Page:United States Statutes at Large Volume 107 Part 2.djvu/560

 107 STAT. 1512 PUBLIC LAW 103-150—NOV. 23, 1993 to in this Resolution as the "Committee") to conduct a new investigation into the events surrounding the overthrow of the monarchy; Whereas the Committee and its chairman, Senator John Morgan, conducted hearings in Washington, D.C., from December 27, 1893, through February 26, 1894, in which members of the Provisional Government justified and condoned the actions of the United States Minister and recommended annexation of Hawaii; Whereas, although the Provisional Government was able to obscure the role of the United States in the illegal overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy, it was unable to rally the support from two-thirds of the Senate needed to ratify a treaty of annexation; Whereas, on July 4, 1894, the Provisional Government declared itself to be the Republic of Hawaii; Whereas, on January 24, 1895, while imprisoned in lolani Palace, Queen Liliuokalani was forced by representatives of the Republic of Hawaii to officially abdicate her throne; Whereas, in the 1896 United States Presidential election, William McKinley replaced Grover Cleveland; Whereas, on July 7, 1898, as a consequence of the Spanish-American War, President McKinley signed the Newlands Joint Resolution that provided for the annexation of Hawaii; Whereas, through the Newlands Resolution, the self-declared Republic of Hawaii ceded sovereignty over the Hawaiian Islands to the United States; Whereas the Republic of Hawaii also ceded 1,800,000 acres of crown, government and public lands of the Kingdom of Hawaii, without the consent of or compensation to the Native Hawaiian people of Hawaii or their sovereign government; Whereas the Congress, through the Newlands Resolution, ratified the cession, annexed Hawaii as part of the United States, and vested title to the lands in Hawaii in the United States; Whereas the Newlands Resolution also specified that treaties existing between Hawaii and foreign nations were to immediately cease and be replaced by United States treaties with such nations; Whereas the Newlands Resolution effected the transaction between the Republic of Hawaii and the United States Government; Whereas the indigenous Hawaiian people never directly relinquished their claims to their inherent sovereignty as a people or over their national lands to the United States, either through their monarchy or through a plebiscite or referendum; Whereas, on April 30, 1900, President McKinley signed the Organic Act that provided a government for the territory of Hawaii and defined the political structure and powers of the newly established Territorial Government and its relationship to the United States; Whereas, on August 21, 1959, Hawaii became the 50th State of the United States; Whereas the health and well-being of the Native Hawaiian people is intrinsically tied to their deep feehngs and attachment to the land; Whereas the long-range economic and social changes in Hawaii over the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries have been devastating to the population and to the health and well-being of the Hawaiian people; Whereas the Native Hawaiian people are determined to preserve, develop and transmit to future generations their ancestral territory, and their cultural identity in accordance with their own

�