A Hawaiian Tradition within a Western Institution : A Study of the Hanai System of Adoption within American Adoption(<Special Theme>Indigeneity in Daily Life: Redefining 'Indigeneity')

<p>This paper throws light upon the native Hawaiian hanai adoption custom within the current institution that originates in the West, and analyzes both its internalization and reconstruction of the traditional values of "indigeneity" through the frame of a new adoption system. The analytical data in the paper were based on two years of fieldwork in native Hawaiian communities - also known as Hawaiian Homesteads - on the west coast of the island of O'ahu in Hawai'i. Hanai is an unwritten traditional Hawaiian custom whereby one family adopts a child from another and raises that child as a member of the adoptive family. The word is derived from a Hawaiian word meaning "to feed" or "to nourish. " The custom had been widely practiced in pre-contact Hawai'i (i.e., before Captain Cook's first visit in 1778), also playing a key role in its kinship system, particularly the perpetuation of family lineages. Hanai was also exercised to carry on the oral history of families, with grandparents adopting their grandchildren, though that was merely one quintessential form of hanai. We need to keep in mind that traditional Hawaiian adoption could take place in many different ways in a number of situations, making traditional hanai quite broad in actuality. It served the function of sustaining or strengthening the emotional, economical, and physical support among a broad spectrum of members of society, such as between an aunt and a niece, a male friend and a female friend, or an orphan and a relative. It should be also noted that the adoption customs widely practiced in Oceania have been drawing much anthropological attention recently. An analysis of previous kinship studies shows that the content and forms of adoption in the region can be explained by viewing them as a strengthening of already existing personal relations. That differs from the kinship theories developed in Europe and China, for example, where the continued prosperity of the family was considered vital. After the first Westerners reached the Hawaiian Islands in 1778, and in the course of the following colonization by the United States, new social values were brought to the Pacific and started to pervade the islands, drastically transforming the traditional concept of family through the implementation of Western norms in Hawaiian society. Later, in the 1960's, when a U.S. government-supported adoption scheme was introduced and became common among native Hawaiian families, new adoption practices institutionally supplanted older ones, with traditional hanai evidently going out of existence. Despite that expectation, the idea of hanai handed down from generation to generation has prevailed in modern native Hawaiian society. Residents in the native Hawaiian community also refer to the American adoption practice as hanai, emphasizing the continuity between the traditional and modern versions. As mentioned above, traditional hanai was a custom established among people in close relationships, while modern hanai is an institutional arrangement deeply reflecting American child welfare policy of the early 20th century. Before the practice of adoption became widespread in the United States, the word "fostering"was commonly used, referring to arrangements in which children were taken care of in homes other than their own. The practice of legal adoption was articulated in the United States only after the experience of the Great Depression and World War Two. Prior to legislation reform pertaining to adoption and fostering, orphanages were set up as general shelters for children in need of care. As statistics began to circulate indicating that children in orphanages were maltreated and often died, citizens in the United States initiated a movement to reform the government's child welfare policy. Eventually, in the 1970's, the modern system of adoption became popular as a</p><p>(View PDF for the rest of the abstract.)</p>