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From “Squatter” to Homesteader: Being Hawaiian in an American City
Author(s) -
SCHACHTER JUDITH
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
city and society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.308
H-Index - 25
eISSN - 1548-744X
pISSN - 0893-0465
DOI - 10.1111/ciso.12072
Subject(s) - commission , indigenous , downtown , context (archaeology) , identity (music) , geography , political science , sociology , law , archaeology , ecology , physics , acoustics , biology
Papakōlea, a neighborhood at the edge of downtown Honolulu, was granted legal status as a Hawaiian Homestead in 1934. The urban homestead represented an important departure from the 1921 Hawaiian Homes Commission Act, a congressional act whose purpose was to “rehabilitate” Native Hawaiians by returning them to the land. My paper examines the steps through which residents of a city neighborhood turned to their advantage an act emphasizing the rural basis of authentic Native Hawaiian identity. I argue that from the 1920s until the present, activists have drawn on interpretations of being Hawaiian as a primary tactic for claiming rights to urban land in an American legal context. In conclusion, I suggest that Papakōlea exemplifies the role that legal protection of a social space, the essence of the homestead idea beyond its ill‐fated rural model, can play in establishing and preserving indigenous identities, community engagement, and the activism of an urban population. [Indigeneity, Hawaiian Homes Commission Act, Honolulu, social activism]