Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Americans

SIGNIFICANCE: These ethnically diverse groups maintain relatively harmonious relationships while negotiating inclusion in the US labor market and European American and Asian American institutions and exploring their rights as Indigenous peoples.

Hawaiian Americans are individuals with Hawaiian ancestry who are American citizens. Pacific Islander Americans are American Samoans, Guamanians, and people of the Northern Mariana Islands and Pacific atolls who reside on their islands, in Hawaii, or on the mainland United States. Pre-1980 census publications did not differentiate Pacific Islander groups except for Hawaiians. In addition, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders were considered to be included in the "Asian" racial category until the 2000 census, making accurate statistics difficult to obtain. The same year, the census added the ability to select multiple races and ethnicities, and the Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander (NHPI) group was found to be the most likely to report multiple races. 56 percent of NHPI Americans identified as mixed-race in 2010. In the 2020 census, about 69 percent of NHPI Americans identified as multiracial. Despite the separation of Asian Americans and NHPI Americans in the census, they are often grouped together informally, and resources for or about Asian Americans and Asian American issues may still include NHPI people as well.

Pacific Islanders sometimes move to the mainland United States because of the mainland’s better economic prospects and educational opportunities. Generally, they adapt more easily to suburban and rural areas than to large urban areas.

Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands

The territory of Guam and the US commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands are believed to have been inhabited as early as 2,000 BCE by ancient Chamorros of Mayo-Polynesian descent. Colonized by Spanish missionaries in 1668, Guam was annexed by the United States in 1898 and ceded to the United States in 1919. Guam was occupied by the Japanese during World War II and retaken by the United States in 1944. In 1950, Guam’s inhabitants were given US citizenship. When the 1962 Naval Clearing Act allowed other ethnic groups to make Guam their home, Filipinos, Caucasians, Japanese, Chinese, Indians, and Pacific Islanders moved there, joining the Carolinians and Chamorros. The 2010 census recorded a population that was 37.3 percent Chamorro, 26.3 percent Filipino, and 7.1 percent Caucasian, with the remaining group mostly made up of East Asian people and other Pacific Islanders. On the 2020 census, 32.8 percent identified as Chamorro, 29.1 percent identified as Filipino, and 6.8 percent identified as Caucasian, while the remaining group again was mostly East Asian people and other Pacific Islanders. In terms of religion, 94 percent are Roman Catholics. Guam is a self-governing, organized unincorporated territory with policy relations between Guam and the United States under the jurisdiction of the US Department of the Interior. A 1972 US law gave Guam one nonvoting delegate to the US House of Representatives. Guam remains a cosmopolitan community retaining customs and traditions from many cultures and has a flourishing tourist industry.

Saipan, Tinian, and Rota, the principal islands of the Mariana Islands, have a long history of foreign occupation, by the Spanish from 1521 to 1899, the Germans from 1899 to 1914, and the Japanese from 1914 to 1944. From 1947 to 1978, the area was recognized as a trust territory of the United Nations with the United States as the administering authority. In 1978, the islands became self-governing in political union with the United States. When the United Nations Trusteeship Council concluded that the United States had discharged its obligations to the Mariana Islands, the United States conferred citizenship upon individuals who met the necessary qualifications. The Security Council of the United Nations voted to dissolve the trusteeship in 1990.

American Samoa

The Samoans’ heritage is Polynesian. European visitors, traders, and missionaries arrived in the eighteenth century. In 1872, Pago Pago harbor was ceded to the United States as a naval station. An 1899 treaty between Britain, Germany, and the United States made Samoa neutral, but when kingship was abolished the following year, the Samoan islands east of 171 degrees were given to the United States. American Samoa remains an unincorporated territory administrated by the United States Department of the Interior. The 57,366 people (as of 1995), who live mostly on Tutuila, are American nationals. Although unable to vote in federal elections, American Samoans can freely enter the United States and, after fulfilling the residency requirements, can become citizens. Their language is Samoan but many speak English.

In 2010, it was estimated that there were over 180,000 people of partial or full Samoan descent in the United States, living mainly in California, Washington, and Hawaii. By 2025, this number was over 240,000. This makes them the second largest Pacific Islander group in the United States, after Native Hawaiians. In Hawaii, they have experienced cultural discrimination, especially in regards to housing, particularly in the 1990s, and have been called a stigmatized ethnic group.

Hawaii

It is estimated that the final migration of Hawaiians from Polynesia occurred about 750 CE. Hawaii’s early social system consisted of the ali’i (nobility), who imposed hierarchical control over the maka’ainana (commoners), whose labor supported a population that, by the mid-1700s, had increased to at least three hundred thousand. England’s Captain James Cook, who reached Kauai in 1778, named Hawaii the Sandwich Islands. King Kamehameha I first unified the islands of Maui, Oahu, Hawaii, Lanai, and Molokai under a single political regime in 1795. Kauai and Niihau joined the union in 1810. The first Congregationalist missionaries arrived from New England in 1820, followed by European and American merchants and Yankee traders. With Western contact came diseases for which the Hawaiians had no immunity or treatment. By 1853, the native population had fallen to seventy-one thousand.

Chinese, Japanese, and Portuguese immigrants arrived to provide labor for the sugar plantations. Workers coming from Korea, Puerto Rico, Europe, Scandinavia, Russia, Micronesia, Polynesia, and the Philippines considered themselves temporary immigrants. By 1890, Hawaii was a multiethnic society in which non-Hawaiians made up most of the population. Hawaii’s independence was recognized by the United States from 1826 until 1893, when American and European sugar plantation owners, descendants of missionaries, and financiers deposed the Hawaiian monarchy, established a provisional government, and proclaimed Hawaii a protectorate of the United States. Annexed by Congress in 1898, Hawaii became a US territory in 1900 and the fiftieth state in 1959.

During the 1970s, a Hawaiian rights and sovereignty movement emerged. Viewed, at first, as a radical grassroots minority, the movement gained momentum after a series of demonstrations and acts of civil disobedience. In 1977, representatives from many organizations and individual Hawaiians met in Puwalu sessions to discuss Hawaiian issues. State Supreme Court justice William Richardson advised Hawaiians to use the courts to redress grievances, challenge laws, and assert gathering, access, and water rights. A constitutional convention, primarily concerned by the state’s improper use of lands ceded to the United States after annexation and transferred to the state in 1959, reviewed and revised the functions and responsibilities of Hawaii’s government in 1978. The following year, the legislature created the Office of Hawaiian Affairs (OHA) to provide and coordinate programs, advocate for Hawaiians, and serve as a receptacle for reparations. Throughout the succeeding ten years, sovereignty groups strongly criticized OHA. In 1993, the US Congress officially acknowledged and apologized for the actions a hundred years earlier (US Public Law 103-150). That same year, the sovereignty groups Ka Laahui and Hui Na’auao were awarded education grants, and Governor John Waihee formed the Hawaiian Sovereignty Advisory Commission, which was renamed in 1996 to Ha Hawaii. The most radical sovereignty group, the Oahana Council, declared independence from the United States in January, 1994. In 1997, a number of workshops were conducted by kupuna (elders) who emphasized unity among the various factions. When Governor Benjamin Cayetano resolved in his 1998 state-of-the-state address “to advance a plan for Hawaiian sovereignty,” he echoed the words of former governor Waihee. Waihee had also ventured his concern that while establishing self-determination, Hawaiians would tear apart the “multicultural fabric” of contemporary Hawaiian society.

Even seeking greater self-governance within the bounds of Hawaii's status as a US state has proved challenging for Native Hawaiians. One issue that has faced them in this area is that they have not been officially recognized as an Indigenous group of the United States and thus have not been covered by the same laws that afford a degree of autonomy, among other benefits, to American Indians and Alaska Natives. A bill intended to address this, the Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act of 2009, was passed by the House of Representatives, but died in the Senate.

Hawaii’s population, which had doubled after the islands gained statehood, fell in the 1990s, partly because of the slow growth that resulted from an economic recession and the vast reduction of military presence on the islands. Between 1990 and 1995, the state experienced a net loss of 376,752 residents to domestic migration, partly because of the high cost of living, which in 1994 was 35 percent to 39 percent greater than the average US large city, while the median income was only about 10 percent higher. However, between 2010 and 2020, the population grew by 7 percent and, according to census data, 1,455,271 people resided on the islands in 2020.

Hawaiians living on the mainland remain connected with their heritage and values through social, university, and cultural associations that promote cultural events and regularly publish newsletters. Hula halaus exist in many states, and Hawaii’s music industry brings musicians to the mainland for live performances. Local Hawaiian newspapers are available on the Internet.

On the 2010 census, there were approximately 518,000 people in the United States who identified as Native Hawaiian, in part or in full. By the 2020 census, that number had risen to 680,442, with 53 percent of Native Hawaiians living in the continental United States and 47 percent living in Hawaii. 

Most Pacific Islanders who live on the continental United States reside in the western states. The Pacific Islanders’ Cultural Association, founded in 1995, is an umbrella organization whose aim is to meet the common needs of all Pacific Islanders living in Northern California.

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