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“The turn-of-the-century was the beginning of the hula-girl thing,” Hale told me. “This exotic country of brown-skinned people had just been annexed into the United States. According to some scholars, there was a very self-conscious desire to make Hawai‘i comfortable and familiar. The government wanted white Americans to see Hawaiians as welcoming lovely people that the United States wanted to bring in, not as naked ‘savages’ or Indians.”
“The government wanted white Americans to see Hawaiians as welcoming lovely people that the United States wanted to bring in, not as naked savages or Indians.”
