US military activity in Hawai’i harms the environment and erodes Native sovereignty

TL;DR - For six weeks this summer, the U.S. military will detonate bombs, conduct live fire training, and sink ships off the coast of the Hawaiian islands in a display that activists say epitomizes how the military’s colonization of Hawaiian land and ongoing destruction of delicate ecosystems are one in the same. Known as the Rim of the Pacific exercises (also called RIMPAC) and hosted every two years since 1971, these “war games” are just another facet of the military’s ongoing destruction of Native land, consumption of precious natural resources, and willful antagonism against endangered and threatened species, all of which organizers, Indigenous land and water defenders, and Hawaiian residents have decried since the U.S. government-sanctioned overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom in 1893.

July 26, 2022: US military activity in Hawai’i harms the environment and erodes Native sovereignty, Prism