Hawaiian Blood Quantum

Enacted in 1920, the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act allocates land to Native Hawaiians who are able to establish at least 50 percent Hawaiian blood quantum. Although presented as a rehabilitative initiative, the policy institutionalized blood quantum as a criterion for exclusion, linking land access to a declining biological threshold within Hawaiʻi’s multiethnic society. The photographs investigate the long-term consequences of this policy and its contribution to the continued displacement of Kanaka Maoli. Each portrait features a figure holding indicators of their Hawaiian blood quantum and is set against landscapes associated with institutions historically involved in settler-colonial expansion and land dispossession. Through this juxtaposition, viewers witness the bureaucratic erasure of Native Hawaiian identity through legislation, genealogy, and the ongoing contestation over land ownership.