Celebrities with Native Hawaiian Roots

Who counts as Native Hawaiian

In a joint resolution of 1993 that apologizes for the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii, Congress defines a Native Hawaiian as “any individual who is a descendent of the aboriginal people who, prior to 1778, occupied and exercised sovereignty in the area that now constitutes the State of Hawaii.”^[6] In Hawaiian, a Native Hawaiian is a Kanaka Maoli. The Pukui-Elbert dictionary translates maoli as native, indigenous or genuine and notes that reports of the 1852 legislative session used kanaka maoli for a Hawaiian native.^[7]

In federal statistics, Native Hawaiians belong to the category Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, which is separate from the category American Indian or Alaska Native.^[8]

In the 2020 census, 680,442 people identified as Native Hawaiian, 29.1% more than in 2010. The count includes everyone who also named another race or group. Native Hawaiian alone was reported by 199,880 people.^[1] In Hawaii itself, 21.8% of residents identified as Native Hawaiian alone or in combination, and 6.5% as Native Hawaiian alone.^[2]

The Hawaiian Homes Commission Act of 1921 uses a narrower definition for its homestead leases. Applicants need a blood quantum of at least 50% Hawaiian, a requirement unchanged since the law was passed.^[9]

Polynesian settlement and the voyaging canoes

A 2012 study analyzed the DNA of 148 Native Hawaiians from the Multiethnic Cohort, a health study in Hawaii and California. Participants who reported full Native Hawaiian heritage carried on average 78% Native Hawaiian, 11.5% European and 7.8% Asian ancestry. When the study modeled their genomes as a mix of Melanesian and East Asian sources, on average 32% came from the Melanesian side. The authors see this as support for the “Slow Boat” model, in which the ancestors of the Polynesians, widely believed to have come from East Asia, mixed with Melanesians before they settled the remote islands.^[10]

Studies disagree on when the first settlers arrived. A 2011 meta-analysis of 1,434 radiocarbon dates from East Polynesia counted only samples of short-lived material as reliable. It dates the settlement of the Society Islands to about 1025–1120 and the spread to all other islands of the region, Hawaii among them, to about 1190–1290.^[11] A 2014 study combined pollen and charcoal from sediment cores with archaeological dates. It places the first settlement of Hawaii between 940 and 1130, most probably between 1000 and 1100.^[12]

The Polynesian Voyaging Society, founded in 1973, set out to show that ancient Polynesians could have settled the Polynesian Triangle on purpose in double-hulled canoes. Its canoe Hōkūleʻa, the first voyaging canoe built in Hawaii in more than 600 years, left for Tahiti on May 1, 1976. The Micronesian navigator Mau Piailug guided it without instruments, and after 33 days it reached Papeete, where a crowd of more than 17,000 greeted it.^[13]

The kingdom and its overthrow

Kamehameha I united the islands in 1810, when Kauaʻi came under his rule.^[14] No census exists from the time of first contact in 1778. Estimates for that year range from 200,000 to 1,000,000. A 2019 study that projects the census of 1910 back in time arrives at 683,200. Diseases against which the islanders had no immunity soon took a heavy toll.^[15] The censuses that followed record a steady decline.^[16]

From the 1850s, sugar plantations recruited contract workers, first from China, later from Portugal and Japan. As Hawaiians married into the new communities, the number of part-Hawaiians grew.^[16]

According to the 1993 resolution, a Committee of Safety representing American and European sugar planters, descendants of missionaries and financiers deposed Queen Liliʻuokalani on January 17, 1893, and proclaimed a Provisional Government. The day before, the American minister John L. Stevens and US naval officers had sent armed forces ashore to positions near the government buildings and ʻIolani Palace. The queen yielded “to the superior force of the United States of America” under protest, until the US government would “undo the action of its representatives”. President Grover Cleveland called for the monarchy to be restored. The Provisional Government stayed in power and declared itself the Republic of Hawaii on July 4, 1894.^[6]

In 1897 a treaty of annexation went to the US Senate. That fall, 21,269 Native Hawaiians signed a petition against it, more than half of the 39,000 Native Hawaiians and part-Hawaiians in the census of the time. A delegation carried the petition to Washington, and the treaty failed for lack of votes.^[17]

The Spanish-American War of 1898 strengthened the case for Hawaii as a naval and fueling station in the mid-Pacific. Congress then annexed the islands by a joint resolution, which needed only a simple majority in both houses, and President William McKinley signed it on July 7, 1898.^[17]

In the resolution of 1993, Congress “apologizes to Native Hawaiians on behalf of the people of the United States for the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii on January 17, 1893 with the participation of agents and citizens of the United States”. Its last section states that it is not intended as a settlement of any claims against the United States.^[6]

ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi, the Hawaiian language

After American missionaries arrived in 1820, an alphabet was created for Hawaiian, and printing in the language began in 1822.^[18] Over time the alphabet settled on 12 letters, plus the ʻokina for the glottal stop and the kahakō, a mark for long vowels.^[19] In 1825 King Kauikeaouli, Kamehameha III, declared, “ʻO koʻu aupuni, he aupuni palapala koʻu”, my kingdom shall be a kingdom of literacy.^[18]

Hawaiian-language newspapers appeared from 1834 to 1948, more than 100 titles with around 125,000 pages.^[18] The first, Ka Lama Hawaii, came out in 1834 at the Lahainaluna school on Maui, where the principal Lorrin Andrews taught his students the printing trade.^[20]

Three years after the overthrow, the Republic of Hawaii passed Act 57 of 1896. It stated, “The English Language shall be the medium and basis of instruction in all public and private schools.”^[21] A resolution adopted by the state legislature in 2022 apologizes for this effective prohibition of Hawaiian in schools, which lasted until 1986. It puts the number of speakers at nearly 40,000 in 1896 and 2,000 in 1978.^[21][22] On the privately owned island of Niʻihau, a small Native Hawaiian community kept speaking the language in its own dialect.^[19]

The constitutional convention of 1978 made Hawaiian an official language of the state alongside English.^[4] A group of educators founded ʻAha Pūnana Leo in 1983. Its first Hawaiian-language preschool opened in Kekaha on Kauaʻi in August 1984. A law of 1986 ended the 90-year ban on teaching in Hawaiian. In 1987 the first immersion classes began in public schools. Education in Hawaiian now runs from preschool to the doctoral level.^[23] In 2019–2023, Hawaiian ranked fifth among the languages other than English spoken at home in the state.^[5]

Moʻokūʻauhau and Hawaiian family records

Moʻokūʻauhau is the Hawaiian word for genealogy.^[24] The Hawaii State Archives in Honolulu keep records of births, marriages and deaths from 1826 to 1929. Many reports were never filed. Marriage records before 1896 do not name the parents of the bride and groom. The name indexes can be searched online through the Ulukau website.^[25] Census returns of the kingdom survive only for 1866, 1878, 1890 and 1896, and only parts of the last three list people by name.^[26]

About 75,000 pages of the Hawaiian-language newspapers can be read online,^[18] among other places in the Papakilo Database of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, launched in 2011.^[27] For homestead leases, the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands establishes Hawaiian ancestry mainly through birth certificates, including Certificates of Hawaiian Birth.^[9]

The authors of a 2021 study of Polynesian ancestry in about 4,000 Native Hawaiians write that they do not endorse using genetic data to replace self-identity or genealogical records as the standards of community membership.^[28]