Book Cover
E-book
Author Inglis, Kerri A

Title Maʻi Lepera : Disease and Displacement in Nineteenth-Century Hawaiʻi / Kerri A. Inglis
Published Honolulu : University of Hawaiʻi Press, [2013]

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Description 1 online resource (xvii, 268 pages) : illustrations, maps
Contents A land and a disease set apart -- The criminalization of leprosy in Hawaiʻi -- Accommodation, adaptation, and resistance to leprosy and the law -- Living with disease and death at Makanalua -- The journey into exile -- Maʻi hoʻokaʻawale : the disease that separates
Summary This book attempts to recover Hawaiian voices at a significant moment in Hawai'i's history. It takes a look at the Hansen's disease outbreak (1865-1900) almost exclusively from the perspective of "patients," ninety percent of whom were Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian). Using traditional and nontraditional sources, published and unpublished, it tells the story of a disease, a society's reaction to it, and the consequences of the experience for Hawai'i and its people.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 Moloka'i 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 ma'i 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 Hawai'i. Although this book is primarily a social history of disease and medicine, it 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. This work will be of significant interest to students and scholars of Hawai'i and medical history and historical and medical anthropology. Given its accessible style, this book will also appeal to general readers who wish to know more about the Kānaka Maoli who contracted leprosy - their connectedness to each other, their families, their islands, and their nation - and how leprosy came to affect those connections and their lives
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 247-258) and index
Notes In English
Subject Leprosy -- Patients -- Hawaii -- Kalaupapa -- Social conditions
Leprosy -- history
History, 19th Century
Social Conditions -- history
POLITICAL SCIENCE -- Public Policy -- Social Security.
POLITICAL SCIENCE -- Public Policy -- Social Services & Welfare.
HISTORY -- United States -- State & Local -- West (AK, CA, CO, HI, ID, MT, NV, UT, WY)
Leprosy -- Patients -- Social conditions
Leprakranker
Soziale Situation
SUBJECT Kalaupapa (Hawaii) -- History -- 19th century
Hawaii. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n80061028
Hawaii
Subject Hawaii
Hawaii -- Kalaupapa
Hawaii
Genre/Form History
Form Electronic book
LC no. 2012029619
ISBN 9780824865795
0824865790
0824834844
9780824834845
0824836359
9780824836351