In her introduction to an anthology entitled Asian Settler Colonialism (2008), which includes, Hoʻomanawanui’s “This Land Is Your Land, This Land was My Land,” Candace Fujikane, a Japanese American UH English teacher and co-editor of the anthology, presents a mythic narrative she calls “Asian Settler Colonialism.” In this mythic realm, Native Hawaiians are victims of white and Asian “settlers,” who occupy Hawai‘i from the 19th century onward making the islands a “settler colony.” The Asian contract workers who arrive in the mid-19th century are pawns in “colonial processes” controlled by American, European and Asian states, making them complicit in and guilty of dispossessing Natives of their lands and subjugating them.

For my critique of Fujikane’s myth, see "The Myth of ʻAsian Settler Colonialism’.”

Fujikane agrees with what Hoʻomanawanui argues in  “This Land Is Your Land, This Land was My Land.”  In an October 8, 2008  email, she writes:

I agreewith the substance of [Ho‘omanawanuiʻs] arguments about what Dennis is doing. As well-intentioned as Dennis is, he does insert his settler family history into the genealogy of Hawaiian land, and he does claim a position of authority for himself on Hawaiian mo'olelo. When she writes, "if we assume that anyone has kuleana over Hawaiian culture, history, and the (re)telling of it through our mo'olelo, then it isn't difficult to understand why most haole and Asian settlers in Hawai'i argue there is no difference between themselves and indigenous Kanaka Maoli, despite the vast differences in kuleana that do exist" (144)

I think this is the heart of her argument, and as Eiko points out in her essay, "We must understand the depth of our immigrant indoctrination and hence the implications of our ideological education that structures our worldview in terms of settler interests." That's the conflict that comes up in Dennis' work--the conflict between his desire to tellthe story of his family and to tell the stories of the land: the two become conflated in ways that make settler claims.

For my  response to Hoomanaawnuit’s argument, see "This Land (Native Hawaii) is Your Land, That Land (Multicultural Hawaii) is My Land."