133 Years After an Illegal Annexation: Why Hawaiians and Chaldeans Understand Each Other
133 Years After the Illegal Annexation of Hawaiʻi: Sovereignty, Federal Law, and a Chaldean Perspective on Cultural Erasure
This year marked 133 years since what many historians and Native Hawaiians recognize as the illegal annexation of Hawaiʻi. For most Americans, it remains a footnote. For many Hawaiians, it is still an open wound. As someone of Chaldean (Iraqi Catholic) heritage building a life in Hawaiʻi, this anniversary is not abstract history—it is recognition. My people carry a parallel story of loss, government intervention, and survival. The paths were different, the scale of violence was different, but the pattern is unmistakably familiar.
Hawaiians and Chaldeans both come from ancient, land-centered civilizations. Hawaiʻi was a sovereign kingdom with international recognition, its own governance, diplomacy, and economic systems long before annexation. They even had electricity in ʻIolani Palace before the White House did! Chaldeans trace their roots to Mesopotamia, to Babylon—one of the earliest cradles of human civilization. Both cultures were deeply spiritual, family-oriented, and rooted in stewardship rather than conquest. Both existed in regions of enormous strategic and economic value. Babylon sat at the center of some of the most important global trade routes. Hawaiʻi stands as an island of sheer willpower — the heartbeat of the Pacific. Both are extraordinarily rich societies, not merely in resources, but in culture, continuity, and identity.
That richness in both attracted their shares of outside global interests. History shows what tends to follow.
Hawaiʻi was taken through political overthrow, economic coercion, and forced annexation. Queen Liliʻuokalani, fully aware of the imbalance of power, made an important decision that spared her people from mass slaughter. Many Hawaiians were forced to assimilate, but the people survived. The culture endured. The land remained. The language—though deliberately suppressed—is now being reclaimed. Sovereignty movements still exist because there is still a homeland to fight for and still a people capable of resisting total erasure.
My people, the Chaldeans, were not afforded that outcome.
Our homeland was not occupied—it was destroyed. Cities that stood for thousands of years were reduced to rubble. Entire communities were slaughtered, displaced, and scattered across the world. Today, there is no homeland to return to. There is no Babylon to reclaim. Our language—Aramaic, the language Christ spoke—is dying, unlike ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi which is being revitalized. By every measurable standard, Chaldeans lost more. Acknowledging that reality does not diminish Hawaiian suffering. It clarifies how close Hawaiʻi itself came to total erasure.
As my public profile grows, I want to be clear about why this history matters to me. I am not here to leave damage behind. I recognize Hawaiʻi’s past precisely because I come from a people shaped by the same forces—foreign intervention, broken promises, and imperialism. The awareness of our similarities imposes my obligation to Hawaiʻi. Respect for the land. Respect for the people. Respect for a history that did not begin with American arrival.
This is not an anti-American argument. It is a critique of government power when it subordinates self-determination to strategic control and economic gain. You can love this country and still acknowledge where it violated its own principles. You can be proud to be American and still recognize that annexation without consent—here or anywhere—was wrong. That distinction is not academic in Hawaiʻi. It is lived reality.
If I defend federal law today, it is because I have seen what happens when governments decide the law no longer matters. When legality becomes optional, the strong take what they want and the vulnerable lose everything. Federal law was ignored in 1893 when Hawaiʻi was taken. It was ignored again when my homeland was invaded then abandoned to chaos. Defending law—however imperfect—is often the only barrier communities have against unchecked power.
Despite everything, Hawaiians and Chaldeans share something rare: cultures built on care rather than conquest, stewardship rather than exploitation. Both value elders as living memory. Both understand identity as something inherited and protected, not casually discarded. Both see land as deep relationship, not a commodity. Hawaiians protected their people through restraint when war would have meant annihilation. Chaldeans survived through dispersion, assimilation, and quiet endurance in exile. Different strategies. Comparable costs.
I did not come to Hawaiʻi to overwrite history or pretend it does not exist. I came knowing that cultures like mine survive only when people listen first, build second, and never extract without giving back. Every decision I make carries a simple question: does this contribute, or does it repeat the same patterns that destroyed my own people’s homeland?
Hawaiʻi still has its land. It still has its voice. It still has a future. That reality deserves respect, protection, and humility from anyone who chooses to build a life here.
Lance Alyas
Owner, Oahu Dispensary and Provisions