Talk:Kanaka (Pacific Island worker)

message: This is clearly hawaiian. The Maori version, for instance, would have been Tangata, the Tahitian form Ta'ata, only in Hawaii does this polynesian root assume the form Kanata, and it's highly unlikely that an English mangling of any of the other forms would have resulted in the Hawaiian form by accident. Yet, best I can ascertain, the Kanaka were mostly Tahitian, Samoan, Tuvulan, Tongan - everything but Hawaiian. Yet the word used to refer to them is specifically Hawaiian. Does anyone know how that came to be?
:The Tahitian, Samoan, Tuvulan, Tongan bunch may have been "kanakas" in Australia, but in North America they were overwhelmingly Hawaiian; see Kanaka: The Untold Story of Hawaiian Pioneers in British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest by Tom Koppel, Whitecap Books (1995) ISBN.  This book will also put the lie to the "indentured servants" argument above; this article clearly needs expansion, as you will find once reading Koppel's book (which I sold recently so can't cite some passages).Skookum1 06:49, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I sold my copy of Koppel a few months ago or would have added something by now; if I come across anything in my remaning BC history books I'll add it; but Koppel lays out the contractual details, particularly the contracts between the Hawaiian king and the Company, or with various America-bound ships (and here I use "America" in the continental sense, as neither California nor BC were in either the US or Canada until after 1848 and 1871, respectively, and the Kanakas were around before that (from the founding of Ft Vancouver onwards, other than those onboard ships at Nootka Sound etc).Skookum1 00:53, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Origin of word Kanaka 

message: The new Governor General,Lord Hopetoun, summarised the scale of costs to employers in a letter to the Prime Minister, Edmund Barton:
A Kanaka [a person from the Pacific Islands] costs ½ crown [2 shillings 6 pence] a day including wages, food, clothing, cost of introduction from the islands and return journey thither. A Jap costs about 3s[shillings] a day on the same basis. A Chinaman about 4s 4d[pence]. An Indian about 5s. While I sympathise with the sentiment of the people which is, rightly I think, in favour of a White Australia, I don't want to see a great industry brought to a standstill and I know your feelings are the same as mine. The average white male wage was 7 shillings per day..
The above is currently in use at blackbirding.
Not sure how best to incorporate this into the article?Garrie 05:25, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Kanakas in Australia 

message: Could somone please move the photograph to commons? Aaker 21:14, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  The photograph 

message: The words "kanak" or "Kanaka" when used in relation to Melanesians is the same as the word NIGGER. It is offensive to the ancestors and also to all Melanesian people. The word kanaka is only properly applied in the Hawaiian language, it means "person, or man". The correct term for these people is Melanesian, or more generally, Pacific Islander. It is only Australian Historians who deny that "blackbirding" was anything other than forced labour and a convenient term to cover slavery (which had been outlawed by Britain). The key point there, is "non free labour". NZ Historians and others, acknowledge Blackbirding for what it was. The great Aussie denial of it's treatment of indigenous people in Australia and the Pacific is still strong but not acceptable in Wikipedia. I suggest that this page be merged with Blackbirding202.70.51.189 (talk) 19:00, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: No. Kanaks are Melanesians, Kanakas are Polynesians.  I'm not familiar with the etymology, but I'm pretty sure the terms are from two entirely different language groups, too.Skookum1 20:27, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

text: The term "Kanaka" is less applied in the U.S. than in Australia or Canada, and I included the entry on the article about "Kanakas" in the U.S. Many Polynesians (the majority being Hawaiian) came to pick crops in agriculture, but are also hired in ranching across the Western U.S. The story of Native Hawaiian vaqueros or the cowboys of Hawaii is an interesting tale of crosscultural contact between Pacific Islander, Latin American and Anglo American cowboy culture in the 19th century. I believe this is worth mentioning in the article, but hardly any American historian uses the term "Kanaka" to describe an imported Hawaiian contract worker. +  71.102.53.48 (talk) 02:19, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: For what it's worth the term Kanaka in the Pacific Northwest (US and Canada) is fairly common and always refers to Natives Hawaiian laborers. It isn't an offensive word, but perhaps a bit archaic. It is probably more common in British Columbia than in Washington, Oregon, and Alaska--but not common at all in most of the rest of the US and Canada. Historically the term seems, from my reading, rather common among historians focusing on the early Pacific Northwest. A relatively well-known example is the Kanaka Village near old Fort Vancouver (see NPS pages on it and Kanakanation's pages). Many history books I have use the term as historically appropriate, with no suggestion that it might be offensive. The USGS GNIS databases lists about 50 US Kanaka placenames, mostly in California, the PNW, and Hawaii. Unlike placenames with the word nigger or squaw in them, I know of no effort to change these kanaka names. In fact, the use of kanaka in Pacific Northwest history is so normal I failed to realized the term was also used in Australia in a different way, until it came up on this page a while back. Am I correct in understanding that kanaka is still used in Australia today, offensively? Over here it is not, but is common in historical contexts, without being offensive. A similar, less common historical word for Native Hawaiians, and Hawaii itself, in America is Owyhee--still common in many placenames. In any case, one never hears the term "Kanak" here in the Pacific Northwest. I hadn't until just now. Pfly (talk) 09:11, 20 June 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merge 

message: This claim seems very specious to me and "some linguists" might be an overblown description if only one author makes the claim.  I've certainly never seen/heard this attribution before....the first known instance of Canuck is in 1835, though, well within the window in which Kanakas might have travelled to Estern Canada via the brigade/express routes in the employ of the fur companies; it seems a real stretch to transplant the hononym from Pacific Islanders to French-Canadians though (the original meaning of Canuck was a French-Canadian, not any Canadian).  In any case I've added your input to teh Canuck article, since it's cited....is so-and-so a linguist, by the way, i.e. formally accredited?  And is this publication peer-reviewed or is it "popular literature"?Skookum1 (talk) 15:46, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Canuck/Kanaka

message: It seems odd that this page is named in the plural. Wouldn't it be more sensible to be single: Kanaka? Pfly (talk) 09:01, 18 February 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, it needs changing; it should only be in the singular per wiki standard.....needs a page-move request/admin intervention because of redirect in the way of a normal page-move.Skookum1 (talk) 15:34, 18 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Should page be named singluar, Kanaka? 

message: On 12 March 2010, an anonymous user added to the sentence "The word kanaka originally referred only to Native Hawaiians, called kānaka ʻōiwi or kānaka maoli in the Hawaiian". They appended the phrase "Mamaka Kaïo which means "man" and " Free man" since 2009**". The double asterisks apparently were an effort to refer to a new citation which was added at the end of the article, "**Wladimir Di Giorgio,rés. n°5195 "Francs et Kanaks".A.P.E /Ctésia -2009.". This citation is now gone from the article, but the addition to the main text remains. As a reader, this addition ("Mamaka Kaïo which means "man" and " Free man" since 2009**") makes no sense to me. A little googling suggests that Mamaka Kaïo is the title of a Hawaiian vocabulary list, but I can't find enough information to cite it properly.  As it stands, this sentence seems like gibberish, since "Mamaka Kaïo" has nothing to do with the Hawaiian for "man" or "free man", and the date is irrelevant. I've removed it - but maybe someone can fix it? Country Wife (talk) 20:12, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:   Mamaka Kaïo 

message: According to the list of U.S. counties that share names with U.S. states (footnote 1), Owyhee County, Idaho was named for Hawaiian fur trappers who explored the area in 1819 and 1820.  Seems like there might be some relevant information that could be included in this article, or perhaps a mention in the "See also" section. YBG (talk) 07:32, 24 September 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Owyhee County, Idaho 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: The photograph in the “Australia” section is captioned as being of a group in front of a sugarcane plantation.  The same photograph is used in the entry for “South Sea Islanders”, but the caption says it is a pineapple plantation.  Recommend either it be settled which it is, or remove the type of produce from the descriptions.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:647:CD01:6AC0:ACBB:3114:5E5B:3A57 (talk) 10:37, 13 February 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Inconsistency with photograph 

message: This is not WIktionary, we don't really need such an offensive article here. There are many offensive loan words in English that have lost their context and have no general meaning in modern English such as Welsh even... But there isn't a specific article for what Welsh means offensively in the UK for example, so why is this here? 27.96.194.4 (talk) 11:15, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Do we really need a racist and outdated term in Wikipedia?