View source for Kanaka (Pacific Island worker)

{{Short description|1800s–1900s Pacific Islander employed in British colonies}}
{{Other uses|Kanaka (disambiguation)}}
{{EngvarB|date=November 2017}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=November 2017}}
[[File:Groupe de Kanakas dans une exploitation de canne à sucre du Queensland.jpg|thumb|Kanaka workers on a sugar cane plantation in Queensland, late 19th century]]

[[File:Loyalty Islanders employed as sailors on the New Caledonian coast, c. 1906.jpg|thumb|[[Kanak people|Loyalty Islanders]] employed as sailors on the New Caledonian coast]]

'''Kanakas''' were workers (a mix of voluntary and [[Blackbirding|involuntary]]) from various [[Pacific Islands]] employed in [[British Empire|British colonies]], such as [[British Columbia]] (Canada), [[Fiji]], [[Solomon Islands]], [[Vanuatu]], [[Papua New Guinea]], and [[Queensland]] (Australia) in the 19th and early 20th centuries. They also worked in [[California]] (United States) and [[Chile]] (see also [[Easter Island]] and the [[Rapa Nui people|Rapa Nui]]).

"Kanaka" originally referred only to [[Native Hawaiians]], from their own name for themselves, ''kānaka ʻōiwi'' or ''kānaka maoli'', ''kānaka'' meaning "man" in the [[Hawaiian language]].<ref>{{cite web | title=Etymology, origin and meaning of kanaka by etymonline | website=Etymonline | date=28 September 2017 | url=https://www.etymonline.com/word/kanaka | access-date=7 November 2023}}</ref> In the Americas in particular, native Hawaiians were the majority; but Kanakas in Australia were almost entirely Melanesian. In [[Australian English]] "kanaka" is now avoided outside of its historical context, as it has been used as an offensive term.<ref name=derog/>

==Australia==
[[File:Nla pic-an24494586 south sea islanders.jpg|thumb|295px|South Sea Islander labourers on a [[Queensland]] pineapple plantation, 1890s; photographer unknown]]
According to the ''[[Macquarie Dictionary]]'', the word "kanaka", which was once widely used in Australia, is now regarded in [[Australian English]] as an offensive term for a Pacific Islander.<ref name=derog>''Macquarie Dictionary'' (Fourth Edition), 2005, p. 774</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.yourdictionary.com/kanaka|title=Kanaka dictionary definition - Kanaka defined|website=www.yourdictionary.com}}</ref> Most "Kanakas" in Australia were people from [[Melanesia]], rather than [[Polynesia]].  The descendants of 19th century immigrants to Australia from the Pacific Islands now generally refer to themselves as "[[South Sea Islanders]]", and this is also the term used in formal and official situations.

Most of the original labourers were recruited or [[Blackbirding|blackbirded]] (kidnapped or deceived) from the [[Solomon Islands]], [[New Hebrides]] (Vanuatu) and [[New Caledonia]], with others from the [[Loyalty Islands]].
[[File:Kanaka_built_house_in_Queensland_-_1907_-_found_by_Kaye.jpg|thumb|Kanaka built house in Queensland in 1907]]
The first shipload of 65 Melanesian labourers arrived in [[Boydtown, New South Wales|Boyd Town]] on 16 April 1847 on board the ''Velocity'', a vessel under the command of Captain Kirsopp and chartered by [[Benjamin Boyd]].<ref>{{cite news |url=https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article31751641 |title=Exports |newspaper=[[Sydney Chronicle]] |date=21 April 1847 |access-date=1 May 2019 |page=2 |via=Trove}}</ref> Boyd was a Scottish colonist who wanted cheap labourers to work at his expansive pastoral leaseholds in the colony of [[New South Wales]]. He financed two more procurements of South Sea Islanders, 70 of which arrived in [[Sydney]] in September 1847, and another 57 in October of that same year.<ref>{{cite news |url=https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article226516651 |title=Sydney news |newspaper=[[The Port Phillip Patriot and Morning Advertiser]] |date=1 October 1847 |access-date=1 May 2019 |page=2 |via=Trove}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |url=https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article37130286 |title=Shipping intelligence |newspaper=[[The Australian (1824 newspaper)|The Australian]] |date=22 October 1847 |access-date=1 May 2019 |page=2 |via=Trove}}
</ref> Many of these Islanders soon absconded from their workplaces and were observed starving and destitute on the streets of Sydney.<ref>{{cite news |url=https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article48544997 |title=The "Phantom" from Sydney |newspaper=[[South Australian Register]] |date=11 December 1847 |access-date=1 May 2019 |page=2 |via=Trove}}</ref> After the report of the alleged murder of the Native Chief of the Island of Rotumah in 1848, a closed-door enquiry was held, choosing not to take any action against Boyd or Kirsopp.<ref>{{cite news |url=https://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article59765205 |title=The alleged murder at Rotumah |newspaper=[[Bell's Life in Sydney and Sporting Reviewer]] |date=1 July 1848 |access-date=1 May 2019 |page=2 |via=Trove}}</ref> The experiment of utilising Melanesian labour was discontinued in Australia until [[Robert Towns]] recommenced the practice in the early 1860s.

After 1863, more than 62,000 Islanders were brought to Australia; in 1901, about 10,000 were living in [[Queensland]] and northern [[New South Wales]].<ref>{{SLQ-CC-BY|url=https://www.slq.qld.gov.au/blog/across-seas-tracing-australian-south-sea-islanders|title=From Across the Seas: Tracing Australian South Sea Islanders|date=19 August 2022|authors=Christina Ealing-Godbold|access-date=16 January 2023}}</ref>  The [[Pacific Island Labourers Act 1901]],<ref>{{cite web |title=Pacific Island Labourers Act 1901 (Cth) |url=http://www.foundingdocs.gov.au/item.asp?sdID=86 |website=Documenting a Democracy |publisher=National Archives of Australia |access-date=2019-01-17 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091026225820/http://www.foundingdocs.gov.au/item.asp?sdID=86 |archive-date=2009-10-26}}</ref> legislation complementing the [[White Australia policy]], ordained the deportation of all post-1879 arrivals to the Solomon Islands or the New Hebrides, where "neither property, nor rights, nor welcome awaited them".<ref>Peter Corris,'' Passage, Port and Plantation: a History of Solomon Islands Labour Migration, 1870-1914'', Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1973, p.127.</ref> Antonius Tua Tonga, a Kanaka who had lived in Queensland since the age of four, petitioned the King of England for a mitigation of the legislation, but the Australian prime minister, [[Alfred Deakin]], advised the British government the petition was a front for planters, and the deportations took place largely as intended. A legislative amendment in 1905 exempted those of "extreme age", those married to whites, and freeholders. The prime minister, Alfred Deakin, declined to exempt those schooled in Australia.<ref>William Coleman,''Their Fiery Cross of Union. A Retelling of the Creation of the Australian Federation, 1889-1914'', Connor Court, Queensland, 2021, p.298.</ref>

The descendants of those who avoided deportation today form Australia's largest Melano-Polynesian ethnic group. Many Australian South Sea Islanders are also of mixed ancestry, including [[Indigenous Australians|Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders]], for whom they are often mistaken. As a consequence, Australian South Sea Islanders have faced forms of discrimination similar to Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders.

After 1994, the Australian South Sea Islander community was recognised as a unique minority group, following a report by the Australian [[Australian Human Rights Commission|Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission]], which found they had become more disadvantaged than indigenous Australians.<ref>{{cite web|title=Recognition for Australian South Sea Islanders|url=http://www.qm.qld.gov.au/Find+out+about/Histories+of+Queensland/Migration/Recognition+for+Australian+South+Sea+Islanders|website=Queensland Museum|access-date=5 May 2017}}</ref>

==Canada==
[[File:Delia and George N. Parker's family.jpg|thumb|Hawaiian family who settled in British Columbia, {{Circa|1890}}]]
Canadian Kanakas were all Hawaiian in origin. They had been aboard the first exploration and trading ships to reach the [[Pacific Northwest|Pacific Northwest Coast]]. There were cases of Kanakas jumping ship then living amongst various First Nations peoples. The first Kanakas to settle came from [[Fort Vancouver]] after clearing the original [[Fort Langley]] site and building the palisade (1827).  They were often assigned to the [[fur brigade]]s and [[York Factory Express|Express]] of the fur companies and were a part of the life of company forts. A great many were contracted to the [[Hudson's Bay Company]] while some had arrived in the area as ship's hands. In other instances, they migrated north from California.<!--Koppel's book talks about Kamehameha contracting out many of his young men to various enterprises and there may have been as many as 100,000 were contracted out--> The [[Rancherie#The Kanaka Rancherie|Kanaka Rancherie]] was a settlement of Native Hawaiian migrant workers in Vancouver.

Many Kanaka men married [[First Nations in Canada|First Nation]]s women,<ref>Koppel, Tom, 1995 ''Kanaka: The Untold Story of Hawaiian Pioneers in British Columbia and Pacific Northwest'' p 2</ref> and their descendants can still be found in [[British Columbia]] and neighbouring parts of Canada, and the United States (particularly in the states of [[Washington (state)|Washington]] and [[Oregon]]). [[Kanaka Creek, British Columbia]], was a community of mixed Hawaiian-First families established across the [[Fraser River]] from [[Fort Langley]] in the 1830s,<!--1820s?--> which remains on the map today.

Kanakas were active in both the [[California Gold Rush]], and in the [[Fraser Canyon Gold Rush]] and other rushes. [[Kanaka Bar|Kanaka Bar, British Columbia]] gets its name from claims staked and worked by Kanakas who had previously worked for the fur company<!--and/or had come up from California--> (which today is a First Nations community of the [[Nlakaʼpamux]] people).

There were no negative connotations in the use of Kanaka in British Columbian and Californian English of the time, and in its most usual sense today, it denotes someone of Hawaiian ethnic inheritance, without any pejorative meaning.

One linguist holds that ''[[Canuck]]'', a nickname for Canadians, is derived from the Hawaiian ''Kanaka''.<ref>Allen, Irving Lewis, 1990. ''Unkind Words: Ethnic Labeling from Redskin to WASP,'' pp 59, 61–62. New York: Bergin & Garvey. {{ISBN|0-89789-217-8}}.</ref>

==United States==
The first native workers from the [[Hawaiian Islands]] (called the "Sandwich Islands" at the time) arrived on the ''[[Tonquin (1807 ship)|Tonquin]]'' in 1811 to clear the site and help build [[Fort Astoria]], as undertaken by the [[Pacific Fur Company]]. Nearly 12 Kanakas or a third of the workforce wintered over among "Astorians". Kanakas built [[Russian Fort Elizabeth|Fort Elizabeth]] on the island of [[Kauai]] in [[Hawaii]] for the [[Russian American Company]] in 1817, with others to follow.

By the 1820s, Kanakas were employed in the kitchen and other skilled trades by the [[Hudson's Bay Company]] at [[Fort Vancouver]], mostly living south and west of the main palisade in an area known as "Kanaka Village." Kanakas, employed in agriculture and ranching, were present in the mainland United States as early as 1834, primarily in [[California]] under [[Spain|Spanish]] colonial rule, and later under American company contracts. ([[Richard Henry Dana Jr.|Richard Henry Dana]] refers often to Kanaka workers and sailors on the Californian coast in his book ''[[Two Years Before the Mast]]'').

The migration of Kanakas peaked between 1900 and 1930, and most of their families soon blended by intermarriage into the [[Chinese Americans|Chinese]], [[Filipino Americans|Filipino]], and more numerous [[Mexican Americans|Mexican]] populations with whom they came in contact. At one point, Native Hawaiians harvested sugar beets and picked apples in the states of [[Washington (state)|Washington]] and [[Oregon]].

The Kanakas have left a legacy in Oregon place names, such as Kanaka Flat in [[Jacksonville, Oregon|Jacksonville]], the [[Owyhee River]] in southeastern Oregon (Owyhee is an archaic spelling of Hawaii)<ref>{{cite web|last1=Rabun|first1=Sheila J.|title=Aloha, Oregon! Hawaiians in Northwest History|url=http://odnp.uoregon.edu/2011/06/01/aloha-oregon-hawaiians-in-northwest-history/|website=Oregon Digital Newspaper Program|access-date=16 February 2016|date=1 June 2011}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|last1=Boom|first1=Tony|title=The Hawaiians of Kanaka Flat|url=http://www.mailtribune.com/article/20090428/News/904280325|access-date=16 February 2016|work=Mail Tribune|date=28 April 2009|location=Medford, OR}}</ref> and the [[Kanaka Gulch]].<ref>{{cite web | url=http://www.rvgslibrary.org/Land/PlaceNames.html | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181004051259/http://www.rvgslibrary.org/Land/PlaceNames.html | url-status=dead | archive-date=4 October 2018 | title=Jackson County Place Names Database | publisher=Jackson County Genealogy Library | access-date=29 May 2019}}</ref>

==See also==
{{EB1911 poster|Kanaka}}
*[[Kanak people|Kanak]]: indigenous people of [[New Caledonia]] (also known as Kanaky)
*[[Kanake]]: German racial epithet
*[[Blackbirding]]
*[[Haole]]
*[[Indentured servant]]
*[[Coolies]]
*[[Slavery]]

==References==
{{reflist}}

==Further reading==
* Affeldt, Stefanie: ''Consuming Whiteness. Australian Racism and the ‘White Sugar’ Campaign''. Lit-Verlag, Münster 2014, pp.&nbsp;152–188
*Barman, Jean, 2006. "Leaving Paradise: Indigenous Hawaiians in the Pacific Northwest", University of Hawaii Press, 513pp. {{ISBN|0-8248-2549-7}}
* {{cite Q|Q108799620}}<!-- A few facts in connection with the Employment of Polynesian Labour in Queensland -->
*Di Giorgio, Wladimir, 2009. "Francs et Kanaks". rés. n°5195 A.P.E/Ctésia
* {{cite Q|Q108864821}}<!-- What I Know of the Labour Traffic, 1884 edition of work by A. J. Duffield -->
*Graves, Adrian, 1983. "Truck and Gifts: Melanesian Immigrants and the Trade Box System in Colonial Queensland", in: ''Past & Present'' (no. 101, 1983)
*Koppel, Tom, 1995. ''Kanaka, The Untold Story of Hawaiian Pioneers in British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest'', Whitecap Books, Vancouver
*Lane, M. Melia, 1985. "Migration of Hawaiians to Coastal B.C., 1810–1869." Master's Thesis, University of Hawaii, Honolulu
*Twain, Mark, 1897. "Following the Equator, A Journey Around the World", chapters V and VI.

==External links==
* [https://www.slq.qld.gov.au/discover/exhibitions/australian-south-sea-islanders Australian South Sea Islanders] - State Library of Queensland
* [https://www.slq.qld.gov.au/discover/exhibitions/plantation-voices Plantation Voices] - State Library of Queensland exhibition 
* Blog - [https://www.slq.qld.gov.au/blog/sugar-slaves Sugar Slaves] 
* Blog - [https://www.slq.qld.gov.au/blog/across-seas-tracing-australian-south-sea-islanders From Across the Seas: Tracing Australian South Sea Islanders]

{{Ethnic slurs}}
{{People of Canada}}

[[Category:Immigrants to New Caledonia]]
[[Category:Australian people of Melanesian descent]]
[[Category:Canadian people of Oceanian descent]]
[[Category:Economic history of Fiji]]
[[Category:Labor history of the United States]]
[[Category:Labour history of Australia]]
[[Category:History of British Columbia]]
[[Category:Labour in Canada]]
[[Category:History of New Caledonia]]
[[Category:Alta California]]
[[Category:Fur trade]]
[[Category:British colonisation in Oceania]]
[[Category:Oceanian diaspora in the United States]]
[[Category:Pacific Islands American history]]
[[Category:Slavery in North America]]
[[Category:Slavery in Australia]]
[[Category:Slavery in Asia]]
[[Category:Slavery in South America]]
[[Category:Slavery in Oceania]]
[[Category:Slavery in the British Empire]]