Aloha Nūhou Monday!

Dear Reader,

This week’s post honors New Caledonia which was the 8th nation to host and is scheduled to be the 14th nation to host the Festival of Pacific Arts & Culture.

Over the past few months, we have honored each of the previous FestPAC hosts with posts featuring those island nations and their connections to Hawaiʻi’s own history.

The Festival of Pacific Arts & Culture is the world’s largest celebration of Indigenous Pacific Islanders, bringing together artists, cultural practitioners, scholars, and officials from member nations of the Pacific Community (SPC). This traveling festival is held every four years and was first launched by the South Pacific Commission in 1972 to halt the erosion of traditional practices through ongoing cultural exchange.

Witnessing an alarming collapse of the native Hawaiian population, the kings of Hawaiʻi, from Kamehameha III Kauikeaouli to Kalākaua, undertook state-sponsored efforts to supplement the Hawaiian people with “cognate races” of “kindred stock.” In an 1855 speech to the legislature, Kamehameha IV Alexander Liholiho states, “A subject of deeper importance… is that of the decrease of our population. It is a subject, in comparison with which all others sink into insignificance.”¹ To remedy this, His Majesty entertains the following consideration: “[perhaps] a class of persons more nearly assimilated with the Hawaiian race, could… be induced to settle on our shores. It does not seem improbable that a portion of the inhabitants of other Polynesian groups might be disposed to come here, were suitable efforts made to lead them to such a step. In a few days they would speak our language with ease; they would be acclimated almost before they left the ships that conveyed them hither; and they might bring with them their wives, whose fecundity is said to be much greater than that of Hawaiian females. Such immigrants, besides supplying the present demand for labor, would pave the way for a future population of native-born Hawaiians, between whom, and those of aboriginal parents, no distinguishable difference would exist.”²

Throughout the mid- to late-nineteenth century, several state-sanctioned expeditions were made to island groups within Oceania, with the intention of encouraging new settlers to Hawaiʻi. Referred to as “Kanaka” or “South Sea Islanders” at the time, these would-be Hawaiians came from islands across the Pacific—the Kanak people of New Caledonia were among those considered of a kindred race. In 1879, under the reign of Kalākaua, 90 Kanaks were successfully recruited by Captain George E. Gresley Jackson of the Stormbird³ to immigrate to Hawaiʻi.