Native Hawai'ian Categorization

Native Hawai'ians and the Census

The year 2000 stands out as a momentous year for Hawai'ians in that the 2000 U.S. census featured for the first time a stand-alone category for Native Hawai'ians and other Pacific Islanders. In October 1997, under a revision of the federal Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Directive No. 15, the U.S. Census Bureau adopted new standards for the classification of race and ethnicity that incorporated a separate and distinct category marked as “Native Hawai'ian or Other Pacific Islander” (NHOPI). Historically, the inclusion of Native Hawai'ian as a separate response category did not happen overnight.

In the 1960s, the response category of “Native Hawai'ians” was included on the census forms only for the state of Hawai'i. In 1970, census forms included the term Native Hawai'ians except Alaska; in 1980, Guamanians and Samoans were lumped into the same category as Hawai'ians. Since 1975 through the 1990s, Hawai'ians as a group (with its own checkbox) were lumped generally into the all-encompassing “Asian American and Pacific Islander.” The change was made in response to concerns raised by representatives from the state of Hawai'i, the Office of Hawai'ian Affairs, and public and private agencies about more accurately classifying Hawai'ians as separate from all Asian Americans. They argued that Native Hawai'ians have a unique political relationship with the United States (as an illegally colonized group that is placed in a “trust” with the United States acting as a guardian), which should be reflected in the census classification system and derived from Pacific Islander peoples.

Historical and Political Formation of Hawai'i

Native Hawai'ian categorization must be remembered in context of the historical and political formation of Hawai'i as a sovereign, independent Hawai'ian nation and ultimately becoming the 50th U.S. state. The Hawai'ian Kingdom was a complex, organized, and burgeoning nation in the 1700s, well before foreigners arrived in 1778. From the 1800s through the 1900s, as more foreign interests entered the islands, it became clear that Hawai'i was no longer just for Hawai'ians. Foreign representatives became friendly with Hawai'ian rulers and eventually incorporated their own voices (and governmental commissions) into the daily matters, laws, policies, and business/political directions of the Hawai'ian Kingdom.

Residents from England, Russia, Spain, and the United States took residency on the islands and even occupied valuable parcels of land. Thus, during this time, the Hawai'ian Kingdom and its rulers faced the colonialist dissolution of the Hawai'ian nation and culture, as Hawai'ians became a marginalized minority in their own home. In 1893, Hawai'i was overthrown by the [Page 63]U.S. government and placed under a provisional government by the United States. It was not until 1993, 100 years later, that Congress passed a joint resolution (known as the Apology Resolution) “to acknowledge the historic significance of the illegal overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawai'i, to express its deep regret to the Native Hawai'ian people.” This resolution marked the first time the U.S. government officially recognized that “the indigenous Hawai'ian people never directly relinquished their claims to their inherent sovereignty as a people or over their national lands to the United States,” according to the resolution.

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