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Hawaii's Last Queen. Prod. by Vivian Ducat. Ducat Segal Productions for the American Experience. WGBH-Boston, 1997. 60 mins. (PBS Video, 1320 Braddock Pl., Alexandria, VA 22314-1698)
One of the interesting but little-known variants of the diverse history of colonialism is the means by which Hawaii became a territory of the United States of America. Within presentday Hawaii itself interpretations of the process vary considerably, depending on whether the commentators' sympathies lie with the native Hawaiians who suffered the loss of indigenous sovereignty or with those American settlers whose commercial and cultural interests in the end prevailed. The annexation of Hawaii in 1898, the outcome of nearly eighty years of strong American influence in the islands, has a sufficiently complex story to deserve rather more attention than the usual footnote to mainland American history. The documentary Hawaii's Last Queen, produced and written by Vivian Ducat for the American Experience series, tells this history with admirable verve and skill, in a style likely to promote the importance of this episode for understanding latenineteenth-century foreign policy.
There is a particularly poignant moment in Hawaii's Last Queen when a young native Hawaiian man describes the ceremony during which Hawaii's own flag was lowered for the last time, as the American flag took pride of place on Honolulu's most prominent building. The Hawaiian flag, he recounted, was cut into small ribbons and distributed to the children of the missionaries as a...