The Queen and I: A Story of

Dispossessions and Reconnections in

Hawai’iSydney Lehua Iaukea. Berkeley: University of California

Press, 2012.

In The Queen and I, Sydney Iaukea is interested in

linking two important stories, one ostensibly publicand the other arguably private, but both necessarily

“hidden” for various institutional and personal bene-fits. The first story explores contested dealings sur-

rounding the attempts of Queen Lili’uokalani (the lastreigning monarch of Hawai’i) to defend her power to

bequeath royally-owned landholdings; both were laidclaim to, by the U.S. government (that sought to

rename these lands “public”), and by members of herown family (who were upset with their limited inheri-tance). The second story explores how this one-

hundred-year old tale dramatically affected Iaukea’sfamily, starting with her great-great grandfather, Cur-

tis P. Iaukea, who aided in the Queen’s defense, andending with Iaukea’s nuclear family who have suffered

materially due to their own relatives’ concealment offamily lands and profits. These stories are used to high-

light how “shifting sociopolitical structures and com-bative personal relationships” sought to violate thelongstanding, authentic, and native perspective on “ka

‘aina (the land–literally, ‘that which feeds’)” (1) byinscribing a newer understanding based on the capital-

istic acquisition of private property. In the end, thepolitical and historical are personal and the personal is

political and historical.Iaukea interweaves her stories through five chap-

ters, beginning each with an extended portion ofCurtis Iaukea’s public (though unpublished) writings

in which he recounts his role in establishing (andthen defending) the Queen’s deed of trust related toher landholdings. (These lands that had been desig-

nated “Crown lands” since the 1848 Mahele divisionof lands, which was designed to enable native Hawai-

ians to protect their lands from the large agriculturalplantations then making their way into the islands.)

The deed to the Queen’s land was alternatively estab-lished, challenged, revoked, and rewritten many times

between 1909 and a final settlement in 1918, aptlydemonstrating that Curtis Iaukea, the Queen, andother royal and territorial government members’

“understood the [new] land laws [imposed by U.S.control] and used them to control their own property

assets” (140) to the best of their abilities. The factthat the Queen, her descendants, and her loyal sup-

porters lost control of most of this land, particularlyto the U.S. government, is a testament to the power-

ful ability of capitalism to “deterritorialize” peopleaway from traditionally held associations with the

land and, as Iaukea puts it, “reterritorialize them inrelation to the requirements of capital” (61). Notably,

Curtis Iaukea—who was given (and then lost) landupon which sits some of the most expensive devel-opments in contemporary Waikıkı—was one such

beneficiary of the Queen. This personal history,which his great-great granddaughter simply summa-

rizes by asking how “a Waikıkı fortune, if only asmall piece of it,” could “slip away from my mother,

my little sister, and me” (17), ultimately drew her tothis topic.

The author, though, is not yet done. Iaukea, draw-ing heavily on the work of Michel Foucault, forcefully

argues that this unquestionably illegal seizure of landby the U.S. government cemented a westernized“regime of truth” that intentionally sought to destroy

a Hawaiian epistemology, in which person, land, his-tory, and memory all co-exist. In its place, the U.S.

government constructed a zone of silence that forcedthe stories that Iaukea tells to lie dormant, “untold

and hidden” (39) from the public. It is unfortunatethat Iaukea’s monograph never fully traces this part of

her story. Historical memory is certainly a powerfulinculcator of identity, and this reviewer has no doubtthat Iaukea often encountered textbooks that were

“silent” on this period of Hawaiian history. However,it would be interesting to see her trace the construc-

tion of this regime of truth in order to demonstratethat the lack of discussion regarding the territorial

government and its actions was a deliberate erasure byinstitutional forces, rather than a historiographical

lacunae.Overall, Iaukea offers us a cautionary tale of the

perils and personal effects of annexation and colonial-ism. It is a useful reminder of the destructive natureof the intended and unintended consequences

wrought upon the native Hawaiian populations bythe U.S. government throughout the last hundred

years, and Iaukea’s fascinating glimpse into her ownlife permits us to see how these consequences can

affect the lives of individual people across distant gen-erations.

–-Richard Bond

Virginia Wesleyan College

Book Reviews 201