Hawaiin Identity Analysis

In his article, Kauanui’s work critically examine the way that blood racializaion constructs Hawaiin identity as a measurable and dilutable. For Kauanui, racialization is the process by which racial meanning is ascribed in her case study of the Kanaka Maoli through ideologies of blood quantum. Blood quantum is a fractionalize measurement- a calculation of “distance” in relation to some supposed purity to mark one’s generational proximity to a full-blood forbearer. Kauanui notes that blood quantum logic presumes that one 's “blood amount” correlates to once cultural orientation and identity. She cites the example of the contemporary legal definition of “native Hawaiin” as a “descendent with at least one half blood quantum of individuals inhabiting

Basically, for Kauanui blood is often evoked to stand in for race, identity, and nationhood - and it can be used to mean any or all of these depending on the specific political agenda of any given moment. Kauanui demonstrated how the legal construction of identity has been instrumental for rejecting (avoiding) Hawaiians entitlement (example: land) and on a broader context their claim on sovereignty. Blood quantum is manifestations of settler colonialism that works to deracinate - to pull out by the roots - and displace Indigenous people. Kauanui further argues that blood quantum is a colonial project in the service of land alienation and

In line with Kauanui 's claim the colonial project of land alienation based on race (and or blood quantum boring Kauanui illustration) under the “Native Land Act” of 1913, is still being felt in contemporary South Africa, a century later in which current supreme laws (including the constitution) perpetuates this indigenous dispossession, safeguarding the existing property holders in their land rights and excluding the majority from ownership. Scholars argue that influenced by colonial legislations, current legislations remains utterly racialised, fracturing the nation into opposing identities of white ownership and black dispossession. A substantial minority of the population continues to find its primary residence in former reserve districts, and secure access to land remains a major concern for many households. As a result, it is a widely held opinion that imagining a unitary South African nation in the face of these ongoing colonial land divisions is extraordinarily difficult. Therefore, I would argue that as the settler project of blood quantum of Hawaiians served demands of whiteness for selective inclusion. In this respect, a similar project in South Africa has led to widespread exclusion of majority black