‘E Hana i Kanaka’ (Let’s Make Humanity)

Abstract

In the nineteenth century, foreigners to Hawai'i put forth many theories about the origin of Kanaka Hawai'i (Native Hawaiians). Rather than accept these theories, which often advanced colonial aims, Kanaka developed counternarratives that repurposed ideas brought from foreign lands. Some of these ideas came from the Bible, particularly the narratives of creation in its opening pages. The nineteenth-century Kanaka historian Samuel Manaiakalani Kamakau recounts some of these narratives. In one of them, the entire world is patterned after Hawai'i, and all humanity originates from Hawai'i. Thus, rather than being on the margins of the known world, Hawai'i is positioned as the center; and rather than Kanaka simply being the first settlers of Hawai'i, they are instead literally made from its land. Other Kanaka, such as Joseph Nawahi, used similar accounts to galvanize Kanaka political consciousness in the wake of the overthrow of the Hawaiian kingdom. These are examples of ho'oku'i, or ‘combinations’ of new ideas with familiar ones, which served important political functions in the intellectual landscape of the time.