Hawaiians reintroduce language with immersion program (fwd)

[phil cash cash]

April 20, 2007 10:00 am

Hawaiians reintroduce language with immersion program

By EDDIE GLENN
Tahlequah Daily Press
http://www.tahlequahdailypress.com/features/local_story_110100006.html?keyword=secondarystory

Hawaii may be a long way from the Cherokee Nation, but both native Hawaiians
and Cherokees face some of the same difficulties in preserving their native
languages.
Three native Hawaiians – Alohalani Housman, Hoku Kamake’e’aina, and
Kalemaile Robia – presented a program Thursday at the 35th Annual Symposium
on the American Indian on the revitalization of the Hawaiian language.
Housman and Robia both teach the language to children, while Kamake’e’aina
teaches at the University of Hawaii Hilo’s College of Hawaiian Language.
According to Housman, the decline of the language began when Christian
missionaries first came to Hawaii in the early 1800s.
“They came at a very advantageous time,” she said. “King Kamehameha passed
away in 1819, and the missionaries came in 1820. It was a very advantageous
time to come in and present new ideas.”
The first education programs initiated by the missionaries were aimed at
adults, to teach them to read the Bible. In 1831, there were 50,000 adult
students attending 1,000 schools in Hawaii.
In the 1830s, native children began attending missionary schools – either
“common schools,” where most Hawaiian children were taught, or “select
schools,” which were set up for the children of native chiefs.
The era between 1840 and 1860, Housman said, was a high point in Hawaiian
literacy, with more than 100 newspapers in the Hawaiian language being
printed.
“It was an exciting time – Hawaiians love to read, and they love to write,”
she said. “In the late 1800s, Hawaii had a 91.2 percent literacy rate.”
After the Hawaiian Kingdom was overthrown in 1893 by U.S. Marines – on
behalf of U.S. businessmen, according to Housman – the language was banned
in schools, so that by the 1980s, only about 800 people could still speak
Hawaiian.
Housman was part of the effort in the early 1980s to reintroduce the
language into the schools.
“At first, we were just trying to get our foot in the door,” she said. “We
told the department of education that we would be doing the same things as
our English counterparts, only we’d use Hawaiian instead of English.”
But she and the other teachers soon realized that, to teach the Hawaiian
language, they would also have to implement aspects of the Hawaiian
culture, including “Mauli” – the “life force” of native Hawaiians. Mauli
includes spiritual, or intuitive, aspects; behavioral components; and
knowledge of traditional ways.
“There was a time when the Mauli was burning out, and there was a lot of
frustration,” Housman said. “But the Mauli is starting to burn bright
again.”
Hawaiian is taught with a syllabic approach, emphasizing the syllables of
the words instead of the individual letters of the alphabet.
“It’s a lot like Cherokee,” said Housman. “We use the same approach in
Hawaii. It’s not a true syllabary because there aren’t symbols for each
syllable, but we do have clusters of consonants and vowels.”
Housman said the Hawaiian language is taught in the immersion programs, just
like other skills pertinent to the culture. First, the kids develop a
connection to a concept, and then an understanding of it. Practice is the
third level of learning, followed by the creation of something using the
newly learned skill, whether it be a craft or a sentence.
Children in the immersion programs are taught so that, to put it in a
traditional Hawaiian context, they know the big currents and the little
currents.
“That means to be well-versed,” said Housman. “That’s what we want in our
children: mastery and the ability to share it with others.”
Houseman said there are currently 21 language immersion schools in Hawaii,
and 11 public schools that teach Hawaiian.
Robia teaches at one of the immersion schools which, she said, begins
introducing children to the native culture almost immediately after birth.
“We have students as young as three months,” she said. “We can actually take
care of kids from coming out of the womb to when they’re ready to go to
college.”
Some of her students, Robia said, have parents who took part in the early
immersion programs, and even parents who aren’t native speakers take
classes to augment their children’s’ education.
“We only have the ids for eight hours a day,” she said. “So it’s really good
if they can hear it at home as well.”
The revitalization of the native Hawaiian language has extended all the way
from birth to a terminal degree in Hawaiian studies. According to
Kamake’e’aina, the University of Hawaii Hilo’s College of Hawaiian Language
was recently approved for a Ph.D. program.
“It’s come a long way,” said Housman. “But we still have a long way to go.”
Contact Eddie Glenn at eglenn at tahlequahdailypress.com.