Of Transgression, Purification and Indigenous Scholarship

Abstract

This essay discusses J. Kehaulani Kauanui's Hawaiian Blood: Colonialism and the Politics of Sovereignty and Indigeneity. The book is a history of the legal definition of a ‘native Hawaiian’, which, for government purposes, is set at one-half blood quantum, more commonly expressed as ‘50 per cent’. This definition originated from the US Government's Hawaiian Homes Commission Act of 1921, which set aside land to be distributed to native Hawaiians. The book argues against the ‘blood quantum model’ of Indigeneity in favour of a ‘Hawaiian genealogical model’. Kauanui argues that the latter model, where anyone with a known Hawaiian ancestor is considered to be Kanaka Maoli (the contemporary term for ‘native Hawaiian’), should be supported because it corresponds with traditional Hawaiian practices. The present review essay critiques methodological and political aspects of the book that act to naturalise and dehistoricise Kanaka Maoli as a political formation. In the process, a distinct boundary is drawn between the categories of blood/biology/Western/exclusive and geneaology/tradition/Hawaiian/inclusive. This binary is the result of what Latour calls a process of ‘purification’ and is an obstacle to understanding the messy reality of Hawaiian life. The challenge of transcending purification is one that must be faced by Critical Indigenous Studies, an emerging area of scholarship of which Kauanui's book is an important work.

Keywords:

• Critical Indigenous Studies
• Hawaii
• Indigeneity
• Indigenous History
• Kanaka Maoli