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Hawaiians

Hawaiian refers to an indigenous group of people, kanaka maoli, Aboriginal to the Hawaiian archipelago. The first discoverers of the 1,500-mile-long Hawaiian archipelago in the Pacific Ocean, these Polynesians migrated to Hawai'i by sea, using advanced navigation skills long before the Western world discovered the concept of longitude. There, they survived and flourished for hundreds of years prior to Western contact, evolving a complex system of resource management and developing sophisticated knowledge bases and skills to survive on these remote islands with limited resources. Their situation underwent an enormous change after the arrival of Europeans, leaving them a minority in their own homeland, as this entry discusses.

Cosmogonic and religious beliefs of Hawaiians tie the Hawaiian Islands to kanaka maoli beginning with creation or po (darkness or obscurity). The islands were born from Papahanaumoku (earth mother) and Wakea (sky father), who also gave birth to kalo, the taro plant and main staple crop of traditional Hawaiians, and ultimately to people. As such, the histories of the land, the gods, the chiefs, and the people are all intertwined with one another and with all other aspects of the universe. In these beginnings, the archipelago is intimately connected to Hawaiians through genealogy, culture, history, and spirituality. The natural elements (land, wind, and rain) and creatures of the islands are considered as primordial ancestors; they are the older relatives of living Hawaiians. Both share an interdependent familial relationship that requires malama (care) and kia'i (guardianship) for the older siblings, who in turn provide for the well-being of the younger siblings.

Significant cultural values of the Hawaiian people center on the importance of 'ohana (family), aloha 'aina (love for the land), and mo'oku'auhau (genealogy). Hawaiians are known for having a deep sense of spirituality and for the special compassion, or aloha, that they bring to the world around them, including both animate and inanimate forms of life.

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Social Context of Colonization

Historically, the Hawaiian Islands were divided into four chiefdoms until the late 18th century, when King Kamehameha I consolidated them through conquest. United under single rule, the archipelago then modernized rapidly through economic commerce in sugar, pineapple, shipping, and related industries. By the late 19th century, Hawai'i was a fully recognized nation-state with multiple international treaties, including one with the United States.

During the same century, however, several transformations occurred that changed Hawaiian ways and lifestyles drastically. First, Native Hawaiians progressively became a minority in their own homeland. Estimates suggest that the Native population, afflicted by Western disease and (to a much lesser extent) warfare, dropped by at least 90% during the 100 years following Captain Cook's arrival. Figure 1 shows a conservative estimate, whereas other population estimates range as high as 800,000 Hawaiians prior to Western contact. By the end of the century, only approximately 40,000 Aboriginal Hawaiians remained alive. Meanwhile, the immigrant population gained steadily in number, including Whites, who outnumbered Hawaiians by the early 1900s. Today, Native Hawaiians comprise approximately one-fifth of the state population.

Second was the gradual and systematic erosion of indigenous control over the land, primarily through the insertion of Western legal tactics, government, and religion. Gradually, foreigners took more and more control, fully exploiting Hawaiian cultural beliefs in land as collective property. The eventual privatization of land played an important role in the displacement of Hawaiians. From a Hawaiian perspective, it was unfathomable that someone else could deny their rights to place, a precious ancestor, the same land that a family had worked and lived on for generations and generations.

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