In a recent article by Eric Stinton (“Can Settlers Ever Be Pono in Hawaiʻi?”), the people interviewed (Elijah Kalā McShane and Adam Keawe Manalo-Camp) made use of huaʻōlelo Hawaiʻi (Hawaiian words) such as pono and kuleana to illustrate their sides of a debate on how haole can live ethically in Hawaiʻi.

However, the English word “settler” was one of the causes of debate, and a word I would like to show offers less relational capacity than other lesser known Hawaiian language terms.

The word settler has been used and theorized in academic and activist contexts around the world and in Hawaiʻi for decades, but recently has been entering the public sphere in debates around colonialism, land dispossession, sovereignty and politics involving Indigenous peoples and people of other ethnicities.

While in the Hawaiian context some might consider settlers to be haole (analogous to the Pākehā in Aotearoa or the Afrikaners of South Africa), Haunani-Kay Trask, a lead scholar-activist, once wrote in a book on “Asian settler colonialism” that “only Hawaiians are Indigenous. Everyone else is a settler.”

This led to some scholars and everyday people considering themselves settlers, as evidenced by a commercial in favor of the Office of Hawaiian Affair’s Hakuone development a couple years back (see Jonathan Okamura’s column “Asian Settler Colonialism Explains Why OHA Should Be Allowed To Develop Kakaako Makai”).

As a haole who has been learning Hawaiian for two years now, I am surprised that the language of kamaʻāina (child of the land, resident) is not used more often, especially as it contrasts with the word malihini (guest, visitor). Some, such as Jamaica Osorio in her book “Remembering Our Intimacies,” have critiqued overuse or misuse of the word kamaʻāina, but I want to suggest that this word, and other phrases can lead to a new understanding of Hawaiian history and people of all ethnicities belonging in Hawaiʻi. 

In the Hawaiian language, people can call a land their ʻāina hānau or one hānau (birth land or birth sands), ʻāina makua (fatherland), ʻāina makuahine (motherland), and even ʻāina hoʻokama (adoptive land).

This last phrase was used by people in obituaries for others who moved from one place to another, such as from Hilo to Honokaʻa or Molokaʻi (see “O Hilo i ka aina ua lu Lehua kona one hanau … O Honokaa i Hamakua Hawaii ka aina hookama … ” by Benjamin S. Kaapa, 1901; “O Molokai kona onehanau a o Oahu a Kakuhihewa kona aina hookama,” Sam M. Nihipali, 1924). It was also used in reference to people who had moved to Hawaiʻi from abroad, for whom, having become kamaʻāina (children of this land, residents), this was their adoptive motherland, and often their final resting place. 

In an obituary for Charles McEwan Hyde, who wrote a Hawaiian grammar book in the language, the newspaper described Hawaiian as “ka olelo makuahine o ka aina i lilo i makuahine hookama nona” (the mother tongue of the land which became an adopted mother for him; Oct. 20, 1899).

In some articles, people were described as having adopted the island, other lands, or America as their home, such as Harvey Saburo Kawakami who fought “no ka aina ana i hookama ai” (for the land he adopted, i.e., America; July 4, 1945). America even came to be referred to as an ʻāina hoʻokama in the 1890s through the 1940s by annexationists, some Hawaiians, and other writers. 

This language of ʻāina hoʻokama, often used in obituaries, was used for prominent people such as Georges Trousseau (a naturalized Hawaiian physician from France) and judge Lawrence McCully, but also for normal haole subjects of the Kingdom and people of all different ethnicities who moved to Hawaiʻi during the territorial period, such as the Japanese whose children were born and raised in this “ʻāina hoʻokama.”

Along with the language of adoption, the language of naturalization, too, belies common misunderstandings of what it means to be Hawaiian and belong in Hawai’i. Willy Kauai in his dissertation “The Color of Nationality” found that “7,495 people were both naturalized Hawaiian subjects and also those born in the Kingdom of foreign parents.” Such people who took the oath to the King and Kingdom were called “kanaka Hawaii” (Hawaiian subjects), “haole hoohiki” (naturalized subject), and more.  

Familial Relationships

Due to the decline of the Hawaiian language-speaking population over the 20th century, and despite the recent revitalization of the language in the last half-century, there has been a disconnect in understanding the past. While some academics have recognized the multiethnic history of the Hawaiian Kingdom, some scholars and activists continue in the vein of Haunani-Kay Trask stating that haole can’t have a familial relationship to land as kānaka ʻōiwi do, or can’t consider themselves aloha ʻāina (patriots) or Hawaiian.

However, as shown above, the historical and archival record show a number of different relations and names for the sense of place, relation and belonging that connect haole and Hawaiians in our shared homeland. In one other newspaper article from the 1860s, the Hawaiian author referred to haole as “ko kakou mau hoahanau ilikeokeo — na keiki hookama a Hawaii nei” (our white cousins — the adoptive children of Hawaiʻi; April 2, 1864).

This familial language, similar to some Hawaiian Christian language of the time, connects rather than divides; rather than the word settler, we can use such language as above now to forge common ground and aloha ʻāina. Not just for haole and Japanese, but also for others who came to Hawaiʻi later, too, such as Filipinos and Micronesians. One Hawaiian missionary to Micronesia, the Reverend David Kapali, even considered “Ebona” in the Marshalls an ʻāina hoʻokama for his family; so can Hawaiʻi be an ʻāina hoʻokama for Micronesian families today.

I believe that this language and the metaphor of adoption can help us reconsider our relations and our common future. In April of 1972, so too did Linton Park, an activist in the group Kokua Hawaii. He wrote in a poem in the group’s newspaper Ka Huli the following: “immigrant workers helped to rebuild our country/ they are our adopted peoples … we are native/ we are immigrants/ we are all races/ we are not american/ we are HAWAIIAN/ our country HAWAII.”

Let us continue this discussion and continue to rebuild this country, all of us, and rediscover who we are and who we can be.