Ka Papahana Kaiapuni, the Hawaiian Language Immersion Program (HLIP), also called Kula Kaiapuni on Maui is unique in that all schools are situated on public school campuses of the Hawai?i Department of Education (HiDOE). Seven schools span the island from the rural town of Hana, through Hamakuapoko, or Upcountry community, and then to Lahaina, the…

Many public charter schools in the state of Hawaii are explicitly religious. For more than two decades, students at Hawaiian-focused schools have offered chants and prayers to the pantheon of gods who rule over skies, seas, and earth, including to the volcanic god, Pelehonuamea ("she who shapes the sacred land"), popularly known as Madam…

What would an educational system centered on core Hawaiian values look like? The Office of Hawaiian Education, established by the Hawai'i Department of Education (HIDOE) in 2015, has been exploring this question through a community-based process that differs significantly from typical Western approaches to policymaking. Often, policymakers use a…

This article examines counter-hegemony occurring through the development of the Hawaiian language immersion movement, successfully leading to the saving of both Hawaiian culture and the Hawaiian language. After almost 100 years without Hawaiian being the language of instruction, it has re-emerged. Counter-hegemony began in the 1960s with the…

Intergenerational transmission, the ultimate goal of language revitalization efforts, can only be achieved by (re)establishing the conditions under which an imperiled language can be acquired by the community's children. This paper presents a tutorial survey of several key points relating to language acquisition and maintenance in children,…