The people do not wish to be subsumed into their colossal neighbor's territory. They wish to have their own identity, their own sovereignty, and their own freedom.
For now the regime refuses to listen, refuses to cede to pressure. It is happy to hold on to its prize, happy to take strategic gain at the expense of the people. The international community, eager to trade with the central government, refuses to support the indigenous people's cause, but their discontent is growing, their resistance increasing. For how much longer can the occupation last?
An upcoming election has highlighted the deep disagreement between native Hawaiians over what the future should look like. For some, it's formal recognition of their community and a changed relationship within the US. Others want to leave the US entirely - or more accurately, want the US to leave Hawai'i.
When US officials came onto the stage that June night, they must have known they would be hearing from a hostile audience.
Speaker after speaker came up to the microphone, decrying a rigged process and an occupying government with no legitimacy.
"We do not need you here. This is our country."
"Get out of our house! Go home."
The officials weren't hearing from foreign nationals, but a crowd of citizens in Honolulu, Hawai'i. Someone began singing the opening words to Hawaii Ponoʻī - a national anthem of the Hawaiian Kingdom and the state's official song.
"Hawaii ponoʻī (Hawaii's own), Nānā i kou moʻī (Be loyal to your king)."
Many in the room at the Hawaiian state capitol began singing along.
This was the first in a series of 2014 hearings by the US interior department about whether it should offer a path to federal recognition to the Native Hawaiian community. Such a path has been long open to Native American groups on the mainland, but not to the descendants of Hawaii's indigenous people.
A year later, the interior department has made it official - publishing a proposed "procedures for re-establishing a formal government-to-government relationship".
The first ballots to elect delegates to a convention, or 'aha, for this purpose have now gone out in Hawai'i. Forty delegates from across the islands will meet in February to discuss whether there should be a Native Hawaiian government and what it should look like in the 21st Century.
Williamson Chang, a professor of law at University of Hawai'i, is one of those Hawaiians. He argues under international law, one country can only annex another by treaty - a document which both parties sign. This is how the entire rest of the US was formed - the Louisiana Purchase, the treaties with Native American tribes, the addition of the Republic of Texas. Anything else - including what happened in Hawaii - is an occupation, Chang says.
Hawaii occupies a unique place in US history - a set of islands 2,500 miles (4,023km) away from the mainland where in 1893, white businessmen and sympathetic politicians, with help from the US military, overthrew a constitutional monarchy.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-34680564
