[burkaman]

I did not mean to imply that all native Hawaiians agree about this, it's a big population so obviously there will be diversity of views. My main point was just that there are native Hawaiians in significant numbers at all - there are some descendants of Taino in Puerto Rico, but very few and it's been centuries since they were independent.

I understand there is some debate about how involved the US government was in overthrowing the Hawaiian government. It seems like everyone agrees that there was a coup with the express purpose of achieving annexation by the US, the majority of Hawaiians did not support annexation, and the US government did it anyway. That happened relatively recently, a lot of people are still mad about it, and it's a legitimate thing to be mad about. The US took over a weaker nation against the will of its people. The most generous view we can take is that a minority of Hawaiians requested annexation and the US agreed, which would still be unjust.

I don't think historical details about how exactly the coup happened are relevant to this discussion, and if they are I'm definitely not qualified to argue about them.