Hawai'ians (Native)

Native Hawai'ians are the descendants of the indigenous Polynesian people of the islands of Hawai'i, of whom there are 527,077 as of the 2010 U.S. Census. Most self-reporting Native Hawai'ians are of mixed heritage; 140,652 identify Hawai'ian as their only ethnic background. About two-thirds of Hawai'ians live in Hawai'i, with most of the remainder in California and populations in Washington and Nevada, as well as others scattered throughout the rest of the country. The Native Hawai'ian population is smaller today than it was in 1778, the year Captain James Cook arrived in Hawai'i and introduced it to Europeans.

Hawai'i was settled hundreds of years before Cook's arrival, but how many hundreds is an open question. After Cook's arrival, the islands united under a single monarchy for the first time, with Kamehameha I as the first king. The Kamehameha dynasty ended in 1872 and was succeeded by the Kalakaua dynasty, which was overthrown by Americans—including military and diplomatic representatives later determined to have “abused their authority,” in the words of the report commissioned by President Grover Cleveland. A later report commissioned by the U.S. Senate contradicted these findings, and though Cleveland attempted to restore the Native monarchy, he was unsuccessful. His successor, William McKinley, annexed Hawai'i over the protests of other countries (including the Empire of Japan). Shortly after annexation, the first Dole pineapple plantation— owned by the cousin of the first Hawai'ian president, Sanford Dole—began business. Hawai'i was admitted as a state in 1959.

Hawai'ian sovereignty movements have persisted since the overthrow of the monarchy. Following statehood, some of these movements redirected their efforts toward keeping Native Hawai'ians involved in state politics and in supporting congressional candidates who would best represent Native interests. The flourishing of Hawai'i's sovereignty movement immediately following statehood helped catalyze the Hawai'ian Renaissance, a reclaiming of Hawai'i's traditional cultural identity and the distancing of that identity from tourist culture. Interest was renewed in the Hawai'ian language and traditional Hawai'ian crafts, as well as the study of the ancient hula dance, traditional Hawai'ian music, and a renewed interest in Hawai'i's place in greater Polynesian culture and history. Though the renaissance peaked in the early 1980s, many would deny that it has ended.

The Office of Hawai'ian Affairs (OHA), a department of the state government, was created in 1978 as a result of the state's constitutional convention, in which sovereignty activists were a strong force. The OHA represents Native Hawai'ian interests in administering the lands that belonged to the Hawai'ian government and the royal family before annexation. Ceded to the United States upon annexation, control of those lands was then passed to the state government in 1959. Creation of the OHA was one of the major successes of the sovereignty movement, but the office has been weakened over the decades by factional bickering.

The sovereignty movement and other activist groups succeeded in obtaining an apology from the federal government in 1993 for the [Page 1043]American government's role in the overthrow of the Hawai'ian people. In 2009 the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed that the apology contains no binding clauses that change the title of Hawai'i's public lands.

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