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<div class="gmail-content-panel gmail-image-container"><div id="gmail-content-font"><div class="gmail-artheada"><h1>What I’ve learned from Hawaii’s language revitalization movement</h1><div class="gmail-authorship"><span class="gmail-author">by <a href="https://intercontinentalcry.org/author/keala-carter/" title="Posts by Keala Carter" class="gmail-author gmail-url gmail-fn" rel="author">Keala Carter</a></span><span class="gmail-date">February 14, 2018</span></div></div></div><a class="gmail-scrollpoint" id="gmail-scrollpoint" href="https://intercontinentalcry.org/ive-learned-hawaiis-language-revitalization-movement/#content-font2"><span></span></a></div><div class="gmail-content-panel gmail-content-container"><div class="gmail-the-content gmail-clearfix"><div id="gmail-content-font2" class="gmail-clearfix"><p>The
Hawaiian language revitalization movement had humble beginnings: a
dying language, native speakers who didn’t recognize the urgency, and
next to no funding. But what the movement lacked in funding resources or
stature, a committed circle of academics offered in a combination of
vision and commitment that silenced their critics and established a
legacy. Today ha’aha’a, or “humility,” remains a fundamental lesson to
students at Hawaiian immersion schools, while the availability of
Preschool – PhD education exclusively in Hawaiian is held up as a model
for native language revitalization around the globe.</p><p>William
“Pila” Wilson was part of the early cohort of academics in the seventies
and has, in every sense of the phrase, walked the talk, from raising
his children in an exclusively Hawaiian-speaking household, to building
the ʻAha Pūnana Leo or “nest of voices” immersion school system. Pila
has educated government leaders about the return on investment that
supporting native language immersion has demonstrated (both raising
graduation rates and lowering suicide rates) in some of the most remote
areas with limited resources.</p><p>As a Native Hawaiian with a strong
interest in evidence-based policy making, I’ve been amazed by the data
on native language immersion and student success. With a desire to
understand the why and the how, I asked Pila to explain the connection
between native language learning student outcomes.</p><div class="gmail-code-block gmail-code-block-2" style="margin:8px auto;text-align:center;clear:both"> <ins class="gmail-adsbygoogle" style="display:block;text-align:center;height:200px"><ins id="gmail-aswift_0_expand" style="display:inline-table;border-color:currentcolor;border-style:none;border-width:medium;height:200px;margin:0px;padding:0px;width:1200px;background-color:transparent"><ins id="gmail-aswift_0_anchor" style="display:block;border-color:currentcolor;border-style:none;border-width:medium;height:200px;margin:0px;padding:0px;width:1200px;background-color:transparent"></ins></ins></ins> </div><div id="gmail-attachment_35654" style="max-width:860px" class="gmail-wp-caption gmail-aligncenter"><img src="https://intercontinentalcry.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/4d0.jpg" alt="" class="gmail-size-full gmail-wp-image-35654" width="850" height="1188"><p class="gmail-wp-caption-text">Young learners at ʻAha Pūnana Leo. Photo: ʻAha Pūnana Leo</p></div><h2>Language roots the tree of culture</h2><p>Pila
broadened my understanding of language from only the spoken and written
word to include behavior as well as “how you hold yourself; treat
others. How you act.” So that in the learning of the Hawaiian language,
the curriculum in immersion schools weaves in cultural norms such as
expressing respect and deference to your elders, <em>mālama i ka ʻāina</em> (to care for and live in harmony with the land) and what it means to live a <em>pono</em> or righteous life.</p><p>He
also underscored the bond that speaking the same language creates, even
when it seems you have nothing in common; if a person speaks with a
dialect or uses a phrase that reminds you of home, familiarity is
established and the wall between you shrinks.</p><p>“Language is
important as a lens, but it also connects you to a base that goes back
generations and generations that allowed the civilization to develop,”
said Pila. Just as the high manifestations of language in song and
poetry are important for a cultural identity, so are the low
manifestations such as chatting on the porch with neighbors and making
an effort to pronounce the Hawaiian words in your vocabulary correctly.
The everydayness of people speaking to each other in their native tongue
is necessary for the higher forms of language to have cultural
resonance.</p><h2>Just as language is dynamic, so are the students</h2><p>Another
common misconception I realized I had given at least partial credence
to was the impression that graduates from Hawaiian immersion schools
were voting as a bloc in controversial disputes such as the TMT
telescope on Mauna Kea and the stalemate over federal recognition. But
Pila made the subtle point that the Hawaiian identity of students
participating in immersion programs is very much intact, and so these
students are less likely to need to rigorously defend what it means to
be Hawaiian.</p><p>“If they are going to school in Hawaiian language the
connection to language and culture is still very alive.” On the other
hand, “…the person who is away from something tends to want to identify
with it more than the person who has never been apart from it.” This
exchange made me stop and question the public narrative that has linked
pedagogy in Hawaiian immersion schools with the repatriation movement in
Hawaiʻi, creating an unfairly weighted stereotype that immersion
students are to blame for the recent protest movements in Hawaiʻi. Pila
went on to give examples of the many and diverse paths that graduates of
Hawaiian immersion schools follow, from doctors to construction
contractors, policy advocates to artists.</p><div class="gmail-code-block gmail-code-block-3" style="margin:8px 0px;clear:both"> <ins class="gmail-adsbygoogle" style="display:block;text-align:center;height:200px"><ins id="gmail-aswift_1_expand" style="display:inline-table;border-color:currentcolor;border-style:none;border-width:medium;height:200px;margin:0px;padding:0px;width:1200px;background-color:transparent"><ins id="gmail-aswift_1_anchor" style="display:block;border-color:currentcolor;border-style:none;border-width:medium;height:200px;margin:0px;padding:0px;width:1200px;background-color:transparent"></ins></ins></ins> </div><p>“It
is not a monolithic group,” he emphasized. Students represent a wide
spectrum of political ideologies including opposing sides of well-known
Hawaiian issues. They are not taught what to think but they are taught,
partly by the very existence of the immersion schools, “…to be engaged
and given a sense of agency.”</p><p>Some of the explanation for the
modern or Western-leaning pursuits of immersion graduates is reflected
in the constant evolution of language itself: “Language changes and
culture changes, and even if you revive a language, you are not going to
have the same culture that existed ages ago. It’s always changing.”</p><p>In
that way, graduates of immersion schools are armed with the tools for
success in any career path of their choosing, from livelihoods that seem
more traditional, such as farming or navigating, to working in a
laboratory or reading for the bar. Most of all, they are instilled with a
curiosity for the world around them and a desire to participate.</p><h2>Get to know your personal family history</h2><p>In
my family and the vast majority of other families in Hawaiʻi, there is a
story of the blending and sharing of cultures where everyone seems to
be mixed blood or <em>hapa</em>. I mentioned to Pila that I felt
uncomfortable only celebrating the ancestry of one of my grandparents
while neglecting my proud Portuguese and Chinese grandmothers and he
warmly agreed: “It’s not Hawaiian to ignore the other cultures that have
long been a part of Hawaii.”</p><p>Pila detailed how ʻAha Pūnana Leo
has been experimenting with the layering of languages whereby students
can learn to read and write Hawaiian by using kanji characters
(characters used in Japanese and Chinese writing). And as complex as
that initially sounded to me, it’s also an ingenious way to pay tribute
to the blended ancestry that is typical in the islands. As he explained:
“You cannot look at things, even language, in isolation. They need to
be placed in context to be relevant. That is why learning Hawaiian
through the lens of Japanese characters can be more of a reflection of
the localness of Hawaii. In this way you’re not denying part of your
background, you are building onto it.”</p><p>In response to my challenge
that learning Hawaiian as a language has felt to me like an all or
nothing endeavor – either you spend your formative years in immersion
and develop a mastery or you are hopelessly limited to a handful of
Hawaiian words and don’t know where to start, Pila was quick to respond
saying: “You don’t have to do full immersion to add onto your knowledge
of Hawaiian. Practicing hula, making music, celebrating the culture.
Everyone can play a different role and we are probably stronger playing
diverse roles in the revitalization … the most important thing is to
preserve what we have and add onto that. Stay conscious, keep
interacting with the language.”</p><p>The best place to start,
recommends Pila, is close to home: “Connect to your family first. Ask
them about Hawaiian words.” And in so doing, he said, you will ground
the learning of Hawaiian language in your own personal story.</p><p>Since
the day of our conversation, I have had Pila’s wise and earnest words
returning to me again and again. I see now that I can weave my Hawaiian
consciousness into the other areas of my life. I don’t need to be in
Hawaiʻi, working for the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, to be Hawaiian. I
can carry it with me. Whether I’m living in Mexico City or negotiating
trade policy, my perspective will always be influenced by the lessons of
my elders and the place I come from.</p><div id="gmail-attachment_35653" style="max-width:1110px" class="gmail-wp-caption gmail-aligncenter"><img src="https://intercontinentalcry.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/image007-r100-1100x1117.jpg" alt="" class="gmail-size-large gmail-wp-image-35653" width="1100" height="1117"><p class="gmail-wp-caption-text">The author with her kanaka grandpa</p></div></div></div></div>
<br clear="all"><br>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature">=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+<br><br> Harold F. Schiffman<br><br>Professor Emeritus of <br> Dravidian Linguistics and Culture <br>Dept. of South Asia Studies <br>University of Pennsylvania<br>Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305<br><br>Phone: (215) 898-7475<br>Fax: (215) 573-2138 <br><br>Email: <a href="mailto:haroldfs@gmail.com" target="_blank">haroldfs@gmail.com</a><br><a href="http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/" target="_blank">http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/</a> <br><br>-------------------------------------------------</div>
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