This book attempts to recover Hawaiian voices at a significant moment in Hawaiʻi's history. It takes an unprecedented look at the Hansen's disease outbreak (1865–1900) almost exclusively from the perspective of “patients,” ninety percent of whom were Kānaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian). The book tells the story of a disease, a society's reaction to it, and the consequences of the experience for Hawaiʻi and its people. Over a span of thirty-four years more than five thousand people were sent to a leprosy settlement on the remote peninsula in north Molokaʻi traditionally known as Makanalua. Their sto ... More

This book attempts to recover Hawaiian voices at a significant moment in Hawaiʻi's history. It takes an unprecedented look at the Hansen's disease outbreak (1865–1900) almost exclusively from the perspective of “patients,” ninety percent of whom were Kānaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian). The book tells the story of a disease, a society's reaction to it, and the consequences of the experience for Hawaiʻi and its people. Over a span of thirty-four years more than five thousand people were sent to a leprosy settlement on the remote peninsula in north Molokaʻi traditionally known as Makanalua. Their story has seldom been told despite the hundreds of letters they wrote to families, friends, and the Board of Health, as well as to Hawaiian-language newspapers, detailing their concerns at the settlement as they struggled to retain their humanity in the face of maʻi lepera. Many remained politically active and, at times, defiant, resisting authority and challenging policies. As much as they suffered, the Kānaka Maoli of Makanalua established new bonds and cared for one another in ways that have been largely overlooked in popular histories describing leprosy in Hawaiʻi. The book, although primarily a social history of disease and medicine, offers compelling evidence of how leprosy and its treatment altered Hawaiian perceptions and identities. It changed how Kānaka Maoli viewed themselves: By the end of the nineteenth century, the “diseased” had become a cultural “other” to the healthy Hawaiian. Moreover, it reinforced colonial ideology and furthered the use of both biomedical practices and disease as tools of colonization.