Maine's Capital Area

The Kennebec Historical Society’s March Public Presentation: "Why did Mainers from the Kennebec Valley Conspire to Overthrow the queen of Hawai'i?"

Jon Olson, our speaker, will explain the motivation and circumstances of the Mainers' interventions in the affairs of a sovereign country, the legal and political ramifications of that action, then and now, and the remedy sought by the contemporary Hawaiian sovereignty movement which is both strong and deep.

Jon Olson was raised in Jefferson, Maine from age seven onward, attending Jefferson Village School, Lincoln Academy and Bates College, and graduated with B.A. in Philosophy. He taught one year of high school at Bonny Eagle in West Buxton, Maine, and then "escaped" to Hawai'i for the next 36 years. Jon got his Master's in Philosophy from
University of Hawai'i while becoming deeply engaged with activism opposing the unwarranted US War Against Vietnam, and the odious Draft. He was a founding member of Students for a Democratic Society, Resistance (to the Draft), Peace and Freedom Party, and 20 years later, the Hawai'i Green Party.

Mr. Olson owned and ran a bookstore for about seven years in Honolulu, and worked at land title research, as a truck driver, in the tuna cannery, and then got into marketing solar water heating systems, which he did for nearly twenty years, which included 2 1/2 years as a quality control inspector for the Hawaiian Electric Company. While in Hawai'i, Jon learned a great deal of Hawaiian history, from Hawaiians, and it is that information that led him to write "Liberate Hawai'i!" since it is an issue virtually absent from history books, and what the history books DO say is mostly wrong!

The Kennebec Historical Society Public Presentation will take place on Wednesday, March 16, 2016, at 6:30pm at the Maine State Library, Second Floor, 230 State Street in Augusta.