Sentence:  So long as the <WSD>Kanakas</WSD> remained, white labour in Queensland went into the mills, from which the <WSD>Kanakas</WSD> were excluded, rather than into the cane brakes. Slowly, however, the change proceeded....The gentleman planter, owning broad estates worked by <WSD>Kanaka</WSD> gangs, crushing and refining his own sugar after a fashion in the plantation mill, was by that time obsolescent. Though the small farmers into whose hands the plantations were divided might employ a <WSD>Kanaka</WSD> or two, no <WSD>Kanaka</WSD> might own land. 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  A South Pacific Islander, especially a labourer in Australia or Canada.