Gabbard has both European and Samoan ancestry, and was raised in a multicultural household. Her mother was born in Indiana and grew up in Michigan. Her father was born in American Samoa and lived in Hawaii and Florida as a child; he is of Samoan and European ancestry.

American Samoa

(more than nine-tenths) is ethnically Samoan; there are tiny minorities of Tongan and Filipino origin and of people of mixed ethnicity. The Samoans are a Polynesian people closely related to the native peoples of New Zealand, French Polynesia, Hawaii, and Tonga.