Popohe
Maila Ka Lehua
Hawaiian Immersion Education Comes of Age
By Kaliko Beamer-Trapp
Aloha to you, grandparents, parents, teachers, children, residents, and visitors; to everyone who now reads this article. This is part one of a two-part series about the Hawaiian language and its use in the Hawaiian language "immersion schools" here on the Island of Keawe, this Hawai'i Island that we love. It should be taken, moreover, as a testament of praise to all the teachers and students of this new era, to the families and employees, to all of those people who have had the strength of conviction and given the hours of dedication to the vision of the Hawaiian language continuing as a living, spoken language in modern day Hawai'i. This article was originally written in Hawaiian, and has been loosely translated here into English. For the Hawaiian version, see below.
As we know, this island
home is an ancient one, born as it was before the recollection of any
person living or dead. It is a land that flourished and supplied the
Hawaiian people with their needs. The only language heard resounding
from the steep walls of the valleys and rustling from the sandy shores
was the Hawaiian language, and it remained that way until the time of
Kamehameha The Great, ruler of the islands.
A new voice was then heard in Hawai'i, proclaiming to the people that,
"For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter
under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die." And it was
indeed so, for the close of that same century, whose years reeled disconcertingly
by, saw the end of Queen Lili'uokalani's sovereign reign over the islands
and the flying of a new and haughty flag over the land and its people.
Hawai'i was in the hands of outsiders.
During the long years of the century which followed - the one in which
you and I were born, dear reader - many foreign animals prospered at
the expense of native species: the arrogant and loud mynah bird, the
chirping crickets, the buzzing mosquitoes, and all manner of other creatures,
culminating most recently with the coqui that hides and calls out its
malicious gossip to us all in the night - oh how terrible! The famed
mamo bird (Drepanis pacifica), known for its fine feather and last seen
in the uplands of Hilo district in 1898, was lost to extinction in the
very same year that Hawai'i was annexed to the United States. The only
remaining descendants ("mamo" also) were the Hawaiian people
themselves. Yet the Hawaiian language was legally banned from use in
public schools, and families were encouraged and persuaded to tend the
flowers of their own gardens in a manner previously foreign to them:
in the English language.
Students of today - myself included - owe no small debt of gratitude
to those admirable kupuna (elders) who continued to cherish the mother
tongue as if it was a tapa covering for themselves against those cold
and dark nights when the tearing winds of change rattled the very doors
of their traditional households, for the Hawaiian language has survived!
The proof is manifested in the Hawaiian language immersion schools,
on those "sacred grounds of tradition and life," where students
of any ancestry are welcomed and educated from within a framework of
traditional knowledge and cultural history, reverence and spirituality,
and appropriate behaviors and social conduct. Underpinning the many
facets of this style of education is the Hawaiian language, that gift
saved from near extinction by those brave kupuna so many years ago.
As of this writing, there are approximately 1,700 students in the 19
public Hawaiian language immersion schools throughout the Hawaiian islands.
Close to 400 are being schooled on Hawai'i Island, and are divided between
four schools: 'Ehunuikaimalino of Kona district (118 students); Ke Kula
Kaiapuni o Waimea (17 students); Ka 'Umeke Ka'eo of Keaukaha (108 students);
and Nawahiokalani'opu'u of Kea'au (150 students).
Outside of Hawai'i Island there are 216 students on Maui, 127 on Moloka'i,
836 on O'ahu, and 100 or so on Kaua'i.
The three Punana Leo preschools on Hawai'i Island serve a total of about
63 students, out of nearly 240 students across the island chain in 11
schools.
Following is an abbreviated account of how the Hawaiian language immersion
schools were formed in Hawai'i. In the early 1980s, several educators
- some of whom had children - came together to devise a method by which
students could be educated through the medium of Hawaiian language,
as this was believed to be a potentially effective model of language
revitalization in the community, and a way to perpetuate the use of
the Hawaiian language into the future. These ideas did not sprout without
precedent, however, for the seeds had been planted during the two years
that the Hawaiians had been in communication with a group in Aotearoa
(New Zealand), which had recently formed "Te Kohanga Reo"
(The Language Nest), and which had similar goals for the Maori language
as the Hawaiians did for the Hawaiian.
Thus, in 1983 the 'Aha Punana Leo (The Language Nest Organization) was
formed, guided by a simple and elegant vision: "The Hawaiian language
shall live." At the time, the one seemingly insurmountable obstacle
to carrying out the vision, insofar as it related to school education,
was that the Hawaiian language had been banned as a medium of instruction
in public schools for almost 90 years! Yet as the group prepared for
the inevitable battles with the state government, they formed a preschool
and named it "Punana Leo" (Language Nest), after the name
of the founding organization. After a short trial period on Kaua'i,
the 'Aha Punana Leo placed a school in Honolulu and another in Hilo,
both privately funded. The original Punana Leo o Hilo location is that
very same house which still stands on Kino'ole Street in Hilo. The 'ohi'a-lehua
tree had now rooted itself firmly in the land of Pele, and had sprouted
forth.
In order that the 'ohi'a-lehua tree that we have just spoken of should
properly grow, the members of the 'Aha took their stamina and their
reasons to the Legislature to have the law changed. With initial approval
in 1986, and actual enactment in 1987, their goal had been realized,
and the first students entered what the families were calling the "Kula
Kaiapuni Hawai'i," meaning "Hawaiian surrounding-environment
school." One Kula Kaiapuni was in Honolulu, and the other was in
Hilo. Both were continuations of the Punana Leo in essence, but both
had conditional State Board of Education approval and financial support.
In 1989, the Board approved the program to teach up to sixth grade,
and in 1992 it granted approval for students to pursue their education
in the Kula Kaiapuni until graduating from high school.
In 1995, spirits were high upon hearing that the State Board of Education
had approved two K-12 Kula Kaiapuni schools: Nawahiokalani'opu'u in
Kea'au, here on Hawai'i; and the other at Anuenue, in Honolulu, O'ahu.
The first graduating classes left these two schools only days apart
from each other in 1999.
The years were long from the time of the first plantings by the 'Aha
Punana Leo until the first blossoms burst forth, and patience was well
tried; yet the progress was measurably great, and the students who graduated
then, and those that have graduated since, should stand proud of all
of their accomplishments.
Some people estimate that there are between 7,000 to 10,000 speakers
of Hawaiian in the islands, who are at all levels of ability. But this
is still a miniscule number beside the 1.2 million or more perhaps who
speak English here. With this fact in hand, and always mindful of the
vision of having Hawaiian be once again a living language, the 'Aha
Punana Leo has been working on the continuation of Hawaiian immersion
education at the college and university level. We will learn a little
about this new and exciting area of interest in an upcoming issue of
the Hawai'i Island Journal.
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