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40 cHApter 2 land as the Vehicle The Hawaiian Homes Commission Act (1921) and Defining Nativeness With my genealogy reconfiguring in my mind, and the pull of generations past urging me to bring forth what was put in my path, getting from here to there in understanding is now the voyage. Land legislation was the vehicle for erasing emotional and epistemological ties to the Hawaiian Kingdom, and for rewriting the national fabric of the ali‘i system and Hawaiian Kingdom national terrain. As the Crown Lands commissioner for many years, and then as the subagent of “Public Lands,” Curtis P. Iaukea had primary responsibility for and a strong interest in land legislation. He wrote glowingly about Sanford B. Dole and the 1884 Homestead Law, “under the provision of which the man of small means may acquire a tract of government land upon which to build himself a home and settle.” But in a public debate in 1922, his tone changed dramatically when he criticized the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act (HHCA), supposedly created to provide homesteading opportunities for native Hawaiians, as nothing but a tool for benefiting the sugar planters. Even though he later served as the chairman of the Hawaiian Homes Commission from 1933 to 1935, Curtis P. Iaukea was against the HHCA at its inception. The rewriting of the Hawaiian national terrain and social fabric through American land legislation, Curtis P. Iaukea’s engagement with and vocal opposition to the HHCA, and my own response to definitions of nativeness were all conditioned by the HHCA. The racialized and impoverished descriptions of land and people that it has perpetrated still fix Hawaiian identity in the eyes of the state. The debates almost a century ago signify native resistance to American classificatory systems of land and people. For lAnD AS tHe veHicle . 41 Curtis P. Iaukea, they also display the complexities of both participating in and speaking out against territorial landscaping agendas. Through his memory of international, national, and personal terrains, it is evident that the discursive movements from ‘āina to private property conditioned and still inform how we relate to space and one another. The Republic of Hawaii firmly established and recognized by all of the Great Powers , with Sanford B. Dole as President, I was offered a position in the Public Lands Office as Sub-Agent under J.F. Brown. Whilst thus employed I accompanied Mr. Dole on a circuit of the Island of Hawaii, preparatory to the opening of Government lands for settlement under the Freehold and Right of Purchase Leases, a system recently adopted by the Legislature on the recommendations of Mr. Dole. Resulting in the taking up of many tracts of land on the Islands of Hawaii and Oahu. The Wahiawa lands on the latter island in particular with its flourishing town and community, and vast fields of pineapple as far as the eye can see. I think this is an appropriate place to sit down my impressions from a long association with Sanford B. Dole, Hawaii’s “grand old man,” he was in later years. It was my good fortune to know Sanford B. Dole and to be counted amongst the favored ones enjoying the intimacy of his home and friendship. A man of sterling qualities, cultured and refined, and at heart the friend of Hawaii and the Hawaiian. I came to know him when he was serving his first term as a legislator and a Representative from the Island of Kauai at the session of 1884. He had introduced a Bill knownasthe“HomesteadLaw,”undertheprovisionofwhichthemanofsmallmeans may acquire a tract of government land upon which to build himself a home and settle. A system of land tenure and occupation that up to that time was prohibitive, becauseofthe existing statuterequiring that all governmentlands ofwhatevernature, whether for sale or lease, be sold at public auction. Usually in such large tracts and at such an upset price or rental as only the wealthy and moneyed interests can acquire. Suffice it to say, the Dole Homestead Bill was enacted into law and became operative on the 29th day of August 1884, when the King’s sign manual “Kalakaua Rex” was affixed to the precious document. As a result some 3000 acres of land in the Hamakua District, Island of Hawaii were thrown open for settlement, the allotments averaging 20 to 25 acres. Then there was the Nuuanu Valley homesteads on the Island of Oahu, in easy access of Honolulu, comprising an area of a 100 acres, subdivided into 5 and...

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