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Native Hawaiian Culture and Identity

Native Hawaiians, also known as Kānaka Maoli, are the Indigenous people of Hawaiʻi. Native Hawaiian identity is distinct from residence in Hawaiʻi: people of many ancestries are local to the islands, but ‘’Native Hawaiian’’ describes Indigenous ancestry and belonging.

Hawaiʻi became a United States state in 1959, following the 1893 overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom and United States annexation in 1898. The 1993 United States Apology Resolution acknowledged the role of United States representatives and citizens in the overthrow and stated that the Native Hawaiian people had never directly relinquished their claims to inherent sovereignty through a plebiscite or referendum. Native Hawaiian political thought includes different approaches to sovereignty, self-determination, land return, federal recognition, and restoration; no single position represents every Native Hawaiian person or organization.

History and Sovereignty

Polynesian voyagers settled Hawaiʻi centuries before European contact and developed complex systems of navigation, agriculture, aquaculture, governance, genealogy, and environmental stewardship. Kamehameha I unified the islands under the Hawaiian Kingdom in 1810. The kingdom maintained diplomatic relations and treaties with other nations, developed a constitutional government, and supported widespread literacy in both Hawaiian and English.

In 1893, a group of American and European businessmen, supported by United States diplomatic and military power, overthrew Queen Liliʻuokalani. Native Hawaiian opposition to annexation included the Kūʻē petitions of 1897, signed by more than twenty-one thousand people. Annexation followed through the Newlands Resolution in 1898, and the islands later became a United States territory and then a state.

Native Hawaiian sovereignty organizing continued through the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Land protection, language restoration, demilitarization, environmental justice, and resistance to development on sacred land remain connected parts of that work.

Land, Kinship, and Responsibility

‘’ʻĀina’’ means that which feeds. The relationship between people and land is reciprocal: land sustains people, and people carry a ‘’kuleana’‘, or responsibility, to care for it. ‘’Mālama ʻāina’’ names that care in practice. Traditional ‘’ahupuaʻa’’ systems organized land from mountain to sea, connecting agriculture, water, forests, fisheries, and community responsibility across an ecological whole.

Genealogy links people to ancestors, place, and the natural world. ‘’ʻOhana’’ includes family bonds that may extend beyond a narrow biological household. Hānai relationships, in which a child is raised or claimed within an extended kin network, are part of this wider understanding of family; hānai kinship does not change a person’s ancestry.

‘’Aloha’’ encompasses love, compassion, regard, and mutual presence. ‘’Aloha ʻāina’‘, love of the land, also carries political force through protection, stewardship, and resistance. It is not passive hospitality owed to visitors or institutions.

Language and Cultural Practice

‘’ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi’’ is the Indigenous language of Hawaiʻi and an official state language alongside English. Suppression of Hawaiian-language education after the overthrow brought the language close to extinction, while immersion schools, university programs, community teaching, music, media, and family transmission have driven its revitalization.

The ʻokina is a letter representing a glottal stop, and the kahakō marks a long vowel. Both can change pronunciation and meaning. ‘’Hawaiʻi’’ therefore retains the ʻokina in careful usage.

Hula preserves history, genealogy, spirituality, and relationship to place through chant, music, and movement. It includes different traditions and contexts and cannot be reduced to tourist entertainment. Traditional wayfinding likewise carries scientific, cultural, and genealogical knowledge. The voyaging canoe Hōkūleʻa became a central symbol of the modern renewal of Polynesian navigation.

Traditional healing practices include ‘’lāʻau lapaʻau’‘, which draws on plant knowledge, spirituality, family, and relationship to place. At WNPC Honolulu, integration of lāʻau lapaʻau occurs through Native Hawaiian practitioners and community relationships rather than through decorative borrowing.

Identity, Gender, and Community

Native Hawaiian people differ in language fluency, religion, politics, place of residence, and relationship to cultural practice. Some live in Hawaiʻi; others belong to a large diaspora shaped in part by military land use, housing costs, employment, and displacement.

‘’Māhū’’ is a Native Hawaiian and Tahitian term associated with people who embody both feminine and masculine spirit and who have historically held cultural and spiritual roles. It is not interchangeable with every contemporary LGBTQ+ identity, although some people understand themselves through both frameworks.

Makani Family Connections

Mo Makani is Native Hawaiian and comes from an Oʻahu family. His son Alika Makani is Native Hawaiian through him. Amber Makani and Elise Makani belong to Mo’s family through hānai kinship and marriage without claiming Native Hawaiian ancestry. Their February 2050 family gathering on Oʻahu joined Amber’s American Sweet Sixteen celebration with practices carried by Mo’s extended family.

Mo later returned to Oʻahu to direct WNPC Honolulu in Kalihi. The campus’s relationship with Native Hawaiian practitioners and community members shaped its healing program, open-air design, and the name ‘’Ka Hale Ola’‘.

Culture & Context Reference File Native Hawaiian Culture