Last reviewed · SEPTEMBER 8, 2026

About

About the Hawaiʻi Sovereignty Archive.

The Hawaiʻi Sovereignty Archive is an independent documentary research gateway examining the historical Hawaiian Kingdom, the overthrow and annexation period, contemporary sovereignty-related organizations and institutions, and the competing legal interpretations surrounding them. It does not determine which modern organization is legitimate. The site is not itself a primary source or a permanent institutional repository.

The Hawaiʻi Sovereignty Archive exists to answer one question honestly: what does the documentary record actually say about Hawaiian sovereignty? The story is contested, the parties are partisan, and accurate information is genuinely hard to find. This site collects the record itself — treaties, statutes, court rulings, congressional reports, the petitions of the Hawaiian people, independent reporting and scholarship, and clearly labeled material published by the organizations themselves — and identifies, for every substantive entry, which of those kinds of record stands behind it.

Claims are cited to the strongest source located and labeled by source class and verification status. Primary government, court, treaty and archival records are preferred where available. Organization-produced material is identified as such and does not by itself establish external acceptance.

Begin with the overthrow chronology for the historical record, the groups pages for profiles of contemporary sovereignty-related organizations and institutions, the comparison page for side-by-side factual comparison, and the fact-check hub for 58 common claims checked against the records located for each.

No organization is endorsed, and inclusion in this archive is not recognition of any claim an organization makes.
Evidence is not scored or ranked, and organizations are not ranked against one another; where the documentation behind two claims differs, the difference is shown through the records themselves.
Documented fact, organization claim, legal argument, government position, disputed interpretation and unverified material are labeled separately, and legal arguments are kept distinct from court holdings and governmental positions.
Source provenance is identified for each substantive entry, and organization-produced records are distinguished from independent corroboration.
Unresolved evidence gaps and incomplete sourcing remain visible rather than being smoothed over, and the same evidentiary framework is applied to every organization.
The archive is a research gateway, not a substitute for the original authorities; corrections are documented in the corrections log below.

What we do

Our methodology.

Present documented historical facts about the Hawaiian Kingdom, the 1893 overthrow, the 1898 Newlands Resolution, and the 1959 statehood ballot.
Profile sovereignty-related organizations and institutions with sourced information on leadership, stated aims, and structure, applying the same fields to each.
Report documented court and leadership records from public state and federal sources, noting where a record could not be located.
Compare organizations side-by-side on the same fields — leadership, stated aims, documented proceedings, external activity — without scoring or ranking.
Check common claims about Hawaiian sovereignty against the documentary record, identifying the source type behind each finding.
Every substantive entry identifies its source type and distinguishes primary/institutional records, independent reporting, organization-produced evidence, incomplete corroboration, and instances where no reliable source has been located.

What we don't do

Our limits.

Advocate for any political position or any particular sovereignty organization.
Present rumor or hearsay — each entry names its source, and entries whose sourcing is incomplete are marked "Requires source review."
Rely on external links that may disappear; citations are preserved by document name.
Determine which modern organization is legitimate, or convert an organization's claim into an established fact.

Editorial standard

How we label what we publish.

Every statement in the archive belongs to one of eight categories. The category tells you what kind of thing the statement is — and what it can and cannot settle.

The archive is neutral toward competing contemporary claimants, not neutral toward the documentary record. Established historical facts are stated plainly. Where legal consequences remain contested, competing interpretations are identified.

Documented historical fact: An event established by primary records that are not in dispute among historians. Stated plainly.Example: Queen Liliʻuokalani signed a protest on January 17, 1893, and the document survives in the U.S. National Archives.
Government or congressional finding: A conclusion reached by a legislature, executive investigation, or agency. Authoritative as to that body's own findings; not a court ruling.Example: Public Law 103-150 (1993) contains congressional findings that U.S. agents and citizens participated in the overthrow.
Court or legal holding: What a court actually decided, limited to the question before it. Cited with the case, court, and year.Example: Hawaii v. Office of Hawaiian Affairs (2009): the Apology Resolution did not create the substantive legal consequence asserted in that case.
Legal argument: A reasoned legal position advanced by scholars, advocates, or counsel that no court or international body has adopted as binding.Example: The argument that the 1898 Newlands Resolution could not transfer sovereignty because a domestic joint resolution is not a bilateral treaty.
Organizational claim: A statement an organization makes about itself — its status, territory, constituency, or authority. Reported as the organization's own claim, with self-published material labeled.Example: An organization describes itself as a continuing government and states it has a defined citizenry.
Indigenous or traditional recognition: Recognition arising from genealogy, custom, royal or chiefly relationships, or nation-to-nation courtesy. Kept separate from recognition by states under international law.Example: A ceremonial protocol exchange or a relationship acknowledged by another Indigenous nation.
Oral history or testimony: First-person or transmitted accounts. Valuable evidence of experience and memory, identified as testimony rather than documentary proof of external events.Example: A family account of participation in the 1897 Kūʻē petition drive.
Contested or unresolved question: A question on which the record is incomplete or the competing positions have not been resolved by any authority. Both positions are set out; no conclusion is asserted.Example: Whether the 1959 statehood ballot breached a binding United Nations standard.

Sources

Where the record comes from.

U.S. Congressional records (Newlands Resolution, Public Law 103-150)
U.S. Library of Congress — Hawaiian Kingdom treaty holdings
U.S. National Archives — Kūʻē Petitions (1897)
Hawaiʻi State Court records and U.S. District Court of Hawaiʻi records
Permanent Court of Arbitration (The Hague) — Larsen v. Hawaiian Kingdom
U.S. Supreme Court opinions (Rice v. Cayetano, Hawaii v. OHA, Akina v. Hawaii)
Honolulu Star-Bulletin, Honolulu Civil Beat, Hawaii News Now reporting
Academic publications and peer-reviewed scholarship on Hawaiian sovereignty
Government archives and the Hawaiʻi State Archives

Launch checklist

What this archive ships with.

All 10 group profiles complete
58 fact-check entries, each with its source named
Interactive historical timeline (1810–2025)
Side-by-side comparison of documented facts, without scoring or ranking of organizations
Citation formats provided for research use in a plain institutional form and in Chicago, APA, MLA and Bluebook formats
Per-page metadata and structured data
Fully responsive across mobile, tablet, and desktop
Designed toward WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility (skip links, landmarks, contrast)
No third-party analytics, advertising, or tracking scripts; page-view and search counts are stored only in your own browser and auto-expire after 30 days

Disclaimer

This website presents publicly available information from court records, news articles, and historical archives for educational purposes. No political position is endorsed and no claim should be understood as legal advice. This archive is independently operated and is not an official publication of any sovereignty organization, government agency, political campaign, or institutional claimant.

Where the record is contested we say so. Where it is unambiguous we cite it. Corrections supported by an identifiable source record are welcome, and each correction made is documented in the corrections log on this page.

Inclusion criteria

Why these 10 entities are profiled.

The 10 entities profiled here are not all of one kind, and the archive does not describe them all as “sovereignty organizations.” They include private organizations, a state agency (the Office of Hawaiian Affairs), and a nonprofit convener (Naʻi Aupuni). Each is included because of its historical or contemporary relevance to one or more of the following:

Independence claims
Hawaiian Kingdom continuity or restoration claims
Native Hawaiian self-determination
Federal-recognition models
Royal or lineage claims
Major institutional sovereignty initiatives

The set is not exhaustive. Other organizations, hui, and initiatives exist, and inclusion here is neither endorsement nor recognition of any claim an organization makes, nor is absence a judgment about an organization's significance.

Source classes

Classes A–E, as the profiles use them.

Class A — Primary and institutional records
Treaties, statutes, court filings and rulings, government and archival records, official United Nations documents.
Class B — Independent journalism and scholarship
Reporting by independent news organizations and peer-reviewed or academically published work.
Class C — Organization-produced documentation
Material published by the organization about itself — constitutions, proclamations, agreements it describes as treaties, photographs, notices, correspondence it sends.
Class D — Partially corroborated material
A record exists but the corroboration is incomplete: a counterparty, an authorship, a date, or an acceptance could not be confirmed.
Class E — No reliable source located
The claim is recorded as claimed, with a statement that no reliable source for it was located in this review.
Archive analysis — This site's own reading of the records
Clearly labeled as such. It is never counted as corroboration of the claim it discusses — the archive cannot corroborate itself.

Class C is not a finding of falsehood. It establishes what an organization published or claimed. What it cannot establish on its own is that any outside actor — a state, a court, an international body, or a named counterparty — accepted, acknowledged, or acted on that claim. Where such acceptance is documented elsewhere, that record is cited separately.

“No source located” means not located. It means the record was not found in the publicly reachable materials reviewed as of the review date. It is not a statement that the event never happened. Records held privately, offline, in another language, or in an archive this review could not reach would not appear here, and readers who can produce such a record are invited to submit it.

Legal neutrality

Five different categories, never silently merged.

Historical fact. An event evidenced by the documentary record — a date, a signature, a filing, a landing of troops.
Legal interpretation. An argument about what the law makes of those facts. Scholars disagree; an interpretation is not an outcome.
U.S. / state legal position. What U.S. and Hawaiʻi courts and governments actually treat as law today. It is presented as such, not as proof that it is correct.
Continuity argument. The argument that the Hawaiian Kingdom was never lawfully extinguished. It is presented as a serious argument that no international tribunal has decided on the merits.
Organization claim. A statement an organization makes about itself or its standing, attributed to that organization.

These are different kinds of statement, and this archive does not silently convert one into another: a claim does not become a fact because it is repeated, an argument does not become a ruling, and a domestic legal position does not become an international one.

Editorial standards

One standard, applied to every subject.

This archive applies a single evidentiary standard to all subjects. The archive uses a source hierarchy that distinguishes primary government and court records, independent journalism, organization-produced materials, oral or traditional testimony, and claims for which independent corroboration has not been located. Each statement is labeled by the kind of record behind it, so readers can weigh it themselves. The archive is a curated research index and documentary gateway; it is not itself a primary source. The same criteria apply regardless of which sovereignty organization is described, and no organization is scored or ranked.

Editorial independence & responsibility

Who is responsible for this archive.

Editorial responsibility

Hawaiʻi Sovereignty Archive is an independently maintained documentary research project. Editorial decisions are governed by the archive's published evidence classification, sourcing and correction standards rather than by the interests of any sovereignty organization, governmental agency, political party or advocacy organization.

The archive is intended as a research gateway rather than a substitute for original legal, governmental or archival sources. Readers evaluating legal or historical questions are encouraged to consult the underlying records directly.

Where a record supports multiple interpretations, the archive seeks to distinguish the underlying document from the conclusions different parties draw from it.

Editorial contact. Editorial questions, documented corrections and stronger source material may be submitted through the corrections and source submissions form or the contact form. Submissions are stored in the archive's editorial inbox; nothing is published automatically.

The archive is not affiliated with, controlled by, sponsored by, or funded by:

the State of Hawaiʻi
the United States government
the Office of Hawaiian Affairs
any Hawaiian sovereignty organization
any contemporary claimant to the Hawaiian Crown
any political party or advocacy organization

Inclusion is not endorsement: Profiling an organization, document or claim records that it exists and is part of the documentary record. It is not support for its position and not a judgment that its claim is valid.
Absence of documentation is not disproof: Where no record has been located, the page says so. That means the record was not found in the sources reviewed — not that the event never happened.
Organization-produced material shows what was claimed: A document an organization produced establishes that the organization made that claim or created that record. By itself it does not establish independent recognition, acceptance by another party, or legal effect.
Court decisions are reported to their holdings: Decisions are described by what the court actually held, with its procedural posture. Holdings are not expanded into broader propositions, and arguments made by parties are not reported as findings.
Corrections are accepted and logged publicly: Substantive factual corrections are recorded in the public corrections log with what changed and why. Submissions are never auto-published; only corrections accepted after review appear.

What follows is limited to what has been confirmed for publication. No qualification, reviewer, affiliation, funder, or endorsement is asserted here unless it is stated below, and where a fact has not been confirmed the entry says so.

Who is responsible: The archive is maintained by a single independent researcher, who makes every editorial decision under the archive's published evidence classification, sourcing and correction standards. That researcher's name, role and experience have not been published on this site, so no identity, qualification or institutional affiliation is confirmed here; an account name or project metadata appearing elsewhere is not a confirmed identification. The archive is independently operated and is not an official publication of any sovereignty organization, government agency, political campaign, or institutional claimant.
Ownership and funding: The archive is self-funded and owned by the researcher who maintains it. It accepts no advertising, no sponsorship, and no funding from any Hawaiian sovereignty organization, political entity, or advocacy group. Independence of funding removes one kind of pressure; it does not by itself establish neutrality, and the basis for trusting an entry is its named source, not the archive's funding.
Relationships that may create perceived conflicts: The researcher maintains longstanding personal relationships within the broader Hawaiian sovereignty community. No specific relationship, membership, office or payment has been disclosed for publication, so none is described here. Disclosure and consistently applied evidence rules manage a perceived conflict of interest; they do not eliminate it, and the relationships are not themselves evidence that any entry is biased.
Research and AI assistance: No research assistant, contributor or collaborator has been disclosed. AI assistance was used to draft and edit page text, write the site's code, summarize gathered material, and help locate candidate records; AI output is never treated as a source, and every substantive claim is attributed to a named record. The full AI disclosure is set out under Editorial policy below.
External review: No external review has occurred. No outside historian, attorney, university, court, government body, or sovereignty organization has reviewed any part of this archive, and no historical, legal, academic, peer review or certification has been conducted. Nothing here is legal advice. The archive's review scope and dates are set out under Review status.
How readers submit corrections: Corrections and stronger source material are submitted through the corrections form or the contact form; both store submissions in the archive's editorial inbox, and a confirmation appears only once a submission has actually been saved. No monitored public mailbox address has been published, so the forms are the route to use. Nothing submitted is published automatically.

Not yet published. The following details have not been published on this site: Researcher / editor name; Role; Relevant experience; Connection to Hawaiian sovereignty communities; Relationships that could create perceived conflicts; Funding and ownership; Research assistance; Historical reviewers; Legal reviewers; Contact method for editorial questions. Nothing is stated in advance of confirmation.

Disclosure last updated September 8, 2026

Review status

What has been reviewed, and by whom.

Last reviewed: September 8, 2026 (site record and editorial review). Organization profiles: public court and records review completed September 6, 2026.
Methodology in force: Archive V3.0, September 2026. Earlier versions are retained in the changelog below rather than deleted.
Reviewed by: Internal review by the archive's own researcher only. No outside scholar, attorney, university, court, government body, or sovereignty organization has reviewed this archive.
Research status: Active. Records are added and revised continuously; the methodology in force is Archive V3.0 (September 2026).
Source completeness: Fact-check hub: 38 of 58 entries carry a located, directly citable record; 20 remain flagged "requires source review" and say so on the page. Document register: 22 of 29 records have a hand-verified locator. A blank metadata field means the information has not been recorded, not that it does not exist.
Correction history: Substantive factual corrections and methodology revisions are listed in the corrections log on this page, each with its date and the source that prompted it. Nothing is removed from that log once entered.

External review

Review by people outside this archive.

No external review has been conducted. No outside historian, attorney, university, court, government body, or sovereignty organization has reviewed any part of this archive as of September 8, 2026. Only a reviewer who has actually read some or all of the archive and agreed to be named is listed here, with their credentials, scope, date, the nature of the review, any resulting corrections, and any relationship a reader should know about.

Archive and research contact

Reaching the archive.

This is the single channel for journalists, academics, attorneys, historians, people offering documents to the archive, and anyone requesting a correction. The same review standard applies to every sender.

Messages reach the archive through the contact form. Submissions are stored in the archive's editorial inbox and read by the person who maintains the archive; a confirmation is shown only once a message has actually been saved. No public mailbox address has been published, so the form is the route to use.

Open the contact form

Editorial policy

How entries are written and revised.

Designed as a documented starting point for readers, journalists, researchers and public officials. Readers should verify significant claims against the linked primary records.

Every substantive entry names the kind of record behind it, and entries whose sourcing has not been confirmed are labeled rather than presented as settled.
Documented fact, government finding, legal argument, and the operative U.S./state legal position are kept as separate categories and never silently converted into one another.
An organization’s own material establishes what that organization published or claimed; it is not treated as proof of an action or acceptance by another party.
The same template, the same source classes, and the same correction standard apply to every organization and person covered here. Nothing is scored or ranked.
Where a record could not be located, the page says so. Absence of documentation is not treated as proof that an event did not occur.

Use of AI

AI assistance was used in building and maintaining this site: drafting and editing page text, writing and revising the site's code, and summarizing or reorganizing material already gathered.

AI was also used to help locate candidate records and cross-check wording against them. AI output is not treated as a source. Every substantive claim is attributed to a named record — a statute, court opinion, government or institutional archive, independent report, or clearly labeled organization-produced document — and entries whose sourcing has not been confirmed are marked so on the page.

AI can state something false with confidence. Readers should verify significant claims against the linked primary records, and errors can be reported through the corrections process.

→ Version history

Corrections policy

How we handle corrections.

Corrections are accepted when backed by a source that can be checked — a government or court record, contemporaneous documentation, or other verifiable material appropriate to the claim. The seven-day review period begins once a submission has been successfully received. Accepted corrections are logged in the corrections log with a timestamp. This archive has no record of having contacted the organizations profiled here, and nothing on this site should be read as a refusal to respond by any organization. Any organization may submit primary materials, a correction, or a written response through the contact form, and it will be reviewed on the same terms.

Corrections may be submitted through the contact form. Submissions are stored in the archive's editorial inbox and read by the person who maintains the archive. No confirmation of receipt is shown unless the submission has actually been stored, and nothing submitted is published automatically.

A correction request should carry the address of the affected page, the exact statement being challenged, the proposed correction, the source supporting it, a short explanation of why the record supports the change, and contact information if the sender wishes to be reached. Contact information is optional; a correction is assessed on its source, not on who sent it.

Nothing a sender submits is published automatically. Only corrections the archive has accepted after checking the source appear in the corrections log below.

Personal-conduct standard. This archive does not state a person’s motives, character, or intent. Claims that someone acted for money, personal gain, jealousy, arrogance, corruption, or to undermine another organization are not published unless a court record, audit, contract, ethics finding, government record, or equivalent reliable document directly supports that specific claim. Where such a record exists, the documented event is reported as recorded, without inferring motive. The same standard applies to every person and organization covered here.

Adverse and misconduct-related records. Adverse or misconduct-related material is classified by what the record actually establishes. A fact established by a primary record or a reliable independent source is stated plainly and is not softened because it may harm a reputation. An allegation is not described as proven misconduct. Conduct is not called fraud, theft, corruption, or a scam unless a court or other competent authority made that finding, or the term appears in a source and is attributed to that source. Audit findings are described as audit findings; findings reported by a news outlet are attributed to that outlet. A criminal charge is never described as a conviction; a dismissed case states the dismissal; a conviction states the offense and disposition where known; and where later proceedings changed a case's status, that later procedural history is included. Euphemism is avoided: where a source establishes something specific, the specific statement is used rather than a vaguer one. Every adverse entry carries a short evidence-status label — Alleged, Reported, Audited, Adjudicated, Convicted, Dismissed, or Unresolved — and the same standard is applied to every organization and every individual discussed here.

Alleged: An allegation, a criminal charge, a civil complaint, or an accusation made by another organization. Unproven; no competent authority has made a finding on it.
Reported: Reported by a news outlet or other third party and attributed to that source. Reporting is not an official finding.
Audited: An audit finding or an administrative finding, described in the terms the audit or agency used. An audit finding is not a court judgment.
Adjudicated: A court, tribunal, or appellate body entered a decision, judgment, plea disposition, or settlement in the matter. The specific disposition is stated.
Convicted: A criminal conviction was entered. The offense and disposition are stated where the located records establish them.
Dismissed: The matter, or the counts identified, were dismissed. A dismissal is stated as a dismissal and is not reported as an unresolved accusation.
Unresolved: No disposition, finding, or outcome has been located. Absence of a located outcome is not evidence either way.

Primary record completeness. Primary record completeness is a separate field from the evidence-status label. The label states what the located record establishes; this field states how complete that documentation is. A missing locator is never treated as doubt about an otherwise documented outcome, and an incomplete record is never read against the subject.

Complete: The primary record is located, cited to a specific document, and reachable by a reader.
Partial: Part of the primary record is located and cited; identified elements of it are not.
Secondary-only: The statement rests on reporting or another secondary account. No primary record has been obtained.
Primary locator missing: The outcome itself is documented, but no item-level citation or online locator for the primary file has been obtained. This is a citation gap, not doubt about the outcome.
Further verification required: A named record must be requested or a later filing checked before the entry can be stated more fully.

Corrections log

The public record of changes.

Substantive factual corrections and methodology revisions are logged below. Layout, styling, and routine copyediting changes are not corrections and are not recorded here, and a change between competing legal interpretations is logged as an editorial revision rather than a factual correction unless an actual factual error was involved.

Factual corrections

September 6, 2026 · Polynesian Kingdom of Atooi profile, Documents
Previous issue: Correspondence with United Nations bodies was cited only to organization-produced material.
Correction made: Entries that appear in official United Nations documentation are now cited to the UN document record and classified accordingly, while material that exists only as organization-published documentation remains labeled Class C.
Source reviewed: Official United Nations document records
September 6, 2026 · Polynesian Kingdom of Atooi profile
Previous issue: A citation pointed to the wrong source domain.
Correction made: The citation now points to the correct publishing domain for the cited material.
Source reviewed: Publisher record for the cited document
September 6, 2026 · Documents
Previous issue: A legal-scholarship excerpt was attributed to “John P. Craven.”
Correction made: The author is corrected to Dr. Matthew Craven, and the passage is presented as a summary rather than a verbatim quotation where the original wording could not be checked.
Source reviewed: Published scholarship of Dr. Matthew Craven
September 6, 2026 · Documents, Treaties
Previous issue: The displayed document and treaty counts were hard-coded and did not match the datasets.
Correction made: Counts are now derived from the underlying datasets, so the number shown always matches the records published.
Source reviewed: Internal dataset audit
September 6, 2026 · Timeline
Previous issue: Several timeline entries carried dates or descriptions the record did not support, including a 1988 founding date and a misdated Smithsonian entry.
Correction made: The founding entry is dated 1999, the Smithsonian entry is dated 2012, the 2013 Geneva entry describes what is documented, and an organization-commissioned audit is labeled organization-produced.
Source reviewed: Institutional records and contemporaneous documentation for each entry
September 6, 2026 · International Law, Documents, Fact Check
Previous issue: UN General Assembly Resolution 742 (VIII) was described in a way that overstated its bearing on Hawaiʻi.
Correction made: Resolution 742 (VIII) is now described as the 1953 factors list used to assess whether a territory has attained a full measure of self-government, cited alongside Resolution 1469 (XIV) on the 1959 removal of Hawaiʻi from the non-self-governing territories list, without implying a Hawaiʻi-specific holding.
Source reviewed: UN General Assembly Resolutions 742 (VIII) and 1469 (XIV)
September 6, 2026 · Overthrow, Documents, Q&A assistant
Previous issue: Recognition of the Provisional Government was described imprecisely, and one passage implied Japan withheld recognition.
Correction made: The archive now states that the U.S. representative extended de facto recognition on January 17, 1893, and that numerous foreign diplomatic and consular representatives — Japan's among them — did likewise, while noting separately that recognition of the government in control does not determine whether the overthrow was lawful. President Cleveland's later condemnation of U.S. involvement is retained in full.
Source reviewed: Hawaiʻi State Archives, Recognition of the Provisional Government; U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States
September 6, 2026 · Treaties, Overthrow, Documents
Previous issue: The 1887 Pearl Harbor provision was described as a cession of Hawaiian territory.
Correction made: It is now described as an exclusive right for the United States to enter Pearl Harbor and establish and maintain a coaling and repair station, with Hawaiian jurisdiction formally intact, no property right conveyed, and no territorial cession. Its strategic significance is preserved.
Source reviewed: Supplementary convention of 1887 and contemporaneous State Department diplomatic correspondence
September 6, 2026 · Treaties, Fact Check
Previous issue: A claimed Japan–Hawaiian Kingdom treaty dated January 28, 1893 was listed without adequate sourcing.
Correction made: The entry was removed because no primary source could be located establishing the parties, signing authority, date, and legal nature of the instrument.
Source reviewed: Treaty series review; no supporting primary record located
September 6, 2026 · Kingdom, Treaties, Documents, Fact Check
Previous issue: Hawaiian Kingdom participation in the Universal Postal Union was presented as evidence of formal sovereign recognition.
Correction made: Participation is now described as demonstrating an internationally integrated postal administration within a major multilateral system, with a note that historical UPU participation was not limited to fully sovereign states and is therefore not conclusive evidence of statehood. Bilateral treaty and diplomatic-recognition evidence is unchanged.
Source reviewed: Universal Postal Union historical membership records
September 6, 2026 · Start Here, Kingdom, Treaties, Consulates
Previous issue: Diplomatic history was summarized with the sweeping phrase “every major world power on earth.”
Correction made: Replaced with wording supported by the record: relations with numerous major world powers, including the United States, Britain, France, Germany, and Japan.
Source reviewed: Hawaiian Kingdom bilateral treaty series and consular appointment records

Editorial / methodology revisions

September 6, 2026 · Compare, Groups, Start Here, Overview
Previous issue: Earlier versions used a numerical comparison model that scored and ranked organizations.
Correction made: Numerical scoring was retired in favor of descriptive evidence classifications. Organizations are described, not ranked.
Source reviewed: Internal methodology revision (V2.0 to V3.0)
September 6, 2026 · Groups, Compare, organization profiles
Previous issue: Criminal-history labels appeared inside evidence checklists and comparison data alongside sovereignty questions.
Correction made: Documented leadership history now appears only in the Leadership & Institutional Accountability section of each full profile, separate from sovereignty and evidence framing.
Source reviewed: Internal methodology revision
September 6, 2026 · International Law, Treaties, Glossary, Start Here
Previous issue: Continuity arguments and U.S. domestic legal positions were sometimes stated as settled fact.
Correction made: Contested legal propositions are now labeled as HAWAIIAN CONTINUITY / INTERNATIONAL-LAW ARGUMENT or U.S. DOMESTIC-LEGAL POSITION, including passages on the Newlands Resolution and Vienna Convention Article 52.
Source reviewed: Internal editorial standard
September 6, 2026 · About, Fact Check, footer, citations
Previous issue: The archive was described as built entirely on primary sources, and every claim as supported by a primary source.
Correction made: Both claims were removed. The archive is described as a documentary research gateway in which every substantive entry identifies its source type and distinguishes primary/institutional records, independent reporting, organization-produced evidence, incomplete corroboration, and instances where no reliable source has been located.
Source reviewed: Internal editorial standard

Privacy

Privacy, as actually implemented. The site uses no advertising trackers and no behavioral analytics, and it does not sell personal information. Page views, on-site searches, and questions put to the Archive Assistant are counted in your own browser's local storage, are not sent to this archive, and are discarded after 30 days; your display-mode preference is stored the same way. On-site search runs entirely in your browser. The Archive Assistant is not local: the text you send it is transmitted to an external AI model provider through Lovable AI to generate an answer, retention terms are set by that provider and are not known to this archive, and sensitive or identifying information should not be entered. The hosting and security providers serving this site may process standard request information such as IP address, user agent, timestamps, and security cookies, outside this archive's control. The correction form transmits only what you type, together with the time of submission. Full details are on the Privacy Policy.

For researchers

For researchers, journalists, and government staff.

Designed as a documented starting point for readers, journalists, researchers and public officials. Readers should verify significant claims against the linked primary records. It is a curated research index and documentary gateway for academic researchers, working journalists, policy analysts, and government staff, and a starting point rather than a primary source: each entry names the record behind it and, where possible, links to the holding institution, and each is labeled by source type — from primary government and court records through to claims for which independent corroboration has not been located. Citation formats are provided for research use in a plain institutional form and in Chicago, APA, MLA and Bluebook formats; they are offered as a convenience and have not been audited against any external certification standard.

Version history

Changelog

Every notable change to the archive, in reverse chronological order. Earlier versions used a numerical comparison model. The current methodology replaced numerical scoring with descriptive evidence classifications and does not rank organizations.

V3.0 — September 2026
Methodology transition, stated plainly. V3 removed organization scoring and ranking; standardized the profile fields so every organization is described with the same template; introduced the Class A–E source classes and the corroboration status labels; separated formal state recognition from Indigenous and traditional relationships; separated organization-produced evidence from independent corroboration; and added documentary, U.S./state-position, and continuity-argument comparison views. Earlier versions used a numerical comparison model that scored and ranked organizations; that model has been retired, and it is documented below rather than removed from this history.
V2.0 — June 2026
Mobile hamburger menu and bottom navigation, sticky table-of-contents on long-read pages, Previous/Next group pager, Ka Lāhui Hawaiʻi added to the comparison tables, Back-to-Top threshold lowered to 400px, version badge simplified. Earlier versions used a numerical comparison model. The current methodology replaced numerical scoring with descriptive evidence classifications and does not rank organizations.
V1.1 — June 2026
Added Ka Lāhui Hawaiʻi, fixed group routing, expanded fact-checks to 40, added Documents page.
V1.0 — June 2026
Initial launch of the research index, with the first organization profiles, 20 fact-checks, and a numerical comparison model that has since been retired.