Mai Loko Mai O ka ‘I‘ini: Proceeding from a Dream

By William H. Wilson & Kauanoe Kamana.

Originally published in The Green Book of Language Revitalization in Practice (2001).

Having established Hawaiian-medium programs from pre-school through graduate school, Hawai‘i has the most developed movement in indigenous language- medium education in the United States. This movement has as its beginning, and still its most quickly moving stream, the partnering of government and community resources under the leadership of the non-profit ‘Aha Pūnana Leo. While the ‘i'ini—the dream, the heartfelt desire for language revitalization—is familiar to many indigenous people, what is often unfamiliar is the specific actions taken by groups such as ours in proceeding from such a dream toward actual language revitalization. We hope that the following information on ‘Aha Pūnana Leo programs may be useful to others who share our deep 'i'ini for continued language life and trust that anything not useful will be put aside.

The leadership of the ‘Aha Pūnana Leo consists of a board of unpaid volunteers who are Hawaiian-speaking educators seeking to revitalize Hawaiian as the daily language of their own families and communities as well as of others pursuing the same goal. These educators, we among them, have strived to reverse what has for decades been the standard philosophy for integrating Hawaiian language and culture into education. In the standard philosophy, Hawaiian language and culture are seen as something to use in facilitating achievement of the actual priority goal: academic parity with the dominant society for a "poorly performing minority group."

The philosophy that has brought our movement most of its success establishes the priority goal as the continued existence of strengthening of the Hawaiian mauli, or life force, which allows for the continued existence of a Hawaiian people. The ‘Aha Pūnana Leo sees academic achievement, especially achievement higher than that of the dominant society, as an important tool in reaching that priority goal. But high academic achievement in and of itself is not the goal. The success of the ‘Aha Pūnana Leo has been the development, organization, and strengthening of what it terms honua—environments where only Hawaiian is used and the Hawaiian mauli is fostered. These honua presently include schools, offices, personal relationships, and homes. For the ‘Aha Pūnana Leo, these honua are essential for the continuation of communities that greatly value a common identity stretching generations into the past and which is being prepared to stretch generations into the future.

Described below is the current core involvement of the ‘Aha Pūnana Leo—its base system of Pūnana Leo language nest preschools, its three model K-12 schools, and its support system, including administration, curriculum development, human resource development, telecommunications, scholarships, and site development. Besides the above programs, ‘Aha Pūnana Leo current core involvement includes its consortium with Ka Haka ‘Ula O Ke‘elikōlani College of Hawaiian Language at the University of Hawai‘i at Hilo and work with Hawaiian language teachers elsewhere, especially some in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa and various Hawaiian-language immersion schools. The consortium with Ka Haka ‘Ula O Ke‘elikōlani extends Hawaiian-medium education through graduate school and provides a key link for the ‘Aha Pūnana Leo to additional resources.

Because this configuration of ‘Aha Pūnana Leo core involvement is part of a larger interrelated Hawaiian language movement in which the ‘Aha Pūnana Leo participates, other Hawaiian programs will be included in the discussion when mutual influences are especially important. The full range of Hawaiian language programs in Hawai‘i, however, is beyond the scope of this essay. We will begin with some background information and proceed to the primary focus of this essay, which is the development and delivery of Hawaiian-medium education through the ‘Aha Pūnana Leo and Ka Haka ‘Ula O Ke‘elikōlani. We will then close with some of the philosophical beliefs that have sustained the ‘Aha Pūnana Leo and played a role in its success.

BACKGROUND

Hawai‘i's history has placed Hawaiian in an especially strong position for language revitalization. As detailed in Wilson 1998a and 1998b, Hawai‘i's primordial base is that of an isolated island chain distinguished and united by a unique Polynesian language and culture. Its initial century of sustained contact with the global expansion of European culture was as the Hawaiian monarchy, a multiracial nation using Hawaiian both as a lingua franca and as an official language of government. The past century has been roughly divided in half between a period as an American territory and one as an American state. Through the entire 20th century, however, Hawai‘i has been politically controlled on a local level by multiracial speakers of either Hawaiian or Hawai‘i Creole English who identify with the indigenous culture. Thus, through all these periods of history, Hawaiian has been accorded special legal status.

In spite of these advantages, Hawaiian has suffered political persecution and the effects of low sociocultural associations. Indeed, Hawaiian has a native-speaker profile worse than that of many other languages indigenous to the United States. For example, a recent count of traditional native-speaking elders born before 1930 by the ‘Ahahui ‘Ōlelo Hawai‘i, an organization that holds an annual conference of Hawaiian-speaking elders, resulted in no more than 200 (Hailama Farden [president of ‘Ahahui ‘Ōlelo Hawai‘i], personal communication, 2000). This figure is less than .01% of an estimated 220,000-240,000 Native Hawaiians now in Hawai‘i and less than .002% of the island population of some 1,000,000-1,200,000. A number of these elders could be described as semispeakers who are actually more comfortable in English than in Hawaiian. Yet one small isolated island—Ni‘ihau—has retained first-language-dominant fluency in Hawaiian for all ages for its entire tiny population of 134, with strong multiage Hawaiian fluency also in its satellite community of about 287 on the neighboring island of Kaua‘i, and others located elsewhere in Hawai‘i and the world numbering about 76 ('Īlei Beniamina [Ni‘ihau community member], personal communication, 2000).

In 1981 Richard Benton, in his study of the status of Pacific Island languages, predicted that Hawaiian would be the first Polynesian language to be totally replaced by a European language. Yet today Hawaiian is in a better position than many other Polynesian languages which are being replaced by English, French, and Spanish. The Ni‘ihau population is growing and regaining language domains that were being lost at the same time that it is expanding into new uses. And there is also now a new non-Ni‘ihau category of young native speakers. These consist of some 20-50 children under the age of 18 who have been raised in homes where Hawaiian is either the sole or a major language of interaction between children and second-language-learner parents. Of course, the Hawaiian of these children is even more threatened than Ni‘ihau Hawaiian since they all are part of neighborhoods and extended families where everyone else speaks a form of English. The development and strengthening of this new population, like the strengthening of the Ni‘ihau population, is closely related to increased attention to the Hawaiian language in education.

Hawaiians have long identified language shift with schooling and the forced closing of Hawaiian-medium educational institutions at the turn of the 20th century. The first generation of Hawaiian parents whose children were affected by forced English-medium education frequently insisted on the sole use of Hawaiian in the home and scolded their children for using English with other Hawaiians (Ka Leo Hawai‘i, oral interviews).

They also made efforts to maintain Hawaiian-medium education in the Sunday school programs of the Hawaiian-medium churches that they controlled, maintained Hawaiian-language newspapers, controlled electoral politics through their language, and campaigned to restore Hawaiian-medium education (“Olelo Hawaii,” Ka Puuhonua [Hawaiian newspaper], 20 January 1917).

Efforts through the schools to reverse the loss of Hawaiian began in the 1920s with second language-style courses legislated by the Hawaiian-controlled territorial legislature, then through the legislatively mandated inclusion of elders in schools in the 1970s, and most recently by Hawaiian-medium immersion education, which began in the 1980s with the Pūnana Leo. At present, every student in the Hawai’i public school system learns a few Hawaiian terms (beyond the many they already know from Hawai‘i Creole English) in required courses in Hawaiian culture and history as well as in a greatly weakened elder-resource teacher program in the elementary schools. In I998, perhaps 2,500 students were enrolled in at least one Hawaiian language course in public and private high schools annually, with another 2,500 at the college level. An additional 1,850 were enrolled in Hawaiian-medium education classes from the preschool level through high school.

Contemporary Hawaiian-medium education at the University of Hawai‘i at Hilo began when we were hired in the late 1970s to establish a bachelor of arts degree in Hawaiian studies. The university agreed to our stipulation that if we were to come to Hilo, courses for the degree would be taught at the upper-division level entirely in Hawaiian. The program for this bachelor's degree, which was first awarded in 1982, grew to include the Hale Kuamo‘o Hawaiian Language Center in 1990. In 1998, the academic program and the Hale Kuamo‘o were organized as their own college, named Ka Haka ‘Ula O Ke‘elikōlani. Initiated along with the college were a master of arts program in Hawaiian language and literature and a teacher certification program, both taught entirely through the medium of Hawaiian. All activities of these entities are conducted through the medium of Hawaiian.

While working toward the establishment of the Hawaiian-medium bachelor's degree, we also established a "Hawaiian-medium family" with the birth of our first child in 1981. This led to a very personal interest in Hawaiian-medium education at the earlier levels, an interest that was strengthened by our relationship with ‘Īlei Beniamina and Paul Williams, who were teaching in a bilingual program established in 1979 for Ni‘ihau children temporarily or permanently resident on the nearby island of Kaua‘i. The Ni‘ihau bilingual program focused on transition out of Hawaiian, a feature with which both Beniamina and Williams were dissatisfied. The fact remained, however, that the Ni‘ihau bilingual program demonstrated that provisions could be made for education specifically for Hawaiian speakers. Beniamina and we wanted our children to be able to receive Hawaiian language-tailored education through Hawaiian-medium schools of the sort that had existed in Hawai‘i during the 19th century. When the new degree in Hawaiian studies was initiated, Beniamina came to Hilo to pursue it, along with teacher certification, and we spent considerable time discussing how Hawaiian-medium education might look in the future.

Also in 1982, when Beniamina enrolled in her first courses in Hilo, the state superintendent of education made a visit to Ni‘ihau school itself, where Beniamina’s mother was the head teacher and all staff were also Ni‘ihauans. The superintendent criticized the school and the diglossic use of English reading and writing in the school surrounded by oral use of Hawaiian, and he demanded that the district office develop a plan to change the school. Wilson sent a letter to the district superintendent offering his assistance in developing a plan where Hawaiian would be made a medium of education and English taught as a second language. Copies were provided to Beniamina, her mother, and Timoti Karetu (the head of the Kohanga Reo Trust), then on sabbatical at the University of Hawai‘i at Hilo from Waikato University. Beniamina and Karetu joined us and Byron Cleeland, an English, Hawaiian, and French language teacher on Kaua‘i, in helping the Department of Education to develop the plan. It was after a visit to Beniamina and Williams's Ni‘ihau bilingual program on Kaua‘i with Karetu and Cleeland that those of us then on Kaua‘i (Beniamina, Cleeland, Kamana, Karetu, Williams, and Wilson) decided to ask our Hawaiian language teacher Larry Kimura and Wilson and Kimura's student Sam L. Warner to come to Kaua‘i to discuss establishing private Hawaiian-medium preschools. Kimura had been, especially keen on the idea of such schools after hearing of the very recent establishment of the Kohanga Reo (translated from the Māori as "language nest") in New Zealand. We then established our organization with the name ‘Aha Pūnana Leo (translated as "language nest gathering"), honoring in our group's name the initial work that occurred in New Zealand.

Later, in 1983, Hawaiian-medium education progressed with the approval by the Board of Education of the plan to allow Hawaiian-medium education on Ni‘ihau. We also legally registered the ‘Aha Pūnana Leo as a nonprofit organization and established our first Pūnana Leo site in Kekaha, Kaua‘i, to serve the Ni‘ihau population with others on a space-available basis. The following two Pūnana Leo, located in Hilo and then Honolulu, also focused on building around a core of existing Hawaiian-speaking children, this time of second-language-learner parents—basically our own children in Hilo and the Kawai'ae'a, Kaina, and Honda children in Honolulu. Thus, from its initiation the ‘Aha Pūnana Leo has focused on developing education for native speakers of Hawaiian and the expansion of the native-speaker group by including other families interested in developing children who are dominant-Hawaiian speakers rather than simply teaching Hawaiian as a second-language skill.

After the Board of Education passed its new policy for Ni‘ihau School, it discovered that a turn-of-the-century ban on teaching through the medium of Hawaiian remained on the books. Wilson and Beniamina then sought help from legislators such as Senator Clayton Hee, a Hawaiian studies graduate and now chair of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, to remove the legal barriers to Hawaiian-medium public education. Beniamina led the effort to remove the ban on public education in Hawaiian which directly affected the Ni‘ihau population. At the same time the entire ‘Aha Pūnana Leo board and its parents, in bills developed by Wilson, sought legislative relief from legal obstacles to Hawaiian-medium private preschools and child care (see Warner, this volume). The legislative changes in public education aimed at the Ni‘ihau community benefited not only Ni‘ihau children, but all children in Hawai‘i, opening statewide access to public education through Hawaiian.

After a three-year struggle the legislative changes were made, and the ‘Aha Pūnana Leo began efforts to open new, now-legal preschool sites. However, the Department of Education did nothing to implement the law providing for Hawaiian-medium public education. On Ni‘ihau, the local public school practice of using Hawaiian informally was now free from intervention, but no state support was given for Hawaiian materials. Furthermore, the Hawaiian-medium education needs of the new group of native speakers of Hawaiian such as our own children and other fluent speakers of Hawaiian matriculating from the now fully legal Pūnana Leo were completely ignored. Although in Honolulu some of these children, such as Kanani Kawai'ae'a, were assigned by the Department of Education to bilingual education classes, in Hilo a boycott kindergarten that we came to call Ke Kula Kaiapuni Hawai 'i (the Hawaiian Surrounding Environment School) was established in a room adjoining the Pūnana Leo O Hilo preschool program. We prepared to be arrested for our children's nonattendance at a public or private school if public Hawaiian-medium education was not provided our children. In the legislative session of that year, 1987, we introduced resolutions in the legislature for the Department of Education to implement the new law, and Senator Clayton Hee persuaded his former Senate colleague and then new Superintendent of Education, Charles Toguchi, to support the opening of Hawaiian-medium education in the public schools on the Kula Kaiapuni Hawai‘i model in both Hilo and Honolulu. That summer the Board of Education approved this action and termed the program the Hawaiian Language Immersion Program. The first Pūnana Leo children then entered the public schools, taking the name Kula Kaiapuni Hawai‘i from the Hilo site with them. That Hawaiian name spread to other sites, often in a shortened form, Kula Kaiapuni.

Ironically, public Hawaiian-medium education gradually became codified as a program by the Department of Education for nonspeakers of Hawaiian rather than for Hawaiian-speaking children for whom the legislation was initiated (SB 2463-86, committee reports). The Hawaiian Language Immersion Program eventually received a coordinator position, an advisory council, and special funding, all lobbied for by the ‘Aha Pūnana Leo and parents of children in the program. And yet, the suggestions of the advisory board and coordinator regarding special consideration for native speakers of Hawaiian were ignored by the Department of Education. Furthermore, the special funding was not extended to programs serving Ni‘ihau children, the explanation being that since all the children served were native speakers, they did not qualify for Hawaiian language immersion support. An ‘Aha Pūnana Leo contention that Hawaiian speakers have a right to education through Hawaiian led to the filing of a suit by the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, at the request of the ‘Aha Pūnana Leo. In the meantime, boycotts and demonstrations were used to assure new Hawaiian Language Immersion Program sites that would accommodate the Hawaiian-speaking children being produced in a growing number of Pūnana Leo throughout the state as well as all other children desiring to enroll in Hawaiian immersion programs. Four of the 11 Hawaiian Language Immersion Program streams began with boycotts in this way. Other sites began at the last minute under the threat of a boycott.

As the ‘Aha Pūnana Leo and the Hawaiian language programs of the University of Hawai‘i at Hilo grew, the two entities formed a consortium to coordinate their activities, make maximum use of resources, and jointly seek grants. Funding has been obtained primarily through programs not originally designed for language revitalization purposes but which allow for the pursuit of particular goals without specifying a particular language. In writing our grants we focus on how our language revitalization program provides a unique means of reaching other goals. Our first major grant was with the Native Hawaiian Education Act, introduced by Hawai‘i's congressional delegation, especially Senator Daniel Inouye. The consortium has developed into a core of educational programs, along with support programs and administrative offices, that includes eleven preschools and three model K-12 schools (designed to also include infant and preschool components). Map 13.1 shows the statewide locations of these schools as well as the support offices. Besides administrative offices, the support offices include curriculum development offices, telecommunication services, and a scholarship program for college students who pursue Hawaiian language either as a major field or in conjunction with another major.

The consortium partners are united in their philosophy and mission, which have been codified in a philosophical statement in Hawaiian called the Kumu Honua Mauli Ola. Within that philosophy, offices and programs serve as honua-distinct places where Hawaiian can thrive as a living language. Hawaiian is used as the language of operation in these offices as well as in the direct delivery of educational programs. While the administrative structures serve only the core educational programs of the consortium and its 800 or so students, most of the support programs serve all Kula Kaiapuni Hawai‘i students, all second-language students of Hawaiian, all Hawaiian language and culture schools and organizations, and all individuals interested in the Hawaiian language. Thus, the consortium also provides books, videos, radio programming, computer services, newspapers, or scholarships to another 5,000 to 7,000 people in Hawai‘i and elsewhere. Participation in the core programs is open and growing, and additional support and coordination are provided through outreach to other indigenous communities pursuing indigenous medium education.

CURRICULUM AND OUTCOMES

The core programs of the ‘Aha Pūnana Leo are distinctive in that priority emphasis is placed on the maintenance and strengthening of the Hawaiian mauli in contrast to the emphasis on academic achievement simply for its own sake. This does not mean rejection of academics or isolation from other languages and cultures. On the contrary, academic knowledge is seen as an important tool in strengthening the mauli and providing new domains in which it can flourish. Indeed, the ‘Aha Pūnana Leo seeks academic achievement above the norm found in English-medium schools and, as will be seen later, has been fairly successful in this regard. Similarly, in ‘Aha Pūnana Leo programs, foreign languages and English are to be actively pursued in order for students to interact with those outside the community and to bring in new resources and knowledge to be adapted to the needs of the mauli. Interaction with those outside the community should bring honor and further support for the mauli. Such interaction includes competing in the areas of academics, sports, the arts, and service to the general population, but always as distinctive Hawaiian speakers with a distinctive Hawaiian upbringing and cultural approach.

The result of this philosophy is a stubborn insistence on total use of the indigenous language in in-group communication, a strong applied orientation in curriculum, and a sense of urgency to integrate Hawaiian language and culture into contemporary Hawaiian life. The philosophy is further accompanied by proactive efforts to confirm that Hawaiian language and culture can be, and must be allowed to be, used in contemporary Hawai‘i on an equal basis with English language and culture for those choosing to do so. At the base of this thinking is a conviction that full use of Hawaiian on a basis equal to English will provide benefits equal to, or better than, those provided by the current monolingual-English orientation of Hawaiian speakers and latent Hawaiian speakers.

This philosophical orientation has grown out of the observation of the strength of the Hawaiian mauli among Hawaiian-speaking kūpuna and the Ni‘ihau population compared to those not raised in the language. In the context of the extremely mixed racial background of the current Hawaiian population and strong Anglo-American ethnic assimilative forces in Hawai‘i, the Hawaiian mauli is seriously threatened. For example, in a 1998 survey of Hilo High School, students were asked to designate 1 of 13 ethnicities with which they most identified. The largest ethnicity was Hawaiian at 26.1%. However, 24.9% of all students who indicated primary identification with a non-Hawaiian ethnicity also indicated that they had Hawaiian ancestry. Thus, while 51% of the students in the school were legally Native Hawaiian, essentially half of these Hawaiians identified strongly with another ethnic group.

THE PŪNANA LEO LANGUAGE NESTS

The original concept of the Pūnana Leo language nest was to recreate an environment where Hawaiian language and culture were conveyed and developed in much the same way that they were in the home in earlier generations. Parents were told that this was not a school in the haole, or Anglo, sense, but a means to revitalize the language and to recreate, as much as possible, a traditional extended family in which children interacted with family members through Hawaiian. This family orientation was further reinforced by the schools' requirements of family participation, which was necessary to keep them operational, and the ongoing political challenges faced by Pūnana Leo parents in establishing Hawaiian-medium education in both the public and private sectors.

As much as we wanted to recreate the extended family arrangement, it was very difficult to recreate the traditional activities, the typical life experiences of elders, in ocean and mountain areas. We decided to bring these activities to our programs as best we could through field trips, gardens, and cultural materials. We decided to use a physical boundary around the school that would define it as a Hawaiian space in contrast to an English space, and to insist that everyone, including parents and visitors, use only Hawaiian language and culture within that space.

We also realized that we needed a daily routine during the period the children occupied the space. Kamanli obtained early childhood certification and took a leave from the University of Hawai‘i at Hilo to develop the program. She felt that the Montessori methodology had features that would support and facilitate our desire to use natural materials and experiences from the Hawaiian environment and steer away from commercial preschool materials. Other features of the curriculum that she developed focused consciously on Hawaiian family experiences, behaviors, and values—the proper way to interact with adults and other children, actions toward food and animals, spiritual interactions, and the important role of music and dance. Much, however, came from the fact that Hawaiian ways of acting were ingrained for our initial teachers, both native speakers and nonnative speakers, as they had been raised in traditional Hawaiian families.

A typical Pūnana Leo begins with 10 to 12 children aged three to five and has a school day from 7:30 to 5:00 Monday through Friday from September through July. The multiaged group allows for the retention of a number of children each year who help transmit the language to incoming students. Enrollment growth to 20 after the first year is common, and we have had up to 30 children at some sites. State regulations make it difficult to bring children under the age of two to a center such as a Pūnana Leo, and the ‘Aha Pūnana Leo has not had the resources to serve children under three on a regular basis. We have experimented, however, with what we call Hui Hi'i Pepe ("Baby Embracing Clubs") where mothers, along with their children from infancy to three, join with a teacher to learn Hawaiian and simple teaching strategies in preparation for the children's entering the Pūnana Leo. These have been successful but again are difficult to run given our present human and financial resource base.

The Pūnana Leo day begins with parents dropping off their children. There is a first circle in the morning, where the children participate in various activities such as singing and chanting, hearing a story, exercising, learning to introduce themselves and their families in a formal manner, discussing the day, or participating in some cultural activity. This is followed by free time, when children can interact with different materials to learn about textures, colors, sizes, and so on, and to use the appropriate language based on models provided by teachers and other children. Then come more structured lessons, which can include prereading and premath skills, social studies, and the arts. This is done in both large and small groups. Children then have outdoor play, lunch, and a nap, then story time, a snack, a second circle, and outdoor play until their parents come to pick them up again.

From the very first day a child enters the Pūnana Leo, only Hawaiian is used. When children do not yet understand, teachers and older children simply help them move through the daily routine. The routine provides a context for rapid understanding, and the group of fully Hawaiian-speaking second-year students provides a language-rich environment. The new children are also required to memorize formulaic statements such as asking permission to leave the lunch table, to go to the bathroom, and to carry out other daily activities. They are also instructed on how to introduce themselves and learn many songs. These memorized bits of language provide a base upon which to build spontaneous speech and interaction with the other children in Hawaiian on the playground and during free-choice activities. Usually children are using only Hawaiian in the Pūnana Leo within three to four months.

Another feature of the curriculum is family learning. All parents in Pūnana Leo are required to support the program through tuition (currently based on income), eight hours of in-kind service at the Pūnana Leo, attendance by a family member for at least one hour a week in a Hawaiian language class at the Pūnana Leo or elsewhere, and attendance at a monthly parent meeting. These features of the program are designed to further the goals of Hawaiian language revitalization which is an evolutionary process for families and requires demonstrated commitment and constant learning and involvement in self-governance.

Literacy in Hawaiian is a well-established feature of the lives of Hawaiian elders, many of whom learned to read Hawaiian at a very early age by chanting consonant-vowel combinations. When the Pūnana Leo began, this tradition was adapted to contemporary modifications of the orthography and taught to the children. At that time, however, there were no children's books in Hawaiian. So parents created books for their children using photographs of the child pasted to construction paper with a few lines written underneath. A number of English books that the Pūnana Leo thought appropriate were also brought to the school and "read" in Hawaiian, that is, shown to the children with the teacher providing narration in Hawaiian for the book's illustrations. This led to the next stage, which was to translate the story and paste the Hawaiian into the book over the English. Translation was not literal and even sometimes deviated considerably from the English in order to assure that Hawaiian culture and values, rather than haole ones, were emphasized.

Mathematical skills begin in the morning circle, where students count off the days of the month to the appropriate date and learn the names of the week, which are number-based in Hawaiian. They also learn patterns and number skills in independent work with pebbles, shells, seeds, and commercial plastic materials that are to be arranged creatively, graded in size, or ordered in numbered groups. Learning about the natural environment and cultural use of that environment forms the basis for science. Traditional Hawaiian culture, as well as information on the culture of the children's many other ancestors through song and stories, provides the basis for social sciences. Materials on the natural and indigenous cultural world of Hawai‘i are difficult to obtain commercially and teachers and parents initially drew pictures and provided materials themselves. Even when materials on Hawai‘i and Hawaiian culture are available commercially, the perspective is typically not from the Hawaiian culture, where the symbolism and association are often totally different from the haole perspective. This perspective is an essential feature of the Hawaiian language, culture, and worldview and must be integrated into all facets of teaching, including teaching about other cultures.

The Pūnana Leo is designed to matriculate children into Hawaiian-medium public schools, but because the state has not always been forthcoming with a Kula Kaiapuni Hawai‘i in areas where a Pūnana Leo has been established, from its very inception the ‘Aha Pūnana Leo. has on several occasions had to declare a Pūnana Leo a public kindergarten and even 1st-grade site and then provide all instructors and materials for such programs. These boycott Kula Kaiapuni Hawai‘i have always eventually been incorporated into the public school system as part of the Hawaiian Language Immersion Program.

Since its initial boycott program, the Pūnana Leo has developed a wide variety of original preschool, kindergarten, and early-elementary-school materials. These materials deal with traditional Hawaiian literature, the natural environment of Hawai‘i, contemporary Hawaiian life, and other cultures. Among the topics are the origin stories of the Hawaiian islands and people, the mixture of different racial strains among the children, traditional food preparations, typical contemporary home and community life among Hawaiians, traditions and literature relating to animals and plants, assimilated Hawaiian cultural activities (including quilting, Hawaiian Christianity, and Hawaiian cowboy culture), the lives of other peoples in Hawai‘i and throughout the world (especially indigenous peoples), and songs on topics ranging from pets to vacant lots, urban birds, and welcoming guests.

PŪNANA LEO CURRICULUM OFFICES

Today the ‘Aha Pūnana Leo has two offices producing curriculum. One focuses on print curriculum, including original books, matching cards, posters, and translations of foreign language books (mostly English, but other languages as well). There is a gradation of printing, ranging from simply printing computerized translations on adhesive-backed paper to be provided to parents for them to paste into commercial books to machine-copied original books printed in different colors, to commercial products, including joint publishing with other language groups to provide commercial products in two or more languages. This office also prints materials for parents to use in establishing Hawaiian in the home such as labels for household items and cards on how to answer the telephone and write checks in Hawaiian. The ‘Aha Pūnana Leo print media center is closely coordinated with the curriculum development efforts of the Hale Kuamo‘o Hawaiian Language Center of Ka Haka ‘Ula O Ke‘elikōlani. The two centers have delineated separate responsibilities in terms of grade levels but also work in consortium, sharing university faculty, advanced student proofreaders, and other technical expertise along with the ‘Aha Pūnana Leo's rapid publication, technical, and distribution system. Curriculum development is described in more detail later in the section on Ka Haka ‘Ula O Ke‘elikōlani.

The other ‘Aha Pūnana Leo materials production office focuses on nonprint media, including videos of traditional activities, exercise, and other follow-along videos for children; animated traditional stories; and documentary information to use in work with parents and the community. These materials are often shown on cable and even commercial television in Hawai‘i. Other aspects of the nonprint media include a Hawaiian radio program sponsored by the ‘Aha Pūnana Leo and the extensive computer system, which it provides through a consortium with Ka Haka ‘Ula O Ke‘elikōlani (discussed below).

ACCOMPLISHMENTS OF THE PŪNANA LEO LANGUAGE NESTS

The most important accomplishments of the Pūnana Leo are its language revitalization accomplishments. The first of these has been the development of strong Hawaiian communicative and behavioral fluency among its matriculating five-year-old students. This fluency is further accompanied by personal self-confidence and a worldview that Hawaiian should be the normal language and daily culture of interaction for Hawai‘i. Pūnana Leo students then come to see themselves, their parents, their peers, and other respected adults and children as seeking to restore this language for themselves and their community. The existence of the Pūnana Leo has encouraged and supported families who are raising their children in a totally Hawaiian-speaking home environment even before they reach the Pūnana Leo. Enrollment priority is given to such families as part of a system of basing enrollment on both cultivated and uncultivated involvement in Hawaiian language and culture.

Hawaiians in general, and those Hawaiians intensely interested in language revitalization in particular, are spread throughout the general population of Hawai‘i. The 'Aha Pūnana Leo has always opened its new sites based on a group of such families gathering together to request the establishment of a school, rather than simply opening a site at a particular location and advertising for enrollment. Typically, these families live in a number of adjoining elementary school districts but are drawn together by their strong Hawaiian cultural orientation and not infrequently by other points of communality, such as coming from the same family, cultural organization, or place of work.

While the 'Aha Pūnana Leo system of enrollment priorities runs contrary to the standard government criteria based on race, blood quantum, place of residence, and income level, the 'Aha Pūnana Leo enrollment priorities are essential for the traditional Hawaiian family orientation and language revitalization goals of the 'Aha Pūnana Leo. Running the program on Pūnana Leo priorities has been made possible by combining government and nongovernment funding. In spite of 'Aha Pūnana Leo's rejection of blood quantum, income, and even race as determining enrollment in its programs, over 90% of students in its programs are of Hawaiian ancestry, with perceptually a higher average blood quantum than the Native Hawaiian population as a whole, and a high enrollment of those with low incomes.

The second language revitalization accomplishment of the Pūnana Leo is the development of an interconnected group of young parents involved in language revitalization. These young adults are learning Hawaiian (or increasing their knowledge when they are already speakers), using Hawaiian in formal public situations sponsored by the Pūnana Leo and gradually extending the use of Hawaiian in their private lives as well. Furthermore, the Pūnana Leo is producing parents who are experienced in providing in-kind and governing assistance to a joint language revitalization effort and are excited about the results that they have produced.

The third language revitalization accomplishment of the Pūnana Leo has been to produce statewide receptivity to the actualization of values and laws that provide for the broad public use of the Hawaiian language. This has been accomplished by establishing high-quality programs attended by families who are proud of their use of the Hawaiian language and who are using the language publicly. Families speak Hawaiian with their children in supermarkets and find that they are congratulated for doing so by individuals of all ethnic backgrounds; Pūnana Leo children are invited to sing in special programs in public malls, where their in-school procedure of using only Hawaiian in all introductions and explanations is not only allowed, but supported; Hawaiian-speaking children are also invited to participate through Hawaiian in the inauguration o f officials in both the Hawaiian and the general community, where their presence emphasizes Hawai‘i's strong identification with its indigenous roots. Most importantly, the Pūnana Leo provides a reason for the establishment of official use of Hawaiian in the state's public school system.

The language revitalization accomplishments of the Pūnana Leo are its most important, but the individual accomplishments of the Pūnana Leo families who make up the program give it its strength. As individuals, Pūnana Leo children matriculate into elementary school with a good body of formal Hawaiian cultural knowledge, including songs, chants and dances, traditional stories, history, and environmental knowledge that enhances their identity as Hawaiians. These cultural skills have the same value for personal development as the study of haole art and culture has for children of haole cultural orientation in haole-oriented preschools. The Pūnana Leo students also master many of the same skills children learn in haole preschools, including fine and gross motor skills, group interaction skills, literacy readiness, and an introduction to a broad range of academic areas, but from a Hawaiian base.

LOSS OF SOME STUDENTS TO OTHER SCHOOLS

The academic and cultural strengths of Pūnana Leo children have made Pūnana Leo graduates attractive to prestigious private schools in Hawai‘i, and a few of our students have entered such schools immediately after preschool. Another group of students left Hawaiian-medium education at 6th grade, again primarily to attend private schools, where they often have to take an entrance test in competition with students from English-medium private and public schools. At the very least, the acceptance of these students into these schools and their subsequent accomplishments in such schools have shown that attending preschool and elementary school in Hawaiian does not harm students. Indeed, it could well be argued that the Pūnana Leo program provides an academic advantage. Another group of students enrolled in Hawaiian-medium intermediate and high school programs and then left to attend public school programs that offer a much larger variety of choices in terms of courses, resources, and social activities that is better tailored to their individual interests and talents.

Hawai‘i has one of the highest private school attendance rates in the United States, with a strong tradition of enrollment of Hawaiians. Historically, these schools have frequently developed from boarding schools with strong English-language assimilation orientations that had a number of other similarities with the early boarding schools attended by American Indians. One of these institutions, Kamehameha, remains restricted to students of Hawaiian ancestry, and competition to enroll in this highly regarded college preparatory school is very keen. It is thus significant that Kula Kaiapuni Hawai‘i students have a high rate of acceptance for enrollment into Kamehameha; indeed, 45% of those who applied to Kamehameha from the first cohort of Kaiapuni Hawai‘i students were accepted, although not all enrolled. Hawai‘i is also rather small and densely populated, which allows high school students to move among the various public schools for academic and athletic purposes. It is therefore quite notable that families whose children enroll in it, even those who have been accepted by private institutions, are quite loyal to Hawaiian-medium education. This loyalty has been rewarded by the 'Aha Pūnana Leo by providing enrollment priority in its preschools to those with siblings who all continue in Hawaiian-medium education.

Because enrollments and academic performance are crucial in justifying the development of a new program, especially for the lead classes opening a new grade every year, loss of students to other schools creates considerable anguish during the period when a stream of students has not yet reached the 12th grade. The program has now had its first graduates, and furthermore, not one of the current 11 streams of Hawaiian-medium education has been denied vertical expansion owing to lack of sufficient students. Indeed, a number of students who have left the program have returned.

REVITALIZATION DIFFICULTIES WITHIN STANDARD PUBLIC SCHOOLS

Hawai‘i's experience in integrating language revitalization into the public school system exemplifies difficulties discussed by Fishman (1991) for his type 4b schools, which are outside the control of the language revitalization community. Conflicts over management and language of operation have been serious obstacles to the maintenance and development of public Hawaiian-medium education as a language revitalization movement. Of the schools operating standard Hawaiian language immersion elementary programs, all but the K-12 stand-alone school Ke Kula Kaiapuni 'O Ānuenue began as Hawaiian streams within English-medium schools, and even Ānuenue is a collecting point for students from such streams on O‘ahu Island at the higher grades. Furthermore, in spite of state recognition of the value of a fully fluent Hawaiian-speaking administration and staff, all standard Hawaiian Language Immersion Program sites to date have been administered by non-Hawaiian-speaking principals under non-Hawaiian-speaking district superintendents. The Hawaiian Language Immersion Program thus faces a problem in that its administrators lack full understanding of, and full participation in, Hawaiian language revitalization goals.

Principals have sometimes come to feel that the Hawaiian streams in their schools are an imposition, that the academic goals of their schools are being compromised by the Hawaiian stream, that the students in the Hawaiian-medium programs are being harmed socially by being educated solely in Hawaiian and solely with other Hawaiian speakers, and that Hawaiian has little value in today's world other than for limited cultural events and purposes. Principals often have difficulty perceiving of Hawaiian as a general language of interaction, not only within the overall structure of the school, including the office, playground, cafeteria, and school assemblies, but even in the program-specific meetings of the Hawaiian Language Immersion Program faculty.

While contemporary Hawaiian-medium education in the public schools resulted from pressure from both members of the Ni'ihau community and Pūnana Leo families for legalization of use of Hawaiian in the education of their Hawaiian-speaking children, the Department of Education rapidly moved the focus of its Hawaiian Language Immersion Program from Hawaiian-speaking students to non-Hawaiian-speaking students. The initial year that parents of Pūnana Leo children were allowed to have their children educated in Hawaiian, the Department of Education stipulated that the Pūnana Leo would have to recruit other families into the program to assure that the standard teacher-student ratio would prevail. Since then all Hawaiian Language Immersion Program kindergartens have been approximately half non-Hawaiian speaking.

Because the initial group of English speakers was recruited by the 'Aha Pūnana Leo, the program began with strong solidarity among all families for language revitalization goals. Once Kula Kaiapuni Hawai‘i became more solidly a part of the Department of Education, new policies relative to enrollment in the Hawaiian Language Immersion Program emerged. One policy placed priority on place of residence within the boundaries of the host English-medium school service area over entrance into the public school system as a Hawaiian-language speaker. This policy has had the effect of denying Hawaiian-speaking children living outside school boundaries the right to education through Hawaiian, a right the 'Aha Pūnana Leo sees as protected, along with other aspects of Native Hawaiian cultural practices in the Hawai‘i Constitution, and one of the basic arguments used in lobbying the state for the initial opening of the Hawaiian Language Immersion Program. Ironically, programs in public schools typically have been opened only after political pressure is applied by Pūnana Leo parents living on a particular side of an island. Once a program is opened, however, some Pūnana Leo children have then faced being denied enrollment owing to residency considerations. Fortunately, parental pressure, including demonstrations on occasion, has always resulted in the expansion of classes to accommodate all interested in the program, including Hawaiian-speaking children living outside school boundaries. However, parent lobbying and demonstrations for busing of children living outside the school bus routes of the regular service area boundaries have to date been unsuccessful. The 'Aha Pūnana Leo has been able to access grant funding to support busing in some years for some schools, notably Ke Kula Kaiapuni 'O Ānuenue, which faces the greatest busing difficulty. Other Hawaiian entities such as the Office of Hawaiian Affairs and Lili‘uokalani Trust have also provided occasional support of this type.

The issue of mixing Hawaiian-speaking and English-speaking children and families is one of accommodation and assimilation. Language revitalization involves the accommodation and assimilation of English speakers to Hawaiian, as they have chosen to join the Hawaiian program. The nature of Department of Education operations has tended to reverse the focus. Instead of providing regular instruction to the Hawaiian-speaking children and giving the English speakers special help with Hawaiian, the language and educational growth needs of the Hawaiian-speaking children have often been put on hold while the entire class focuses on the need of the English-speaking children to learn some Hawaiian. The Pūnana Leo children have been expected to accommodate to this environment, which includes use of English outside class and sometimes even in class. As a consequence, in these situations, both the Hawaiian and the academic preparation of children from the Pūnana Leo begins to weaken and lapse. The Pūnana Leo parents have also been expected to accommodate and assimilate to the English-medium school culture, where parent education and involvement are much diminished and English is used in all communication with parents. Lack of attention to parent education by the department has resulted in new parents' putting their children in the program in kindergarten, sometimes simply as a novelty, without fully understanding the purposes, goals, and design of the program. Soon these parents, who are not oriented to language revitalization, are complaining about the focus on Hawaiian and expressing a desire for more English. Hawaiian Language Immersion Program sites too often have had conflicts erupting within parent groups and with the school administration relative to the program and its goals.

The lack of strong support for the primary position of the Hawaiian language in the enrollment of students in the Hawaiian Language Immersion Program has a parallel in teacher and staff hiring policies in the Program. Hawai‘i's public schools still make no special provisions for Hawaiian fluency for teachers hired for the Hawaiian Language Immersion Program. Principals follow standard hiring practices and only use Hawaiian fluency as a criterion for hiring when two candidates are equal in certification status and seniority. This has led on occasion to the hiring of teachers with little or no functional ability in Hawaiian and the release of fluent non-certified teachers who have demonstrated skills in teaching. Principals sometimes assign the least fluent teachers to kindergarten "where the Pūnana Leo children can teach them Hawaiian," or even have teachers use English in kindergarten to "ease children into Hawaiian" or allow the use of English for "the harder subjects.”

All of these practices and other features that subordinate the position of Hawaiian within the Department of Education weaken the program's language revitalization goals. The subordination of Hawaiian also has a negative effect on student achievement. The sites with the greatest student achievement are those with the strongest Hawaiian language orientation and Hawaiian language fluency and literacy skills among teachers, a situation that has parallels in New Zealand Māori-medium education (Timoti Kliretu, former Māori language commissioner, personal communication, 1999). In spite of the strong evidence provided administrators relative to the academic achievement of programs that are highly oriented to the Hawaiian language, administrators have a difficult time overcoming ingrained preconceptions that not only undervalue that which is Hawaiian, but also see things Hawaiian (especially when they are used in place of things English) as an impediment to achievement.

These ingrained feelings of many in the Department of Education that more emphasis should be put on English than Hawaiian have also been supported by the professional evaluation team that the department hired upon the initiation of its Hawaiian Language Immersion Program. The recommendation of the evaluation team after the first year of the program was that it begin transition to English at 20% of the day in the 3rd grade and then 50% of the day from grades 4 to 6 (Slaughter et al. 1988). This recommendation was met by stiff resistance from families oriented to 'Aha Pūnana Leo philosophy who wanted full Hawaiian-medium education through grade 12. After the second year of the program, and after receiving important input from the Canadian immersion expert Dr. Fred Genessee of Montreal's McGill University, the evaluation team changed its recommendation to include full Hawaiian immersion education until grades 5 and 6, where English would be used as a medium of instruction for as little as 45 minutes per day in a variety of subject areas focusing on English literacy. Genessee’s 1988 positive evidence from Canadian immersion, which was reiterated in a paper written by Sam L. Warner for the Board of Education in 1990, along with extensive annual lobbying by parents strongly oriented to language revitalization who were determined to maintain full Hawaiian-medium education through grade 12, had an effect on the Board of Education. The board's policy decisions eventually went beyond the recommendations of the evaluation team. In 1992, in a series of motions, the board voted to allow full use of Hawaiian through grade 12, the teaching of English for one hour a day beginning in grade 5 without restrictions on use of Hawaiian as the medium of instruction in the teaching of English, and the establishment of two totally Hawaiian-medium school sites, one in Honolulu and the other in Hilo. Later, the evaluation team reverted to recommendations that the decision to introduce English in the 5th grade be reconsidered, that the value of establishment of single Hawaiian-medium sites be reconsidered, and that English be used as a primary medium of instruction from intermediate school on (Slaughter et al. 1994, 1997). The evaluation team was also consistently critical of teaching English through the medium of Hawaiian, such as occurs at Ke Kula ‘O Nāwahīokalani‘opu‘u, insisting that such an approach could not work well in spite of the evidence to the contrary.

THE QUESTION OF ENGLISH

The question of English has thus been the primary political issue in the Hawaiian Language Immersion Program. The strongest language revitalization stance has been to demand reestablishment of full Hawaiian-medium education to assure a means of quality academic and cultural development for Hawaiian speakers and a means for others to assimilate to the Hawaiian-speaking community, where English would be a highly developed second language taught in accordance with the latest internationally developed methods. The most conservative stance has been to defend maintenance of the position of English as the dominant language of education, even for first-language speakers of Hawaiian, as a means to assure quality academic preparation and access to an English-dominated society on a level similar to that of Anglo-American native speakers of English, possibly with some form of Hawaiian as cultural enrichment. The lines of struggle between these two positions were even evident in the Hawaiian and English names assigned to the program. Kula Kaiapuni Hawai‘i was chosen to indicate that the program was totally Hawaiian in all aspects of instruction, staffing, and administration, with preference for native-speaker children and strict requirements of parents. Kula Kaiapuni Hawai‘i was used for the 'Aha Pūnana Leo boycott program before the official adoption of the term Hawaiian Language Immersion Program. The term “immersion” was adopted in Hawai‘i from programs in Canada and the continental United States designed primarily for second-language learning by majority language-dominant speakers learning a minority language, rather than minority students reestablishing an educational system through their nearly exterminated traditional language. Furthermore, most of these traditional immersion programs transition to majority language programs in intermediate and high school, which contrasted with the desire of language revitalization advocates for full K-12 Hawaiian-medium education. It is therefore important that if the word “immersion” is used for programs such as Kula Kaiapuni Hawai‘i, indigenous immersion be clearly differentiated from foreign-language immersion (for learning languages unconnected to the personal identity of students) and also heritage immersion (for immigrant groups with thriving languages elsewhere).

The 'Aha Pūnana Leo language revitalization position of supporting and creating new native speakers was advanced through the activism of parents in the political arena, while the transition and second-language enrichment positions were taken by lower-level Department of Education staff and provided support by the reports of the evaluation team. The delineation of the struggle was rather clear from the beginning, given the historical context of the politically based closure of Hawaiian-medium schools and the four years of political struggle in the legislature to get into the public schools. The lines were further clarified when the department staff member given charge of the program stated to us who were preparing curriculum on our own that this program, like some others in the past, was a political creation and destined to end in a few years. Further instructions from this individual that Hawaiian literacy was not to be taught showed a determination to limit the development of Hawaiian, as did the restriction of special state funding of the program to the hiring of an evaluation team, with no funds for materials development. The lack of funding for materials for the use of Hawaiian in Ni'ihau school thus was also applied to the new program for Pūnana Leo graduates, but the 'Aha Pūnana Leo obtained private funding and developed materials anyway and provided them to the schools against the wishes of the official in charge.

While the evaluation team may have seen its role as to assure maximum success in both language learning and academics, they found themselves in the middle of the political battle by insisting in their first-year recommendations that the program be recognized as "bilingual" in their report's discussion of "transition to English." This produced very real fears that the replacement of Hawaiian with English, which was already occurring with the Ni'ihau children in the bilingual program on Kaua‘i, would be reproduced with the Pūnana Leo children. These fears never completely disappeared and resulted in an ongoing struggle with the evaluation team to assure the maintenance of Hawaiian as the full medium of education. This led to further efforts in the political arena which were ultimately successful in assuring full Hawaiian-medium schools.

Consistent Board of Education and Superintendent of Education support of full Hawaiian-medium education has been important in that it has allowed parents, such as those oriented to 'Aha Pūnana Leo philosophy, to seek full Hawaiian language revitalization and maintenance for their families. Such support has not precluded support for teaching Hawaiian as enrichment for other families. The reality of the Department of Education has been that even though the state policy calls for full use of Hawaiian, principals have allowed the use of English at earlier grades and in the teaching of some subjects. We believe, however, that if state policy did not allow full use of Hawaiian, full use of Hawaiian would not occur in the public schools. Regardless of the policies of the Board of Education, the only fully state-established totally Hawaiian-medium site has been Ke Kula Kaiapuni 'O Ānuenue on O‘ahu. Ānuenue also remains the only fully state-established program offering totally Hawaiian-medium education in intermediate and high school. All other Hawaiian language-medium intermediate and high school programs overseen by the Department of Education are streams within large English-medium schools consisting of a number of courses taught through Hawaiian that supplement a predominantly English-medium program of requirements and electives. All separate sites other than Ānuenue using a totally Hawaiian medium for a K-12 program were initiated by the 'Aha Pūnana Leo and are operated in partnership with the state as described below.

The issues and resource needs involved in serious revitalization of Hawaiian as a community language and even Hawaiian language-medium teaching for enrichment purposes require major changes that are difficult to make in a large statewide system in which Hawaiian-medium programs serve but a tiny fraction of students. The Hawai‘i State Department of Education is to be commended for providing recognition and shouldering support for three different population groups within the listed purposes of its Hawaiian Language Immersion Program: (1) native speakers wishing to maintain their language, (2) those wishing to integrate into the Hawaiian-speaking population, and (3) those wishing to learn Hawaiian as a second or third language along the lines of foreign-language learning (Long-Range Plan of the Hawaiian Language Immersion Program, 1994). Much of the conflict in Hawaiian-medium education might be reduced by development of differentiated programs of choice focusing on the needs of these three populations as well as parental desire for Hawaiian relative to English, for example, strongly Hawaiian-medium programs, programs that are partially Hawaiian medium and partially English medium, and programs that are English medium with strong Hawaiian-as-a-second-language courses. The 'Aha Pūnana Leo has always tried to work together with the department to assure that shared goals of the two institutions for programs serving all three populations could be met in moving Hawaiian-medium programs forward. More recently, this has led to an effort to develop new structures that could accommodate the distinctive features of families oriented strongly to language revitalization in groups (1) and (2) above within the context of state funding and the 'Aha Pūnana Leo as an administrative entity along the lines of Fishman's 4a schools.

While supporting the desires of those who wish to remain in the standard structure as streams in English-medium schools, or who wish to create alternative structures focusing on enrichment through Hawaiian as second language, or who wish to pursue other methods, strategies, or structures, the 'Aha Pūnana Leo has focused on and pursued the creation of a new, more highly language revitalization-oriented model for those families who desire it. This cooperative model, involving the partnering of the state Department of Education, the Ka Haka 'Uia O Ke‘elikōlani College of Hawaiian Language, and the 'Aha Pūnana Leo, is based somewhat on the experience of the American Indian contract schools and charter schools in other states. Movement toward that structure is illustrated by Ke Kula 'O Nāwahīokalani‘opu‘u and programs reproduced along the same lines at Ke Kula Ni‘ihau O Kekaha and Ke Kula 'O Samuel Mānaiakalani Kamakau. As these structures are stabilizing, efforts are being made to include external experts in educational methods who wish to assist in further developing academic and other goals. But such development is always done with the understanding that the framework of language and culture revitalization is not to be compromised.

NĀWAHĪOKALANI‘OPU‘U LABORATORY SCHOOL

Ke Kula '0 Nāwahīokalani‘opu‘u represents a milestone in the struggle of the 'Aha Pūnana Leo to assure the realization of federal and state laws recognizing the right of Native Hawaiians to choose Hawaiian as the daily language of their families and to extend that into government-supported education. At Nāwahīokalani‘opu‘u there is an explicit understanding that use of the Hawaiian language has priority over use of English within the context of, and with the support of, Hawai‘i's compulsory education system. The school further validates the claim of the 'Aha Pūnana Leo that it is possible to have high achievement recognized on an international level within the context of an institution where such achievement is second in priority to linguistic and cultural survival. Indeed, as we will see later, academic achievement at Nāwahīokalani‘opu‘u is higher than the Native Hawaiian norm in the English-medium public school in its service area.

Ke Kula 'O Nāwahīokalani‘opu‘u is an institutionalization of the boycott schools that the Pūnana Leo has run in order to assure state provision of education through Hawaiian. The initiation of Ke Kula '0 Nāwahīokalani‘opu‘u differed from the typical boycott school in that it began at the intermediate school level when the Department of Education did not provide a separate Hawaiian Language Immersion Program site in Hilo, as promised by the State Board of Education in conjunction with the establishment of Ke Kula Kaiapuni '0 Ānuenue on O‘ahu. More importantly, however, Nāwahīokalani‘opu‘u changed the paradigm in that the state provided resources for the running of the school in spite of the fact that it was located on property controlled by the 'Aha Pūnana Leo, and its daily operations were developed primarily by the ' Aha Pūnana Leo rather than exclusively by the State Department of Education. The powers of the 'Aha Pūnana Leo within Nāwahīokalani‘opu‘u have been further facilitated by the state legislature's declaring Nāwahīokalani‘opu‘u "and other sites as appropriate" as the laboratory school program of Ka Haka ‘Ula O Ke‘elikōlani College of Hawaiian Language and requiring that Ka Haka ‘Ula O Ke‘elikōlani work in cooperation with the 'Aha Pūnana Leo.

The distinctive administrative powers of the ' Aha Pūnana Leo and Ka Haka ‘Ula O Ke‘elikōlani vis-a-vis the Department of Education have facilitated curriculum content at Nāwahīokalani‘opu‘u that is more language revitalization-oriented and distinct from the English-medium school norms than that at other Hawaiian-medium sites. However, because Nāwahīokalani‘opu‘u is still in transition from a Department of Education school to a full University of Hawai‘i laboratory school, it must follow the standard Department of Education curriculum guidelines and requirements in its choice of course offerings. Furthermore, because of its small size, all students at Nāwahīokalani‘opu‘u must take the same courses, with prescribed courses in place of electives. The school has felt that a college preparatory curriculum would best serve the interests of Hawaiian language revitalization by having Hawaiian speakers highly educated to protect and develop their community. This includes excellent skills in English, but English from the perspective of a second rather than a first language. The school also has distinctive block scheduling of 80-minute classes, a longer school day, uniforms, and an applied focus for all students through its sustainable-environment program in agriculture, aquaculture, horticulture, and animal husbandry.

The college preparatory focus of Nāwahīokalani‘opu‘u has been lessened by a number of the required department courses such as guidance, community service, and practical arts, whose content the ‘Aha Pūnana Leo and Ka Haka ‘Ula O Ke’elikōlani administrations feel can be systematically covered through the everyday activities of the school. Also vexing to language revivalists is the classification of Hawaiian language arts classes as second-language courses. Yet Nāwahīokalani‘opu‘u has been successful in establishing the Hawaiian language as the medium for all courses and its use as a factor in grading in all courses.

The curriculum materials used at Nāwahīokalani‘opu‘u are produced primarily by the Hale Kuamo‘o Language Center of Ka Haka ‘Ula O Ke‘elikōlani and by the teachers themselves. Indeed, curriculum development is a primary responsibility of those hired at the school under the 'Aha Pūnana Leo. Reference materials are primarily standard English ones, although at present the library at Nāwahīokalani‘opu‘u has fewer than 200 books, and the materials available to teachers in their classrooms are very basic. On the other hand, the school makes extensive use of technology and the highly developed Leoki Hawaiian computer system, described below. In addition, the sustainable-environment site includes an imu (traditional ground oven) and other outdoor equipment necessary for the production and preparation of traditional Hawaiian foods and arts as well as an extensive traditional agriculture and indigenous-species environmental complex. The focus on application of knowledge to daily life is important from a language revitalization perspective in that students are being prepared to make their homes in the local community and make their contribution to it and its economy as Hawaiian speakers. This focus contrasts with the typical situation in Hawai‘i private and public schools, where students are encouraged to open their horizons to the “whole world” (in actuality, only to the possibility of living in other states). Those with academic talent are often discouraged from studying Hawaiian topics, areas often viewed as parochial and restrictive, and encouraged to pursue further education without any preparation for them to return to the community. One result of such practices has been an extensive brain drain in the Hawaiian community.

ACADEMIC SUCCESS OF NĀWAHĪOKALANI‘OPU‘U

The priority focus of the Aha Pūnana Leo and Ka Haka ‘Ula O Ke‘elikōlani on language revitalization has not had a negative effect on student achievement, including achievement in English. Indeed, the opposite seems to be the case. In the 1998-99 school year, the 77 students of Nāwahīokalani‘opu‘u were counted among the 1,737 students at Hilo High School, yet this small group (34 of whom were actually intermediate school students) garnered a disproportionate number of academic and other achievements in the Hilo area. For example, of the 100 prestigious Bank of Hawai‘i Second Century Scholarships offering up to $10,000 per year for four years of college for outstanding 10th-graders statewide, Nāwahīokalani‘opu‘u students received two. Nāwahīokalani‘opu‘u students took first place in a statewide computerized stock market game, and a Nāwahīokalani‘opu‘u student was chosen to be the vice president of the statewide Native Hawaiian Youth Legislature. Nāwahīokalani‘opu‘u students won the Hilo High musical talent contest for both 1997-98 and 1998-99, and Nāwahīokalani‘opu‘u students were a major presence on Hilo High athletic teams, with two of its girls’ volleyball players named to the island all-star team in 1998-99.

Perhaps most significant is the fact that all five members of Nāwahīokalani‘opu‘u’s first senior class were also admitted as concurrently enrolled high school students at the University of Hawai‘i at Hilo; only one other student from Hilo High School was allowed to attend university classes while still in high school that year. By their junior year of high school, the entire class had completed all but two courses needed to graduate under Department of Education regulations. The students enrolled in two courses each in the fall semester and one course each in the spring semester. During the 1999-2000 year, Nāwahīokalani‘opu‘u students continued to excel, with early enrollment in university and community college courses extended to the junior year, and students won a number of additional academic, artistic, and athletic awards.

There has always been concern outside Nāwahīokalani‘opu‘u that the school's students would have difficulty with English, especially scientific and mathematical language. It thus may have come as something of a surprise to detractors that all five of the initial seniors passed the university’s English composition assessment examination. This same examination often presents considerable difficulty to graduates of Hawai‘i's English-medium public high schools, especially Hawaiian students. Furthermore, the Nāwahīokalani‘opu‘u seniors reported no difficulty using English in their college courses, which have included such subjects as political science, agriculture, mathematics, horticulture, Hawaiian, and Japanese. Their grades bore this out-virtually all As and Bs, with only a single student earning a C in a single class. All seniors continued on to college.

The success of these Nāwahīokalani‘opu‘u seniors in functioning in a college environment in English supports the contention of the 'Aha Pūnana Leo that much of the poor achievement of Native Hawaiian youth in English-medium schools is owing to resistance, conscious or unconscious, to the subjugation in Hawai‘i's schools of Hawaiian identity and culture to haole identity and culture. Certainly, the reason for Native Hawaiian difficulties in school elsewhere cannot be owing to their Hawaiian cultural backgrounds. The first class of Nāwahīokalani‘opu‘u seniors has been educated totally through the Hawaiian language and from a very explicitly Hawaiian cultural base. They received training in English for only one course per semester beginning in the 5th grade, and all their English instruction since then has been through Hawaiian. Furthermore, two of the students were essentially monolingual speakers of Hawaiian until elementary school.

STANDARDIZED TESTS AND THE COMMUNITY SERVED

The achievements of Nāwahīokalani‘opu‘u students must also be understood within the context of their community. The Hilo area has a household median income about $14,000 lower than the state average, over twice as many households on public assistance than the state average, and over 10 times the number of children considered at risk than the state average. The Hawaiian Language Immersion Program feeding Nāwahīokalani‘opu‘u is located at Keaukaha Elementary, a school serving primarily children from Keaukaha Hawaiian Homelands, an area reserved for lessees of half or more Hawaiian ancestry. Keaukaha Elementary students generally perform below average at Hilo High School and have a below-average percentage of students who continue on to college and an above-average percentage of students who drop out. No students have dropped out of school from Nāwahīokalani‘opu‘u, although some have transferred to other schools for various reasons. There is strong interest in attending college among all students at Nāwahīokalani‘opu‘u, even though most of the children come from families whose parents had not attended college prior to enrolling their children in the program. Indeed, over one-third of the students come from economic circumstances that qualify them for free school lunches, and a few have learning disabilities that would qualify them for special assistance in the English-medium schools.

The scores of Nāwahīokalani‘opu‘u students on standardized tests, as shown in Figure 13.1, have not been as impressive as the coursework they have completed in high school and college, but they still compare well with the scores from the English-medium schools which the students would otherwise attend. In general, standardized test scores of Nāwahīokalani‘opu‘u students have a lower percentage of students in the below-average category and also sometimes a lower percentage of students in the above-average category than the national average. There is, however, considerable variation between the classes, which can be accounted for in part by the exaggerated role of individuals in determining class averages in classes of fewer than 20 students. It should be noted that a comparison of Nāwahīokalani‘opu‘u students with Hawaiian students at Hilo Intermediate School and Hilo High School would likely show a greater difference in scores because Hawaiians at these schools often have lower scores than do other ethnicities on such examinations (Carole lshimaru [Hilo High School Vice Principal for Nāwahīokalani‘opu‘u), personal communication, 2000). At Keaukaha Elementary School, which is predominantly Hawaiian, children in the Hawaiian Immersion Program stream generally score higher than those in the English-medium stream on the 6th-grade SAT even though the Hawaiian-medium students have no formal exposure to English until reaching their one-hour daily 5th-grade course in English language arts.

The fact that standardized examinations are administered in English and are based on North American cultural contexts may reduce the number of Nāwahīokalani‘opu‘u student scores in the above-average category. This possibility was a significant factor in Ka Haka ‘Ula O Ke‘elikōlani College's arguing for the university to admit Nāwahīokalani‘opu‘u students on the same criteria as foreign students, who are not expected to score well on American standardized tests and yet usually perform well at the university. The fact that standardized examinations do not test what is taught as higher-level knowledge at Nāwahīokalani‘opu‘u—traditional Hawaiian oratory and literature, the application of science and mathematics to agriculture and aquaculture, and unique features of Hawaiian life and society—may be another factor in reducing the percentage of above-average scores on standardized examinations. Another possible factor is that Nāwahīokalani‘opu‘u is a new school just beginning to develop, where students from a wide range of abilities are accommodated in a single class and the teaching staff is mostly young people, some of whom have yet to complete certification or even a bachelor's degree. As the school grows and develops, development that includes a plan to integrate juniors and seniors into Hawaiian-medium general education courses to be offered in the Ka Haka ‘Ula O Ke‘elikōlani College of Hawaiian Language, the number of students scoring above average on standardized tests may increase. Among the areas that are targeted for development is methodology for teaching English to Hawaiian speakers, including improved methods of teaching spelling, an area of weakness reported in Canadian immersion that has also occurred in Hawaiian-medium education. Increased fluency in Hawaiian, however, remains the highest priority, and special work is needed in this area with incoming intermediate students.

MAULl AND THE ISSUE OF CULTURE AT NĀWAHĪOKALANI‘OPU‘U

The 'Aha Pūnana Leo does not consider its revitalization efforts to be confined to the use of Hawaiian vocabulary and sentence structure. Hawaiian language is seen as but a part of a fuller aspect of cultural continuity and individual identity described as mauli. Some features of mauli are covered by the English word “culture,” but mauli also includes worldview, spirituality, physical movement, morality, personal relationships, and other central features of a person's life and the life of a people. Furthermore, while the English term “culture” often denotes something that can be separated from life and demonstrated, mauli is seen as something that is always a part of a person and his or her way of living and also of a group of people and its way of living. In this sense, language and mauli are closely related, as language is always with us in the thought processes in which we view the world and act out our thoughts. The Kumu Honua Mauli Ola educational philosophy thus sees language as the essential feature in maintaining and increasing the strength of the mauli and keeping culture from being simply the public display of physical articles and activities which lack the soul of being truly lived as part of daily life in contemporary Hawai‘i.

The mauli-oriented view of Hawaiian culture found at Nāwahīokalani‘opu‘u, along with the use of Hawaiian language and culture approaches to teach what are popularly, and we would say incorrectly, identified as non-Hawaiian areas, such as mathematics and science, have led some in Hawai‘i to state that Nāwahīokalani‘opu‘u is a Hawaiian language program but not a Hawaiian culture program. Such a view accepts the Western categorization of language as separate from culture and can be related to the fact that the easily observed physical manifestations of Hawaiian culture at Nāwahīokalani‘opu‘u are not distinctly separated from what appears to outsiders to be non-Hawaiian features. The situation is similar to that of early efforts by some photographers of Hawaiians. The Hawaiian person might be asked to replace “unauthentic” clothing such as a mu‘umu‘u, the Hawaiian woman’s dress adopted after Western contact, with a more “authentic” pa‘u or sarong. The “authentic” clothing might, however, be used in a Western way, for example, as a costume provided to be worn by several people and with colors chosen for their eye appeal, while the “unauthentic” mu‘umu‘u it replaced would have been worn in a Hawaiian way, including kapu or restrictions on its use and handling and possibly color symbolism unique to that person's family.

The morning assembly at Nāwahīokalani‘opu‘u is an example of how “culture” is integrated as part of the mauli of Nāwahīokalani‘opu‘u. Students and staff line up at the front of the school and begin with a number of chants. The chants are then followed by the singing of Hawai‘i’s state song, "Hawai‘i Pono‘i," while the students face the Hawaiian flag, and an address is given in Hawaiian to students regarding the activities of the day. Students and faculty are wearing uniforms, with the males to the right and the females to the left. The only thing obviously Hawaiian to an observer would be the chant and the language. However, the alignment of students and teachers follows Hawaiian traditions regarding the concepts of male and female space as well as genealogical ordering. A dried lei above the hallway dividing the two groups has significance as the piko or navel of the school, which is associated with unique events in the school year. Even the physical location of the flag has meaning within Hawaiian traditions.

Furthermore, use of uniforms does not simply follow a trend seen in other states, but is related to Hawaiian concepts of unity in body decoration sought in activities of importance, be they in the traditional Hawaiian school, called the hālau or in contemporary manifestations of that ideal in family dress in a lū‘au for special occasions. The words spoken, both in the chants and in the address to students, furthermore, contain references to oral traditions and Hawaiian beliefs in addition to the simple remarks regarding the day’s activities. These words also provide access to multiple meanings or kaona that exist at a deeper level of the symbolic structure of the activities opening the school day.

The mauli approach to student interaction found at the opening of the day at Nāwahīokalani‘opu‘u is included in all activities of the school, including classroom teaching of standard subjects. While not readily observable by those unfamiliar with the symbolism and thinking behind how courses are taught, this mauli approach is the essential cultural feature of the running of the school. This is not to say that the more stereotypical features of Hawaiian culture are not part of Nāwahīokalani‘opu‘u. All students learn Hawaiian hula and Hawaiian music as well as Hawaiian crafts and participate in the cultivation of traditional Hawaiian foods and their preparation. Furthermore, students learn traditional Hawaiian poetry and literature along with studies of their own genealogies and those of important Hawaiian ali‘i or chiefs. Students also participate in field trips to culturally important sites outside the school that are related to these activities.

The cultural features of Nāwahīokalani‘opu‘u, however, are not learned as “culture” in the sense that Hawaiian culture is a clearly delineated separate class or extracurricular activity in other schools. Chant, music, dance, crafts, and the natural world are instead integrated into the full life of the school. Along with opening the school day, chants are used to ask permission to enter a particular area and to welcome visitors. Traditional foods are prepared to feed gatherings of students and parents at the school. The craft of making feather leis is taught so that students will be able to prepare a lei that will be worn by seniors at graduation, with different parts of the lei symbolizing particular aspects in the ceremony. Traditional musical instruments are made for particular dances with special meanings relative to the school and its community, beyond the purpose of simple musical accompaniment.

In contemporary Hawai‘i, where much of Hawaiian culture has been used commercially either to entertain tourists or to provide educational insight into the physical appearance of precontact Hawai‘i, Nāwahīokalani‘opu‘u’s approach to Hawaiian culture is often difficult to place within the typical public understanding of Hawaiian culture. Furthermore, Nāwahīokalani‘opu‘u’s incorporation of cultural features from 19th-century Hawaiian life, such as Hawaiian stringed instrument music and the mu‘umu‘u, and indeed its teaching of mathematics and science in Hawaiian as in the early Hawaiian-medium schools, seems un-Hawaiian to some who come from a perspective that only precontact Hawaiian culture involving stone tools, wood, and bark cloth is truly Hawaiian.

The mental placement of Hawaiian culture in an “uncontaminated” past focusing on the outward physical manifestations of the culture rather than its inner meaning runs directly counter to the concept and practice of mauli ola, or living mauli, cultivated at Nāwahīokalani‘opu‘u. Such a Western representation of Hawaiian culture is also in direct opposition to a Hawaiian tradition of viewing activities, materials, and meanings from a genealogically developed perspective which gives them an origin in a history of named ancestors from the beginning of time. This genealogical perspective is how Hawaiian culture has been passed down through the generations and how significant changes that occurred in precontact as well as postcontact times were integrated into the lives of the people in a Hawaiian manner. The Hawaiian-speaking elders in Hawaiian families, including those of Kamana and other members of the 'Aha Pūnana Leo board, themselves approached everything that they did, from maintaining the family laundry to attending church, from Hawaiian medicine to family celebrations, in a distinctive Hawaiian manner. This distinctive Hawaiian manner, the Hawaiian mauli, uses indigenous and introduced materials in an integrated fashion based on Hawaiian beliefs and evolving family traditions that are quite distinct from Western beliefs.

REVITALIZATION PROGRESS AT NĀWAHĪOKALANI‘OPU‘U

The academic and other achievements described earlier are not the reason for Nāwahīokalani‘opu‘u’s unique existence. Instead, they are by-products of the effort to maintain and strengthen the Hawaiian mauli using especially the unique powers inherent within the Hawaiian language. Language and culture revitalization is a much more difficult and complex goal than academic achievement. Nāwahīokalani‘opu‘u still has a considerable way to go before reaching its goal of full natural use of Hawaiian as the preferred language of students and their families in all aspects of their daily lives based in the Hawaiian mauli. At present, Hawaiian is the full operational language among faculty and staff at Nāwahīokalani‘opu‘u. The two exceptions are Department of Education staff members who do not normally interact directly with students, but who are fully supportive of the language revitalization goals of the school and who bring important skills to the school which are unavailable at present among fluent Hawaiian speakers. Hawaiian is used as the language of all teacher meetings and by the secretary and support staff. Hawaiian is also used in formal school assemblies with parents where the minority of parents who understand the language fluently translate for those who do not. All students at Nāwahīokalani‘opu‘u make full use of Hawaiian in all formal aspects of their education, such as use of the language in class, assemblies, and speeches, but English still dominates their peer-group interaction in most situations as well as in their family life, with the exception of a few totally Hawaiian-speaking families. Teachers at Nāwahīokalani‘opu‘u have indicated that the difficulties experienced in maintaining Hawaiian in an elementary program that is a stream within an English-medium school have a subsequent impact on the use of Hawaiian at Nāwahīokalani‘opu‘u as students matriculate from such a program to a totally Hawaiian campus. An effort is therefore being made to develop a small elementary program to model practices that would strengthen peer-group use of Hawaiian and Hawaiian mauli, practices that could be copied by other elementary schools, as well as providing a strong Hawaiian-speaking core group for the intermediate and high school program in the future.

Currently, where Hawaiian is most often used at the initiation of students is not on campus, but in Hawaiian cultural situations such as when students visit the taro-growing area of Waipi‘o, the island of Kaho‘olawe, and other cultural excursions. This shows that the Hawaiian language is increasingly being identified as an essential feature of Hawaiian culture among these students. Students report that they feel that speaking Hawaiian is more natural in such situations than in their daily lives, an indication that students are still affected by a worldview that highly marks Hawaiian language and culture as not part of the normal day-to-day activities of contemporary Hawaiians. A movement toward use of Hawaiian in ordinary activities of daily life is evident among some graduates of the school, perhaps in imitation of their young college-age teachers who use the language with each other in all situations outside of school. Students also use Hawaiian when they are with each other in unfamiliar social situations where Hawaiian seems to bind them together and distinguish them from outsiders. Siblings who speak Hawaiian at all times at home also use Hawaiian at all times with each other regardless of the activity or the presence of others, but code switch to English with others in the same group even when all are Nāwahīokalani‘opu‘u students and thus capable of using Hawaiian. This shows the strong influence of establishing Hawaiian as the language of the family in the expansion of Hawaiian to the normal language of peer groups as well as the present predominance of English-speaking families. The 'Aha Pūnana Leo and Ka Haka ‘Ula O Ke‘elikōlani College are anxious to develop programs to help families wishing to use Hawaiian in the home to implement such practice and a model elementary program for children from Hawaiian-speaking homes.

The consortium partners are also anxious to develop a Hawaiian-medium boarding program at Nāwahīokalani‘opu‘u to serve students already moving to Hilo to participate in the school from islands and communities where there are no fully Hawaiian-medium schools available for intermediate and high school. Among these students are some from Moloka‘i whose parents had requested the 'Aha Pūnana Leo and the Office of Hawaiian Affairs to jointly start a K-12 full Hawaiian-medium school like Nāwahīokalani‘opu‘u there at a small abandoned hotel site. This request was denied by the Office of Hawaiian Affairs after it heard testimony from other parents who planned to attend a partially Hawaiian-medium model intermediate/high school to be housed at Moloka‘i High School, as well as community members who wished to see the hotel used for other purposes (see Warner, this volume). After the initial year of partial Hawaiian-medium courses at Moloka‘i High School, an expanded group of parents and teachers again approached the 'Aha Pūnana Leo to establish a stand-alone site similar to Nāwahīokalani‘opu‘u on that island.

KE KULA NI‘IHAU O KEKAHA: A SCHOOL FOR NATIVE SPEAKERS

There is already an elementary program under the direction of the 'Aha Pūnana Leo and Ka Haka ‘Ula O Ke‘elikōlani College in partnership with the Hawai‘i State Department of Education. Ke Kula Ni‘ihau O Kekaha serves a very distinctive population of children who are native speakers of the Ni‘ihau dialect of Hawaiian and who live either periodically or permanently on the adjoining island of Kaua‘i. The program was established in response to a 1993 boycott supported by the 'Aha Pūnana Leo and modeled on that used in the case of Nāwahīokalani‘opu‘u to induce the Department of Education to provide public Hawaiian-medium education in cooperation with the 'Aha Pūnana Leo. The boycott followed over a decade of discussion of Hawaiian-medium education in the Ni‘ihau community led by two 'Aha Pūnana Leo board members, Īlei Beniamina of Ni‘ihau and Byron Cleeland, the director of the Pūnana Leo on the island of Kaua‘i. These discussions were reinforced by several years of practical experience of Ni‘ihau community members in the 'Aha Pūnana Leo summer Hawaiian-medium programs on Kaua‘i for Ni‘ihau and Kula Kaiapuni Hawai‘i students.

Like Ke Kula ‘O Nāwahīokalani‘opu‘u, Ke Kula Ni‘ihau O Kekaha is a public school program that follows the Department of Education guidelines relative to curriculum. The Department of Education provides a single teacher, while the 'Aha Pūnana Leo provides additional teachers, staff, and resources. The elementary school curriculum in the Department of Education is rather broad, allowing considerable flexibility in incorporating the unique features of the Ni‘ihau community. The program includes some intermediate students and has plans to include high school students.

Ke Kula Ni‘ihau O Kekaha receives all the curriculum materials used in the other Hawaiian-medium schools but has tried to adapt its curriculum to the distinctive features of the home language and culture of its students, especially as lived on Ni‘ihau. Because much of the terminology in Hawaiian-medium education was coined only recently, the language used in Hawaiian schoolbooks is unfamiliar to many in the Ni‘ihau community. A decision was made to try to develop materials of their own to use in addition to what has been provided. Funding was procured and non-Hawaiian speakers were hired to develop lessons, which were then translated into Hawaiian by the teachers. The teachers found these lessons unsatisfactory and began developing a curriculum totally on their own that was more closely related to the lifestyle of their island. Their original materials placed a strong emphasis on fishing, the ocean, and self-sufficiency for an environment where there is no running water, electricity, or telephone system, nor are there any commercial services. This curriculum is providing much better results. As the school progresses, the teachers, students, and community are also becoming familiar with new terminology found in the statewide Hawaiian-medium texts. Indeed, daily usage of new Hawaiian terms is now spreading more rapidly in the Ni‘ihau population than elsewhere.

On Ni‘ihau itself students do not take standardized examinations, and Ke Kula Ni’ihau O Kekaha has been following that precedent. The main indicator of success in the past has been the high level of student attendance. Recently the 'Aha Pūnana Leo engaged the Pacific Regional Educational Laboratory (PREL) to assist with the evaluation of educational progress at Ke Kula Ni‘ihau O Kekaha after working with the organization in the development of a self-study for Nāwahīokalani‘opu‘u. Although this effort has just begun, there are indications that some of the children enrolled in the program are reading above grade level in Hawaiian. There have also been reports that a student who matriculated from the program to the local high school received an A in English her first semester away from the school. The certified teacher at the school is Byron Cleeland, who, besides being a board member of the ‘Aha Pūnana Leo, has taught for over 20 years in the Hawai'i public school system. Another ‘Aha Pūnana Leo board member, llei Beniamina, has also been very active in the school, particularly in program and staff development. As the only Ni'ihauan with teacher certification and experience teaching from elementary through the college levels, Beniamina has long had unique credentials with both the Ni‘ihau and the larger community. Integration with Ka Haka ‘Ula O Ke‘elikōlani College provides an avenue for additional support for adult education and other services to the students of the school that also tie in with Beniamina’s efforts through her permanent position at Kaua‘i Community College.

SPECIAL LANGUAGE FEATURES

Language issues have special relevance at Kekaha beyond the typical Hawaiian-medium program. Many adults are somewhat uncomfortable in English and aware of their own difficulties in interacting in English with the world outside Ni‘ihau. In order to ensure that their children learn English, a sector of the Ni‘ihau population on Kaua‘i has always kept its children in English-medium schools even though they are often assigned to bilingual programs with immigrant students and teased by other local students. On Ni‘ihau itself, all formal schoolwork and recitation is still in English, while teachers use Hawaiian for giving directions, explanations, and class discussion. A considerable number of the students at Ke Kula Ni‘ihau O Kekaha attend both Ni‘ihau School and the program owing to frequent moving between the two islands. Because of the concern for learning English in the community and because Ni‘ihau School teaches English from kindergarten, the initial English class is taught at Kekaha in grade 4 rather than grade 5, as in other Hawaiian-medium schools.

The current generation of Ni‘ihau children have been much more quick to pick up English (Hawai‘i Creole English) in the areas where they live on Kaua‘i. On Kaua‘i, exposure to English-speaking children, businesses, and television provides much support for English development, while for children who do not attend school in Hawaiian, Hawaiian is supported only in the home and church. Indeed, some children of Ni‘ihau ancestry on Kaua‘i do not regularly use Hawaiian. Even on Ni‘ihau itself, modern technology is providing increased exposure to English at the same time that the community is spending more time on Kaua‘i. Thus Ke Kula Ni‘ihau O Kekaha provides an important means for maintaining Hawaiian for its students.

Differences between Ni‘ihau Hawaiian and the Hawaiian spoken in other schools have also played a role in curriculum development at Ke Kula Ni 'ihau O Kekaha. The school has a policy of maintaining and strengthening the Ni‘ihau tradition of use of Ni‘ihau dialect as the primary spoken language and standard Hawaiian for formal registers such as use in church and with Hawaiian speakers from other areas. Ni‘ihau children are very fluent in informal registers of the language but less familiar with the formal forms of the language used by their own elders and the formal language found in documents from the 19th and early 20th centuries. The language used elsewhere has been revived from these very documents, from taped interviews of elders who are no longer living, and from limited contact with people who are now mostly semi-speakers of other dialects of Hawaiian. Because the formal registers of Hawaiian were weakened on Ni‘ihau and informal registers were weakened on other islands, there is increased cooperation between Ni‘ihau and non-Ni‘ihau speakers of Hawaiian in reestablishing the full range of the language.

The strengths that Ke Kula Ni‘ihau O Kekaha exhibits in Hawaiian language are indicative of the mauli of the school as a whole. A distinctly Hawaiian worldview with distinctly Ni‘ihau variations within that worldview distinguish this school from all other Hawaiian-medium programs. Ke Kula Ni‘ihau O Kekaha has made it possible for this mauli to blossom outside the structures that constrain it in standard Department of Education programs.

UNIQUE OPERATIONAL CHALLENGES

As the last community that has maintained a totally unbroken chain of Hawaiian from antiquity, Ni‘ihau has a special role in the efforts to revitalize Hawaiian and has been the priority community for the 'Aha Pūnana Leo since its inception. As indicated earlier in this essay, the history of the 'Aha Pūnana Leo has been closely tied to an effort to legalize use of Hawaiian in the public school on Ni‘ihau Island itself, a struggle led by one of 'Aha Pūnana Leo's founding members, ‘Īlei Beniamina of Ni‘ihau. Furthermore, the first Pūnana Leo preschool was established in 1984 at Kekaha on Kaua‘i in order to serve Ni‘ihauans, and there have been a succession of 'Aha Pūnana Leo special summer programs for Ni‘ihau children and older students in the Kekaha area over many years, frequently combined with children from Kula Kaiapuni Hawai‘i.

During the time when 'Aha Pūnana Leo Ni‘ihau programs were funded at a relatively low level and during the four years that Ke Kula Ni‘ihau O Kekaha was located in a single classroom, 'Aha Pūnana Leo Ni‘ihau programs drew little attention from those who had differences with the programs or with those organizing them. Things changed when the 'Aha Pūnana Leo sought major funding to provide Ke Kula Ni‘ihau O Kekaha with its own site on the model of Ke Kula 'O Nāwahīokalani‘opu‘u. The new site was needed because the single classroom that the Department of Education provided became increasingly inadequate for the multiage group of students it served. The 'Aha Pūnana Leo learned that the state was abandoning a small National Guard building across from Kekaha Elementary School and that this could be obtained for the program if the property were transferred to the Office of Hawaiian Affairs by the governor and state land board, with the specification that the property be rented to the ‘Aha Pūnana Leo for Ke Kula Ni‘ihau O Kekaha. The transfer process took over a year, after which 'Aha Pūnana Leo then renovated the front half of the building for an elementary program and began to plan for expansion for an intermediate and high school program.

The new building and its resources and employment opportunities drew interest from those in the Ni‘ihau and greater Hawaiian community not formerly involved in Ke Kula Ni‘ihau O Kekaha, and enrollments grew as high as 47. The sudden explosion of new resources and visibility, however, led to community conflicts over hiring and the use of lead contaminated scrap materials from the renovation of the school. These conflicts, along with a recent split in the Ni‘ihau church, political divisions, and changes within the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, and a whispering campaign by detractors of the 'Aha Pūnana Leo, resulted in an effort to take over the newly renovated building and place it in under the control of a dissident group. (See Warner, this volume, for a discussion of this issue from the point of view of a detractor of the 'Aha Pūnana Leo and supporter of that transfer.)

The dissident group is led by a president who is a Ni‘ihauan who raised his children as non-Hawaiian speakers outside Kaua‘i and who had only recently returned to Kekaha. Its secretary is a non-Ni‘ihauan and a faculty member currently associated with a faction of the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa that has been very hostile to the 'Aha Pūnana Leo since the unanimous dismissal of Sam L. Warner from the 'Aha Pūnana Leo Board in 1996 (see Warner 1999 and this volume). The dismissal was related to a pattern of outlandish attacks on other board members and a reversal of support of the basic principles and philosophy that served as the foundation of the 'Aha Pūnana Leo.

The walkout involved 2 teachers and 16 students. This group's numbers have fluctuated up and down as some of its students left to enter the English-medium schools and as others from elsewhere, including preschool-age children, joined them during the 1999-2000 school year. The group refused use of a classroom and other facilities at Kekaha Elementary School, registered themselves as home schoolers, and moved to the old boycott site of Ke Kula Ni' ihau O Kekaha, a public park.

Enrollment of compulsory school-age students who have remained at Ke Kula Ni‘ihau O Kekaha has also fluctuated between 19 and 26, depending on the migration patterns from Ni‘ihau as well as 4 to 12 additional preschool-age students in Pūnana Leo program at the site (‘Īlei Beniamina, personal communication, 2000). These remaining Ni‘ihau families have indicated their resolve to remain with Ke Kula Ni‘ihau O Kekaha as a partnership public school and to keep it a totally Hawaiian-medium program, with English taught as a second language. The 'Aha Pūnana Leo has indicated to them that it will continue to support the remaining families with the program even if the Office of Hawaiian Affairs steps in to prevent the 'Aha Pūnana Leo from using the building they renovated. There has also been a consensus among the 'Aha Pūnana Leo and the remaining families that students who were removed from the program will be welcomed back if their families choose to return after trying an approach with more use of English.

The 'Aha Pūnana Leo has provided complimentary Hawaiian books to the dissident group for the Hawaiian component of its program, as it does with all Hawaiian-medium programs. The 'Aha Pūnana Leo has further stated that it is not opposed to those who wish to initiate a separately operated program that places more emphasis on English, but such a program is distinct from Ke Kula Ni‘ihau O Kekaha and should seek a separate name and site rather than attempting to replace Ke Kula Ni‘ihau O Kekaha and its program of total Hawaiian use at the current Ke Kula Ni‘ihau O Kekaha building site.

The controversy over the building that houses Ke Kula Ni‘ihau O Kekaha has taken some energy away from the program’s planned services, especially in the area of parent and staff education. Progress is being made in these areas, however, with training in educational techniques used in the Pūnana Leo and Nāwahīokalani‘opu‘u as well as efforts to establish programs for parents and staff to expand their strengths and develop new talents. Those who have remained at the school have been strengthened by the experience, although the effect on the community as a whole has been negative.

The larger aspect of the situation at Ke Kula Ni‘ihau O Kekaha is that the effect of disgruntlement aimed at a language revitalization group or a politician who supports language revitalization is a negative aspect of operations that language revitalization groups must deal with. Another feature that plays a negative role is fear in minority communities regarding the dominant language and allegations, even false ones, that children in language revitalization programs are performing at a lower level in the dominant language than children from the same minority program are in English-medium programs. The negative effects of such disgruntlement and fear are especially evident in times of expansion to include new participants or participation at higher grade levels.

KE KULA ‘O SAMUEL MĀNAIAKALANI KAMAKAU

The most recent expansion of the model or laboratory school concept is Ke Kula 'O Samuel Mānaiakalani Kamakau, located on a third island, O‘ahu-specifically, on the opposite side of the island from Honolulu. Initiated in early 2000, the school is named after the 19th-century Hawaiian scholar Samuel M. Kamakau, whose extensive writings in Hawaiian are a primary source of knowledge about the traditional culture and history of Hawai‘i. Kamakau has developed under the direction of two members of the Hawaiian language faculty at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, Makalapua Ka‘awa and Kawehi Lucas. Besides the ‘Aha Pūnana Leo and Ka Haka ‘Ula O Ke‘elikōlani College, the school has received support from the College of Languages, Linguistics, and Literature of the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa.

Kamakau has been designed as a Hi‘i Pepe (parent-infant program)/Pūnana Leo program for preschool through grade 12. Enrollment is by family, and those who have enrolled have generally sought out the program owing to a desire for an even stronger Hawaiian language and culture focus than that available in the schools in which their children were previously enrolled. Classes are multiage. The present lead class is in the 9th grade. The school operates on a theme of Native Hawaiian health, with integrated lessons based on that theme. As in Pūnana Leo preschools, parents are required to take Hawaiian language courses or courses through Hawaiian. The association with Ka Haka ‘Ula O Ke‘elikōlani has allowed parents to receive college credit for their courses.

In the few months of its existence the school has concluded some important partnerships with local Native Hawaiian health providers and others involved in health which are providing additional resources for the program. One of the purposes of the school is to develop curriculum materials and teacher training opportunities with a focus on Native Hawaiian health that can be shared with the greater Hawaiian language-medium education community.

KA HAKA ‘ULA O KE‘ELIKŌLANI COLLEGE OF HAWAIIAN LANGUAGE

Owing to its large Native Hawaiian population and the significance of its physical features in Hawaiian creation traditions, Hawai‘i’s second largest city, Hilo, has long been a center for Hawaiian linguistic and cultural activism. Among the proponents of the Hawaiian language associated with Hilo was Luka Ke‘elikōlani, governor of the island of Hawai‘i in the mid-1800’s. Although she was quite fluent in English and, as the wealthiest person in the kingdom in her day, frequently did business with the foreign community, Governor Ke‘elikōlani refused to allow anyone to address her in English. She also insisted that only Hawaiian be spoken with her son. An especially memorable event in Hilo was when she used her high ali‘i rank and genealogical connection to the fire goddess, Pele, to stop a lava flow just outside the city limits.

Ka Haka ‘Ula O Ke‘elikōlani (“Royal Standard of Ke‘elikōlani”), the College of Hawaiian Language at the University of Hawai‘i at Hilo, strives to reestablish the Hawaiian language and culture usage exemplified by its namesake. One of three colleges within the University of Hawai‘i at Hilo, it is the first to have a graduate program and the only one administered through a language other than English. Also distinctive is a mandate from the state legislature to work with entities outside the University of Hawai‘i system, including the State Office of Hawaiian Affairs, the 'Aha Pūnana Leo, and the federal government. The private-public partnership with the 'Aha Pūnana Leo has been extremely valuable to the college in its efforts to reach its language revitalization goals and in establishing the structure of the college, including its Hawaiian studies academic programs, Hale Kuamo‘o Hawaiian Language Center, its outreach efforts, its laboratory school program, and its teacher education program. Similarly, the Office of Hawaiian Affairs and the federal government have played important roles in establishing and funding programs of the college, often through partnership with the 'Aha Pūnana Leo.

CURRICULUM PRODUCTION FOR HAWAIIAN-MEDIUM SCHOOLS

Since the initiation of the Pūnana Leo program, the University of Hawai‘i at Hilo and its graduates have been a primary source of curriculum for Hawaiian-medium schools. With the establishment of the 'Aha Pūnana Leo, Hilo often served as a location for the weekend camp-together meetings of the organization, including its first special curriculum development project. In 1984 and 1985, Kamanā took a two-year leave from her university position to develop the Pūnana Leo program and curriculum. The teachers she trained were primarily native speakers and college students either freshly graduated or still taking courses. In 1986, when the Pūnana Leo in Hilo was boycotting the Department of Education by setting up its own Hawaiian-medium kindergarten, Kamanā provided the direction for its teachers and curriculum.

Initial curriculum development efforts were expanded with a summer program in Hilo in 1987 through a private grant to the 'Aha Pūnana Leo to create materials for the transition into the Department of Education. This summer program received assistance from Dorothy Lazore, the pioneering Canadian Mohawk immersion educator, who suggested curriculum goals and ways to attain them for the initial public school Hawaiian-medium classrooms. The Hawaiian-speaking team, consisting of most of the present faculty of the College of Hawaiian Language, took Lazore’s ideas and put them into the context of Hawai‘i’s natural and cultural environment. Larry Kimura, the founding president of the ‘Aha Pūnana Leo, then secured a federal grant to give Pūnana Leo and Kula Kaiapuni Hawai‘i teachers inservice summer teacher and curriculum development training through Hawaiian at both the Mānoa and the Hilo campuses of the University of Hawai‘i. This grant provided summer teacher training and curriculum development from 1988 through 1991. Finally in 1990, the Hawai‘i state legislature funded the establishment of the Hale Kuamo‘o Hawaiian Language Center at the University of Hawai‘i at Hilo.

From the beginning, the Hale Kuamo‘o and 'Aha Pūnana Leo closely coordinated their development of curriculum and avoided duplication of translations to assure the maximum benefit to teachers. Nineteenth-century Hawaiian-medium textbooks were not usable, as they were sorely outdated (for example, a geography book showed the Mississippi River as the western boundary of the United States). But the earlier texts did provide inspiration and some vocabulary terms. Larry Kimura moved from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa to the University of Hawai‘i at Hilo with the establishment of the Hale Kuamo‘o, a center which he had envisioned, and took on the task of translating the standard state mathematics curriculum. Kalena Silva and Wilson worked on science with Kimura, and the entire faculty did projects in Hawaiian language arts, social sciences, and culture, along with some exceptionally talented students.

Keiki Kawai‘ae‘a, a founding parent of the Pūnana Leo O Honolulu and the pioneering Kula Kaiapuni Hawai‘i teacher on Maui, was hired as the educational specialist and full-time manager for the Hale Kuamo‘o. Kawai‘ae‘a further strengthened the coordination of curriculum development with the Kula Kaiapuni Hawai‘i classrooms through her contacts in the schools and her personal experience. When the ‘Aha Kauleo Advisory Council was formed for the Hawaiian Language Immersion Program by the state Department of Education, Kawai‘ae‘a was appointed as chair of its curriculum committee, which coordinated all curriculum development statewide with the larger Hale Kuamo‘o and 'Aha Pūnana Leo efforts.

TECHNOLOGY AND LEXICAL EXPANSION

Kawai‘ae‘a also brought Keola Donnaghy from Maui to start a Hawaiian-language computer system, which is now the most sophisticated computer system anywhere in an indigenous language. Based on Macintosh computers (chosen for their ease of use by children and technologically unsophisticated language-materials writers), Donnaghy's Leokī system links all Pūnana Leo and Hawaiian-medium schools and Hawaiian language program offices statewide in a free system provided totally through the Hawaiian language with appropriate unique Hawaiian spelling symbols, icons, and directions. The system contains chat rooms, central calendars of events, a dictionary, and folders for the different entities and interest groups within the Hawaiian language revitalization community. There is also provided in the Leokī system a means for teachers and the general public to quickly order curriculum materials. Most recently, Donnaghy provided a Hawaiian version of Netscape Navigator, which provides students with limited library resources with a means to search the Pūnaewele Puni Honua (the World Wide Web) in Hawaiian. An employee of the 'Aha Pūnana Leo, Donnaghy is stationed at the Hale Kuamo‘o and provides technical stability and direction for the entire Hawaiian language revitalization movement.

Moving Hawaiian into new domains has required a huge amount of new vocabulary. From the beginning of the 'Aha Pūnana Leo, the Hawaiian language has been the fortunate beneficiary of Larry Kimura’s visionary work in collecting and coining new terms. Before the first Pūnana Leo opened, Kimura was working to develop a list of appropriate vocabulary to use with new activities and materials to be found in the schools. Sometimes native speakers, especially Ni‘ihau speakers, would have terms that had not been documented, for example, ‘ōwili ‘photographic film’ (literally, “twisted coil”), or would clarify terms already listed in the dictionary, such as pēheu 'mumps' (listed in the dictionary as “soft, flabby, sagging, as fat flesh; swelling or protuberance, as on cheeks or neck”).

When we moved into our first group curriculum project with Dorothy Lazore, Kimura arranged for a late-afternoon meeting every day to have translators and native speakers discuss and decide upon new terms which he recorded. His next step was to organize a formal lexicon committee composed mostly of native speakers with representation from different parts of the island chain. But Kimura also included in the committee younger Hawaiian language teachers from the university who were doing the translations. The elders in the committee found that their contribution was primarily in the area of clarifying older terms. They had difficulty with the newer terms for concepts and technology with which they were unfamiliar. The university-trained translators then began meeting on their own to deal with these modern technical terms. This younger group developed into the present standing Lexicon Committee chaired by Kimura. The process of approval of new terms includes documenting all submissions to the committee, first readings, and final approvals. A joint project of the 'Aha Pūnana Leo and the Hale Kuamo‘o, the Lexicon Committee publishes annually an updated book of recently coined or documented terms with both a Hawaiian-to-English and an English-to-Hawaiian section. The book, Māmaka Kaiao (The Burden Pole of the Dawn), currently has some 4,000 entries.

The Lexicon Committee focuses on producing terms of practical use to the growing Hawaiian-speaking community—at present mostly classrooms and offices serving schools. These terms are meant not to supplant traditional terms but to allow Hawaiian to move into new fields of use and grow as a living language. Every effort is made to create new words that tie in to Hawaiian traditions—for instance, the word māuiili ‘equinox’ is related to the name of a famous ancestral hero, Māui, who slowed the movements of the sun. The committee also tries to model new words on established older vocabulary. Thus the traditional term kālaimana‘o ‘philosophy’ (“thought carving”) has led to kālai ‘ōlelo ‘linguistics’ (“language carving”), kālaimeaola ‘biology’ (“living-thing carving”), and kālaiōewe ‘genetics’ (“lineage-continuant carving”). While it supports developing vocabulary from indigenous Hawaiian roots, the committee is not adverse to borrowing, especially from other Polynesian languages—thus na‘ina‘i ‘lowercase [letter]’ and ma‘aka ‘uppercase [letter]’ are derived from the Tahitian and Rarotongan words, respectively, for small and large. When terms relate to an area outside Hawai‘i, efforts are made to borrow from languages indigenous to those areas—thus kokei‘a ‘prairie dog’ and ponī ‘skunk’ from the Ute language of southern Colorado.

The biggest difficulty the committee has faced is in developing Hawaiian equivalents of terms that are from categories that seem to go on endlessly—Latinate scientific terms for chemicals, species, and so on, and the names of places outside Hawai‘i. These are a problem for all modern languages participating in the global society. The committee has been torn in two different directions regarding the development of Hawaiian terms in these categories. One direction is to continue composing terms based on Hawaiian roots, and the other is to borrow the international term. The native-roots position has proven to move much too slowly, and although the committee has approved native-root terms, especially for very common things such as the stomata of a leaf, pukahanu (literally, “breathing hole”), it has often also adopted many terms from the international lexicon. The borrowing position is designed to allow students to move between Hawaiian, English, and other languages in the scientific area, especially in the written forms of these languages.

An extreme view in terms of borrowing and one frequently adopted by teachers and students who are first-language speakers of English is to use the terms as in English and move on. These individuals simply pronounce and write “sodium bisulfate” or “Bulgaria” as they are pronounced and written in American English. For first-language speakers of Hawaiian, a similar process takes place, but of course their pronunciation of the borrowed term is more distinctly Hawaiian and differs from individual to individual according to how well he or she is able to pronounce English. There is a sentiment in the Lexicon Committee that Hawaiian should have its own pronunciation and spelling of international terms, one distinct from the English pronunciation and spelling in the same way that the French, Spanish, and Japanese versions of international terms are written and pronounced differently from the English versions of the same words. This has been accomplished by developing a formula for the adoption of international terms from English spelling rather than from English pronunciation. The formula consists principally of inserting vowels in consonant clusters and at the end of words, with some letter changes, and the invention of equivalents of some common scientific endings. Thus “sodium bisulfate” is sodiuma bisulufahate and “Bulgaria” is Bulugaria.

Hawaiianization of the spelling of scientific words is similar to the solution adopted by missionaries in adapting foreign words in the Bible, such as Iosepa ‘Joseph’, Betelehema ‘Bethlehem’, and nāhesa ‘snake' (from Hebrew nachash). This solution was expanded by the Hawaiian people in newspaper reporting in the 1800s. Because some of the borrowed consonant sounds are not native to Hawaiian, there are usually at least two possible pronunciations of these borrowed biblical, scientific, and geographical terms. One pronunciation uses the borrowed English consonant sounds, and the other assimilates those consonant sounds to indigenous ones, which are then pronounced variably according to dialect. Through this process over the last century, spoken Hawaiian bas borrowed a number of consonant sounds from English. In some instances this borrowing process has also established minimal pairs such as berena ‘communion wafer' versus pelena ‘cracker’, both originally the same word, derived from the English term ‘bread’.

ISSUES IN ADAPTING WRITINGS AND TAPES OF NATIVE SPEAKERS

Reworking older materials has been a means by which much curriculum has been produced. Hawaiian is very fortunate in having a very large amount of older written materials as well as much taped material. As with vocabulary development, we have faced two schools of thought in the use of older written documents. At one extreme is the opinion that these materials should be changed as little as possible to retain the form in which they were created, avoiding mistaken interpretations by contemporary readers. At the other extreme is the opinion that the materials should be completely rewritten to meet the needs and comprehension of the young children in the schools. This way the language and culture in these materials can be actually passed down to the students rather than simply read without understanding.

The Hale Kuamo‘o has taken more or less a middle ground. All older written material used by the Hale Kuamo‘o is reformatted in modern orthography. Efforts are also made to fill in gaps when a word, sentence, or page is missing or damaged. The Hale Kuamo‘o has also, in its less conservative efforts, produced glossaries for such texts that provide explanations for terms and idioms. Among the decisions that must be made are the pronunciation, meaning, and grammatical classification of words for which no living resource authority exists. This task is carefully done by very experienced language professionals supported by proofreaders.

The Hale Kuamo‘o has probably been a bit too conservative in its approach to old texts, and as a result some of its reformatted older works have sat unused in the schools. It is not uncommon for whole sections of texts to be quite obscure, especially to young teachers, not to mention elementary, intermediate, and high school students, who thus become frustrated trying to read them. Often these passages can be clarified by providing information on older customs, extinct species, genealogical connections, historical happenings, and so on. The Hale Kuamo‘o has included endnotes in some materials, but not extensive ones. It has also produced some rewritten materials for contemporary readers incorporating explanatory information as part of the narrative and context. This process requires high-level skills beyond those required for simply reformatting materials and has so far been done only on a limited basis.

Taped, rather than written, materials have been more commonly used for “rewriting” older materials for contemporary purposes. The many pauses, self-corrections, and asides require modification for written purposes, so there is less concern with maintaining the exact form of the original. Adaptations of audiotapes also include use of short taped selections of natural conversation by native speakers on various cultural and historical topics which are used as aural introductions for lessons and models for pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar. Videotapes of interviews and semi-scripted cultural activities have also been developed, but primarily by the 'Aha Pūnana Leo rather than the Hale Kuamo‘o.

TEACHER TRAINING FOR HAWAIIAN-MEDIUM SCHOOLS

Teacher training has been an area of concern since the initiation of the 'Aha Pūnana Leo and an activity in which the University of Hawai‘i at Hilo Hawaiian program has been very much involved. All teachers other than the few native-speaking teachers have learned the language over the years in courses in various universities and community colleges in the state. Beyond standard Hawaiian language and culture courses, university Hawaiian studies programs initially focused primarily on further developing language and culture skills appropriate to be taught to Pūnana Leo preschool- and elementary school-age children.

Certification of teachers has always been an issue for Hawaiian-medium education. Initially the Pūnana Leo pre-schools were effectively barred from legal establishment by requirements that its teachers be certified through English language- and culture-based early-childhood training provided by colleges. This was unattainable for our native-speaker teachers, who often had maintained the language by being isolated from haole education. However, in 1986 lobbying by Pūnana Leo resulted in a legal change that exempted teachers in preschools taught through Hawaiian from certification requirements. From its inception, the Pūnana Leo has encouraged its teachers to expand their knowledge of other approaches to education by assisting its staff in enrolling in haole culture- and language-based early education programs. The Pūnana Leo is concerned, however, that its teachers not be overly influenced by haole approaches to early childhood education and has also encouraged learning from other countries and cultures, especially when they align with Hawaiian culture and values. The main focus of Pūnana Leo preschool teacher training, however, has been on internally run in-service training. Similar in-service training is available to teachers in Kula Kaiapuni Hawai‘i through the Hale Kuamo‘o at the College of Hawaiian Language.

Certification has remained a major issue for the public school Hawaiian Language Immersion Program. The initial two elementary Kula Kaiapuni Hawai‘i classrooms were opened as combined kindergarten and 1st grade classes with teachers who had already been certified. Neither teacher had the ideal qualifications of full training in Hawaiian and early childhood education. One, Puanani Wilhelm, was a Hawaiian studies major certified to teach second-language courses at the high school level, while the other, Alohalani Kaina, was an elementary school teacher who had had two years of college Hawaiian and also had children in the Pūnana Leo with whom she and her husband were using Hawaiian at home. As the program grew, it became increasingly difficult to find teachers who combined Hawaiian and state certification qualifications, even to the level found in these initial teachers. Principals leaned toward hiring teachers who met the certification criteria and downplayed the Hawaiian qualifications; Pūnana Leo philosophy-leaning parents downplayed certification and stressed Hawaiian qualifications. Parents actually drove out some teachers with very obvious deficiencies in Hawaiian.

The University of Hawai‘i at Hilo Hawaiian studies major had been approved as an area of certification for second-language teaching before the initiation of the Pūnana Leo. Graduates of the program entered the university's English-medium education department for further training, which culminated in student teaching in high school courses in Hawaiian language taught through English. The initiation of the Kula Kaiapuni Hawai‘i presented the opportunity to begin specialized training for Hawaiian-medium schools which we proposed to begin with student teaching. When in 1990 two Hawaiian studies graduates in the university's education department approached the department regarding student teaching in Hawaiian, they were initially refused. Evaluation of student teaching was considered impossible because the department did not have any Hawaiian-speaking faculty. This barrier was overcome by the offer of Kamana, in the Hawaiian studies department, to provide interpretation services to the education department for all on-site visits and the offer of the students to write all lesson plans in both Hawaiian and English. The education department then agreed to allow student teaching through Hawaiian but also told the students that they were greatly damaging their employment prospects by refusing to student teach in English. Nāko'olani Warrington, the one student who decided to student teach through Hawaiian, received the University of Hawai‘i at Hilo education department's award for elementary student teacher of the year.

As more Kula Kaiapuni Hawai‘i opened, it became increasingly difficult to obtain trained teachers, and the ad hoc solutions of bilingual lesson plans and voluntary interpreters became increasingly burdensome. Furthermore, Kula Kaiapuni Hawai‘i were not satisfied with the standard English-medium teacher training; they desired something more closely tailored to Hawaiian cultural perspectives and taught through Hawaiian itself, a position that was finally officially articulated by the 'Aha Kauleo advisory council to the Department of Education. In addition, with the establishment of Nāwahīokalani‘opu‘u, a number of talented undergraduate students joined with Kamana and other experienced teachers in developing the intermediate and high school program. These university students became the nucleus of what was to become the Kahuawaiola Professional Teaching Certificate Program of Ka Haka ‘Ula O Ke’elikōlani.

Initial plans for a Hawaiian-medium teaching certificate offered through the Hawaiian studies department began in 1994. Moving the program forward through the university structure was difficult until a Hawaiian-medium teacher training program was mandated by the 1997 state legislature in the legislation establishing the College of Hawaiian Language. An official pilot program began that year, and the certification was given final approval by the university administration in early 1999 as the Kahuawaiola Professional Teaching Certificate Program. The final step now underway is a self-study in conjunction with the state Department of Education, which should lead to full teacher licensing by the year 2000. Eleven students have graduated from the program and await news regarding Department of Education licensing.

The Kahuawaiola Program is designed to meet the special needs of teachers in Kula Kaiapuni Hawai‘i and also to serve teachers in English-medium schools who are teaching Hawaiian language and culture and/or serving students from strongly Hawaiian cultural backgrounds. The program is taught entirely in Hawaiian and draws primarily Hawaiian studies majors as students. Entrance requirements include a bachelor's degree, four years of Hawaiian with a grade point average of 2.75 in the last two years, and, for non-Hawaiian studies majors, at least two additional college courses in Hawaiian culture. Majors from outside Hawaiian studies are recruited, and double majors are especially encouraged. Before entering the program, a student must have completed either 50 hours of teaching through Hawaiian or 75 hours in curriculum development.

All students, regardless of the level or program in which they are to teach, take the same set of courses but with instruction designed to allow students to focus on their own particular needs. Thus, during the mathematics strand, students preparing for elementary mathematics, high school mathematics, or high school Hawaiian language in an English-medium school all work on projects designed to tie in mathematical principles and the Hawaiian culture to their particular specialization. For example, such students might develop a unit on traditional Hawaiian children's jingles relating to numbers for kindergarten, the geometry involved in the construction of Hawaiian terraced taro gardens for high school, and a unit on special numeral groupings and number symbolism for a high school language class. The initial core credits are offered over the summer in a live-in, totally Hawaiian-speaking environment using the dormitories and classrooms of Ke Kula ‘O Nāwahīokalani’opu‘u.

After completing the core courses in the summer, teachers proceed to a school of their choosing in the state, where they work for the entire school year with an experienced Hawaiian-speaking teacher. The experienced teacher and a site-visiting faculty member from Ka Haka ‘Ula O Ke‘elikōlani provide direction and grading for this on-site training. In addition, while they are doing their student teaching, participants enroll in 2 three-credit seminars. The first seminar deals with the day-to-day strategies and problems of teaching through Hawaiian. The second deals with broader issues faced by Hawaiian-medium schools and programs. These seminars are taught through interactive television using sites within the statewide University of Hawai‘i system.

To receive the certificate, teachers must also pass a base-level Hawaiian fluency examination that is provided as part of a one-credit course. The examination consists of five sections. Oral fluency is tested through an interview following the guidelines of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages. Transcription of taped natural conversation of elders and answering written questions in Hawaiian on the content of such tapes is used to test listening comprehension. Teachers need to be able to translate English materials into Hawaiian for their classrooms, a facility tested through a translation exercise, usually using English newspaper articles. Skill in using older written Hawaiian materials is tested through a section calling for rewriting a selection from such older materials in contemporary Hawaiian orthography. Finally, there is a composition section tested through writing in Hawaiian on an assigned topic provided on the day of the examination.

The preparation of teachers in Kahuawaiola follows the Kumu Honua Mauli Ola educational philosophy adopted by Ka Haka ‘Ula O Ke‘elikōlani and the 'Aha Pūnana Leo. The philosophy is based on Hawaiian traditions and includes attention to four aspects of knowledge or skills: ka ‘ao‘ao pili ‘uhane (the spiritual or intuitive aspect), ka ‘ao‘ao ‘ōlelo (the language aspect), ka ‘ao‘ao lawena (the physical and body language aspect), and ka ‘ao‘ao ‘ike ku‘una (the traditional knowledge aspect). This is to be conveyed in a honua or specific location which becomes more permeable to outside influences as the student grows in age and wisdom, and through three focal points of human interaction: ka piko ‘ī, or point of spiritual/intuitive connections; ka piko ‘ō, or point of inherited, genealogical, and externally initiated connections; and ka piko ‘ā, or point connecting one to relationships and materials created or adapted by a person himself or herself. This last point of connection allows for the integration of contemporary non-Hawaiian knowledge such as science and computers into the system, which is then passed on as traditional knowledge though the piko ‘ō in the same way that earlier generations of Hawaiians integrated the horse, quilting, and the guitar into their lives in a distinctive Hawaiian manner and then transmitted them to their descendants.

A major challenge for the Ka Haka ‘Ula O Ke‘elikōlani has been in convincing the teacher education establishment that preparing teachers from a Kumu Honua Mauli Ola perspective can produce teachers who can educate students on a level comparable to that provided by standard Western teacher education approaches. While the teacher education establishment has shown genuine interest in the academic and other achievements of students at Nāwahīokalani‘opu‘u and the unique results of implementation of the Kumu Honua Mauli Ola, there is still considerable skepticism regarding the Kahuawaiola program and its being taught by faculty whose degree qualifications lie primarily, but not exclusively, outside traditional Western education. We are hopeful that licensing will be granted to allow a number of years’ demonstration of the value of the strongly Hawaiian approach of Kahuawaiola. In this regard it is important to note that a fully licensed program to prepare teachers for Hawaiian language immersion classrooms already exists at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, where Hawaiian language teaching and literacy training from the Hawaiian language program is integrated with English-medium pedagogical training within the College of Education there using faculty with more standard education backgrounds. The Kahuawaiola program, like other 'Aha Pūnana Leo and Ka Haka ‘Ula O Ke‘elikōlani programs, seeks to establish a more radically distinct indigenous approach to education in its belief that closer alignment with Hawaiian tradition will provide greater benefits for schools with a strong Hawaiian language and culture revitalization orientation as well as for Hawaiian students in English-medium schools who could benefit from teachers with a strongly Hawaiian approach to education.

MASTER OF ARTS PROGRAM

A number of the teachers at Ke Kula ‘O Nāwahīokalani‘opu‘u have been simultaneously enrolled in both the master of arts in Hawaiian language and literature and the Kahuawaiola Professional Teaching Certificate Program. The 33-credit master's degree, begun in September of 1998, is at present being offered on a cohort model. Because all nine students have also been working full time, only two required courses are offered per semester. The coursework is modeled on standard foreign-language master's programs, but again with a distinctive Hawaiian base. Included is a course on the history of the Hawaiian language and literature and an introduction to research methods, both taught the first semester. These are followed by courses in various aspects of Hawaiian linguistics and literature, including the performance of literature through chant. The breadth and depth of recorded Hawaiian literature allows for courses on such subjects as traditional Hawaiian literature, ethnological and historical narratives, European-influenced Hawaiian literature, and applied Hawaiian chant. Enough materials exist in each of these areas that the courses can be offered in several different subcategories. The program also requires all students to write a thesis in Hawaiian and to earn three credits through educational interaction with an ethnic group outside Hawai‘i involved in language revitalization.

The focus on language revitalization and application to the community distinguishes our master’s program from foreign-language master’s programs. Students are encouraged to choose as their thesis topic any area in which data are secured through Hawaiian or for which Hawaiian-speaking communities are being created. Thus, student thesis topics chosen the first semester include formal language devices in Hawaiian poetry; the traditions of akule fishing in Hana, Maui; the development of the genre of Hawaiian language film and video; and Hawaiian language substrata in Hawai‘i Creole English. During discussion periods in the master's courses, students relate the topic of study to their field of interest. Students also use the expertise of non-Hawaiian-speaking faculty on campus in developing their thesis.

BACHELOR OF ARTS PROGRAM

The Master of Arts in Hawaiian language and literature and the Kahuawaiola Professional Teaching Certificate are built upon the bachelor of arts in Hawaiian studies. The 43-credit bachelor's program was originally designed by Wilson from a vision statement developed by a committee headed by the program's senior member, the late Hilo language, culture, and hula revivalist kupuna (elder) Edith Kanaka‘ole. The program has two tracks. Track 1, Continuing the Culture, is taught entirely within the Hawaiian studies department and focuses on language, linguistics, performing arts, and traditional culture. This track is taught entirely through Hawaiian at the upper division level and requires four years of Hawaiian language. Track 2, Monitoring the Culture, also requires four years of Hawaiian language and six additional credits taught through Hawaiian, but the remainder of the credits are taken in courses taught through English outside the department, in anthropology, political science, biology, history, and other fields.

The language courses that are the heart of the bachelor's program are the most intense in the state of Hawai‘i. The hour-long classes meet 5 days a week for 30 weeks per year, not only at the first two levels, but all the way through fourth year. The methodology used focuses on grammar and translation, with weekly quizzes and speeches. Grammar is taught using Hawaiian terms and a system developed by Wilson and Kamanā using the metaphor of an octopus. By the second year all language-skills course instruction is through Hawaiian, and by the third year, students are taking content courses in Hawaiian.

The nearly 20-year old bachelor of arts in Hawaiian studies and the affiliated minor and two subject certificates are now being considered for revision. In recent years, students have come to the program with less personal experience in Hawaiian lifeways and therefore desire a stronger cultural focus. Students also need to understand the language and culture revitalization in which they are participating as a historic and social process. The weakening of the traditional Hawaiian lifestyle has also made students more vulnerable to generic Western stereotypes of indigenous identity which urgently need to be addressed. Finally, the B.A. program needs to address the phenomenon of students entering Ka Haka ‘Ula O Ke‘elikōlani with high fluency in Hawaiian as graduates of Hawaiian-medium schools.

Many of the changes needed for the B.A. program are expected to be developed in a new general education program of Ka Haka ‘Ula O Ke‘elikōlani. Previously, Hawaiian studies majors participated in the College of Arts and Sciences' Western-based general education program. A new Ka Haka ‘Ula O Ke‘elikōlani general education program is being discussed as focusing on a Hawaiian and language revivalist view of the world. Some of these general education courses would be made available through Hawaiian to accommodate fluent Hawaiian speakers and could be enrolled in by advanced high school students still attending Ke Kula ‘O Nāwahīokalani‘opu‘u. Changes to the major itself will likely target improving methods of language teaching and expanding Hawaiian-medium courses in Track 2, focusing on the social and natural science areas of the Hawaiian world.

All of these changes, however, require additional personnel and funding.

EXTERNAL CONNECTIONS

The 'Aha Pūnana Leo and Ka Haka ‘Ula O Ke‘elikōlani have long held a philosophy of working with others involved in language revitalization. From the very beginning, the 'Aha Pūnana Leo has had a close relation with New Zealand Māori language revitalization, benefiting especially from a close relationship with Tīmoti Kāretu, the current head of the Kohanga Reo Trust and the former commissioner of Māori language. Within Polynesia, Ka Haka ‘Ula O Ke’elikōlani serves as the permanent secretariat of the Polynesian Languages Forum, a body consisting of delegates from 14 Polynesian countries that was established through the initiative of Kāretu. Relationships with Polynesia have now extended to 'Aha Pūnana Leo and Ka Haka ‘Ula O Ke‘elikōlani-sponsored school visits, student exchanges, and joint printings.

Relationships with American Indians, Alaska Natives, and Aboriginal Canadians have also been very strong. As recounted earlier, Dorothy Lazore, who pioneered Mohawk immersion in Canada, played an important role in the crucial year in which Pūnana Leo students matriculated into the public Hawaiian Language Immersion Program. She later hosted an important visit to her program for 'Aha Pūnana Leo and Kula Kaiapuni Hawai‘i teachers. Even earlier, Lucille Watahornigie of the Peach Springs School Hualapai Bilingual Program hosted Kamanā, introducing her to the Native American Languages Issues (NALI) Institute network and methods of curriculum development. This led to the 1993 NALI conference's being hosted by the 'Aha Pūnana Leo and the University of Hawai‘i at Hilo, assisted by the Office of Hawaiian Affairs and the Kamehameha Schools, and to increased assistance to native peoples in North America following the total indigenous language-medium model. These relationships have led to assistance with teacher training, curriculum development, and joint printings with Piegan Institute's Blackfeet schools, the Washoe Washiw ‘itlu Gawgayay school, Sealaska's Tlingit immersion program, and many others. More recently we have expanded our horizons to contacting European regional languages. We see such contacts and mutual assistance as important in strengthening the overall effort of language and cultural revitalization and maintenance on a global level. The strengths of the 'Aha Pūnana Leo in Hawaiian-medium education have resulted in the 'Aha Pūnana Leo's having the unique privilege of being chosen as the indigenous peoples’ exhibitor in the area of education at Expo 2000, the millennium world's fair held in Hanover, Germany.

CLOSING THOUGHTS

I ka ‘ōlelo nõ ke ola; I ka ‘ōlelo no ka make. “In language rests life; in language rests death.” This traditional saying has served as the cornerstone of the 'Aha Pūnana Leo in its belief that the Hawaiian language, the actual use of the language, and what is said in the language hold the key to the survival for a distinctly Hawaiian society. The converse of the saying is that replacing Hawaiian with other languages, using other languages regularly in place of Hawaiian, and using foreign words to define Hawaiians is the road to eventual extinction for Hawaiian society. The 'Aha Pūnana Leo, therefore, strives to use Hawaiian in all its activities, utilizing other languages to interact only with those who are not able to function in Hawaiian. No matter how rudimentary their knowledge of Hawaiian, individuals are expected to use the language within the 'Aha Pūnana Leo system and to constantly improve their level of proficiency. Furthermore, the language is not to be put in a lower social position by switching to English in conversations with another Hawaiian speaker simply because nonspeakers are present. The programs described in this article strive to reflect the ideal that the Hawaiian language and culture are the priority.

Hawaiian culture and sayings are often characterized by dualities. The second part of the above saying could be interpreted to mean that too much emphasis on words can lead to death. Indeed, in Hawaiian culture, words are used sparingly and there is much emphasis on action. Huli ka lima i lalo, piha ka ‘ōpū; huli ka lima i luna, piha ka ‘ōpū i ka makani. “Turn your hands down to work, and your stomach will be full giving survival; turn your hands up in supplication to others, and your stomach will be filled with the wind of words alone.” Inspite of its belief in the crucial role of language, the 'Aha Pūnana Leo also believes that in order for the language to survive, its speakers must work very hard and reach a higher level of achievement. In the Hawaiian ethic, work is motivated by a need to produce in order to be able to share on a large scale.

Within the 'Aha Pūnana Leo system, we do not wait for others to help us. And no matter how fluent one is in Hawaiian, or how educated in either the Hawaiian or the Western sense, one is expected to work as part of a group for the basic needs of the group and to share with others for the good of all. The programs described in this article seek to reflect the ideal that action—not academic credentials, not blood or background, not even native-speaker status—but action, especially coordinated action as in a Hawaiian family, brings language and culture revitalization. Without such action, we have nothing to share but our observations, our fears, and our dreams.

The actions described above grew out of dream for a revitalized Hawaiian language. It is easier to understand where that dream has taken us by personal observation of results of the language revitalization movement here in Hawai‘i. We hope, however, that the words of this article will be of some value, especially to those who may never visit our programs. With that hope, we also note that there are many circumstances in the world and even in Hawai‘i. Many other perspectives and approaches to language revitalization and to Hawaiian language and culture besides ours exist. We offer what has been done by one particular coordinated group of people to which we are honored to belong and to contribute—the 'Aha Pūnana Leo and its consortium partner, the Ka Haka ‘Ula O Ke‘elikōlani College of Hawaiian Language.

An essay that focuses on the development and delivery of Hawaiian-medium education through the NGO ʻAha Pūnana Leo and the Ka Haka ʻUla o Keʻelikōlani Hawaiian Language College of the University of Hawaiʻi's Hilo campus and delves into some of the philosophical beliefs that have sustained the ʻAha Pūnana Leo and played a role in its success.

Language Movements: History, Background and Approach