The Hawaiian language revitalisation effort is the most developed of any indigenous language revitalisation in the United States. The language has a unique status as the single indigenous language of the state and a history as an administrative language spoken by all ethnic groups during the time of the independent Kingdom of Hawai‘i. During the past fifteen years, Hawaiian language revitalisation has centred around establishing indigenous medium/immersion education and implementing the official status of the language in the State of Hawai‘i. The current revitalisation has its roots in a broad cultural movement of the 1970s called the Hawaiian Renaissance and has benefited politically from the unification of various ethnic groups in Hawai‘i under a ‘local’ consciousness that has a strong indigenous base. In spite of higher level political support, the revitalisation movement has required strong grassroots activism in its efforts to seek accommodation within the Hawai‘i public school system.

Introduction

Hawai‘i is a place that has name recognition in the rest of the world. That recognition includes, besides a sun-filled climate and an ocean-oriented island culture, a vowel-rich musical language. That Hawai‘i is more than the stereotypes and that Hawai‘i’s indigenous language is endangered should come as no surprise to those interested in language revitalisation.

Indigenous language loss in Hawai‘i has been dramatic. Out of a total 1992 population of 1,138,870, of which 220,747 were of Hawaiian ancestry, only about 500–1000 were native speakers of Hawaiian. All native speakers are in their 70s or older except for those from the island of Niʻihau, a small community of some 300 individuals that maintains first-language fluency in the language at all ages. The Niʻihau community’s use of Hawaiian is threatened by their movement between Niʻihau and the neighbouring island of Kaua’i.

There are perhaps another 175 scattered individuals, who use primarily Hawaiian in their work and home life, and who are central to an education-based revitalisation movement of the language. The neo-native speaker children from some of these families generally join a growing group of another 1500 children aged between 3–16 years who have become quite conversant in Hawaiian through attending private community-based Pūnana Leo preschools and public Hawaiian-medium/immersion schools which have developed in response to them. When the first of these Hawaiian immersion students graduate from high school in 1999, it will be possible for them to attend a Hawaiian language college and obtain a masters degree in Hawaiian language and literature.

In addition to those who are being educated through Hawaiian, there is a larger group studying Hawaiian in standard second-language courses including approximately 2000 university and college students, 2000 high school students and 3000 community language class students. The teaching of some Hawaiian is also constitutionally mandated in all public elementary (primary) schools in the state. Turnover in this second language student category is quite rapid, with only those who continue study for several years in college attaining any fluency, yet it is this group that provides the teachers and curriculum developers for Hawaiian-medium education.

Hawai‘i has a long history as a multi-ethnic society. The contemporary population of Hawai‘i is approximately 50% island born and raised, with an overall population ethnic mix of 23% white, 20% Japanese, 19% Hawaiian (96% of whom are part-Hawaiian), 10% Filipino and 28% others (over half of whom are of mixed ethnic ancestry not including Hawaiian).1 Interracial marriage is extremely high in Hawai‘i and contributes to the rapid growth of the Hawaiian category with current births at about 33% Hawaiian. Ethnic statistics also hide a unifying cultural/linguistic identity that is shared by a majority of the Hawai‘i born and raised population, and by a considerable portion of immigrants who assimilate to that identity, which contrasts with haole or Anglo-American ethnic and cultural identity. Most long-time non-haole residents, including all Hawaiians and even a considerable portion of the haole population, consider themselves ‘local’. A Creole to standard English continuum is characteristic of language use among locals. Hawai‘i Creole English, or Pidgin as it is known in Hawai‘i, has its roots in pidginised Hawaiian that re-lexified, in large part with English vocabulary, and then creolised in the beginning of the twentieth century. A strong identification with indigenous Hawaiian culture is thus found among locals.

Long an isolated island chain made up of chiefdoms that expanded and shrunk depending on the martial success of their rulers, Hawai‘i was drawn into the international world in 1778 with the arrival of Captain James Cook. The establishment of the Kingdom of Hawai‘i is generally recognised as having occurred in 1796 with the last of the conquests of Kamehameha who became the first king of the Hawaiian state. The Hawaiian Kingdom comprised a mixture of traditional Hawaiian, European, and American political structures, and was highly integrated into the international economy. However, it was overthrown by American business interests supported by the US marines in 1893. In 1898, Hawai‘i was officially annexed to the United States and in 1959 became the 50th and most recently included state of the United States.

The contemporary Hawaiian language revitalisation movement developed from within what is called the Hawaiian Renaissance of the 1970s. While the Hawaiian Renaissance movement was inspired in considerable part by the civil rights movement elsewhere in the United States, Hawaiian language revitalisation has been influenced more by other Pacific Islands, especially Aotearoa/New Zealand (see Durie; May, this volume), than by language issue movements elsewhere in the United States. Geographic isolation, differences in the general population’s cultural orientation, and lack of knowledge of Hawai‘i in the US federal government, diminished the role of 20th century American policies and attitudes in determining the status of Hawaiian. Conversely, Hawai‘i policy and attitudes have recently had a strong impact on United States policy relative to the American indigenous languages. The 1990 Native American Languages Act and the 1994 Puerto Rican/Native American section of the Bilingual Education Act were developed in large part based on Hawai‘i philosophy and models. The growing indigenous immersion effort in the United States also has strong Hawaiian connections (cf. McCarty & Watahomigie, this volume).

In this paper I will examine the social–political context of Hawaiian language revitalisation in the past 20 years in relation to three key areas: official status legislation; specific educational policies and laws; and actual language use in conjunction with Hawaiian language education.

Official Status Legislation

In 1978, the state of Hawai‘i held its first constitutional convention since statehood. It was during this constitutional convention that the Hawaiian language was recognised as official and other important Hawaiian-related provisions were included in Hawai‘i’s constitution. Establishment of Hawaiian as an official language of Hawai‘i and these other Hawaiian provisions occurred within the context of the Hawaiian Renaissance when Hawaiians and other locals sought to return to indigenous cultural roots.

At that time, the state legislature, the governorship, and government were firmly controlled by the Democratic Party and often associated with the nisei, the second-generation Japanese, who constituted by far the single largest locally born ethnic group. The nisei had come of age during World War II, when the male members of their generation won honours on the battlefield, and had come back to Hawai‘i determined to correct past injustices against their parents who had not been recognised as United States citizens. The most significant achievement associated with the movement to correct injustices of the territorial period had been statehood for Hawai‘i — accomplished five years after the Democratic Party came to power in 1954. In 1978, Japanese had been the dominant ethnic group among school teachers, civil servants and all government offices for some 20 years.

Prior to the takeover of the territorial legislature by Democrats, the Republican Party — associated with a coalition of the then tiny haole population and Hawaiians — had always controlled the territory. Especially during the early days of the territory, Hawaiians had been prominent in civil service, school teaching, and other areas controlled by the Japanese in the 1970s, while haoles controlled big business and their sugar plantation base. While there were Hawaiians who participated in the Democratic Party takeover of the territory and the battle for statehood, many Hawaiians, especially older Hawaiians who had been born under the Hawaiian Kingdom, opposed statehood. In 1978, the condition of Hawaiians was perceived as having fallen considerably since the rise of the Japanese, and many young Hawaiians and other locals, including young Japanese, involved in the Hawaiian Renaissance were resentful of the nisei.

Resentment of the nisei was tempered by an even greater resentment of economic changes that had come with statehood and the influx of haoles into Hawai‘i. Where there had once been open beaches where Hawaiians and other local people fished, there were now hotels populated by haole and Japanese tourists. Where there had once been primarily locally owned small stores, there were now large chains from the continental United States and Japan. Disillusionment with the results of statehood for Hawai‘i was common among young local people of all ethnic backgrounds and those from older generations had no answers to address the problem.

It was within this sociopolitical environment, combined with the American civil rights and Vietnam War protest movements, that the Hawaiian Renaissance developed — beginning in the 1970s and reaching its peak slightly before the 1978 Constitutional Convention. By then, Hawaiian music and dance had been revitalised and were extremely popular among all ethnic groups. The voyaging canoe Hokule’a had just completed its initial voyage to French Polynesia to retrace ancient contacts between Hawai‘i and the rest of Polynesia. Hawaiian land struggles were major issues, the most prominent of which, the struggle for Kaho’olawe Island, included dramatic occupations and efforts to re-establish ancient religious traditions that had been abandoned since 1819. Prominent leadership in all of these efforts came from young Hawaiians with widespread support from other young local people.

This renaissance included elders and parents, but the majority of those of the elder and parent generations of Hawaiians were taken aback by the Hawaiian Renaissance. The land struggles in particular greatly irritated parents with their defiance of authority, civility, and parental perceptions of how Hawaiians presented themselves to others. Furthermore, the goals of returning to the land and ancient culture seemed unrealistic romanticism and idealism to many Hawaiians of the parental generation. These were very similar to the things that these parents had found unrealistic in the lives of some of their own royalist grandparents.

On the cultural front, kupuna, the grandparents of the youth of the 1970s, were very concerned with innovation occurring in dance and music and the disregard for traditional approaches to spirituality in both the indigenous pre-western and indigenous Christian traditions. Theirs had been the generation that had found the balancing of the two religious traditions difficult and, together with their own parents, had often ritualistically cut future generations off from the dangerous powers of pre-western spirituality while innovating new more westernised forms of Hawaiian music and dance at the turn of the century.

However, the one area of the Hawaiian Renaissance that elders did actively participate in was language teaching. Groups of kupuna were formed to teach the language in the schools and joined with those from the parental generation in exerting political pressure to include the teaching of Hawaiian language in the curriculum. Teaching Hawaiian was the most easily supported area of Hawaiian culture because it was used both in ancient Hawaiian culture and in Europeanised Hawaiian culture, including Hawaiian Christianity. Indeed, many Hawaiian elders claimed that the best way to learn Hawaiian was from the Hawaiian Bible. Although some activists rejected learning the Hawaiian language because of its associations with the status quo in the Hawaiian community, and while some on the other end of the spectrum rejected learning the Hawaiian language as a backward step into paganism and primitivism, Hawaiian language study was one area that was generally uncontroversial and received widespread Hawaiian community support. University of Hawai‘i enrolments in Hawaiian, which had plummeted after World War II and reached their lowest point immediately after statehood, began a tremendous climb to around 300 at the time of the Constitutional Convention. Furthermore, Hawaiian language teachers and students included the three largest ethnic backgrounds of Hawaiian, Japanese and haole.

The 1978 Constitutional Convention was seen by young Hawaiians and others involved in the Hawaiian Renaissance as an opportunity to give attention to Hawaiian political issues. They made a political decision to align themselves with the Democrats, the ‘nisei party’, rather than with the Republicans, the ‘haole party’, as previous generations of Hawaiians had. Many of these young people ran for a seat in the convention and won. The convention elected a young Hawaiian Democrat, John Waihe’e III, as their leader. The Hawaiian provisions that these young Hawaiians proposed for inclusion in the constitution were:

• establishment of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs;

• recognition of traditional and customary rights of Hawaiians;

• a mandate for the teaching of Hawaiian language, history and culture in all public schools;

• recognition of Hawaiian as an official language along with English.

The most controversial of these measures was the establishment of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs. OHA, as it has come to be known, was partially based on the model of the New Zealand Office of Maori Affairs, and was intended as the receptacle for monies due the Hawaiian people for Hawaiian Kingdom government lands now under the control of the US federal and state governments.

The establishment of Hawaiian as an official language was not controversial. Hawaiian had long been used symbolically in the state’s motto and anthem, as well as in all cultural contexts where the state presented itself to the outside world. The only concern was that the constitutional provision should not require the immediate use of Hawaiian because, essentially, no one was able to speak the language except kupuna and the tiny Niʻihau population. Wording was included to assure that official status did not require the use of Hawaiian by the state unless specified by other law: ‘English and Hawaiian shall be the official languages of Hawaii, except that Hawaiian shall be required for public acts and transactions only as provided by law’ (Article XVI. Section 4).

Even so, it is clear that the constitutional convention intended that someday it would be possible to use Hawaiian in government in Hawai‘i, both from its mandate that the Hawaiian language be taught in all public schools and from specific statements made in the convention. Note the following: first from the committee report that developed the Hawaiian education mandate; and second from a statement by John Waihe’e regarding the teaching mandate (emphasis added).

This section is intended to thereby insure the general diffusion of Hawaiian history on a wider basis, to recognise and preserve the Hawaiian culture which has contributed to, and in many ways forms the basis and foundation of, modern Hawaii, and to revive the Hawaiian language, which is essential tothe preservation and perpetuation of Hawaiian culture. 1⁄4 the State was now mandated, in addition to providing for a Hawaiian education program in the public schools and utilising community resources Establishing Hawaiian-medium Education 329 for it, to promote the study of the Hawaiian language, history and culture in all phases of state activities.

The 1978 Constitutional Convention ushered in a new era in Hawai‘i politics that was sometimes described as ‘palaka power’, palaka being a type of cloth used by immigrant and Hawaiian plantation workers. The significance of palaka power was a closer unification of young local people — the Hawai‘i Creole English speakers — in the Democratic Party. This included young Hawaiians whose parents and grandparents had been Republicans, young Japanese whose parents had initiated the Democratic control of the state, as well as those of the other ethnic derivations in Hawai‘i. The Hawaiian term palaka as well as the Hawaiian provisions of the new constitution signified a renewed identification of local people in their indigenous Hawaiian roots and the belief that features of Hawai‘i’s past, including political features such as gathering rights and recognition of two official languages, were possible within contemporary Hawai‘i as part of the United States.

John Waihe’e was elected to the legislature shortly after the convention and then was chosen to run as lieutenant governor on the Democratic ticket with George Ariyoshi, the state’s first Japanese governor. In 1986 Waihe’e was himself elected governor of Hawai‘i with his lieutenant governor being a local Filipino, Benjamin Cayetano.

Educational Policies and Laws

The 1978 constitutional provision that Hawaiian history, culture and language be taught in all public schools resulted in two changes in public schooling in Hawai‘i. First, it became a requirement that a course in the modern history of Hawai‘i (from 1778 until the present) be taken for graduation from a Hawai‘i public school. Primary areas of focus in the new text produced by the public schools are the Hawaiian Kingdom, the establishment of the plantations, the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom, the struggle for statehood, and the Hawaiian Renaissance — areas that unite local people. Because the teachers for this programme were to be the regular teachers of the public schools and because no new training was mandated for this programme, this provision was added relatively easily to the existing curriculum.

For Hawaiian language, the efforts initially made by Hawaiian elders to have the language taught in the public schools during the Hawaiian Renaissance were incorporated into the system as the ‘Kupuna Program’. A newly established administrative position in the State Department of Education in Hawaiian Studies focused primarily on coordinating the recruitment, hiring and training of kupuna for the programme. As the question of certification was a major issue in including the elders in the schools, the constitutional mandate specifically stated that: ‘The use of community expertise shall be encouraged as a suitable and essential means in furtherance of the Hawaiian education program’ (emphasis added).

Prototypes of the Kupuna Program had begun before the Constitutional Convention of 1978, and there had been other programmes mandated for the teaching of Hawaiian during the territorial period that used untrained native speakers for short periods of the day. Indeed, the fact that the haole-controlled governors and superintendents of education had not fully carried out territorial law in the teaching of Hawaiian was one of the reasons that the palaka power group had wanted a Hawaiian education programme mandated in the state constitution. Those of us most involved in Hawaiian language study, however, were sure that short lessons in colours, body parts and greetings that the kupuna were teaching would not revitalise the language, nor would the second-language courses that were becoming increasingly common in the high schools. What we saw as essential was re-establishment of the public Hawaiian-medium schools that had been the sole form of public education initially in Hawai‘i and which lasted in rural Hawaiian communities until the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom. We wanted such schools for our own children when we had them.

Unofficially, Hawaiian-medium education of a sort still existed in Hawai‘i in 1978 on the isolated island of Niʻihau. Niʻihau School, while officially English and while supplied with text books in English, served a totally Hawaiian-dominant school population with a totally Hawaiian-dominant teaching staff from the island itself. Education on Niʻihau included use of Hawaiian to explain material presented in English. Because English was used for almost no purposes on the island outside school, few residents of Niʻihau were very fluent in the spoken form of English once they had been out of school a few years. In the mid-1970s, a considerable portion of the Niʻihau population was beginning to move between Niʻihau and the neighbouring island of Kauaʻi. Frequently, Niʻihau children did not go to school when off Niʻihau due to the great cultural and linguistic differences they encountered in Kauaʻi schools.

In 1978, independently of the Constitutional Convention, the state Department of Education established a transitional bilingual education programme for Niʻihau children on Kauaʻi, hiring Paul Williams, a Hawaiian language programme graduate from the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa, and ‘Ilei Beniamina, a Niʻihau native who later attended the University of Hilo to obtain a teaching certificate and a BA in Hawaiian Studies. A partnership was then developed by the Department of Education with the private Kamehameha Schools in providing this programme.

This was the first experience of the Hawaiian-speaking community with bilingual education. Being included in bilingual education carries considerable stigma in Hawai‘i due to the high status of local Hawaiian identity and the association of bilingual education with new immigrants. Being included in bilingual education made Niʻihauan children seem foreign and thus un-Hawaiian! The programme with its transitional focus also struck Hawaiian language supporters, including Mr Williams and Ms Beniamina, as being dangerous for the preservation of the Hawaiian language amongst Niʻihauans. The unique status of Niʻihau within Hawai‘i as an island largely off-limits to outsiders is based on it being the last community in which Hawaiian language and culture are dominant for all residents. The Kauaʻi Niʻihau programme staff tried to move the programme more towards the Hawaiian-medium school model with which they were familiar from Hawaiian history and also towards the status of schooling on Niʻihau itself. However, they had little success in this due to the feeling of those in charge from the Kamehameha schools that it was not possible to educate children through Hawaiian, or at least, not to an adequate level for contemporary life in Hawai‘i and the world.

In 1982 there were several developments. First, the University of Hawai‘i system approved the use of Hawaiian as a medium of education in the newly established Hawaiian Studies BA programme at the University of Hawai‘i at Hilo. Second, university Hawaiian language programme products were having children and some, including my wife, Kauanoe Kamana, and myself, were using Hawaiian as the language of the home. Third, Aotearoa/New Zealand Maori language revitalisation leaders made a significant impact by their presence in Hawai‘i. And finally, education on Niʻihau became a political issue.

In mid-1982, State Schools Superintendent Donnis Thompson made a visit to Niʻihau School and returned concerned that the educational needs of Niʻihau students were not being met. She asked the Kauaʻi District Superintendent Dr Mitsugi Nakashima to come up with a plan to change education on Niʻihau. Dr Thompson’s proposal was met with considerable concern by Dr Nakashima, who unlike her was born and raised in Hawai‘i and was thus aware of the potential reaction from the general community if Niʻihau was disturbed. There was indeed an outcry from the general population who felt that since the Department of Education had not solved the academic, linguistic (Hawai‘i Creole English) and social problems of the other islands, it should leave the innocent children of Niʻihau alone.

At that time, I offered Dr Nakashima assistance from our newly established Hawaiian Studies Department at the University of Hawai‘i at Hilo in developing a plan to establish a Hawaiian-medium programme for Niʻihau children in response to Dr Thompson’s call for change on Niʻihau. This proposal was provided further support by later discussions regarding Maori-medium education for Aotearoa/New Zealand’s closest analogy to the Niʻihau community, the Tuhoe tribe. Providing information on New Zealand Maori education to Hawai‘i public school officials was Professor Timoti Karetu, a Tuhoe and now head of Te Taura Whiri I Te Reo Maori (Maori Language Commission; see Durie; May, this volume), but in 1982–83 on sabbatical in Hawai‘i from the University of Waikato Maori language programme. At the end of 1983, the proposal to re-establish Hawaiian-medium education on Niʻihau was adopted by the State Board of Education.

Hawaiian language support was occurring at another level. In early 1983, a number of us — including university Hawaiian language teachers from different islands, and the teachers in the Niʻihau bilingual programme — established the ‘Aha Pūnana Leo. This non-profit group grew out of a desire to establish and support the Niʻihau population, and new populations of Hawaiian-speaking children centred around the children of the products of university Hawaiian language programmes. Hawaiian-medium schools for these new populations of children were needed. An Aotearoa/New Zealand connection again proved important.

In late 1982, Dr Tamati Reedy, then Director of the New Zealand Office of Maori Affairs, visited Hawai‘i and gave a speech challenging the Office of Hawaiian Affairs to fund indigenous language centres for preschool-aged children in Hawai‘i on the model of the Kohanga Reo movement initiated by his Department that very year. Dr Reedy, a product of the University of Hawai‘i, had studied Hawaiian at the University and was a good friend of those of us most seriously involved in efforts to revitalise Hawaiian. Indeed, a frequent topic when we were students was the importance of re-establishing the indigenous medium schools that once existed in the two countries. Both Dr Reedy and Professor Karetu urged us to work with the Office of Hawaiian Affairs in establishing Pūnana Leo language nests where babies and preschool-aged children would interact entirely in Hawaiian with fluent speakers such as Niʻihauans, kupuna from other communities, and university Hawaiian language programme products.

The Pūnana Leo effort and the Niʻihau efforts both ran into political problems in 1983, however, in the form of laws and policies that effectively banned the use of Hawaiian as a medium of education either in public schools (such as Niʻihau School) or private programmes seen as day care or preschools (the Pūnana Leo programme). The Pūnana Leo ran into an additional difficulty in that the expected support from the Office of Hawaiian Affairs did not materialise. This appeared to be due to a competing proposal that was orchestrated from within the Office, itself the result of mistrust by Office leadership of the university language teachers and the youth leadership in the ‘Aha Pūnana Leo.

Public school education through Hawaiian was banned by a descendant of the law that had closed all Hawaiian-medium schools in 1896. This law required instruction through the medium of English through to grade eight. The law banning the Pūnana Leo was less direct, but more insidious because it effectively banned the last remaining native speakers of Hawaiian from being teachers because they lacked, and were very unlikely ever to obtain, the proper credentials.

The state determined that Pūnana Leo centres were to be classified as either day care or preschools, both of which required college certified teachers. Exemptions were only made available to foreign-language schools and purely educational schools. The foreign-language school exemption was established to cover Japanese language after-school programmes originally taught primarily by Buddhist priests from Japan who had no college education. The sole preschool deemed to be purely educational was the preschool feeding Punahou, the missionary established private school where the elite of Honolulu sent their children. The ‘Aha Pūnana Leo was advised to sue the state by then state legislator, Benjamin Cayetano, but decided instead that it would campaign for a change in the law.

In 1986, after three years of lobbying by ‘Aha Pūnana Leo members, parents, and the Hawaiian community, the two laws were amended to allow Hawaiian-medium education in the public schools and to exempt preschool and day care programmes taught through Hawaiian from requirements relative to teacher training. The bill for the public schools focused on the needs of the Niʻihau community with lobbying led by ‘Ilei Beniamina from Niʻihau. The Pūnana Leo lobbying was done primarily by the ‘Aha Pūnana Leo board and parents. The final hearing for the bill for the Pūnana Leo took four hours of testimony which although primarily in support, also included some testimony in opposition from the preschool establishment. Testimony in opposition focused on the harm to a child’s development that being educated by untrained individuals might cause.

Passage of the 1986 legislation was a milestone in Hawaiian language revitalisation. The decision to actively lobby to change legislation, while simultaneously developing the schools, proved to be a wise one (cf. May, this volume). The initial three years of lobbying resulted in a relationship of understanding and familiarity with the Hawai‘i legislature among Pūnana Leo families and leadership that has continued until the present. Hawaiian language proponents have annually lobbied the legislature for some Hawaiian language law or provision since that time and developed strong support from politicians and the press who have followed the progress of Hawaiian language revitalisation efforts.

By the time the law was changed two Pūnana Leo had been running for two years using a combination of resource-depleting techniques to get around the law. These two schools were now totally legal. However, there still remained much to do for the simple legalisation of Hawaiian-medium education did not mean that it would necessarily be implemented. On Niʻihau, for example, passage of the Hawaiian-medium public school law allowed the community to simply leave the limelight. The Board of Education plan to teach through Hawaiian was not implemented there, but the long-standing practice of Niʻihau-raised teachers using English materials and explaining them in Hawaiian was not further disturbed. Attention regarding Hawaiian-medium public school training now turned to the students preparing to graduate from the existing Pūnana Leo schools — one in Honolulu and one in Hilo, the two largest cities in Hawai‘i.

Recent Developments

Hawai‘i is unique in the United States in having a single united public school system. Although it was now legal to provide Hawaiian-medium education, the State Board of Education and State Superintendent of Education had made no plans to actually provide such education. Parents of the Pūnana Leo O Hilo thus decided to hold their children back in the Pūnana Leo for kindergarten — a legal option in Hawai‘i but also one that indicated to the state that they would actively defy the compulsory education law for grade one should no Hawaiian-medium programme be offered the following year. Parents at the Pūnana Leo O Honolulu enrolled their children in the public schools with the result that their children were assigned to a bilingual programme with immigrant children because they entered school speaking a language other than English. This upset the parents of the Hawaiian speaking children, many of whom were themselves teachers and who knew that their children were not educationally or linguistically deficient.

That year several important political events occurred. First, 1986 was declared the Year of the Hawaiian by the Office of Hawaiian Affairs as a Hawaiian counterpart to centennial anniversaries of immigration being held during that period by various other ethnic groups. This provided extra attention to the language issue. Most important, however, was the election of a new governor, John Waihe’e — the very individual who championed the Hawaiian provisions of the 1989 Constitutional Convention. Chosen as new Superintendent of Education was Charles Toguchi, a young local Okinawan who had served as State Senate Education Chair and introducer of the bills that removed the bans on the use of Hawaiian in the Pūnana Leo and public schools. Another Senate supporter, Hawaiian Clayton Hee, later to become chair of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, arranged for a meeting with the newly appointed Superintendent Toguchi. Senator Hee assisted us in presenting a proposal that the graduates of the ‘Aha Pūnana Leo be allowed to continue their education through Hawaiian in a pilot programme in two public schools, one in Hilo and one in Honolulu. This proposal was supported by Superintendent Toguchi and also through resolutions from the 1987 legislature to the independently elected State Board of Education.

In July 1987, the State Board of Education approved the proposal to initiate public Hawaiian-medium schools as a one year pilot to be implemented in August using curriculum materials provided by the ‘Aha Pūnana Leo. These schools were to be called the Kula Kaiapuni Hawai‘i (Hawaiian Environment School) in Hawaiian and the Hawaiian Language Immersion Program in English. Children other than Pūnana Leo graduates were also allowed to enter the programme and now make up about half of all children in all sites. The programme has grown since then by annual addition of a new class at all sites and expansion to new sites usually following the establishment of new Pūnana Leo. As of the fall of 1997, there were ten Pūnana Leo sites, ten solely elementary sites, two intermediate school sites, one combined intermediate/high school site, and one comprehensive kindergarten through high school site. All sites but two are streams within English-medium schools.

From the initial approval until today, the story of the growth of these programmes has been tempered by ongoing legislative and Board of Education attention and, at times, obstruction. Issues of contention include expansion, enrolment priority for Hawaiian-speaking children, enrolment of children from outside normal school boundaries, staffing qualifications, transportation, teaching of English, use of English and Hawaiian in teaching, use of Hawaiian outside the classroom, evaluation and funding. The central philosophical difference has been between the merits of the promotion of the Hawaiian language at all costs vis-à-vis the need for educationally qualified teachers. On the one hand, there are those — primarily Pūnana Leo originating families — who see the issue as one of practitioners of the Hawaiian language, regardless of their place of residence in the state, having the right to full education in Hawaiian via staff whose first qualification is fluency in the Hawaiian language. On the other hand, there are those — primarily lower level Department of Education administrators — who do not agree that Hawaiian speakers have a right to education in Hawaiian and who even see Hawaiian fluency as a desirable rather than an essential staff qualification that comes only after meeting certification and union procedures. The differences are major and have resulted in considerable conflict and await at least some resolution in a court case filed against the Department of Education by the Office of Hawaiian Affairs.

In spite of negative actions taken by administrators in the Department of Education, many of their efforts have been blocked by families who have held illegal school boycotts, refused to comply with Department rules, forced staff to leave programmes and worked with other entities such as the ‘Aha Pūnana Leo, the Office of Hawaiian Affairs and Queen Lili’uokalani Trust to provide resources when the Department has delayed or refused. The struggle to escape the negative influences of the Department of Education’s bureaucracy has been most successful in the case of the Niʻihau community on Kauaʻi and also in the case of Nawahiokalani‘opu‘u Intermediate and High School in Hilo.

Through a school boycott in 1993, Niʻihauans were able to establish a public school programme called Ke Kula Niʻihau O Kekaha that is outside the Hawaiian Immersion Program and serves Niʻihauans temporarily on Kauaʻi or those residing there more permanently. Nawahiokalani‘opu‘u School is located on property purchased for the ‘Aha Pūnana Leo by the Office of Hawaiian Affairs but its programmes are taught in conjunction with the state. Recently, Nawahiokalani‘opu‘u School was incorporated into the University of Hawai‘i at Hilo as the laboratory school of Ka Haka ‘Ula O Ke‘elikolani College of Hawaiian Language. A provision of the College allows other Hawaiian-medium schools to be included in the laboratory school which could allow other schools to be included in the benefits of the College. There are plans underway to follow the Nawahiokalani‘opu‘u model with Ke Kula Niʻihau O Kekaha as well.

At the Department of Education policy making level, parents have been able to get the Hawaiian Immersion Program to be approved through high school, to have English restricted to a single one-hour English language arts class beginning in fifth grade which may be taught through the medium of Hawaiian, to obtain Anuenue School on O‘ahu as a separate site, and to fight down every significant attempt to restrict children from enrolling or from continuing their education through Hawaiian. On the other hand, the Department has weakened the programme in terms of Hawaiian use by its hiring policies and the policies of individual principals at the various sites regarding promoting use of Hawaiian outside the classroom.

Besides the landmark 1987 entrance into the public school system, there have been several other laws that have established new contexts in which to strengthen the position of the Hawaiian language revitalisation effort. In 1990, the Hawai‘i State legislature established the Hale Kuamo’o Hawaiian Language Centre at the University of Hawai‘i at Hilo. This centre produces curriculum, does outreach to Hawaiian-medium schools using computers and other methods, trains teachers, develops contemporary lexicon, researches the language, and works with other indigenous peoples. In 1997 the Hawai‘i State Legislature established Ka Haka ‘Ula O Ke‘elikolani College of Hawaiian Language around the Hale Kuamo’o and Hawaiian Studies Department to carry on their current functions and also develop several new ones, including a general liberal college education programme through the medium of Hawaiian, a graduate programme in Hawaiian language and literature, a Hawaiian-medium laboratory school using Nawahiokalani‘opu‘u School, and a Hawaiian-medium teacher education programme.

The overall effect of the various Hawaiian language programmes established by law has been very significant if only to greatly increase the number of people who can speak Hawaiian and the involvement of Hawaiians in the public school system. But these have not been the only effects. The decline of Hawaiian has been considerably slowed if not halted in the Niʻihau community. Furthermore, against great odds and albeit still at a rudimentary level, a new population that speaks Hawaiian as its dominant language, at least in some circumstances, has been created and is growing.

Correspondence

Any correspondence should be directed to Dr William H. Wilson, Ka Haka ‘Ula O Ke‘elikolani College of Hawaiian Language, University of Hawai‘i at Hilo, 200 W. Kawili, Hilo, Hawai‘i 96720, USA (pila_w@leoki.uhh.hawaii.edu).