Stealing the land and tiki: Leah M. Kuragano, ‘Tiki Culture and the Staging of Settler Colonial Hawai’i in Mid-Century America’, American Quarterly, 77, 2, 2025, pp. 257-282 | settler colonial studies blog

Stealing the land and tiki: Leah M. Kuragano, ‘Tiki Culture and the Staging of Settler Colonial Hawai’i in Mid-Century America’, American Quarterly, 77, 2, 2025, pp. 257-282

07Jun25

Abstract: This essay traces the genealogy of American tiki culture from the first “Polynesian” restaurant in 1930s Hollywood through the postwar “tiki craze” by examining tiki objects, US and Hawai’i newspapers, and Dole Pineapple Corporation promotional materials through the analytic of settler colonialism. Contrary to popular assertions that tiki has always been innocent fantasy-making rather than appropriative misrepresentation, historical evidence suggests that producers actively authenticated settler colonial knowledge about Hawai’i and Kanaka Maoli (Indigenous Hawaiians) throughout the twentieth century. Over many decades of tiki-cultural production, white Americans have iteratively staged and occupied an idealized Hawai’i wherein their presence would be unconditionally celebrated. Ultimately, these stagings have reified a fantasy of white belonging in Hawai’i that bolsters the settler colonial project.

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