In 1921, the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act (HHCA) defined a “‘native Hawaiian’ as a ‘descendant with at least one-half blood quantum of individuals inhabiting the Hawaiian Islands prior to 1778’” (p. 2). The HHCA set aside 200,000 acres of land and made parcels available to native Hawaiians for long-term leases. In Hawaiian Blood, J. Kēhaulani Kauanui examines the authoring of the HHCA, the historical origins of the one-half blood criterion, and its legacy for Hawaiian identity and sovereignty struggles.
As conceived and promoted by Hawaiian elites, the goal of the HHCA was to “rehabilitate” (p. 2) Hawaiians suffering from depopulation, poverty, and urbanization by returning them to the land. But because of opposition from the islands' large sugar plantations, Kauanui argues that “in the end the HHCA served as a policy of broad land dispossession” (p. 8) and that blood quantum served to undermine legal claims to land and sovereignty. She further argues that the HHCA continues to do this work today by falsely fracturing Kanaka Maoli—the Hawaiian people—into native Hawaiians with legal standing and non-native Hawaiians without. In doing so, blood quantum undercuts united Kanaka Maoli claims by limiting the number of people with the legal standing to make such claims.
Kauanui begins by comparing culturally Hawaiian genealogical practices to blood quantum. The differences are dramatic. Hawaiian practices establish belonging through lineage and kinship and are, as a result, inclusive and integrative. Blood quantum, on the other hand, purports to quantify one's distance from a supposedly pure-blood ancestor through a fractional accounting of the mixing of that bloodline with others. Unlike culturally Hawaiian practices, blood quantum is an exclusive and hierarchical ranking. In addition, because blood quantum conceives of identity as biologically inherited, one who is born without membership cannot gain it.
Although the HHCA ultimately defined native Hawaiians through blood quantum, Kauanui suggests this was not inevitable. In fact, initial hearings on the Act considered Hawaiian people as a whole, without making distinctions among them. Concerned that such an expansive definition would lead to the loss of lucrative land, plantation interests pushed to limit eligibility. The ensuing debate ranged from a one-thirty-second blood criterion to a “full blood” requirement. The ultimate tragedy of the final one-half blood criterion was its arbitrariness: “The compromise of redefining ‘native Hawaiian’ [in this way] … seems to have been a last-ditch effort to contain the bill's impact on the part of its opponents and a desperate attempt, by its supporters, to salvage some legislative action” (p. 166; emphasis in original).
The establishment of the blood quantum criterion was interwoven with a shift in how land and sovereignty claims were framed in the HHCA. The original inclusivity was premised on the idea that the Hawaiian people in general were entitled in some way to lands lost to the United States. Eager to circumscribe the Act's effects, plantation interests argued that only some Hawaiians should be eligible because only some were in need of the HHCA's benefits. The terms of debate were therefore shifted from entitlement to charity, simultaneously limiting eligibility and undermining the very premise of sovereignty claims.
Kauanui's book is of value not only to scholars focused on indigenous legal issues, but also to those interested in how imposed legal categories become naturalized and in the interplay between identity and law more generally. Indeed, the role of law in the formulation of indigenous identity remains an understudied area. For native peoples, colonial legal definitions of belonging are simultaneously centrally important and fundamentally intrusive. However, the intrusiveness of blood quantum is complicated by the fact that some American Indian tribes themselves choose blood quantum as a way of defining tribal membership. Why do they do so, especially since they have the legal authority to set their own criteria for membership? While Kauanui locates her study within broader debates over blood quantum, readers may be left wanting to know more about how the Hawaiian case could help answer such questions and inform these debates. In addition, the tension between the legal framings of indigenous entitlement versus charity is a recurring theme in the legal history of indigenous people, with many parallels in U.S. history. In this way, indigenous identity (in both legal and popular contexts) becomes problematically entangled with being poor, and this association has had far-reaching and detrimental effects. The impact of Kauanui's account would be strengthened by a broader consideration of these parallels. In sum, her book vividly shows the origins and effects of blood quantum in Hawaii, but I was left feeling as if Hawaii were somewhat disconnected from indigenous history and politics in the continental United States and elsewhere in the world.
