Ova Da Rainbow

After more than half a century as a territory, Hawaiʻi is finally a state.

Statehood does not quiet the ghosts of annexation, occupation, and war. It does not resolve the tension between sovereignty and survival, nor does it answer who she is meant to be now: the soul of a people, state of America, or something fiercely her own. As the banners fade and the speeches end, Hawaiʻi must confront the fractures in her history-the betrayals, the compromises, the loyalties that still ache-and decide what parts of her past she will carry forward.

In the wake of celebration comes reckoning. And in that reckoning, Hawaiʻi must forge an identity not handed to her by conquest or congress, but created by and for herself and her people.