kanaka

plural kanakas · alternative Kanaka

1. A person of Hawaiian descent.

   "Who was the call from?" "I don't know. Sound like a kanaka though.” When Erin frowned, he added, “A Hawaiian, like me.”

   2010, Mike Farris, Kanaka Blues, Savant Books and Publications, page 21

   1 more example

   It was considered one of the nation’s strictest bans because of the reference to Kanakas – native Hawaiians – and because Nevada was the only other state to add Chinese.

   2004 October 29, Peter Wong, “Interracial-marriage ban used in Measure 36 comparisons”, in Statesman Journal, volume 152, number 214, Salem, OR, page 2A

2. historicalA South Pacific Islander, especially a labourer in Australia or Canada.

   The Kanaka at the wheel gave him a glance, but did not speak.

   1921, W. Somerset Maugham, “Red”, in The Trembling of a Leaf: Little Stories of the South Sea Islands, The Floating Press, published 2011, page 47

   2 more examples

   There remains one case to be considered, that of the deportation of the Kanakas who were introduced into Queensland for the purpose of work on the sugar plantations.[…]It was, however, felt in the south that a white Australia was essential, and the Commonwealth passed in 1901 an Act (No. 16) which arranged for the deportation of all Kanakas within a few years.

   1912, Arthur Berriedale Keith, Responsible Government in the Dominions, Volume II, page 1098

   1933, Cambridge History of the British Empire, Part I, Volume VII, Cambridge University Press, Reissued 1988, Ernest Scott (editor), Australia, Volume 1, Cambridge University Press, page 313, So long as the Kanakas remained, white labour in Queensland went into the mills, from which the Kanakas were excluded, rather than into the cane brakes. Slowly, however, the change proceeded. […] The gentleman planter, owning broad estates worked by Kanaka 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 Kanaka or two, no Kanaka might own land.

plural Kanakas

1. Alternative letter-case form of kanaka.