Native Hawaiian, Not Native Enough? Rethinking Cultural Sovereignty and Representation

At the Walker Youngbird Foundation, our mission centers on amplifying Indigenous voices in contemporary art-voices often unheard or overlooked by national institutions, cultural gatekeepers, and even funding systems that claim to support them. But what happens when those systems don't recognize you as Native and American?

This is the lived reality for many Native Hawaiians, whose struggle for sovereignty and recognition continues not just in the courts and on the land-but in galleries, grant programs, and cultural institutions guided by curatorial frameworks that tend to interpret "Native American" through a continental lens.

Despite being the Indigenous people of a colonized archipelago annexed by the United States without the consent of its sovereign government, Native Hawaiians are not recognized as a tribal nation by the federal government. The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) does not include Native Hawaiians in its legal definition of "Native American," denying them access to the kinds of benefits, protections, and representation afforded to federally recognized tribes in the continental U.S. and Alaska. And while First Nations artists in Canada are supported through a distinct system of recognition and funding, Native Hawaiian artists often remain unacknowledged-even within the United States' own Indigenous arts infrastructure.

For example, Native Hawaiian artists are often told they don't qualify for fellowships, residencies, and museum programs designed for "Indigenous artists." And when they are included, it's often under a kind of exception or loophole-as if their Indigeneity needs special justification. We've heard more than one story of a Native Hawaiian artist being asked to "prove" their cultural legitimacy in a way few would ask of an artist from a federally recognized tribe.

But cultural sovereignty is not paperwork. It is relationship to land, to language, to ancestors. Native Hawaiians carry that inheritance-and the burden of invisibility that comes from being too often left out of national Native conversations. In many ways, they have been placed at the margins of a system already built at the margins.

This is not just a legal issue. It is a cultural one. And it plays out in the way Native Hawaiian art is often misunderstood-seen as decorative, folkloric, or separate from the contemporary Indigenous art movement gaining momentum across North America. That separation is both false and harmful.

Native Hawaiian artists like Lehuauakea-this year's Walker Youngbird Foundation grant recipient-are not preserving a frozen past. They are reviving, reshaping, and reasserting a cultural tradition that was nearly erased. In Lehuauakea's work, traditional kapa-making becomes a site of contemporary expression: barkcloth not as artifact, but as a living medium for cultural voice and Indigenous identity. This is what cultural sovereignty looks like.

Walker Youngbird Foundation Emerging Native Arts Grant Recipient, Lehuauakea. Photo by Kelso Meyer.

Yet even in the art world-often considered more progressive than most sectors-Native Hawaiian artists are frequently boxed out of major exhibitions, curatorial initiatives, and acquisition funds earmarked for "Native" or "Indigenous" work. Some are rerouted into Asian and Pacific Islander categories alongside artists from places like Tahiti or Samoa, as if their Indigeneity were a matter of geography rather than sovereignty. The message is subtle but clear: you are not quite Native American enough.

As an organization working to support Indigenous artists, we believe it's time for institutions to take a broader view. The frameworks-legal, curatorial, and philanthropic-that define Indigeneity deserve careful reexamination. Native Hawaiian artists should be included not as exceptions, but as equal and essential voices in the wider Indigenous American art conversation. Their continued exclusionhighlights persistent blind spots-and the need for a more inclusive, thoughtful model of recognition and support.

The question isn't whether Native Hawaiians belong. It's whether the systems designed to elevate Native voices are willing to evolve-beyond current models and toward a fuller expression of Indigenous presence.

This is more than a matter of fairness. It's a matter of accuracy, equity, and respect. Because if we claim to support Indigenous artists, we cannot do so selectively. We cannot celebrate sovereignty in theory and deny it in practice.

We invite museums, curators, grantmakers, and cultural institutions to broaden their definitions of Indigenous identity to fully include Native Hawaiians-not as an exception, but as an equal part of the Indigenous story. This means reexamining eligibility criteria, curatorial language, and acquisition strategies to reflect a fuller picture of Native presence and creativity across the Pacific and the continent.

It's not a question of belonging-it's a question of whether we're ready to see what's already there.

Written By Reid Walker, Walker Youngbird Founder