report (which was later reversed in 2018) for the effect it would have on non-ethnic Hawaiian populations. A 2005 Grassroot Institute poll found that most Hawaiian residents opposed the Akaka Bill. Background Native Hawaiians' ancestors may have arrived in the Hawaiian Islands around 350CE, from other areas of Polynesia. By the time Captain Cook arrived, Hawaii had a well-established culture, with a population estimated between 400,000 and 900,000. Starting in 1795 and completed by 1810, Kamehameha I conquered the entire archipelago and formed the unified Kingdom of Hawaii. In the first 100 years of contact with Western civilization, due to disease and war, the Hawaiian population dropped by 90%, to only 53,900 in 1876. American missionaries arrived in 1820 and assumed great power and influence. Despite formal recognition of the Kingdom of Hawaii by the United States and other world powers, the kingdom was overthrown beginning January 17, 1893, with a coup d'état orchestrated mostly by Americans within the kingdom's legislature, with aid from the U.S. military. The Blount Report is the popular name given to the part of the 1893 United States House of Representatives Foreign Relations Committee Report about the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii. U.S. Commissioner James H. Blount, appointed by President Grover Cleveland to investigate the events surrounding the January 1893 coup, conducted the report. It provides the first evidence that officially identifies U.S. complicity in the overthrow of the government of the Kingdom of Hawaii. Blount concluded that U.S. Minister to Hawaii John L. Stevens had carried out unauthorized partisan activities, including the landing of U.S. Marines under a false or exaggerated pretext to support anti-royalist conspirators; the report also found that these actions were instrumental to the revolution's success and that the revolution was carried out against the wishes of a majority of the population of the Hawaiian Kingdom and/or its royalty. On December 14, 1893, Albert Willis arrived unannounced in Honolulu aboard the USRC Corwin, bringing with him an anticipation of an American invasion in order to restore the monarchy, which became known as the Black Week. Willis was Blount's successor as United States Minister to Hawaii. With the hysteria of a military assault, he staged a mock invasion with the USS Adams and USS Philadelphia, directing their guns toward the capital. He also ordered Rear Admiral John Irwin to organize a landing operation using troops on the two American ships, which