From: The Encyclopedia of Canada's Peoples/Hawaiians/
Hawaiian settlers, particularly those on Saltspring and nearby islands, appeared on voters’ lists virtually from the time of British Columbia’s entry into Confederation in 1871, a fact that underlines how early many had shifted their allegiance to Canada. The value that these British Columbia pioneers gave to respectability is also visible in studio portraits and more informal photographs of families carefully posed and neatly dressed in Victorian or Edwardian fashion. Other evidence substantiates the same point. From the mid-nineteenth century to the time of the Hawaiian Islands’ annexation in 1898, consular offices were maintained abroad. The infrequency with which Hawaiian consuls at Victoria, Port Townsend, and Vancouver dealt with infractions of the law or cases of destitution testifies to individual and family pride. The sole British Columbia case to come to a consul’s attention concerned a man known as “Kanaka Pete,” sentenced to death in 1869 for having killed his Indian wife and family on discovering her adultery; the consul and twenty of Vancouver Island’s leading citizens unsuccessfully sought clemency on the man’s behalf owing to the mitigating circumstances.
If within two or three generations many Hawaiians were living outwardly as “Indian” or “white,” most did not lose consciousness of their distinctive identity. Some elements of Hawaiian culture, such as the hula dance, did not generally transfer to the Pacific northwest, there being so few women of the first generation to pass it on to their daughters. Language, too, was an early casualty; only words and phrases seem to have been retained in the second and subsequent generations, although such early place names as Kanaka Creek opposite Fort Langley, Kanaka Bluff on Portland Island, and Kanaka Bay on Newcastle Island off Nanaimo provide tangible linguistic links with the past. A love of music and a delight in playing stringed instruments was passed down in many families. The family feast known as the luau and, more generally, the high value accorded to family life long continued; well into the twentieth century families on Saltspring and nearby islands celebrated each autumn’s harvest with a luau-style party that moved virtually intact over a period of weeks from family to family, island to island.
Physical appearance has created another enduring bond. Captain James Cook described the Hawaiian Islanders as “well made,” with brown eyes, a skin colour varying from light olive to darker shades, and “brownish black” hair that is “neither uniformly straight like that of the Indians of America, nor uniformly curling, as amongst the African negroes.” These features have appeared and reappeared in British Columbia families generation after generation. Sometimes they have been cause for prejudice and discrimination, but they have also served as a bond uniting families and clans.
Although never a clearly defined community in the sense of having formal institutions, Hawaiians in British Columbia have valued their heritage. Stories passed down over the years remain remarkably intact, in part perhaps because the first generation was non-literate and the culture of subsequent generations has been as much verbal as written. Many who know little about their precise family histories are nonetheless aware of their distinctive origins, and for the most part descendants take greater pride in being Hawaiian than in being Indian, likely because of the greater respect accorded Hawaiians historically. Particularly since the 1970s some families have begun to visit Hawaii, hoping, so far without success, to recover an actual as well as a spiritual link with families there. Operation Ohana, a recent initiative by the Hawaiian government to enrol all persons of aboriginal Hawaiian ancestry into a cultural association, has been greeted with enthusiasm.
Current attitudes are indicated by a somewhat spontaneous event of 1992 and its annual successors. While some families had come together from time to time, a first general reunion entitled “The Hawaiian Connection” was organized in conjunction with the celebration of the 125th anniversary of confederation. Although news of the event spread only informally, more than two hundred people – representing virtually the entire British Columbia socio-economic spectrum, from First Nations leaders and a former provincial cabinet minister to ordinary men, women, and children – were in attendance. Most had never met each other before, but many discovered that they shared the same stories and, in some cases, common ancestry. Dominant physical characteristics created a special bond, one man quipping that in looking for a parking space he had seen his uncle nine times even though his uncle was long since dead. An elderly man who grew up in Victoria as “white” told of the shame he had felt whenever his visibly Hawaiian grandmother would come to visit and how he wished that he had not denied her a place in his childhood. The editor of a First Nations newspaper descended from a one-time squatter in Stanley Park summed the event up as “a reaffirmation of ourselves.”
Though they are one of Canada’s smaller peoples, British Columbia’s Hawaiians testify strongly to the strength of the country’s fabric. Their treatment by the dominant society belies the myth that legal discrimination necessarily follows from a distinctive physical appearance. The handful of Hawaiian men who remained in British Columbia were deemed citizens of Canada, and behaved as such. Their descendants testify to the diversity of Canada’s peoples.
