Displacing Natives: The Rhetorical Production of Hawai'i (Pacific Formations: Global Relations in Asian and Pacific Perspectives)

This original and insightful study examines the strategies used by outsiders to usurp Hawaiian lands and undermine indigenous Hawaiian culture. Drawing upon historical and contemporary examples, Houston Wood investigates the journals of Captain Cook, Hollywood films, commercialized hula, Waikiki development schemes, and the appropriation of Pele and Kilauea by haoles to explore how these diverse productions all displace Native culture. Although this colonization has been unceasing for two hundred years, the author emphasizes the Native Hawaiians' voices that have never been completely silenced and can be heard asserting themselves in the islands today through songs, chants, literature, the internet, and the Native nationalist sovereignty movement. This cohesive and impassioned argument about the linkages between textual and physical displacements of Native Hawaiians will engage all readers interested in Pacific literature and postcolonial studies.