Context: Indigenous Learning in Hawaii
“Schools are not natural places,” Fenwick English writes, “they are deliberate social constructions with their own set of paradoxes and contradictions within them” (English 2010). Perhaps this statement could not be any more apparent if it is applied to teaching and learning in the most remote landmass on Earth: Hawai’i. Most Americans know very little about Hawaii save a few trivial facts such as it is the 50th State in the union and a prime vacation destination. To understand the current context of schooling in Hawaii it is imperative to dive deeper into the historical precedents of Western colonization and the devastation of hegemony and cultural genocide nearly drove the indigenous population to extinction.
Prior to Western contact in 1778, the population of Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiians) is estimated to have been close to one million across the island chain. In just a few short decades that number declined by 84% (Goo, 2015). This story parallels much of the history of the indigenous people and white colonization throughout the world. The Western doctrine of discovery and manifest destiny followed similar trajectories in the Pacific, with the now well-documented patterns of genocide, theft, and commodification of indigenous lands. If death was not the direct result of colonization, its byproducts generally included the loss of indigenous language and forced assimilation into the dominant culture via religious indoctrination and schooling.
Native Hawaiians quickly became a minority in their homeland. As more missionaries and fortune seekers came, they brought with them laborers to work on sugar plantations: Japanese, Filipino, Portuguese, Puerto Rican, and Chinese. Hawaiians and non-white immigrants suffered much discrimination as the islands were subsequently annexed and eventually made an American State. For generations, Western education deprived Pidgin speaking learners of linguistic agency and displaced them from their cultural learning context.
These injustices continue to this day, but since the 1970’s there has been a Hawaiian cultural renaissance which has slowly brought indigenous issues to the fore in the educational system. Some educational reforms include the introduction of Hawaiian language and culture courses in public schools. Charter schools have also been created to address the cultural needs of students. These include "immersion schools" in which all instruction is delivered in the Hawaiian language and "culture-focused" schools which are mostly taught in English but seek to be culturally relevant, responsive, and sustaining. There have also been reform efforts in public schools. HĀ Nā Hopena A‘o is a pilot program by the Hawaii DOE which has been developing a framework for Hawaiian Culture-Based Education (HCBE). The program is better known as “HĀ” which means “breath” in the Hawaiian language.
I should also mention here that in 1887, a private Hawaiian school system was established called Kamehameha Schools Bishop Estate (KSBE). Originally founded as a school for Native Hawaiian boys, KSBE now has three K-12 schools on the islands and an estimated endowment of $10 billion dollars. The original structure of Kamehameha Schools was based on a European-American model of education, but it has also played a significant role in some of the cultural reforms since the 1970's. Several of the works and resources I consulted for this project are by scholars from KSBE.
We now turn to the specific context from which I developed this project idea and the particular school that I conducted the study.
Kamaile Academy - Wai'anae, O'ahu
Wai’anae is a coastal town nestled between the mountains and exotic white sand beaches on the west side of the island. This community is described by one local novelist as “the last hold out of pure-blooded Hawaiians” (Davenport, 2006, p. 4) who comprise nearly 70% of the area’s population. Whites make up less than 10% of the region.
Across the street from the school sits Pu’uhonua o Waianae, Hawaii's largest homeless encampment. Some of my students came from this camp, and many others were living in slightly better conditions. It is generally not a place for tourists as it has historically been understood to be a hostile area for outsiders. People spend much of their time outdoors fishing, pig hunting, and navigating their existence between the old ways and modern life. Schools on this coast are among the lowest-performing in the nation and Hawaiians have been alienated from mainland forms of education. Several other marginalized ethnic groups, mostly descendants of workers from the plantation period, also represent a sizable portion of the student population. Most students speak Hawaiian Creole (often referred to as Pidgin). Other home languages include: Tagalog, Ilocano, Samoan, Japanese, Chinese, Spanish, Marshallese, and Chuukese.
Kamaile Academy is a K-12 culture-focused charter school where I began my research for this project in 2018. When I arrived, the high school program was still being developed and the curriculum was mostly modeled after a college prep charter school organization from the mainland called Envision Schools. During my three year tenure at Kamaile I taught English Language Arts and worked with indigenous practitioners to developed culturally relevant curriculum for grades 9-12. It was my goal to utilize my background in critical pedagogy to begin making revisions to the learning units. I had three primary goals in mind:
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To reframe learning objectives and move away from decontextualized skills-based toward critical reflection on language ideology and linguistic agency for bicultural and marginalized learners.
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The inclusion of multicultural and local indigenous literature.
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To introduce critical literary lenses in reading and writing instruction.
Ultimately, the revisions I sought to make were designed to be culturally responsive, relevant, and sustaining for my Hawaiian students and other local populations. However, at the beginning of the 2019-2020 school year, Kamaile underwent significant restructuring and I was informed that the curriculum I had been designing would not be implemented. This event influenced my decision to take a position at another school, only this time on the opposite side of the island in the wealthiest zip code in the State.
Henry J. Kaiser High School - Hawaii Kai, O'ahu
In the fall of 2019, I made the transition to Henry J. Kaiser High School in Hawaii Kai, which is part of the International Baccalaureate Organization. It is located in an upper-middle-class area with an Asian majority population of 40.2%, white 21.1%, and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islanders make up 13%. The cultural and racial composition at this school was very different from the mostly Native Hawaiian Wai'anae, but the demographics are consistent with most of the State.
“More than any other state, Hawaii stands out when it comes to its racial and ethnic diversity. The Rainbow State has never had a white majority. In fact, non-Hispanic whites, the largest group in most states, account for only 23% of the population, according to 2013 census figures” (Goo, 2013).
Although the Native Hawaiian student population at Kaiser is not the majority, most of my learners are local and cognizant that they are living on indigenous lands. To my surprise, the administration at the school was incredibly supportive of my culture-based ideas, so I began to revise my units while learning the curriculum framework for the IB program. During the first semester, I slowly integrated some of my culture-focused lesson ideas while getting to know this new student population. I learned very quickly that several Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander students in my classes were unengaged and isolated. However, these same students perked up when I greeted the class in Hawaiian with an ancestral chant.
When the time came to implement the lessons for this inquiry, the entire world came to a halt with the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic. Consequently, all teachers were forced to modify their instructional delivery to online or other distance learning methods. This situation presented significant challenges, but I decided to go forward anyway.
In the next section, I will describe my positionality as a white male teacher from the mainland working in this context.
