Kanaka (Pacific Island Worker) - Canada

Canada

In Canada, many Kanaka men married First Nations women, and their descendants can still be found in British Columbia and neighbouring parts of Canada and the United States (the states of Washington and Oregon). Canadian Kanakas were all Hawaiian in origin. Nearly all were contractees of the Hudson's Bay Company although some had arrived in the area as ship's hands or, in some cases, migrated north from California. There was no negative connotation to the use of Kanaka in British Columbian and Californian English of the time, and in its most usual sense today means someone of Hawaiian ethnic inheritance, without any derisive sense. Kanakas had been aboard the first exploration and trading ships to reach the Pacific Northwest Coast and there were cases of Kanakas living amongst various First Nations peoples after jumping ship as well as often along on the fur brigades and Express of the fur companies, as well as in the life of the fort. Kanaka Creek, British Columbia was a community of mixed Hawaiian-First families established across the Fraser River from Fort Langley in the 1830s and remains on the map today. Kanakas were active in both the California Gold Rush and in the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush and other rushes; Kanaka Bar, British Columbia gets its name from claims staked and worked by Kanakas who had been previously working for the fur company (which today is a First Nations community of the Nlaka'pamux people).

Some linguists hold that canuck, a nickname for Canadians, is derived from the Hawaiian Kanaka.