We live on stolen land. That is not a metaphor, not a rhetorical flourish, but a plain and stubborn fact. The ground we build on, the soil we farm, the beaches we claim as holiday escapes—all of it was taken.
In the United States, the genocide and displacement of Native Americans is at least acknowledged in the cultural landscape, if rarely with the weight it deserves. But the story of Hawai‘i, its unification, its colonization, and the cultural stripping that followed, is less told. Apple TV+’s Chief of War, a sweeping 18th-century war epic from Jason Momoa and Thomas Pa’a Sibbett, forces us to confront it spanning nearly three decades of conflict, the series dramatizes the brutal and complex process by which the Hawaiian Islands were unified. It’s an origin story, but not one of progress and glory. Instead, Momoa and his collaborators present history as it was lived: bloody, chaotic, full of shifting alliances, betrayals, and the unrelenting hunger for power. The battle scenes are cinematic in scope, with the crashing Pacific surf often a backdrop to the violence. Yet what makes the show compelling isn’t only the spectacle it’s the question of what is lost when conquest, even among kin, is mistaken for destiny.
Momoa commands the screen, his character torn between the demands of leadership and the burden of knowing that the price of “unity” may be the erosion of tradition. He is not a simple hero. He is a man caught in the push and pull of survival, ambition, and loyalty to his people. The series is careful not to romanticize the past; instead it shows how the drive for power, whether Indigenous or foreign, can corrode the very values it seeks to protect.
This matters because Hawai‘i’s history is not only its own. It is part of a larger pattern: the story of Indigenous lands claimed, reshaped, and exploited by the forces of empire. In Australia, the land was declared terra nullius—nobody’s land—an insult that erases millennia of Aboriginal custodianship. In America, treaties were broken as fast as they were signed, tribes driven from their homelands and confined to reservations. In Hawai‘i, unification would eventually open the way to Western traders, missionaries, and finally U.S. annexation. What looks like “nation-building” in one telling is, in another, the first step in a long dispossession.
Watching Chief of War, it is impossible not to think about land justice today. Indigenous people in Hawai‘i continue to defend sacred mountains from development, to reclaim language and culture, to fight for sovereignty in the face of overwhelming tourist economies and military presence.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in Australia press for recognition that the land was never ceded, their calls for truth-telling and treaty often met with resistance. In North America, Native communities battle pipelines, pollution, and systemic neglect while insisting that treaties – still legally binding – be honoured.
The series, then, is not only about history. It asks us to consider what it means to live in a present built on conquest. The wars of the 18th century may be over, but the consequences are not. Land justice is not a nostalgic cause. It is about sovereignty, reparations, and the right to live fully in one’s culture without being pushed aside for profit. When we hear Indigenous voices today demand their land back, we should not mistake it for an abstract slogan. It is a claim to life itself.
One of the most powerful aspects of Chief of War is how it refuses to let us off the hook with clean heroes and villains. Yes, colonizers exploited the islands, and what Hawai’i shares with Australia is the “explorer” Captain Cook. Indigenous Hawaiians were eventually stripped of much of their power. But the series also shows how the thirst for dominance, even within Indigenous societies, can mirror the very forces that later dispossess them. That moral tension deepens the story. It makes clear that conquest is not only something done to a people; it can also be the temptation within them. And yet, the true tragedy is that once the door is opened, empire always comes knocking.
For viewers outside Hawai‘i, the series is a mirror. In Australia, where I write, it asks us to think about what it means to live on land never willingly given.
Watching Momoa’s character struggle to hold together a fractured land makes you wonder what might have been had Indigenous sovereignty been respected rather than erased. The series doesn’t provide an answer, but it makes the question unavoidable.
Visually, Chief of War is stunning: lush landscapes, intricate costumes, and meticulous attention to cultural detail. But what lingers most is not the beauty – it’s the grief. A grief that comes from knowing how much has been lost, and how much continues to be taken. This is not a story to be admired from a distance. It is a call to see where we stand, whose land we occupy, and what justice might require of us now.
At its core, Chief of War is not just about the unification of Hawai‘i. It is about the cost of conquest, the fragility of power, and the unfinished work of reckoning with stolen land. It tells us that history is not past. It is present. And until we face it with honesty, the wounds remain open—on the islands of Hawai‘i, on the continent of Australia, across the plains of America, and under the very ground we share.
Chief Of War is available to watch on Apple TV+ with a subscription.
