text: Herb Kane's artwork is beautiful and inspiring.  Peter Apo's narrative of ethnic Hawaiian victimhood, however, is ugly and demoralizing.  Its bitterness serves only to inspire resentment and racial hatred.  
  
  I have time to focus on only one of Apo's "poor me" falsehoods.  
  
  Apo wrote "The loss of sovereignty [1893 overthrow] was followed by the decimation of two-thirds of the Hawaiian population infected by common Western diseases from which we had no immunity."  Total nonsense.  The opposite of what really happened.  The enormous decimation of native population happened from 1778 up to 1893, during which time native Kings and ali'i ruled Hawaii, often treating maka'ainana (native peasantry) with disdain and ruthless exploitation.  For example, thousands of native women, children, and kupuna died from starvation because ali'i forced their tenant farmers to abandon their taro patches to go harvest sandalwood to enrich the ali'i.
  
  See population data in followup comment..