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< | Policing the Borders of Racially Exclusive Policies within the Kanaka Maoli Community:
The Recognition of Racially Non-Hawaiian Hanai Persons in Hawaiian Families |
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> | The Discordance Between Hawaiian Traditions and the Modern Racial Rule for Community Recognition |
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< | The Kanaka Maoli (the indigenous people of Hawai’i) have traditions for handling adoption called hanai. Hanai practices are not unique compared to other Polynesian peoples, but they significantly differ from traditional adoption practices in other parts of the United States. This paper looks at what those differences are and discusses (i) how the substance of the hanai practice is being betrayed within the modern Hawaiian community, (ii) what harmful effects this betrayal has for the family concerned and the group as a whole, and (iii) how these harms should be corrected by addressing the discordance between current community recognition policies and traditional cultural values concerning family and hanai family members. |
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> | Background: Native Hawaiian Racial and Cultural Preservation |
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< | I. The Hanai System: A Background & Comparison to American Adoption Practices |
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> | Over the last 150 years Native Hawaiians have struggled to survive and maintain a distinct cultural heritage under both government and social pressures to integrate into the American mainstream. In the last century, groups recognizing this struggle and responding to the need for active preservation efforts have been lead both by private community based organizations and (ironically) the government. |
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> | The mission of these groups is generally to support and assist the Hawaiian people by identifying Native Hawaiians and providing them with some tangible benefits calculated to decrease the trend of cultural decline. Thus, one way to measure the effectiveness of these efforts is to question the process used to identify Hawaiians. Here I will discuss what the rule is for determining Native Hawaiian status, how that rule was developed, the ways in which the rule is discordant with traditional Hawaiian values, and how the overall effectiveness of revitalization efforts may be jeopardized by this discordance. |
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< | The common conception of a family entity in the United States is the nuclear family, and the term adoption refers to the movement of a child permanently and completely from its natural nuclear family to the adoptive one. Traditionally, Maoli people lived communally, and an ohana (a Maoli family) includes extended members of a family and friends in the community. Accordingly, the adoption traditions differed. Hanai describes the permanent movement of a child’s primary care giving from the natural parents to someone usually within their ohana, although not necessarily a biological relative. The hanai child is always aware of its natural parentage, this information is not kept hidden from them, and they will very likely have a relationship with the natural parents. However the hanai relationship between child and adoptive parents is equal in recognition and substance to that of the adoptive parent’s natural children. |
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> | I. Recognition by Race: The Preference System & the Criteria for Native-ness |
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< | Hanai is common and not considered emotionally traumatizing for a child. The hanai system and extended ohana structure create an environment in which a hanai child has the benefit of his hanai parents and a relationship with his natural parents, instead of an experience associated with loss, abandonment, and confusion, feelings that seem to commonly result for children under western adoption practices. There is no stigma connected to being hanai within Maoli families. There is also no tradition of lessened recognition of a family member due to a hanai, versus a biological, connection. Hanai compared to natural children are equally loved, committed to permanently for care giving, and recognized as heirs. |
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> | A. An Illustration: The HHCA |
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> | In 1920, Congress passed the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act. The Act provided for homesteads that would “revitalize the Hawaiian people.” Congress provided that a Native Hawaiian could be eligible for leases to reserved homestead lands, but only if the person could prove that they were at least one-half racially Hawaiian. Lessees could designate children as successors to their lease, but the children would also have to meet the one-half blood quantum rule. |
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< | II. The Spirit of Ohana & Hanai Betrayed: Lack of Recognition for Trans-racial Hanai |
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> | B. The Rule Today: Blood Quantum Required |
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> | The one-half rule outlined in the HHCA is one of the harsher blood quantum requirements by a benefit program, but it is used by a handful of organizations and illustrates the method of defining what it means to be Hawaiian by measuring some amount of Hawaiian ancestry. Today, without known exception, programs specifically aimed at providing benefits to Native Hawaiians require that a benefitee have at a minimum one documented racially Native Hawaiian ancestor. This applies both to government and privately run Hawaiian programs. |
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< | The hanai practice described above survives today. But the reality of customs continued from ancient Maoli traditions is that their development occurred during a time when the Maoli were a racially homogeneous community. Descriptions of how hanai children were recognized, as full members of the family without lessened community recognition, come from a time when recognition questions involving trans-racial hanai did not arise. Thus, no custom squarely addresses how the general Hawaiian community has or should recognize a racially non-Hawaiian child that is hanai into a racially Hawaiian family. |
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> | C. The Effects of the Blood Quantum Rule |
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< | The face of the Hawaiian community has changed dramatically in the last century. Hawaiians are continuing the tradition of hanai, but in highly racially-mixed communities and hanai family members now include racially-non-Hawaiian (RNH) persons and their descendants. |
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> | The problem with using the blood-quantum rule when trying to provide benefits to the entire Hawaiian community is that this form of identification precludes many persons who identify as Hawaiian. For example, adopted persons do not qualify for participation in any of these programs although their entire cultural identity may be learned from Hawaiian adoptive parents and developed through life-long participation in Hawaiian communities. To the extent that minimum blood percentages are required, children of Hawaiian parents also may be barred from access to programs depending upon the spousal choices made by their Hawaiian ancestors. |
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> | Using the HHCA illustration, a family may develop and create roots on a piece of land for decades to have it re-possessed by the government when a parent with only adopted children passes or if a Hawaiian who chose a non-Hawaiian spouse is survived by less than 50% Hawaiian heirs. |
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< | A. Modern Challenge: The Trans-racial Hanai Family |
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> | These are harsh ramifications affecting a large quantity of Hawaiian family members. Thus it is important to explore in what traditions this rule is grounded and how consistent it is with Hawaiian values and conceptions of identity. |
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< | The community recognition problem that trans-racial hanai presents occurs in the following context. The Hawaiian community is responding to the need for active efforts at cultural preservation by creating programs and organizations for its own benefit. These programs and organizations generally restrict participation to those with some Hawaiian blood quantum. Generally these policies provide no language regarding the treatment of RNH- hanai family members. As a result, the adopting ohana members are able to participate in these programs, but the RNH- hanai member and his descendants are excluded. Therefore, RNH- hanai children and their descendants comprise a class of persons that are members of Hawaiian families but not allowed participation in the Hawaiian community fully compared to natural born members. (See Appendix II for an illustration of this problem recently presented in litigation.) |
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> | II. The Blood Quantum Method: Comparisons to American and Hawaiian Traditions |
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> | Federal Indian law reveals the US tradition of identifying members of indigenous groups by race. For example, US v. Rogers (an 1846 case binding on criminal cases but often referenced in civil disputes) created a two prong test for determining whether someone was Indian – first, looking for blood quantum and second, a non-racial link to tribal life. Therefore the practice of recognizing native-ness in Hawaiians only when racial ties exist is entirely consistent with American customs. |
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< | B. Effect: Three Nested Rings of Harm |
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> | In contrast, Hawaiians have traditionally been unconcerned with blood quantum measurements and more affable to the notion of assimilating racial “outsiders.” Hawaiian communities were built on extended families and close friends specializing in tasks (fishing, farming, canoe building, etc) and living communally to meet everyone’s needs. This structure had a pecking order, but not based on a measurement of Hawaiian blood. Rather being a community member started with being a recognized member of a family and contributing to it. Through that relationship recognition by the broader community would flow. It seems unlikely that Hawaiians three hundred years ago would debate the “Hawaiian-ness” of a man raised on the land and taking part in the community because of the origin of his ancestors (as compared to hanai/adoption cases today). Even more difficult to conceive of is the idea that the children of Hawaiian parents would be demoted to some inferior class of Hawaiians once interracial breeding caused a descendant’s blood quantum to fall below some arbitrarily chosen level (like fifty percent in the problem with HHCA’s successor rules). |
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< | These exclusionary RNH- hanai practices are causing harm on three fronts. First, the hanai person suffers by not being granted the same rights to participation in the community that his hanai family members would by virtue of his hanai status – a status that traditionally has deliberately avoided diminished recognition within the family or community. Second, it is important to realize that the Hawaiian family as a whole is associatively injured. The ohana concept does not allow injury to a family member to remain localized. The community that calls into question the legitimacy of a hanai child harms not just the child but insults and causes emotional harm to the entire family unit. Third, the Hawaiian community as a whole is harmed. The community is allowing race to nullify the opportunity for meaningful community contribution by a child of a community family. The community is also creating unnecessary exceptions to recognition traditions of Hawaiian family members and treatment of hanai persons which degrades the culture that the policy aims to preserve. |
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> | But today’s Hawaiian community is having these debates. Kamehameha Schools, a private institution founded at the bequest of a past Hawaiian princess, strictly adheres to racial preference when admitting students with no recognition for hanai (adopted) children of Hawaiian families. Hou Lahuiohana, a band of Hawaiians fighting for self governance rights, does so on behalf of “native Hawaiians of the blood,” meaning those at least one half racially Hawaiian, stating that those of smaller levels have lesser entitlements to Hawaiian rights. These are but two of many examples. |
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> | The blood quantum method introduced by Americans has created a de facto standard for what it means to be Hawaiian. This standard has not simply drawn the line between whom the government will and will not assist in the name of Hawaiian revitalization, but it has bleed into the fabric of internal Hawaiian relations. Under American influence modern Hawaiians have taken up a system of recognition that seems in serious discord with the conceptions of family and community held by their ancestors. |
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< | III. A Call for Change: Cultural Preservation Policies that Maintain Substantive Cultural Values |
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> | III. Conclusion – Open Questions |
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> | Identification of this discordance then begs the questions: how effective have the last century’s efforts at revitalization been when at their basic level they undermine core values of the culture they seek to preserve? Is the social justice achieved for the Hawaiian community by programs using the blood quantum method (and its variances that include minimum percentage rules), outweighed by the injustice suffered by Hawaiian family members denied recognition? |
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< | The harm that these exclusionary policies cause is so pervasive within the Hawaiian community that they must be changed. Community leaders must look to traditional Maoli goals of customs and practices to inform the development of new policies for RNH-hanai family members. As the Hawaiian community strives to prevent cultural extinction it must take care not to subvert major customs such as the recognition of ohana members in a community and the status of hanai members in an ohana. These cultural cornerstones should not be disregarded. Efforts to preserve these values, to reaffirm the importance of recognition of our hanai family, whatever their biological race, would have the effect of correcting the discordance between cultural values and modern recognition rules while also preventing the multifarious harms described above. |
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> | These questions are impossible to answer with any quantitative data available today, but nevertheless they are critical for policy makers to consider – at both the private and governmental levels, in order for sustainable restoration of the Hawaiian community to be achieved. |
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Appendix I: Illustration of RNH-Hanai Exclusion
Mohica-Cummings v. Kamehameha School illustrates this problem well. Kamehameha School is a prestigious K-12 private school providing services that include difficult to obtain Hawaiian cultural and language education courses. Their admission’s policy is racially preferential and it is effectively completely exclusive to persons with a Hawaiian ancestor. There is no language in their policy speaking to RNH-hanai children and the current interpretation denies admissions preference to this group. Braydon Mohica-Cummings is the son of a RNH-hanai woman. He was admitted to Kamehameha School, but his admission to the school was rescinded when it was discovered that his Hawaiian familial status was through his hanai grandfather, a Native Hawaiian man. After a court provided injunctory relief allowing Braydon to attend school while the suit challenging the lawfulness of Kamehameha’s racially preferential policies was in progress, the school settled the case with the family. The settlement included an agreement to allow Braydon an exception to their ancestor requirement, but no general exception for RNH-hanai persons has been instituted.
- The word "injunctory" didn't exist. You wanted in fact to say "interim," rather than "injunctive."
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- I think the awkwardness of this analysis, Makalika, is that it begins from the assumption that there's a general problem in the treatment of traditional family-definition law, when in fact your data show that there's a problem in the administration of the local racial preference system. Without the preference system, there's no demonstrated incompatibility between traditional family definition and contemporary family law. The preference system's concern with distinguishing "native" from "non-native" may conflict with traditional understandings of "us" in many ways, of which some are more difficult to deal with than others. Analysis of that question would be as economical as your current mode of investigation, wasting no concepts or attention on irrelevant matters, and it needn't be ideological either for or against preference in order to provide a more straightforward and useful set of insights than what you can get with the present conceptual machinery.
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