Hawaiian Blood

"J. Kehaulani Kauanui's study investigates how blood quantum politics, first used to define "native Hawaiian" by the U.S. Congress in 1921, became a policy of colonial exclusion and erasure of sovereignty claims, whose effects are still being felt today. Kauanui traces how an indigenous attempt to reclaim lands for displaced Hawaiians was transformed into a project for the "rehabilitation" of "Natives" - ultimately defined in blood quantum as half-blooded or more - who were deemed "incompetent" and thus in need of charity. This racialization of Hawaiian identity, she argues, flew in the face of more inclusive Kanaka Maoli genealogical and kinship practices and concealed the dispossession of Hawaiians as a people and a nation."--BOOK JACKET.

J. Kehaulani Kauanui is an associate professor of American studies and anthropology at Wesleyan University.