Native Hawaiian Education

La apuesta del trabajo de traducción de los textos que conforman este libro, tal vez sea provechoso conocer la riqueza de los contextos insulares del Pacífico, por más diversos que sean respecto a los casos que conoce mejor el lector, puesto que ofrecen un recorrido para repensar otros casos con los cuales finalmente tienen también muchos puntos en común.

Al igual que en otros contextos nacionales, el proyecto de una enseñanza “diferente” para los niños indígenas, solo puede construirse paralelamente a la enseñanza tal cual está pensada por y para los no indígenas. Pero incluso el proyecto es defensivo, porque se constata una fuerte homología estructural entre la ideología escolar dominante y la contra-ideología sostenida por los movimientos soberanistas. Para una observadora externa como yo, parece evidente que esquemas fundamentales comunes señalan los límites de lo imaginable y de lo inimaginable en materia de reflexión sobre lo “escolar”, situación que se explica por la gran proximidad intelectual –vinculada a su propia formación “escolar”– entre pedagogos indígenas que se encuentran en el origen de las reformas y los partidarios del “sistema” vigente.

The Hawaiian kingdom, prior to the illegal overthrow of its monarchy (1893) and the subsequent English-only Law (1896), had boasted a 91-95% literacy rate. Within that learning environment learners had a clear sense of purpose because Hawaiians had a firm grasp of who they were, where they were, and what they had to contribute. Since the English-only Law and US annexation of Hawai‘i (1898), however, the settler colonialschool system has maintained levels of cultural dissonance that have manifested as inequitable student outcomes for Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders (NHPI) across multiple academic and disciplinary student indicators (i.e., proficiency, suspension rates, etc). While western law and US compulsory education severed traditional sources of knowledge production that had provided a sustainable model of a‘o (teaching and learning), the ancestors of the Native Hawaiian community were diligent about preserving the keys to their genealogical legacies within more than 120,000 pages of Hawaiian-language newspapers. This collective repository is a resource that helps the Office of Hawaian Education (OHE) rethread Hawaiian education into the tapestry of traditional sources of knowledge production to improve sustainability (cultural, intellectual, environmental, political, etc.) for all learners. OHE uses a theory of change that engages primary and secondary sources, quantitative and qualitative data, in action research that informs Why contemporary circumstances exist, What those contemporary circumstances are, Where we want Hawaiian education to go, and How we are going to get there.

In the early 1980s, the Hawaiian language had reached its low point with fewer than 50 native speakers of Hawaiian under the age of 18. Outside of the Niʻihau community, a small group of families in Honolulu and Hilo were raising their children through Hawaiian. This article shares the perspectives of three pioneering families of the Hawaiian language revitalization movement over one generation of growth, change, and transformation. Our living case study stands as a testament for other Hawaiian language families who have endured the challenges of revitalizing the Hawaiian language as the living language of the home, school, and community. The article also celebrates the legacy of the Hawaiian language movement upon the 20th-year anniversary of Hawaiian-medium education within the public sector.