January 16, 2024 • 63 mins
In the first episode of season two, we are joined by Dr Kauanoe Kamana and Dr William “Pila” Wilson, who were both instrumental to the Hawaiian Language Reclamation movement. They collaborated with a courageous and amazing group of changemakers to create the ‘Aha Pūnana Leo (language nest) and Ke Kula ʻo Nāwahīokalaniʻōpuʻu (language medium school). They talk about what helped them create change and what it take to keep a language movement going. Thanks for joining us for season two!
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
They tried to colonize, tried to genocide.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Yet we're still here with the tongue unbroken. We're back
baby season two. Yet we're still here with the tongue unbroken.
Yata cut your d I am so thankful folks that
(00:46):
this is flowing into your ears. It's like a little
mini miracle in this decolonization efforts. I think that the
minds and the hearts at iHeart all got together and said,
you know what, we got to keep decolonizing folks. So
(01:06):
my name is Jane Lance Twitchell. I live on a
kwan Ai and Shlingitani also known on the maps as
Juno Alaska in southeast Alaska. A Slingett country extends into Canada.
It did before and it does now. Somebody drew a
(01:27):
border over our land. So what's away a singit? What's
up to the inland Linget People's what's up to everybody?
It has been a long year and a little bit
more since the season one ended, and I'm so thankful
(01:47):
to everybody who was on there. And one of the
things we got to do right up front, we got
to give a big acknowledgment sends so much love to
the family and friends of our deer and departed doctor
Saul Neely. Saul was the first guest on the Tongue
(02:08):
Unbroken that I was not related to. My children were
the first ones I ever interviewed. Behind the scenes. It
was The interview with the kids was wild. They were
just going bonkers. They just wasn't working. They wouldn't answer questions.
They were laughing and balking the microphone. And it was
a snowy day here and shut My partner, my love, Mariah,
(02:32):
she helped. She stepped in. She said, okay, I take
the kids outside with playing snow. Send them in one
at a time. Genius move. So they were the first
that I interviewed, and then the first that I interviewed
outside of them was Saul Neely, who tragically, tragically passed
away in October of twenty twenty two. So we've been
(02:54):
trying to figure out how does this world spin without
such a brilliant, beautiful mind and such a wonderful, kind
and funny human being. He was so much fun to
be with. He was my partner injustice and my co
conspirator and decolonizing. But you know, we keep going, We
(03:15):
keep this thing moving. We got a lot to talk
about in season two. So we're going to bring you
about sixteen different episodes every single week, and we welcome
your feedback, your thoughts, your you know, your hopes, your
dreams in terms of what could you think of in
a world that is something different than a colonized space
(03:37):
that just murders Indigenous languages. We are all about language
reclamation movements. We are all about Indigenous empowerment and the
beauty that is our people, our ancestors, our current generations,
our future generations. Are we going to kick it off
with a great conversation that I recorded in Flagstaff, Arizona.
(04:00):
We attended the Stabilizing Indigenous Languages Symposium at Northern Arizona
University in the summer of twenty twenty three. There were
some folks from the Ajibwe nations from Hawaii, from Slinge
and we got together and we talked about a plan.
And part of our plan was thinking about a national
(04:22):
Native American Language Resource Center, which is happening that is
coming through a partnership between those three entities Hawaiian folks,
Ojibwei folks, Anishinabe and Shinge peoples. And so the University
of Lasco Southeast where I work. We also represent hot
Kill the Heida language and Samalgech the Simshan language. So
(04:47):
we are all partnering to figure out how we can
better deliver plans, resources, ideas support for indigenous languages throughout
the United States of America. We got lots of love
for our folks up in Canada. We know you' all
been through it up there, like different name, same game
(05:07):
as far as colonization goes. So we are united in
our efforts to bring our languages back to places of
safety and prestige. These languages are. This is the highest
form of intellectualism in the country, and so many people
don't know, don't have access, haven't looked at it. I
haven't thought about it. But it's not all your faults.
(05:29):
I was just talking today. Yeah, I learned a lot
more about a single pilgrim than I did about my
own people going to school on our own lands. And
so as we think about what can be education, as
we think about what can be the United States of
America and Canada in these decolonized states, let's listen to
(05:50):
a conversation that I was fortunate to have with the
beautiful and brilliant couple Colinoid Kamanna Andla doctor William Wilson.
I convinced them to record an episode with me. They
were my teachers when I was getting a PhD at
kahako Ulaklikilani, the College of Hawaiian Language at the University
(06:13):
of Hawaii at Hilo, where they both work and teach.
Uh Klinoi works at the Navahe School, which is a
language medium school in Hawaii just outside of Hilo. And
so we spent the day just talking about a number
of different things. I just love to listen to them talk,
and I'm so glad to bring this to you. Season
(06:35):
two is a go. Light is green, the waters are calm.
We're starting to paddle. I don't know why. There's a
green light on the water. There's a buie. There's a
green one on the left, the red one on the right.
I remember right always. Let's go. So glad you're here. Yisakhan, Yisakhan.
(06:58):
I love you all work on this with love is
Pila KAWANOI gonna chiesh Mahalom, gonna chiese to cut you
on ConA disai Ayaki. Welcome to the Tongue Unbroken, a
podcast about language revitalization and decolonization in North America. And
(07:22):
we have with us today two absolute powerhouse people who
have changed the landscape and been part of an incredible
movement in Hawaii for the Hawaiian language, making contributions, creating systems,
creating institutions, standing up to things that are in their
(07:44):
way and just moving them out so that their children,
their kiki, their people can live with their language. So
we are joined by doctors Kawanoi Kamana and doctor William
Pila Wilson from the Ahapunanalo and the University of Hawaii
at Hilo and Navahi Medium Language School, and we'll just
(08:05):
start with introductions. So I was just wondering who are
you so that the folks can get to know you
and how did you get started in the Hawaiian language.
Speaker 3 (08:15):
Aloha mah ma yau ame pila nokeya k i anakola
haai mahal Yahui. I'm Kawanoi Kamana, and I am a
parent of two children who were raised at home in
(08:38):
the Hawaiian language and also who attended the puno Are
Hawaiian Language Language nest in Hawaii and our Hawaiian Language
Medium School in Kiao on the Big Island of Hawaii.
So I'm involved in language revitalization because way back when
(09:00):
we started the Punanalao the Ahapunanaleo in nineteen eighty three,
we recognized that there were dwindling numbers of native speakers
at the time and less than fifty children under eighteen
who were speakers of Hawaiian. So we're really concerned and
we wanted to do something about it. We didn't really
(09:23):
know what that would be, but we came to meet
some people who were driven by the same worry about
our language surviving, living and thriving from New Zealand. And
he said, this person that we know from New Zealand said,
(09:44):
you know, what we're going to do is just going
to put our babies together with our old people and
have them be together all day. Toma tiur readi, Tama
ti readi, doctor tomati readi. And we thought, well, that
sounds like something we could do, you know, just put
our young people, our babies, together with our elders, our
older speakers, and have them speak Hawaiian all day. Of course,
(10:07):
people were saying, well, what is that. Is that a
school or is that a daycare or nursery of some sort.
We thought, well, we're not thinking about what we're gonna
call it, just that we wanted to take action and
make sure that those speakers were making direct contact with
those babies and spending hours every day using our language.
(10:29):
So we were just trying to reverse the negative impact
of the overthrow of our government in eighteen ninety three
by bringing our language back. And it's been sleeping. I mean,
it was sleeping for over one hundred years. And we
thought we had language in the university system in the past,
but that wasn't bringing our language back to the children
(10:51):
as children speaking our language. So we thought we'd just
try it and do whatever we could to try and
reverse that negative of history that we had.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
Wow, and we're also joined by doctor William Pila Wilson,
And if you can introduce yourself, and then we'll get
to the Aha and how it started and how it's
interconnected to all these other parts of the language movement.
Speaker 4 (11:15):
Mahalo nui a kahua. I'll make mayana to everyone who's listening.
This is really a great honor to be able to
speak to Haney. And he has worked and he's spreading
information about language revitalization around the world. So I've been
asked to introduce myself. My name is William H. Wilson.
Speaker 5 (11:36):
Uh.
Speaker 4 (11:37):
I'm not native Hawaiian. I was born in Hawaii. My
parents moved to Hawaii during World War two part of
the war, and so I was born in Hawaii. And
then when I was ten years old, my father decided
to move us to live in Europe the work he
was creating a business there. And that's how I got
(11:58):
interested in the Hawaii language, because in Europe people speak
all these languages and they where are you from and where?
Children said, Oh, We're from Hawaii, and so they'd say,
what language do you speak? And Hawaii is kind of
a famous place, and then it does have an identity
that's deeply rooted in the native Hawaiian language culture, but
(12:20):
nobody really spoke it except for old people. And Native
Hawaiians were a significant minority in Hawaii, but they were
not the majority. And so I thought, how come I
don't know the Hawaiian language? And that was something that
kind of stirred within me. And we kept moving different
(12:41):
places and I kept learning more languages, and then we
came back to Hawaii when I was a senior in
high school, I started going to night school as kind
of a hobby, and as COLINOI mentioned, Hawaiian was offered
at the university, but it was not a very gong course,
(13:02):
and so I enrolled and while I was trying to
major in biology, and so I met Colinois through going
to those classes, and we kind of became close and
came to this idea that maybe we would try to
do something about the loss of the Hawaiian language. So
(13:24):
that's basically, in a nutshell, how I got involved. The
problem that we had is how do we actually learn Hawaiian,
and then after we learn it, what do we do
about spreading it? Because as Cohen I said, the university
was not that successful. We actually had four years of
Hawaiian and my last semester of fourth year we got
(13:45):
a new teacher and he's a language of idalization. He
was a young person like Kimura, and I think it
was the first second language speaker who really learned to
speak Hawaiian. He's Hawaiian. His grandparents, even his mother could
speak Hawaiian, but he didn't grow up speaking Hawaiian. And
then he taught himself by interacting with elders. So when
(14:10):
he came to our class, he played a tape of
someone actually speaking Hawaii and none of us, our little
class of four students, couldn't understand a word. And we
had been reading it. It's written, there's a lot of
written Hawaiian, and we had a certain book that had
Hawaiian on one side, in English on another Hawaiian literature.
(14:31):
So we read it and sort of translated before Larry
came and he expected us to actually be able to
understand and speak it. It was a different It was
kind of taught like Latin, I guess. So one of
the things that Larry did was he started this Hawaiian
language radio talk show with Elders and Coheno and I
(14:53):
both helped Larry with that program, and that's how we
started getting fluent with Hawaiian.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
I was in Fairbanks and this was before I met
you wonderful folks, and I had a couple of friends. Well,
one was a teacher and she was British, and so
she's had a British accent. She was from England, and
then when she would talk to her children, she would
(15:21):
talk to them in French. And I asked her one time,
I said, I thought you're from England, why do you
speak French? And she said, well, my mother was French,
and so I grew up in England. But my mother
was French and I always spoke to her in French,
and she spoke to me in French, and so to
keep my memory of her alive, I only speak to
my children in French. And I was really interested in that.
(15:43):
We had another friend who was from Uruguay and did
the same thing with Spanish with her child. So as
my wife and I were talking about having children, I said,
what if we did like a one parent, one language
model where I spoke only in cling It and you
could speak in English, and then we would raise kids
that would know thing get language. Because that went we
went sixty years without having that. But you folks were
(16:05):
two parents, one language and raised children in Hawaiian, which
hadn't been happening outside of Nihaw, a small island that
had an unbroken chain of language. But outside of that,
children weren't being raised with the language. And I think
this helped perhaps give birth to the Ahao as an
(16:26):
idea which turned into a movement.
Speaker 3 (16:28):
So could you talk about that, well, I think in
my childhood, both my parents were born in nineteen eleven.
My father was pure Hawaiian and my mother had a
quarter of English, and so they both spoke to me
in English and so, and that's how it really was,
because the English was the language, you know, to use.
(16:51):
So they used a lot of words with my family,
my aunties and uncle's words phrases in Hawaiian. So I
was raised that way with all my cousins. And so
in growing up and actually meeting Larry pe Law and
going to the university, we were learning language as a
second language, our Hawaiian language as a second language.
Speaker 5 (17:12):
And so.
Speaker 3 (17:14):
In the course of time and meeting these native speakers
and then felt the urgency that I mentioned before that
we needed to do something about it. But both Pela
and I realized that we had to begin speaking ourselves
because we were second language learners, you know, and those
native speakers were very, very positive and encouraging all the time.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
You know.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
We would of course have formal sessions, we'd have the
radio show and everything, but then we'd get together and
have parties and eat and laugh and sing. So we
were involved in language in that way at that time.
So we decided, well, we have to get ahead start
you know, before we have our children, and that was
(17:58):
a challenge, you know, to actually discipline yourselves to use
only Hawaiian at that time, and it took some time
and some patience perseverance, you know, and we managed to
do that. So when we had our son, Jui Lao,
at the time, we were relatively ready to just be
(18:20):
using Hawaiian between the two of us, and nobody else
was doing that outside of the nie How Island community
that is known for using Hawaiian exclusively in the families
how families. So outside of that context, people were not
(18:40):
using Hawaiian in the way that we were doing it
at home, and so it was important that we do
that in our own family because we have to start
with ourselves, you know, if we think it's something important,
we can't help other people it's important, and we're not
practicing the language in a real way, in a real way.
(19:01):
It wasn't a theory or anything. It was something we're
actually doing and struggling with it, you know. And so
if you struggle through something, you become quite knowledgeable about
about how to overcome difficult things. And then also you
experienced the joy of seeing and hearing the language come
(19:24):
through your children, you know, the baby. So so as
our son was getting older, you know, as an infant
and beginning to actually say some words, and we're recording
everything because we were excited about that too. We thought, well,
now this child is growing to grow up and get
(19:46):
ready to go to school. So we decided, well you can.
And we also knew because we knew how other a second,
people who were speaking other languages were using language at home.
They could speak to the their parents in the language
the language would speak, the parents would speak to them
in the language, but then they'd go with their friends
and then they'd use English, so their friends would be
(20:09):
using English, and eventually they would just be using English.
So we had to come up with a way to
have Hawain speaking friends for our children. So we're with
people who were using language. We're teaching language at the time,
attending university at the time, and and found a connection
with a small group of people. Larry Kimura was one
(20:33):
elab Beniamina from the community, Phila, myself, Poku Lani Cleveland.
Those were the key people and some other of our
friends who were seeing the same vision, you know as
we had and decided That's how we decided that we
(20:53):
would create what we called now the ahpun Aleo and
and then coming in contact with doctor Tmati Redi, so
we incorporated and said, well, okay, we need to make
a business. We didn't know anything about preschools. That was
kind of just a detail, you know, And I mean
(21:14):
long story short. We stayed to that mission aola colahova,
the Hawaiian language shall live and whatever it takes to
make that happen and grow together with other families, our
children collectively, and have it grow over time. So that
was for this year forty years ago, nineteen eighty three.
(21:38):
So this is a special year for us. And when
we look back, we can see that a lot of
those original lessons that we learned at that time about
ourselves learning our language as second language learners and also
as parents, raising children and growing them through the language
up into high school and even into the university system,
(22:00):
has really made a big impact on the life of
our language.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
O hallo. So one of the things I was thinking
about all you folks were talking was Larry Kimura. You
folks have brought him up a couple of times. We
stayed it with with Larry and visit with Larry. And
when I first met Larry Kimura. I sent my email.
I said, Larry, the thing of languages in trouble, what
do we do? What should we tell us what to do?
(22:29):
And he wrote back and he said, I don't know.
I don't want to tell you what to do. And
it was very polite, you know, because he didn't know us.
And then once we really got to know Larry and
went through the wonderful program at KLANI, we brought him
to Juno and once we got to know him, we said, Larry,
this is what we're gonna do. He said, don't do that.
Speaker 6 (22:48):
It's not going to work.
Speaker 3 (22:49):
Right.
Speaker 2 (22:49):
So then then we sort of got the the the
nuts and bolts discussion about what it's going to take.
But I remember in that meeting we said, well, we're
not ready because we don't have curriculum, and we're not
ready because we don't know what a daycare is, and
we're not ready because you know, we always had these reasons.
And he said one of the things that he did
I think that really helped us get going with our
(23:10):
language nest was you need to create a home with
the language. Is the prime with the primary language is
your language, that's your primary focus. Don't think about money,
don't think about curriculum, don't think about all these things,
because that's just going to distract you from what you
really need to do, which is to just get started.
So how did you folks get started?
Speaker 4 (23:30):
Well, interesting, you bring up Larry's name. So he was
the president of our apuna. We got together and said, Larry,
you got to be the president because he's the older
one and our teacher. So yes. But part of that
thing of back and forth of no, you can't do this, oh, yes,
you gotta do this. It's part of how we grew.
And it's good to hear the negative and the positive
(23:52):
together because you don't want to just have one the
negative you're not going to do anything, and if it's
all positive, you're going to jump off the cliffs. So
it's good to have the back and forth. But with
Pouna and Alio has commonly said, we were speaking Hawaiian
to our two children, and if we didn't do something
(24:14):
right away, our children would have missed out, and we've
had other cases where that happened. So we had to
make use of them. They were the only Hawaiian speaking
children on our whole island, and the Nihoo community, which
was pretty remote. They didn't have regular way of transportation
from their little island. They only had two hundred people there,
so that's why they kept the language because they were
(24:34):
so remote. But everybody else was why is very heavily populated.
And so anyway, we started, and exactly what you said was,
we decided that it's not about really education, it's about
recreating a community, recreating a home. And we had elders
(24:55):
and some of them are raised like ten twelve kids,
so weird. They know how to care for kids, they
know how to do it, and we didn't want just
the language. They wanted the way they did things, their values,
their way of raising children. And for me, I'm not
Hawaiian at all, and I've been around Hawaiian's. I even
learned to speak Hawaiian, but it's really different in the
(25:18):
family type of a situation. And COLINOI had, I mean,
she's very Hawaiian upbringing and both her parents could speak Awaian,
all hers aunties they could all speak Hawaiian, but they didn't.
They only they were used to using Hawaiian with their
previous generation that was basically monolingual. But anyway, so we
started the schools, and we had elders who could speak
(25:40):
Hawaiian and there were like two generations above us, and
we just kind of followed what they did. And however,
they did have academic thoughts about how to do things
and learning and but the main thing was to just
be Hawaiian. We wanted them to be Hawaiian. So we
(26:02):
had parents bring in fish, you know, and go and
get things that they did when the elders did, but
bring them into them and bring them to their children.
And also the way they were, you know, disciplined or whatever,
how they got the children to do things and it
(26:23):
was very, i would say, quite different from my upbringing.
So part of my challenge was although I could speak
the language, I couldn't be the Hawaiian and we wanted
our children to be Hawaiian in that sense. So one
(26:44):
big challenge was that it was illegal. So then you
might think, wow, that's pretty heavy. It wasn't totally illegal.
They had they decided that we were daycare and you
had to have life teachers unless you were doing certain things.
So they said sports, dance or foreign languages. But the
(27:08):
state offices decided, why wasn't foreign and so therefore the
teachers had to have all these training like in uh,
what'd you call community college? Two years certificate in early education.
And the elders who speake spoke Hawaiian, and they were
(27:29):
the ones who didn't go to school. They were you know,
some of them gone fifth grade, eighth grade, but there
hadn't gone to college as much less study for early
childhood education. So Colin I had to take off. We
were teaching at the university. He had to take off
and get some training. And she served as kind of
the person. We had two sites, so she'd fly back
(27:49):
and forth. And we had people in the state office
who were kind of sympathetic to us, even though we
were technically illegal. They didn't really hammered down on us.
And then we went to the legislature to change the law.
It took us three years. It changed the early education
or childcare law. And also it was illegal completely to
(28:12):
use Hawaiian as a medium of education in the schools.
And this went back to eighteen overthrow that con I mentioned.
Eighteen ninety three, the US Marines came ashore and they
overthrew the Hawaiian Kingdom, and then they put in a
temporary government and then they created ab they created a republic,
(28:34):
they kept trying to get us to annex and there's
all kinds of things going on. But during that period,
which was about eighteen ninety eight Hawaii was annexed. That
was kind of a long period, like three from eighty
five years, Hawaiian was all the public schools. Hawaiian used
(28:55):
to be an medium of education in public education was
made illegal and it was copying what was done in
the rest of regular United States. And then when Hawaii
was annexed, that was made part of the rule and
all through the territorial period. So it was during that
time that Hawaiian started to disappear. And the elders who
(29:17):
spoke Hawaiian were in general born between before nineteen twenty.
They used it as a pure language what they spoke
among themselves. Those people those born after that, there were
some who were raised by grandparents who could speak to
their grandparents, but they always spoke to their own peers
in the local form of English, which people call pigeon
(29:38):
in Hawaii or Hawaii Creole English, and so they could
speak Hawaiian, but they didn't use it among themselves or
with their own children. So we got the ones who
were born before that to come into schools.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
We're going to take a little break and we'll come
back and we'll talk about doing the work, what's needed
to create change at the local level, at the regional
and state level, and at the federal level, and the
types of things that you folks have been up to
lately and what you might be up too. Soon. We'll
be right back.
Speaker 6 (30:11):
What's happening the baby. This colonization shit got you down?
You go, I get on this dead colonization group.
Speaker 2 (30:22):
It's time relaying with revitalization all across North America, the land.
Speaker 6 (30:27):
Of the language coming back into the hands.
Speaker 5 (30:30):
Of future generations where it all blows, rise up and
have their voices be heard.
Speaker 6 (30:36):
Defeat all the colonial forces that try to hold you down,
and we're back.
Speaker 2 (30:52):
Kawin No. One of the things I've always been impressed
with is when you respond to people about what's needed
and what does it take and how did you find
a way to do it? And I was thinking of
this speech I saw by a Maudi scholar named Mawana
Jackson where he said, one of the most dangerous things
of colonization is it got us to stop believing in
ourselves and then we start thinking there needs to be
(31:15):
some external solution to some sort of problem. But colonization,
when we look at decolonization, it requires your people to
really kind of do the impossible. And so for a
lot of our people, we might think, well, I don't
know if I can do this, or I think I'm
going to break the rules if.
Speaker 3 (31:30):
I do this.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
And so from your perspective, how did you folks find
the ability to do that? And how do you think
other folks can to get themselves to say we can
do this ourselves and we could stop fighting with ourselves
and we can overcome this thing so our language lives.
Speaker 3 (31:48):
Well, that's a big question, Kadin, that's a big question.
But just kind of being practical and simple about responding.
I think that we need to trust the way that
we were raised to trust it and to actually see
colonization as kind of a side issue and not pay
(32:12):
so much attention to that even that word, you know,
and what that means, because it will distract you from
what you're really supposed to be focusing in on, which
is the olova in our case we're talking about here,
and the Hawaiian culture and the language and how it
is experienced lived as a real and valuable part of
(32:37):
our past, our present, and our future.
Speaker 5 (32:42):
And so.
Speaker 3 (32:44):
When we work with each other, because people, whenever you
have people, you have problems. So we want to utilize
our traditional ways of or getting back to what is
what is correct, what is right, right way to be.
And so if we look at our own people and
(33:04):
our own ways that have been passed on over the
years and practice those ways in contemporary society today and
not think of it as oh, that's the way it
was before, or the Hawaiians were that kind of thinking
(33:25):
was pretty much the way for a long long time.
And so in bringing our language and our children together,
and our elders and our children together, our coupona, the
children show us and remind us of where we are
and where we're going. It's always an inspiration to hear
(33:46):
their voices and to see them and to look at them.
And so when we are faced with problems that's going
to happen all the time. The ability to remember that,
remember and recall as we work together and to acknowledge
each other's strengths, because we cannot be doing this alone
(34:07):
as individuals. I'm just thinking about individuals is very foreign.
But because individuals are part of a collective or an
ohana a family, and families have problems, you know, and
some of them are pretty terrible, you know, living together.
And so when we understand and take care of each other,
(34:32):
even in the most dismal times difficulties, we know that
living together in peace or keeping Maluhia peace is at work.
It is not something that just happens organically. It needs attention,
It needs aloha and care. And so if we see
(34:53):
each other as contributing to the greater good, then we're
going to listen and we're going to to want to
care for each other's strengths and have everybody just kind
of understand, yes, I am part of us moving forward.
Yes I am different from this other person. But I
(35:14):
can contribute and I will contribute, and if I'm asked
to help in a particular way, I want to say yes,
I can help in that way because I understand that
I have something that other people do not have, you know,
and not to compete, Oh, I know more than you
or your grandma was better at mixing poisonan you know
(35:34):
mine was better than yours, or you know, don't compete
with people that are a part of your ohana. Or
part of your group. That is the only way that
we're going to really bring our language back and bring
our culture back, bring our ways back, to not make
yourself bigger or more important than the collective mission or goal.
(35:59):
And so for then it is an intergenerational mindset in
intergenerational omission, and it really requires that we understand each
other in that way, and if we do, then we
can overcome a lot of things. And for us with
(36:21):
the Punana Leo, we've had a lot of obstacles and
we just see them as just one and then we
move on to the next one and move on to
the next one. Are using each other's strengths in that way.
Speaker 2 (36:36):
Mahallo. So we are recording this in Flagstaff, Arizona. We
were invited down here for the Stabilizing Indigenous Languages Symposium
and a Native American Education conference at Northern Arizona University.
And one of the things that I noticed and I
always notice when I I have the wonderful opportunity to
(36:56):
hang out with COLINOI and Pila, is it's work work
all the time, Like you know, go get a good meal,
visit with each other, have fun. But then there's a
lot of strategy sessions, like we got to get together
and we got to go get this funding, we got
to go create this change, we got to go. It's
just always trying to figure out what's the next thing.
And sometimes it's like you're coming in and everything's on
(37:20):
fire or you know, and so like where do you start?
You know, because I know in a lot of our
time talking we talk about you got to create changes
at the individual level and families, and you got to
create changes within the community and the state, and you've
got to create changes within the state and the federal government.
So these sort of that as I think we called
it the micro, the maso, and the macro, which I
(37:43):
like to say the little cup of coffee, the medium
cup of coffee, and the big cup of coffee. But
like for you and from your perspective, how do you
know when to do the work at which spot and
how do you shift your focus? Because you guys have
an interconnected system what we call a P twenty system,
which means preschool all the way to a PhD, the
(38:05):
whole thing in Hawaiian. But sometimes that means you've got
to go create structural systemic changes outside of your area.
And so how do you do it.
Speaker 4 (38:14):
Yeah, that's a good question. But I also want to
go back to what Colnoi says about the people, and
it's important to start with a small group of people
that are really dedicated rather than their big group, and
that's how you show the rest of the people that
it can be done. And then they start joining in
at different levels and they're doing other initiatives, maybe not
(38:37):
the same one you're doing, but it all adds up.
You can't think that you're one way is the best way,
and especially one way that's happening in a particular place
is the best way for everybody in every place. Every
place is different in every community, and individuals are different.
But to bring people together is the trick for me.
(39:02):
Because Corona is so good and she's just her upbringing.
She knows how to be a good Hawaiian person and
move forward. But then you've got to have a place
to be a good Hawaiian person. And I think in
Hawaii we began with the university system. Again, I said,
(39:22):
it wasn't creating second language beacause figuring out how to
do that, and the way we figured it out to
do it was why don't we speak Hawaiian like they
did before in the eighteen hundreds in classrooms and as
I saw in Europe there, I mean Germany, they actually
go to school in German. The big surprise I discovered,
So how do we get to do that? And you
(39:47):
also have to be able to have some kind of
a show the irony or the strangeness of the current situation.
So where we really began to make a difference was
before the Punaa. It happened and we graduated, were working
on the radio program, and then we got married and
I was like, oh, we got to make a living.
(40:07):
What are we going to do? I started to go
do little things and an opportunity came up at the
University of Hawaii Hilo, where the community wanted to have
Hawaiian Hawaiian Studies BA. And there was a lot of
pressure and there is nobody that the university, but they
(40:27):
already had an elder and Anti Edith can Accoli. She
was really wonderful, she was doing a great job. She
only went to eighth grade and she was actually in
the tenure track and she figured that she would be
kicked out because she hadn't gone any further, and the
university came to talk to us in Honolulu where we lived,
and they said could you come, and we were really
(40:51):
leary of it, and so we talked to Anti Edith
and said, well they run us to come, what do
you think And she said, well, we need some teachers.
We want to make this program. They want somebody with
some sort of degree. So we had mays at the time.
So if we go, let's ask for something, not just
(41:14):
you all agree, you can hire me. I'll do your thing.
So the two things that we came up Anti Edith
and I had to talk and came up with Number
one was that the classes would be taught through Hawaiian
and she believed that too. And then the other one
was that we have our own little department because we
(41:36):
were in foreign languages and also at uah Manoir was
like that and foreign languages controlled everything, and Hawaiians had
all the students, had lots of students, but they were
all we did like no thing. They had no decision making,
and so that what became the thing, and the university
accepted it because they were desperate. They're getting all this
(41:56):
pressure from the community. So that was the first thing
we really saw and we moved into that, and then
the pun on a leo, And then you see how
come foreign languages can hire any native speaker but Hawaiian cannot.
There's a big irony. And bring that before the legislature,
but they don't say yes the very first time you
(42:18):
bring it up. We had to go for three years.
Same thing. How come Hawaiian's illegal in the schools and
we have all these winean sing and everything to the tourists,
and yet we make it illegal in the schools for
their own children. You know, they're giving all this Hawaiian
stuff to the outsiders, but nothing for the true people themselves.
So once you see the irony, then you got to
(42:39):
kind of press the button there and don't give up.
And when you have people like Colinoi and the elders
who are all working together, they can go and show
up with the elders and the children. It's really hard
to Oh, we want to get rid of these kids.
We want to not mistreat these older people. We're doing
(43:01):
volunteering and all that. Again, the volunteer part is you
cannot expect the government to do things. If you're going
to say do this for us, you got in trouble
because they're going to do it the wrong way. So
if they say open the door and then say we
will do this, so you have to sacrifice to show
(43:21):
them and then maybe later on get resources from them.
But they have to start from zero and using your
own strength. And that's the best strength, that strength of
the people that con I said, the whine is raised
doing things together rather than following the rules from the
(43:42):
as your podcast about colonization, it's going to follow the
colonizer's way of doing things, even to their own people.
So we moved like that, and every time we'd hit
some kind of a little bump, then the bump showed
us this is the thing that needs to be changed.
(44:03):
And so now that was one of those bumps when
we went to the state legislature to change Hawaiian make
it legal again, and one of the leading legislators said,
we're going to pass this law. We're not against Hawaiian
or anything, you know, but it's a federal government. They
(44:23):
came to Hawaii and they closed down Hawaiian, they banned
Hawaiian in the schools. It wasn't us. We're the people
from here, we're not against it, but the federal government
will come in and close us down, so we passed it,
but they're going to come in. So they said, oh, oh,
now we're going to go to the federal government, and
(44:44):
fortunately we were. We had a senator who was supportive,
Senator Daniel Inoya. He was Japanese but his mother had
been raised by a Hawaiian family. She was an orphan
and she always told her son, you have to do
something back for the Hawaiian people who took care of
me when I was the baby on orphan baby. So
(45:05):
we talked to him and he said, oh, well, I
can help, but we're only one state. There's fifty states,
and I've told that the people, the native people of
the other states are really important. You can't just ask
me to try and pass a law and go against
all these forty nine states. But said, you have to
find support with other people. And we didn't know. And
(45:28):
COLINOI was going to dance hula in Los Angeles and said,
Colnoy can't go dance. We've got plenty work, just like
you said. But she said, I will find the Indians
and she did. She found these people not far from here,
the Waalpie and fact we were just talking to people
Waldpies at the conference and about the lady who helped us.
(45:51):
It was Lucille Wadamage and Kawanoi and her Hula group
went and visited and Lucill Wadamage shared what they were
doing with their builing program. We didn't have bilingual in
a way for Wayians. And then she said, okay, there's
this conference where a bunch of tribes are getting together.
And we gradually met and and all the older people,
(46:13):
just like the Waine elders, they were working in the
schools and then the tribal offices, and they all said, yeah, yeah,
we're going to get our kids to call Congress, and
we'll call Congress. And everybody worked together. It was really wonderful,
kept calling and they finally passed this bill called the
Native American Languages Act. And so I when I recognized
(46:36):
Ophelia Sepeta she at Aldi, it's in the University of Arizona.
To organize people. We had people from Alaska. Edna MacLean
was the big pusher there, and so it seemed like
people were all you know, and that's how we seem
to get things from the grassroots. Then the trouble is
(46:57):
it's past. Now, what do you do and you got
to figure out how to make use of the law,
because we may have a law in the books and
nobody pays any attention. That's what happened to us with
our first law. The preschool was okay, but the public
schools making Hawaiian okay to be used in the school,
the state didn't open up any schools. So we opened
(47:19):
up a kindergarten with our preschool, and our preschool charges tuition,
so he said, you don't have to pay tuition. So
there was only twelve kids, not probably until five or six,
and we said, we are a public school, we don't
charge tuition, and we're doing the state's job. The state
(47:40):
is supposed to open up kindergarten, but they haven't done it,
so we're doing it, and we're creating a public were
a public school. And unfortunately, I guess he know us
kind of far from the center of power, so we
weren't closed down. And then the next year we had
a friend from the legislature who worked for the with
a Department of Education, and he took it and moved it,
and we got Dorothy Lazoor from the Mohawks to come
(48:04):
in testify that it would work, and what's passed. But
it was like a few weeks before school started, so
we had to like parents had to go fix up
the room. We had to bring on our teacher. We
were prepared though. We were going to do it, not
the state. We just needed the door to be opened.
(48:26):
So we opened doors and then go in ourselves and.
Speaker 2 (48:30):
Do the work at cheshasu yah Kawanoi, Kapila, yayekiya tea haini.
Speaker 4 (48:49):
It.
Speaker 2 (48:50):
We're just so blessed to have Kawanoi and Pila here
with us. I'm so thankful for this time we get
to spend together. We take a little break, and we
come back. I'm gonna ask him one last question, which
is we'll just all be questions here, which is what
do people need so their language can gain strength? So
we'll take a little break, we'll be right back.
Speaker 4 (49:12):
Once.
Speaker 2 (49:13):
I thought about.
Speaker 5 (49:15):
A million birds all around the world sharing their songs,
thinking about the ways they have lived and they're gonna
live and this is the way.
Speaker 6 (49:29):
Yeah, yet to see ouchin yakatu.
Speaker 2 (49:35):
Go gonna cheehohun. So around the world, we maybe have
seven thousand languages. In North America there were maybe five
(49:56):
six hundred languages and the way things are going right now,
maybe ten or twenty languages are in a safe place,
and so it takes a lot to figure out what
to do and how to do it. And you might
have doubts in your own mind like who am I
to do this? What am I going to do? I'm
just a person. And you also might have lateral violence
(50:18):
coming through your community where you start doing stuff and
someone stands up to say who you to do this
and try to kind of push you down a little bit.
So I guess as we kind of start to wrap
this thing up, this work never ends, So it's not
like your final thought on anything. But we don't know
who's out there and who's listening. They might have a
thousand speakers, or everybody in their community might speak, but
(50:41):
maybe the kids are starting to not speak, or they
might not have anybody who's spoken their language in one
hundred years and they're trying to bring it back. So
what are your thoughts for the folks who are out
there doing this work in the language, trying to keep
belief in themselves and each other in order to keep
going well.
Speaker 3 (51:00):
There are all kinds of ways to answer that that question,
but really, to see language as what we say at
kahaka ulah okay at ekulani as the binding cord of
our culture brings us together. So not to really see
ourselves as individuals, because when you look at yourself as
an individual, then you're alone, you know. So for us,
(51:23):
it's kako, it's it's the collective, it's the ohana, it's
the family, it's working together. And so if you are
working together, then you're not alone, and then you will
be encouraged, and you will encourage, you will be helped,
and you will provide help to other people. So working
(51:46):
together in that way is very important. And and also
that for each language family there are different ways of
doing that and it may be very different. I'm explaining
what we do, you know, in Hawaii, and how we
think about Hawaiian and our families, our family and our
connection to our own Hawaii, our land and our tradition
(52:07):
and our history. Our stories are molelo. So understanding language
as something that is living, it is living. It has
to be relevant to our life today. So Pila and I,
like we were born in what nineteen fifty and nineteen
fifty one, you know, so that's a long time ago,
(52:29):
you know, that's a long time ago. So when we
are working with our people of our age group or
the people after our next generation, next generation, and I'm
looking at little children, you know as well. And everybody
has their own way of understanding their own generation and
understanding their own world. The world we live in today
(52:50):
is not the one we were raised in, you know.
And so the young people who are here today, who
are in high school or in elementary or college, or
married or forty years old, fifty years old, they understand
their own generation in their own way. They have to
understand the importance of our Hawaiian language for us in
(53:12):
a contemporary way as a living language dealing with the obstacles,
the problems, the issues that we're faced with today, the
kind of relationships people have. What is true, what is
not true? What is you know on the internet? What
are we using our phones? How children are being impacted
(53:34):
by all of these things? What are the things about
our own culture and our language that can help keep
our families together, help people through struggles, And that all
comes from our own tradition. The answers are there, and
not to try and find answers somewhere else, you know.
So if we think about our language and our culture
(53:57):
as being dynamic, it moves, it's connected to a past,
it's rooted. We're not trying to be something else. And
even if times have changed and we have all this
technology and a lot of real discouraging things that happen
in the world today that we find out about not
just because we're interested, but we're just blasted with everything.
(54:21):
We have to have a way to see and understand
that through a cultural lens, through our language and our
own beliefs as a Hawaiian people. So to trust again
in that history, in our genealogy, in the past, in
(54:41):
order to be here in the present and also know
that we are really passing this on to the future
generations for our children.
Speaker 2 (54:52):
Mahalo beautiful wonderful messages from beautiful, wonderful people.
Speaker 4 (54:58):
Pela, I think you know cownoy me. I always try.
I'm always learning from her in a way. She kind
of kind of a strong person all her antis and everything.
You are like that too, So I first want to
say that what I hear heard cowanois saying is what
you are is Hawaiian already, and she said that at
(55:21):
the conference too. Nobody ever told me I was Hawaiian.
So I think what she's saying is that if you
have a group of people who have an identity as
an indigenous group, they already have an identity. Maybe the
language has been changed, there's still the people, and then
there's still maybe some words, some kind of things. Those
(55:42):
words that you have are the most precious words that exist,
not some kind of distant thing that some great ancestor had,
but what your family passed down to you is the
most important thing. You want to preserve. You don't want
to lose it. So part of our thing has always
been to protect that we already have. Then build on
that and maybe build over generations over the time. Fixed
(56:05):
come into the time, and you can also look back
and find things that some anthropologists or somebody wrote down
or whatever and bring that in. But you're bringing it
in as something new because it's new to the contemporary community.
So not to get yourself tied to something that somebody
wrote about your people one hundred years ago. So it's
basically what you already are. And then build on that.
(56:29):
So if you only have one speaker, or you only
have a few words, you get that and then you
try to maybe find family members other people. So, like
I mentioned about Nala, how there's so many other people
that I didn't name, all helping. So you learn and
you take a little something from here or a little
something from there from other people, which is the history
(56:50):
of Native people. They interact with each other, they help
each other. It's not you're an isolated thing. And then
as you're trying to build old the language back to strength,
and some people have a big lot of stuff and
some people have only a few things, but you're still
all building. And then it's not easy. And human beings
(57:13):
are imperfect. That's why there's so many languages because over
time things change. And so some of the people will
criticize you, say, oh, you speak, you don't speak exactly
like my grandmother and they can't speak they but they
heard their grammar specause somehow you don't sound like an
old lady or something. Maybe that was unkind thing to say.
(57:36):
But anyway, you'll get criticized and maybe you're not going
to be perfect. But you have scars, and those are
the scars of the language war that you brought the
language back. You survived, you went through these battles. They're
being mistreated and hurt and everything and yet you have
survived and you're moving forward. Every little inch, every little
(57:59):
scar is a kind of pride that you made it.
And so I think people shouldn't expect to jump from
here down at the very bottom where you started, to
some huge progress, because every little inch is a huge
thing to cherish. And so don't give up. Keep on going, everybody,
(58:24):
and for us, we had when we went into school,
we say, prairie dog. There's a prairie dog in the book,
and the state is requiring us to learn about prairie dogs.
We don't have prairies. We don't have prairie dogs. Where
can we find all Let's go look and see if
there's some native word for the prairie dog instead of
calling it a dog that lives in the grass, you know.
And so we gained a word from somebody, and we
(58:48):
remember that those people had that, and that's the real
people who know about the prairie dog. That might be
a silly example, but keep on going. You will succeed.
Speaker 2 (59:02):
Clinker Cheese SHUEI yeah, Johan h yeah, good Aka jakutani
aya ha ha hashtin ties. I'm so thankful for you both.
(59:29):
I love you both so much. The joy and the
things that you brought into my life I'm so thankful
for personally, and sometimes I feel like it's just a
big storm came upon us and I just washed up
on some wonderful, beautiful but different land, and then I
came into your folks' home and you just gave me
(59:49):
such wonderful food and wonderful love and advice and aloha.
And it helped us as as ling at people's as
we came back and we tried to replicate what you
for folks did. So those of you out there, if
you've never been to Hilo to see what's going on,
I highly recommend you take a close look at it.
Look at the programs in kahaka Ulo klik I Lani,
(01:00:11):
look at the Ahapo, look at Navihi. Find what these
things are. If you want to pursue your education and
get get a PhD in revitalizing indigenous and Hawaiian languages,
that's something you could do through Uhulo.
Speaker 3 (01:00:25):
I did it.
Speaker 2 (01:00:25):
I highly recommend it. If you just want to make
these connections and continue to figure out what to do,
reach out, find people. As as they said, you're not
alone and individuals don't create change. It's the movement. The
movement creates a change. Gonna cheez. Thanks for listening, folks.
You go Ejuan, have strength and courage. We'll catch you later.
(01:00:51):
WA's away, you hun. There is one episode in the books, folks.
It's wonderful to be back. It's wonderful to have you listening,
tuning in, thinking about what we can all be doing
individually collectively to be the change makers that are needed
to create a bright future for indigenous languages in North America.
(01:01:15):
Takes a village. This village is going to be rocking
with Indigenous content thoughts. You know, wherever you're at, I
hope that things are looking brighter for you, for your communities,
for your people, more lateral kindness, more love, more protection
(01:01:36):
of one another, doing the thing that's needed to create
new teachers, create new speakers, protect the speakers you have,
take over realms that were taken from your people. Take
your language new places, try new things to exist without
having to rely on a language that ad as core
(01:01:58):
kind of hates us. We're strong, we got vision, we
got heart, we got energy. Wherever you're at, I believe
in you what you're trying to do as you sit
up at night maybe think about the next step. Think
about the things you don't have yet, how you're gonna
(01:02:18):
get them, Where you're gonna get them, who's gonna make them?
The collective, the collective, the movement. When we talk about
something that's bigger than one person, bigger than a group
of people, it becomes an unstoppable force, an impenetrable fort
(01:02:38):
cut the duke solid. This has been the tongue unbroken.
The production of iHeartMedia Network and the Next Up Initiative.
Keep your eye out for new podcasts that are coming
out through the Next Up Initiative. Wonderful brilliant minds, through
the heart and energy of joel Anna Yessenia, a whole
(01:03:05):
team of people that are looking out for voices that
need to be brought to the center. You go, Awan,
have strength, encourage in all of your work and is cheesh.
Catch you next time.
They tried to colonize, tried to genocide.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Yet we're still here with the tongue unbroken. We're back
baby season two. Yet we're still here with the tongue unbroken.
Yata cut your d I am so thankful folks that
(00:46):
this is flowing into your ears. It's like a little
mini miracle in this decolonization efforts. I think that the
minds and the hearts at iHeart all got together and said,
you know what, we got to keep decolonizing folks. So
(01:06):
my name is Jane Lance Twitchell. I live on a
kwan Ai and Shlingitani also known on the maps as
Juno Alaska in southeast Alaska. A Slingett country extends into Canada.
It did before and it does now. Somebody drew a
(01:27):
border over our land. So what's away a singit? What's
up to the inland Linget People's what's up to everybody?
It has been a long year and a little bit
more since the season one ended, and I'm so thankful
(01:47):
to everybody who was on there. And one of the
things we got to do right up front, we got
to give a big acknowledgment sends so much love to
the family and friends of our deer and departed doctor
Saul Neely. Saul was the first guest on the Tongue
(02:08):
Unbroken that I was not related to. My children were
the first ones I ever interviewed. Behind the scenes. It
was The interview with the kids was wild. They were
just going bonkers. They just wasn't working. They wouldn't answer questions.
They were laughing and balking the microphone. And it was
a snowy day here and shut My partner, my love, Mariah,
(02:32):
she helped. She stepped in. She said, okay, I take
the kids outside with playing snow. Send them in one
at a time. Genius move. So they were the first
that I interviewed, and then the first that I interviewed
outside of them was Saul Neely, who tragically, tragically passed
away in October of twenty twenty two. So we've been
(02:54):
trying to figure out how does this world spin without
such a brilliant, beautiful mind and such a wonderful, kind
and funny human being. He was so much fun to
be with. He was my partner injustice and my co
conspirator and decolonizing. But you know, we keep going, We
(03:15):
keep this thing moving. We got a lot to talk
about in season two. So we're going to bring you
about sixteen different episodes every single week, and we welcome
your feedback, your thoughts, your you know, your hopes, your
dreams in terms of what could you think of in
a world that is something different than a colonized space
(03:37):
that just murders Indigenous languages. We are all about language
reclamation movements. We are all about Indigenous empowerment and the
beauty that is our people, our ancestors, our current generations,
our future generations. Are we going to kick it off
with a great conversation that I recorded in Flagstaff, Arizona.
(04:00):
We attended the Stabilizing Indigenous Languages Symposium at Northern Arizona
University in the summer of twenty twenty three. There were
some folks from the Ajibwe nations from Hawaii, from Slinge
and we got together and we talked about a plan.
And part of our plan was thinking about a national
(04:22):
Native American Language Resource Center, which is happening that is
coming through a partnership between those three entities Hawaiian folks,
Ojibwei folks, Anishinabe and Shinge peoples. And so the University
of Lasco Southeast where I work. We also represent hot
Kill the Heida language and Samalgech the Simshan language. So
(04:47):
we are all partnering to figure out how we can
better deliver plans, resources, ideas support for indigenous languages throughout
the United States of America. We got lots of love
for our folks up in Canada. We know you' all
been through it up there, like different name, same game
(05:07):
as far as colonization goes. So we are united in
our efforts to bring our languages back to places of
safety and prestige. These languages are. This is the highest
form of intellectualism in the country, and so many people
don't know, don't have access, haven't looked at it. I
haven't thought about it. But it's not all your faults.
(05:29):
I was just talking today. Yeah, I learned a lot
more about a single pilgrim than I did about my
own people going to school on our own lands. And
so as we think about what can be education, as
we think about what can be the United States of
America and Canada in these decolonized states, let's listen to
(05:50):
a conversation that I was fortunate to have with the
beautiful and brilliant couple Colinoid Kamanna Andla doctor William Wilson.
I convinced them to record an episode with me. They
were my teachers when I was getting a PhD at
kahako Ulaklikilani, the College of Hawaiian Language at the University
(06:13):
of Hawaii at Hilo, where they both work and teach.
Uh Klinoi works at the Navahe School, which is a
language medium school in Hawaii just outside of Hilo. And
so we spent the day just talking about a number
of different things. I just love to listen to them talk,
and I'm so glad to bring this to you. Season
(06:35):
two is a go. Light is green, the waters are calm.
We're starting to paddle. I don't know why. There's a
green light on the water. There's a buie. There's a
green one on the left, the red one on the right.
I remember right always. Let's go. So glad you're here. Yisakhan, Yisakhan.
(06:58):
I love you all work on this with love is
Pila KAWANOI gonna chiesh Mahalom, gonna chiese to cut you
on ConA disai Ayaki. Welcome to the Tongue Unbroken, a
podcast about language revitalization and decolonization in North America. And
(07:22):
we have with us today two absolute powerhouse people who
have changed the landscape and been part of an incredible
movement in Hawaii for the Hawaiian language, making contributions, creating systems,
creating institutions, standing up to things that are in their
(07:44):
way and just moving them out so that their children,
their kiki, their people can live with their language. So
we are joined by doctors Kawanoi Kamana and doctor William
Pila Wilson from the Ahapunanalo and the University of Hawaii
at Hilo and Navahi Medium Language School, and we'll just
(08:05):
start with introductions. So I was just wondering who are
you so that the folks can get to know you
and how did you get started in the Hawaiian language.
Speaker 3 (08:15):
Aloha mah ma yau ame pila nokeya k i anakola
haai mahal Yahui. I'm Kawanoi Kamana, and I am a
parent of two children who were raised at home in
(08:38):
the Hawaiian language and also who attended the puno Are
Hawaiian Language Language nest in Hawaii and our Hawaiian Language
Medium School in Kiao on the Big Island of Hawaii.
So I'm involved in language revitalization because way back when
(09:00):
we started the Punanalao the Ahapunanaleo in nineteen eighty three,
we recognized that there were dwindling numbers of native speakers
at the time and less than fifty children under eighteen
who were speakers of Hawaiian. So we're really concerned and
we wanted to do something about it. We didn't really
(09:23):
know what that would be, but we came to meet
some people who were driven by the same worry about
our language surviving, living and thriving from New Zealand. And
he said, this person that we know from New Zealand said,
(09:44):
you know, what we're going to do is just going
to put our babies together with our old people and
have them be together all day. Toma tiur readi, Tama
ti readi, doctor tomati readi. And we thought, well, that
sounds like something we could do, you know, just put
our young people, our babies, together with our elders, our
older speakers, and have them speak Hawaiian all day. Of course,
(10:07):
people were saying, well, what is that. Is that a
school or is that a daycare or nursery of some sort.
We thought, well, we're not thinking about what we're gonna
call it, just that we wanted to take action and
make sure that those speakers were making direct contact with
those babies and spending hours every day using our language.
(10:29):
So we were just trying to reverse the negative impact
of the overthrow of our government in eighteen ninety three
by bringing our language back. And it's been sleeping. I mean,
it was sleeping for over one hundred years. And we
thought we had language in the university system in the past,
but that wasn't bringing our language back to the children
(10:51):
as children speaking our language. So we thought we'd just
try it and do whatever we could to try and
reverse that negative of history that we had.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
Wow, and we're also joined by doctor William Pila Wilson,
And if you can introduce yourself, and then we'll get
to the Aha and how it started and how it's
interconnected to all these other parts of the language movement.
Speaker 4 (11:15):
Mahalo nui a kahua. I'll make mayana to everyone who's listening.
This is really a great honor to be able to
speak to Haney. And he has worked and he's spreading
information about language revitalization around the world. So I've been
asked to introduce myself. My name is William H. Wilson.
Speaker 5 (11:36):
Uh.
Speaker 4 (11:37):
I'm not native Hawaiian. I was born in Hawaii. My
parents moved to Hawaii during World War two part of
the war, and so I was born in Hawaii. And
then when I was ten years old, my father decided
to move us to live in Europe the work he
was creating a business there. And that's how I got
(11:58):
interested in the Hawaii language, because in Europe people speak
all these languages and they where are you from and where?
Children said, Oh, We're from Hawaii, and so they'd say,
what language do you speak? And Hawaii is kind of
a famous place, and then it does have an identity
that's deeply rooted in the native Hawaiian language culture, but
(12:20):
nobody really spoke it except for old people. And Native
Hawaiians were a significant minority in Hawaii, but they were
not the majority. And so I thought, how come I
don't know the Hawaiian language? And that was something that
kind of stirred within me. And we kept moving different
(12:41):
places and I kept learning more languages, and then we
came back to Hawaii when I was a senior in
high school, I started going to night school as kind
of a hobby, and as COLINOI mentioned, Hawaiian was offered
at the university, but it was not a very gong course,
(13:02):
and so I enrolled and while I was trying to
major in biology, and so I met Colinois through going
to those classes, and we kind of became close and
came to this idea that maybe we would try to
do something about the loss of the Hawaiian language. So
(13:24):
that's basically, in a nutshell, how I got involved. The
problem that we had is how do we actually learn Hawaiian,
and then after we learn it, what do we do
about spreading it? Because as Cohen I said, the university
was not that successful. We actually had four years of
Hawaiian and my last semester of fourth year we got
(13:45):
a new teacher and he's a language of idalization. He
was a young person like Kimura, and I think it
was the first second language speaker who really learned to
speak Hawaiian. He's Hawaiian. His grandparents, even his mother could
speak Hawaiian, but he didn't grow up speaking Hawaiian. And
then he taught himself by interacting with elders. So when
(14:10):
he came to our class, he played a tape of
someone actually speaking Hawaii and none of us, our little
class of four students, couldn't understand a word. And we
had been reading it. It's written, there's a lot of
written Hawaiian, and we had a certain book that had
Hawaiian on one side, in English on another Hawaiian literature.
(14:31):
So we read it and sort of translated before Larry
came and he expected us to actually be able to
understand and speak it. It was a different It was
kind of taught like Latin, I guess. So one of
the things that Larry did was he started this Hawaiian
language radio talk show with Elders and Coheno and I
(14:53):
both helped Larry with that program, and that's how we
started getting fluent with Hawaiian.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
I was in Fairbanks and this was before I met
you wonderful folks, and I had a couple of friends. Well,
one was a teacher and she was British, and so
she's had a British accent. She was from England, and
then when she would talk to her children, she would
(15:21):
talk to them in French. And I asked her one time,
I said, I thought you're from England, why do you
speak French? And she said, well, my mother was French,
and so I grew up in England. But my mother
was French and I always spoke to her in French,
and she spoke to me in French, and so to
keep my memory of her alive, I only speak to
my children in French. And I was really interested in that.
(15:43):
We had another friend who was from Uruguay and did
the same thing with Spanish with her child. So as
my wife and I were talking about having children, I said,
what if we did like a one parent, one language
model where I spoke only in cling It and you
could speak in English, and then we would raise kids
that would know thing get language. Because that went we
went sixty years without having that. But you folks were
(16:05):
two parents, one language and raised children in Hawaiian, which
hadn't been happening outside of Nihaw, a small island that
had an unbroken chain of language. But outside of that,
children weren't being raised with the language. And I think
this helped perhaps give birth to the Ahao as an
(16:26):
idea which turned into a movement.
Speaker 3 (16:28):
So could you talk about that, well, I think in
my childhood, both my parents were born in nineteen eleven.
My father was pure Hawaiian and my mother had a
quarter of English, and so they both spoke to me
in English and so, and that's how it really was,
because the English was the language, you know, to use.
(16:51):
So they used a lot of words with my family,
my aunties and uncle's words phrases in Hawaiian. So I
was raised that way with all my cousins. And so
in growing up and actually meeting Larry pe Law and
going to the university, we were learning language as a
second language, our Hawaiian language as a second language.
Speaker 5 (17:12):
And so.
Speaker 3 (17:14):
In the course of time and meeting these native speakers
and then felt the urgency that I mentioned before that
we needed to do something about it. But both Pela
and I realized that we had to begin speaking ourselves
because we were second language learners, you know, and those
native speakers were very, very positive and encouraging all the time.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
You know.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
We would of course have formal sessions, we'd have the
radio show and everything, but then we'd get together and
have parties and eat and laugh and sing. So we
were involved in language in that way at that time.
So we decided, well, we have to get ahead start
you know, before we have our children, and that was
(17:58):
a challenge, you know, to actually discipline yourselves to use
only Hawaiian at that time, and it took some time
and some patience perseverance, you know, and we managed to
do that. So when we had our son, Jui Lao,
at the time, we were relatively ready to just be
(18:20):
using Hawaiian between the two of us, and nobody else
was doing that outside of the nie How Island community
that is known for using Hawaiian exclusively in the families
how families. So outside of that context, people were not
(18:40):
using Hawaiian in the way that we were doing it
at home, and so it was important that we do
that in our own family because we have to start
with ourselves, you know, if we think it's something important,
we can't help other people it's important, and we're not
practicing the language in a real way, in a real way.
(19:01):
It wasn't a theory or anything. It was something we're
actually doing and struggling with it, you know. And so
if you struggle through something, you become quite knowledgeable about
about how to overcome difficult things. And then also you
experienced the joy of seeing and hearing the language come
(19:24):
through your children, you know, the baby. So so as
our son was getting older, you know, as an infant
and beginning to actually say some words, and we're recording
everything because we were excited about that too. We thought, well,
now this child is growing to grow up and get
(19:46):
ready to go to school. So we decided, well you can.
And we also knew because we knew how other a second,
people who were speaking other languages were using language at home.
They could speak to the their parents in the language
the language would speak, the parents would speak to them
in the language, but then they'd go with their friends
and then they'd use English, so their friends would be
(20:09):
using English, and eventually they would just be using English.
So we had to come up with a way to
have Hawain speaking friends for our children. So we're with
people who were using language. We're teaching language at the time,
attending university at the time, and and found a connection
with a small group of people. Larry Kimura was one
(20:33):
elab Beniamina from the community, Phila, myself, Poku Lani Cleveland.
Those were the key people and some other of our
friends who were seeing the same vision, you know as
we had and decided That's how we decided that we
(20:53):
would create what we called now the ahpun Aleo and
and then coming in contact with doctor Tmati Redi, so
we incorporated and said, well, okay, we need to make
a business. We didn't know anything about preschools. That was
kind of just a detail, you know, And I mean
(21:14):
long story short. We stayed to that mission aola colahova,
the Hawaiian language shall live and whatever it takes to
make that happen and grow together with other families, our
children collectively, and have it grow over time. So that
was for this year forty years ago, nineteen eighty three.
(21:38):
So this is a special year for us. And when
we look back, we can see that a lot of
those original lessons that we learned at that time about
ourselves learning our language as second language learners and also
as parents, raising children and growing them through the language
up into high school and even into the university system,
(22:00):
has really made a big impact on the life of
our language.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
O hallo. So one of the things I was thinking
about all you folks were talking was Larry Kimura. You
folks have brought him up a couple of times. We
stayed it with with Larry and visit with Larry. And
when I first met Larry Kimura. I sent my email.
I said, Larry, the thing of languages in trouble, what
do we do? What should we tell us what to do?
(22:29):
And he wrote back and he said, I don't know.
I don't want to tell you what to do. And
it was very polite, you know, because he didn't know us.
And then once we really got to know Larry and
went through the wonderful program at KLANI, we brought him
to Juno and once we got to know him, we said, Larry,
this is what we're gonna do. He said, don't do that.
Speaker 6 (22:48):
It's not going to work.
Speaker 3 (22:49):
Right.
Speaker 2 (22:49):
So then then we sort of got the the the
nuts and bolts discussion about what it's going to take.
But I remember in that meeting we said, well, we're
not ready because we don't have curriculum, and we're not
ready because we don't know what a daycare is, and
we're not ready because you know, we always had these reasons.
And he said one of the things that he did
I think that really helped us get going with our
(23:10):
language nest was you need to create a home with
the language. Is the prime with the primary language is
your language, that's your primary focus. Don't think about money,
don't think about curriculum, don't think about all these things,
because that's just going to distract you from what you
really need to do, which is to just get started.
So how did you folks get started?
Speaker 4 (23:30):
Well, interesting, you bring up Larry's name. So he was
the president of our apuna. We got together and said, Larry,
you got to be the president because he's the older
one and our teacher. So yes. But part of that
thing of back and forth of no, you can't do this, oh, yes,
you gotta do this. It's part of how we grew.
And it's good to hear the negative and the positive
(23:52):
together because you don't want to just have one the
negative you're not going to do anything, and if it's
all positive, you're going to jump off the cliffs. So
it's good to have the back and forth. But with
Pouna and Alio has commonly said, we were speaking Hawaiian
to our two children, and if we didn't do something
(24:14):
right away, our children would have missed out, and we've
had other cases where that happened. So we had to
make use of them. They were the only Hawaiian speaking
children on our whole island, and the Nihoo community, which
was pretty remote. They didn't have regular way of transportation
from their little island. They only had two hundred people there,
so that's why they kept the language because they were
(24:34):
so remote. But everybody else was why is very heavily populated.
And so anyway, we started, and exactly what you said was,
we decided that it's not about really education, it's about
recreating a community, recreating a home. And we had elders
(24:55):
and some of them are raised like ten twelve kids,
so weird. They know how to care for kids, they
know how to do it, and we didn't want just
the language. They wanted the way they did things, their values,
their way of raising children. And for me, I'm not
Hawaiian at all, and I've been around Hawaiian's. I even
learned to speak Hawaiian, but it's really different in the
(25:18):
family type of a situation. And COLINOI had, I mean,
she's very Hawaiian upbringing and both her parents could speak Awaian,
all hers aunties they could all speak Hawaiian, but they didn't.
They only they were used to using Hawaiian with their
previous generation that was basically monolingual. But anyway, so we
started the schools, and we had elders who could speak
(25:40):
Hawaiian and there were like two generations above us, and
we just kind of followed what they did. And however,
they did have academic thoughts about how to do things
and learning and but the main thing was to just
be Hawaiian. We wanted them to be Hawaiian. So we
(26:02):
had parents bring in fish, you know, and go and
get things that they did when the elders did, but
bring them into them and bring them to their children.
And also the way they were, you know, disciplined or whatever,
how they got the children to do things and it
(26:23):
was very, i would say, quite different from my upbringing.
So part of my challenge was although I could speak
the language, I couldn't be the Hawaiian and we wanted
our children to be Hawaiian in that sense. So one
(26:44):
big challenge was that it was illegal. So then you
might think, wow, that's pretty heavy. It wasn't totally illegal.
They had they decided that we were daycare and you
had to have life teachers unless you were doing certain things.
So they said sports, dance or foreign languages. But the
(27:08):
state offices decided, why wasn't foreign and so therefore the
teachers had to have all these training like in uh,
what'd you call community college? Two years certificate in early education.
And the elders who speake spoke Hawaiian, and they were
(27:29):
the ones who didn't go to school. They were you know,
some of them gone fifth grade, eighth grade, but there
hadn't gone to college as much less study for early
childhood education. So Colin I had to take off. We
were teaching at the university. He had to take off
and get some training. And she served as kind of
the person. We had two sites, so she'd fly back
(27:49):
and forth. And we had people in the state office
who were kind of sympathetic to us, even though we
were technically illegal. They didn't really hammered down on us.
And then we went to the legislature to change the law.
It took us three years. It changed the early education
or childcare law. And also it was illegal completely to
(28:12):
use Hawaiian as a medium of education in the schools.
And this went back to eighteen overthrow that con I mentioned.
Eighteen ninety three, the US Marines came ashore and they
overthrew the Hawaiian Kingdom, and then they put in a
temporary government and then they created ab they created a republic,
(28:34):
they kept trying to get us to annex and there's
all kinds of things going on. But during that period,
which was about eighteen ninety eight Hawaii was annexed. That
was kind of a long period, like three from eighty
five years, Hawaiian was all the public schools. Hawaiian used
(28:55):
to be an medium of education in public education was
made illegal and it was copying what was done in
the rest of regular United States. And then when Hawaii
was annexed, that was made part of the rule and
all through the territorial period. So it was during that
time that Hawaiian started to disappear. And the elders who
(29:17):
spoke Hawaiian were in general born between before nineteen twenty.
They used it as a pure language what they spoke
among themselves. Those people those born after that, there were
some who were raised by grandparents who could speak to
their grandparents, but they always spoke to their own peers
in the local form of English, which people call pigeon
(29:38):
in Hawaii or Hawaii Creole English, and so they could
speak Hawaiian, but they didn't use it among themselves or
with their own children. So we got the ones who
were born before that to come into schools.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
We're going to take a little break and we'll come
back and we'll talk about doing the work, what's needed
to create change at the local level, at the regional
and state level, and at the federal level, and the
types of things that you folks have been up to
lately and what you might be up too. Soon. We'll
be right back.
Speaker 6 (30:11):
What's happening the baby. This colonization shit got you down?
You go, I get on this dead colonization group.
Speaker 2 (30:22):
It's time relaying with revitalization all across North America, the land.
Speaker 6 (30:27):
Of the language coming back into the hands.
Speaker 5 (30:30):
Of future generations where it all blows, rise up and
have their voices be heard.
Speaker 6 (30:36):
Defeat all the colonial forces that try to hold you down,
and we're back.
Speaker 2 (30:52):
Kawin No. One of the things I've always been impressed
with is when you respond to people about what's needed
and what does it take and how did you find
a way to do it? And I was thinking of
this speech I saw by a Maudi scholar named Mawana
Jackson where he said, one of the most dangerous things
of colonization is it got us to stop believing in
ourselves and then we start thinking there needs to be
(31:15):
some external solution to some sort of problem. But colonization,
when we look at decolonization, it requires your people to
really kind of do the impossible. And so for a
lot of our people, we might think, well, I don't
know if I can do this, or I think I'm
going to break the rules if.
Speaker 3 (31:30):
I do this.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
And so from your perspective, how did you folks find
the ability to do that? And how do you think
other folks can to get themselves to say we can
do this ourselves and we could stop fighting with ourselves
and we can overcome this thing so our language lives.
Speaker 3 (31:48):
Well, that's a big question, Kadin, that's a big question.
But just kind of being practical and simple about responding.
I think that we need to trust the way that
we were raised to trust it and to actually see
colonization as kind of a side issue and not pay
(32:12):
so much attention to that even that word, you know,
and what that means, because it will distract you from
what you're really supposed to be focusing in on, which
is the olova in our case we're talking about here,
and the Hawaiian culture and the language and how it
is experienced lived as a real and valuable part of
(32:37):
our past, our present, and our future.
Speaker 5 (32:42):
And so.
Speaker 3 (32:44):
When we work with each other, because people, whenever you
have people, you have problems. So we want to utilize
our traditional ways of or getting back to what is
what is correct, what is right, right way to be.
And so if we look at our own people and
(33:04):
our own ways that have been passed on over the
years and practice those ways in contemporary society today and
not think of it as oh, that's the way it
was before, or the Hawaiians were that kind of thinking
(33:25):
was pretty much the way for a long long time.
And so in bringing our language and our children together,
and our elders and our children together, our coupona, the
children show us and remind us of where we are
and where we're going. It's always an inspiration to hear
(33:46):
their voices and to see them and to look at them.
And so when we are faced with problems that's going
to happen all the time. The ability to remember that,
remember and recall as we work together and to acknowledge
each other's strengths, because we cannot be doing this alone
(34:07):
as individuals. I'm just thinking about individuals is very foreign.
But because individuals are part of a collective or an
ohana a family, and families have problems, you know, and
some of them are pretty terrible, you know, living together.
And so when we understand and take care of each other,
(34:32):
even in the most dismal times difficulties, we know that
living together in peace or keeping Maluhia peace is at work.
It is not something that just happens organically. It needs attention,
It needs aloha and care. And so if we see
(34:53):
each other as contributing to the greater good, then we're
going to listen and we're going to to want to
care for each other's strengths and have everybody just kind
of understand, yes, I am part of us moving forward.
Yes I am different from this other person. But I
(35:14):
can contribute and I will contribute, and if I'm asked
to help in a particular way, I want to say yes,
I can help in that way because I understand that
I have something that other people do not have, you know,
and not to compete, Oh, I know more than you
or your grandma was better at mixing poisonan you know
(35:34):
mine was better than yours, or you know, don't compete
with people that are a part of your ohana. Or
part of your group. That is the only way that
we're going to really bring our language back and bring
our culture back, bring our ways back, to not make
yourself bigger or more important than the collective mission or goal.
(35:59):
And so for then it is an intergenerational mindset in
intergenerational omission, and it really requires that we understand each
other in that way, and if we do, then we
can overcome a lot of things. And for us with
(36:21):
the Punana Leo, we've had a lot of obstacles and
we just see them as just one and then we
move on to the next one and move on to
the next one. Are using each other's strengths in that way.
Speaker 2 (36:36):
Mahallo. So we are recording this in Flagstaff, Arizona. We
were invited down here for the Stabilizing Indigenous Languages Symposium
and a Native American Education conference at Northern Arizona University.
And one of the things that I noticed and I
always notice when I I have the wonderful opportunity to
(36:56):
hang out with COLINOI and Pila, is it's work work
all the time, Like you know, go get a good meal,
visit with each other, have fun. But then there's a
lot of strategy sessions, like we got to get together
and we got to go get this funding, we got
to go create this change, we got to go. It's
just always trying to figure out what's the next thing.
And sometimes it's like you're coming in and everything's on
(37:20):
fire or you know, and so like where do you start?
You know, because I know in a lot of our
time talking we talk about you got to create changes
at the individual level and families, and you got to
create changes within the community and the state, and you've
got to create changes within the state and the federal government.
So these sort of that as I think we called
it the micro, the maso, and the macro, which I
(37:43):
like to say the little cup of coffee, the medium
cup of coffee, and the big cup of coffee. But
like for you and from your perspective, how do you
know when to do the work at which spot and
how do you shift your focus? Because you guys have
an interconnected system what we call a P twenty system,
which means preschool all the way to a PhD, the
(38:05):
whole thing in Hawaiian. But sometimes that means you've got
to go create structural systemic changes outside of your area.
And so how do you do it.
Speaker 4 (38:14):
Yeah, that's a good question. But I also want to
go back to what Colnoi says about the people, and
it's important to start with a small group of people
that are really dedicated rather than their big group, and
that's how you show the rest of the people that
it can be done. And then they start joining in
at different levels and they're doing other initiatives, maybe not
(38:37):
the same one you're doing, but it all adds up.
You can't think that you're one way is the best way,
and especially one way that's happening in a particular place
is the best way for everybody in every place. Every
place is different in every community, and individuals are different.
But to bring people together is the trick for me.
(39:02):
Because Corona is so good and she's just her upbringing.
She knows how to be a good Hawaiian person and
move forward. But then you've got to have a place
to be a good Hawaiian person. And I think in
Hawaii we began with the university system. Again, I said,
(39:22):
it wasn't creating second language beacause figuring out how to
do that, and the way we figured it out to
do it was why don't we speak Hawaiian like they
did before in the eighteen hundreds in classrooms and as
I saw in Europe there, I mean Germany, they actually
go to school in German. The big surprise I discovered,
So how do we get to do that? And you
(39:47):
also have to be able to have some kind of
a show the irony or the strangeness of the current situation.
So where we really began to make a difference was
before the Punaa. It happened and we graduated, were working
on the radio program, and then we got married and
I was like, oh, we got to make a living.
(40:07):
What are we going to do? I started to go
do little things and an opportunity came up at the
University of Hawaii Hilo, where the community wanted to have
Hawaiian Hawaiian Studies BA. And there was a lot of
pressure and there is nobody that the university, but they
(40:27):
already had an elder and Anti Edith can Accoli. She
was really wonderful, she was doing a great job. She
only went to eighth grade and she was actually in
the tenure track and she figured that she would be
kicked out because she hadn't gone any further, and the
university came to talk to us in Honolulu where we lived,
and they said could you come, and we were really
(40:51):
leary of it, and so we talked to Anti Edith
and said, well they run us to come, what do
you think And she said, well, we need some teachers.
We want to make this program. They want somebody with
some sort of degree. So we had mays at the time.
So if we go, let's ask for something, not just
(41:14):
you all agree, you can hire me. I'll do your thing.
So the two things that we came up Anti Edith
and I had to talk and came up with Number
one was that the classes would be taught through Hawaiian
and she believed that too. And then the other one
was that we have our own little department because we
(41:36):
were in foreign languages and also at uah Manoir was
like that and foreign languages controlled everything, and Hawaiians had
all the students, had lots of students, but they were
all we did like no thing. They had no decision making,
and so that what became the thing, and the university
accepted it because they were desperate. They're getting all this
(41:56):
pressure from the community. So that was the first thing
we really saw and we moved into that, and then
the pun on a leo, And then you see how
come foreign languages can hire any native speaker but Hawaiian cannot.
There's a big irony. And bring that before the legislature,
but they don't say yes the very first time you
(42:18):
bring it up. We had to go for three years.
Same thing. How come Hawaiian's illegal in the schools and
we have all these winean sing and everything to the tourists,
and yet we make it illegal in the schools for
their own children. You know, they're giving all this Hawaiian
stuff to the outsiders, but nothing for the true people themselves.
So once you see the irony, then you got to
(42:39):
kind of press the button there and don't give up.
And when you have people like Colinoi and the elders
who are all working together, they can go and show
up with the elders and the children. It's really hard
to Oh, we want to get rid of these kids.
We want to not mistreat these older people. We're doing
(43:01):
volunteering and all that. Again, the volunteer part is you
cannot expect the government to do things. If you're going
to say do this for us, you got in trouble
because they're going to do it the wrong way. So
if they say open the door and then say we
will do this, so you have to sacrifice to show
(43:21):
them and then maybe later on get resources from them.
But they have to start from zero and using your
own strength. And that's the best strength, that strength of
the people that con I said, the whine is raised
doing things together rather than following the rules from the
(43:42):
as your podcast about colonization, it's going to follow the
colonizer's way of doing things, even to their own people.
So we moved like that, and every time we'd hit
some kind of a little bump, then the bump showed
us this is the thing that needs to be changed.
(44:03):
And so now that was one of those bumps when
we went to the state legislature to change Hawaiian make
it legal again, and one of the leading legislators said,
we're going to pass this law. We're not against Hawaiian
or anything, you know, but it's a federal government. They
(44:23):
came to Hawaii and they closed down Hawaiian, they banned
Hawaiian in the schools. It wasn't us. We're the people
from here, we're not against it, but the federal government
will come in and close us down, so we passed it,
but they're going to come in. So they said, oh, oh,
now we're going to go to the federal government, and
(44:44):
fortunately we were. We had a senator who was supportive,
Senator Daniel Inoya. He was Japanese but his mother had
been raised by a Hawaiian family. She was an orphan
and she always told her son, you have to do
something back for the Hawaiian people who took care of
me when I was the baby on orphan baby. So
(45:05):
we talked to him and he said, oh, well, I
can help, but we're only one state. There's fifty states,
and I've told that the people, the native people of
the other states are really important. You can't just ask
me to try and pass a law and go against
all these forty nine states. But said, you have to
find support with other people. And we didn't know. And
(45:28):
COLINOI was going to dance hula in Los Angeles and said,
Colnoy can't go dance. We've got plenty work, just like
you said. But she said, I will find the Indians
and she did. She found these people not far from here,
the Waalpie and fact we were just talking to people
Waldpies at the conference and about the lady who helped us.
(45:51):
It was Lucille Wadamage and Kawanoi and her Hula group
went and visited and Lucill Wadamage shared what they were
doing with their builing program. We didn't have bilingual in
a way for Wayians. And then she said, okay, there's
this conference where a bunch of tribes are getting together.
And we gradually met and and all the older people,
(46:13):
just like the Waine elders, they were working in the
schools and then the tribal offices, and they all said, yeah, yeah,
we're going to get our kids to call Congress, and
we'll call Congress. And everybody worked together. It was really wonderful,
kept calling and they finally passed this bill called the
Native American Languages Act. And so I when I recognized
(46:36):
Ophelia Sepeta she at Aldi, it's in the University of Arizona.
To organize people. We had people from Alaska. Edna MacLean
was the big pusher there, and so it seemed like
people were all you know, and that's how we seem
to get things from the grassroots. Then the trouble is
(46:57):
it's past. Now, what do you do and you got
to figure out how to make use of the law,
because we may have a law in the books and
nobody pays any attention. That's what happened to us with
our first law. The preschool was okay, but the public
schools making Hawaiian okay to be used in the school,
the state didn't open up any schools. So we opened
(47:19):
up a kindergarten with our preschool, and our preschool charges tuition,
so he said, you don't have to pay tuition. So
there was only twelve kids, not probably until five or six,
and we said, we are a public school, we don't
charge tuition, and we're doing the state's job. The state
(47:40):
is supposed to open up kindergarten, but they haven't done it,
so we're doing it, and we're creating a public were
a public school. And unfortunately, I guess he know us
kind of far from the center of power, so we
weren't closed down. And then the next year we had
a friend from the legislature who worked for the with
a Department of Education, and he took it and moved it,
and we got Dorothy Lazoor from the Mohawks to come
(48:04):
in testify that it would work, and what's passed. But
it was like a few weeks before school started, so
we had to like parents had to go fix up
the room. We had to bring on our teacher. We
were prepared though. We were going to do it, not
the state. We just needed the door to be opened.
(48:26):
So we opened doors and then go in ourselves and.
Speaker 2 (48:30):
Do the work at cheshasu yah Kawanoi, Kapila, yayekiya tea haini.
Speaker 4 (48:49):
It.
Speaker 2 (48:50):
We're just so blessed to have Kawanoi and Pila here
with us. I'm so thankful for this time we get
to spend together. We take a little break, and we
come back. I'm gonna ask him one last question, which
is we'll just all be questions here, which is what
do people need so their language can gain strength? So
we'll take a little break, we'll be right back.
Speaker 4 (49:12):
Once.
Speaker 2 (49:13):
I thought about.
Speaker 5 (49:15):
A million birds all around the world sharing their songs,
thinking about the ways they have lived and they're gonna
live and this is the way.
Speaker 6 (49:29):
Yeah, yet to see ouchin yakatu.
Speaker 2 (49:35):
Go gonna cheehohun. So around the world, we maybe have
seven thousand languages. In North America there were maybe five
(49:56):
six hundred languages and the way things are going right now,
maybe ten or twenty languages are in a safe place,
and so it takes a lot to figure out what
to do and how to do it. And you might
have doubts in your own mind like who am I
to do this? What am I going to do? I'm
just a person. And you also might have lateral violence
(50:18):
coming through your community where you start doing stuff and
someone stands up to say who you to do this
and try to kind of push you down a little bit.
So I guess as we kind of start to wrap
this thing up, this work never ends, So it's not
like your final thought on anything. But we don't know
who's out there and who's listening. They might have a
thousand speakers, or everybody in their community might speak, but
(50:41):
maybe the kids are starting to not speak, or they
might not have anybody who's spoken their language in one
hundred years and they're trying to bring it back. So
what are your thoughts for the folks who are out
there doing this work in the language, trying to keep
belief in themselves and each other in order to keep
going well.
Speaker 3 (51:00):
There are all kinds of ways to answer that that question,
but really, to see language as what we say at
kahaka ulah okay at ekulani as the binding cord of
our culture brings us together. So not to really see
ourselves as individuals, because when you look at yourself as
an individual, then you're alone, you know. So for us,
(51:23):
it's kako, it's it's the collective, it's the ohana, it's
the family, it's working together. And so if you are
working together, then you're not alone, and then you will
be encouraged, and you will encourage, you will be helped,
and you will provide help to other people. So working
(51:46):
together in that way is very important. And and also
that for each language family there are different ways of
doing that and it may be very different. I'm explaining
what we do, you know, in Hawaii, and how we
think about Hawaiian and our families, our family and our
connection to our own Hawaii, our land and our tradition
(52:07):
and our history. Our stories are molelo. So understanding language
as something that is living, it is living. It has
to be relevant to our life today. So Pila and I,
like we were born in what nineteen fifty and nineteen
fifty one, you know, so that's a long time ago,
(52:29):
you know, that's a long time ago. So when we
are working with our people of our age group or
the people after our next generation, next generation, and I'm
looking at little children, you know as well. And everybody
has their own way of understanding their own generation and
understanding their own world. The world we live in today
(52:50):
is not the one we were raised in, you know.
And so the young people who are here today, who
are in high school or in elementary or college, or
married or forty years old, fifty years old, they understand
their own generation in their own way. They have to
understand the importance of our Hawaiian language for us in
(53:12):
a contemporary way as a living language dealing with the obstacles,
the problems, the issues that we're faced with today, the
kind of relationships people have. What is true, what is
not true? What is you know on the internet? What
are we using our phones? How children are being impacted
(53:34):
by all of these things? What are the things about
our own culture and our language that can help keep
our families together, help people through struggles, And that all
comes from our own tradition. The answers are there, and
not to try and find answers somewhere else, you know.
So if we think about our language and our culture
(53:57):
as being dynamic, it moves, it's connected to a past,
it's rooted. We're not trying to be something else. And
even if times have changed and we have all this
technology and a lot of real discouraging things that happen
in the world today that we find out about not
just because we're interested, but we're just blasted with everything.
(54:21):
We have to have a way to see and understand
that through a cultural lens, through our language and our
own beliefs as a Hawaiian people. So to trust again
in that history, in our genealogy, in the past, in
(54:41):
order to be here in the present and also know
that we are really passing this on to the future
generations for our children.
Speaker 2 (54:52):
Mahalo beautiful wonderful messages from beautiful, wonderful people.
Speaker 4 (54:58):
Pela, I think you know cownoy me. I always try.
I'm always learning from her in a way. She kind
of kind of a strong person all her antis and everything.
You are like that too, So I first want to
say that what I hear heard cowanois saying is what
you are is Hawaiian already, and she said that at
(55:21):
the conference too. Nobody ever told me I was Hawaiian.
So I think what she's saying is that if you
have a group of people who have an identity as
an indigenous group, they already have an identity. Maybe the
language has been changed, there's still the people, and then
there's still maybe some words, some kind of things. Those
(55:42):
words that you have are the most precious words that exist,
not some kind of distant thing that some great ancestor had,
but what your family passed down to you is the
most important thing. You want to preserve. You don't want
to lose it. So part of our thing has always
been to protect that we already have. Then build on
that and maybe build over generations over the time. Fixed
(56:05):
come into the time, and you can also look back
and find things that some anthropologists or somebody wrote down
or whatever and bring that in. But you're bringing it
in as something new because it's new to the contemporary community.
So not to get yourself tied to something that somebody
wrote about your people one hundred years ago. So it's
basically what you already are. And then build on that.
(56:29):
So if you only have one speaker, or you only
have a few words, you get that and then you
try to maybe find family members other people. So, like
I mentioned about Nala, how there's so many other people
that I didn't name, all helping. So you learn and
you take a little something from here or a little
something from there from other people, which is the history
(56:50):
of Native people. They interact with each other, they help
each other. It's not you're an isolated thing. And then
as you're trying to build old the language back to strength,
and some people have a big lot of stuff and
some people have only a few things, but you're still
all building. And then it's not easy. And human beings
(57:13):
are imperfect. That's why there's so many languages because over
time things change. And so some of the people will
criticize you, say, oh, you speak, you don't speak exactly
like my grandmother and they can't speak they but they
heard their grammar specause somehow you don't sound like an
old lady or something. Maybe that was unkind thing to say.
(57:36):
But anyway, you'll get criticized and maybe you're not going
to be perfect. But you have scars, and those are
the scars of the language war that you brought the
language back. You survived, you went through these battles. They're
being mistreated and hurt and everything and yet you have
survived and you're moving forward. Every little inch, every little
(57:59):
scar is a kind of pride that you made it.
And so I think people shouldn't expect to jump from
here down at the very bottom where you started, to
some huge progress, because every little inch is a huge
thing to cherish. And so don't give up. Keep on going, everybody,
(58:24):
and for us, we had when we went into school,
we say, prairie dog. There's a prairie dog in the book,
and the state is requiring us to learn about prairie dogs.
We don't have prairies. We don't have prairie dogs. Where
can we find all Let's go look and see if
there's some native word for the prairie dog instead of
calling it a dog that lives in the grass, you know.
And so we gained a word from somebody, and we
(58:48):
remember that those people had that, and that's the real
people who know about the prairie dog. That might be
a silly example, but keep on going. You will succeed.
Speaker 2 (59:02):
Clinker Cheese SHUEI yeah, Johan h yeah, good Aka jakutani
aya ha ha hashtin ties. I'm so thankful for you both.
(59:29):
I love you both so much. The joy and the
things that you brought into my life I'm so thankful
for personally, and sometimes I feel like it's just a
big storm came upon us and I just washed up
on some wonderful, beautiful but different land, and then I
came into your folks' home and you just gave me
(59:49):
such wonderful food and wonderful love and advice and aloha.
And it helped us as as ling at people's as
we came back and we tried to replicate what you
for folks did. So those of you out there, if
you've never been to Hilo to see what's going on,
I highly recommend you take a close look at it.
Look at the programs in kahaka Ulo klik I Lani,
(01:00:11):
look at the Ahapo, look at Navihi. Find what these
things are. If you want to pursue your education and
get get a PhD in revitalizing indigenous and Hawaiian languages,
that's something you could do through Uhulo.
Speaker 3 (01:00:25):
I did it.
Speaker 2 (01:00:25):
I highly recommend it. If you just want to make
these connections and continue to figure out what to do,
reach out, find people. As as they said, you're not
alone and individuals don't create change. It's the movement. The
movement creates a change. Gonna cheez. Thanks for listening, folks.
You go Ejuan, have strength and courage. We'll catch you later.
(01:00:51):
WA's away, you hun. There is one episode in the books, folks.
It's wonderful to be back. It's wonderful to have you listening,
tuning in, thinking about what we can all be doing
individually collectively to be the change makers that are needed
to create a bright future for indigenous languages in North America.
(01:01:15):
Takes a village. This village is going to be rocking
with Indigenous content thoughts. You know, wherever you're at, I
hope that things are looking brighter for you, for your communities,
for your people, more lateral kindness, more love, more protection
(01:01:36):
of one another, doing the thing that's needed to create
new teachers, create new speakers, protect the speakers you have,
take over realms that were taken from your people. Take
your language new places, try new things to exist without
having to rely on a language that ad as core
(01:01:58):
kind of hates us. We're strong, we got vision, we
got heart, we got energy. Wherever you're at, I believe
in you what you're trying to do as you sit
up at night maybe think about the next step. Think
about the things you don't have yet, how you're gonna
(01:02:18):
get them, Where you're gonna get them, who's gonna make them?
The collective, the collective, the movement. When we talk about
something that's bigger than one person, bigger than a group
of people, it becomes an unstoppable force, an impenetrable fort
(01:02:38):
cut the duke solid. This has been the tongue unbroken.
The production of iHeartMedia Network and the Next Up Initiative.
Keep your eye out for new podcasts that are coming
out through the Next Up Initiative. Wonderful brilliant minds, through
the heart and energy of joel Anna Yessenia, a whole
(01:03:05):
team of people that are looking out for voices that
need to be brought to the center. You go, Awan,
have strength, encourage in all of your work and is cheesh.
Catch you next time.
Host
X̱ʼunei Lance Twitchell
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