were one of the biggest national parks in the world, which had already just begun national parks with yellowstone. and your cemetery in the united states. so it's fashioned after removal of native americans on the continent from the land based. so they follow the same guideline in that way. so we still have one of the largest spaces with with national parks for the united states after queen lili uokalani lost the case regarding her rights to the crown land, she returned to court in 1915 to fight for her right to decide

ownership of her two personal properties washington place and yellow. giuliani in waikiki. the end result is that after the queen had passed november 11th, 1917, the trustees came together with a trujillo and his wife, and they hammered out an agreement to stop the legally from going on anymore. and what occurred was that washington place her home that she got from her husband a dominance she wanted to go his son but it's condemned property for the public good so went for the governors of the newly formed territory, which to me was the ultimate slap in the face. she loved washington place, so to take that and have the governors live within the mansion and now they live on a site in the side house next to

it an kill or hilal which is her waikiki residence, her other property that she loved with. she had two homes on that property, some houses that was the most contested case that principal hill wanted as a be simple, instead of just as a life, estate and what ended up happening was that he got the estate as a simple the name, then changed to poor leilani and the the territory. it was given to the territory in his death in 1921. so this is within relatively few years. all of this occurs and then today it's kahil parke and then with the my last chapter actually looks at waikiki and the dredging of the holloway canal. why they wanted the canal was to build waikiki and quote for a new and better class of people that envisioning of a turning into a monetary site and for

consumption occurred early so the canal was completed around 1920 829. and then we have the tourism industry that begins soon after. so the idea that hawaii is just a place for visitors was put into play strongly and done on purpose for a monetary profit. the narrative of waikiki, though, is that the elite lived here. it has a long history of elite influence, and because it's so beautiful, this is where they serve. rode the waves. this is where they played. this is where they had their homes for the queen. this was her favorite space. and so disconnecting it from that was part of what we see today, where it's just mostly a consumer society. so people coming with that expectation in a lot of ways, that's to be expected and that's what they will get. is that one dimensional display

of culture on the land where it's so much