The View from Here
A Hawaiian Education and the Fight for Cultural Identity:
     What it Means to Native Hawaiians

Lynne K. Fukuda
Instructor of Anthropology
Windward Community College
E-mail: lfukuda@hawaii.edu

Dedicated to my large hanai family, the native Hawaiian people who showed me nothing but aloha. May they bear the fruit of their struggles. May they be blessed in a world where understanding, respect, and aloha all come together as they once did in the Hawaiian Islands. For the pono, or justice, of our aina (land). And to all people of the United States, may they have a place to share their knowledge and their culture for generations to come.

      Presently, in the Waianae Mountains that shadows my parents' hometown and in the surrounding dry areas, there are persistent brushfires. Many burn dangerously with almost an insatiable anger, reminding residents of massive lava flows on the mountain ridges. The soot and the smoke are horrendous so that many have coughing fits. Many homeowners quiver with fear that they will lose everything that they have invested in from years of hard work. No one is rich in Waianae; many live in poverty. Those who manage to buy homes there have sacrificed by taking two jobs and making long commutes. This is the last stronghold of the native Hawaiians who live on the West Coast of Oahu in the dry areas that were not favored in ancient times.
      The brushfires are not natural. And yet they seem to mirror the anger and the rebellion of a younger generation; although, perhaps they have been fires set by a few troubled individuals. Many of the brushfires have been set by young people, often teens who are misguided and believe that playing with fire is a sport. These youths are not representative of the younger generation in the Hawaiian Islands, yet it is a disturbing indicator of what may come.
      Even in the days of my childhood, Hawaiian families were more cohesive, stable, and characterized by respect for one another, for the community, and for the environment. The elders, or the kupunas, taught the children of the community their values and their beliefs. It was this informal type of education of the younger generation that ensured children of Hawaii, especially those of Hawaiian descent, the values and morals of their culture. The Hawaiians were a traditional horticultural people, harvesting the blessing from the sea and land and working as one. Their connection with one another and their land was spiritual as well as physical.
      As times changed and Hawaii became more prosperous, as in all capitalistic societies, property for some is poverty for others; the divide between the "haves" and the "have nots" became greater. When I was a child, everyone was poor or lower-middle class. No one was much richer, except for those who had been always wealthy for generations. Our homes were simple--of plantation origin or made of simple wood and less-expensive materials. Our home furnishings consisted of a worn coffee table stacked with snacks and magazines and newspapers, and we always had a worn-out sofa that also doubled as a bed for children who stayed over.
      Many of us and those of the older generation were full of respect for their elders, the community, and the environment. "If we talked back to our elders or called them by their first names, we'd get slapped," many older people would say, laughing.
      "We had a lot of respect. We didn't waste. Or else Pele or the gods would punish us," some would say in reference to the use of natural resources. When fishing, hunting, or gathering natural materials, many of us said a prayer and asked for permission before partaking of the blessing of nature.
      I grew up in such a world, where a mix of Christianity, Buddhism, native religion and Hawaiian culture influenced me to have a deep-lying respect for all people and all things. My kupunas, or the elders who were my own grandparents, relatives, family friends, and neighbors all managed to influence me as they influenced other children who also grew up in those times as well.
      This was my basic education before enrolling in public school and learning the ways of the school culture. Even there we learned respect for our elders, our country, and for our government, including the rules and laws. We saluted the flag and pledged allegiance to the flag of both the United States and Hawaii (the Hawaiian flag resembles the Union Jack on the upper left corner). We sang our national anthem--the song of America and Hawaii Ponoi, the song of Hawaii. I still remember the words that are very foreign to me in the Hawaiian language yet still very familiar that most of us in our later years will be able to sing it word for word and feel a strong pull of aloha for a small island kingdom that no longer exists. Just as tears appear in our eyes when we sing the national anthem of the United States, tears linger in our eyes and our hearts ache as we sing Hawaii Ponoi which is a song about the righteousness in our land.

      Some say that by pledging allegiance to two flags and having two national anthems or songs we are being disloyal. "Hawaii is a state and has been from 1959. Why must they continue to have a Hawaiian flag?" someone will always say with impatience. And yet, how fast does a culture that has been in isolation change in a matter of decades? Our kupunas were born and raised in the Territory of Hawaii. Some of the kupunas who have since passed on were born during the Kingdom of Hawaii. Our culture, our feelings, our thinking, all reflects the proud culture of Hawaii before statehood.
      Some activists say that justice has not been served. They claim that Hawaii was stolen from the Queen Lilioukalani, the last monarch of Hawaii, because the American government held her at gunpoint and made her surrender her throne and her kingdom to the more powerful and overwhelmingly large nation, the United States. The Queen, being a wise and peaceful individual, made a painful decision. She would accept being conquered if her people could be saved. The United States was technologically superior to Hawaii and outnumbered the Hawaiians. Instead of having her people fight proudly to the end, she stepped down from her throne and died a sad, haunted woman.
      Yet, if the United States had not taken over, some other nation would have stolen Hawaii from her queen. Some powerful nation might have decimated Hawaii's population, enslaved them, or converted them to communism. Russia, Germany, England, Japan, and perhaps others had always wanted Hawaii for its strategic location and rich resources.
      As a conquered people, the native Hawaiians lost their lands. Nobles and commoners alike lost their ancestral rights to lands and resources that they did not own, but held in stewardship for their people for generations to come. Hawaiians did not claim land as Westerners did but shared it with their people, their ohana or family, that usually consisted of Aliis (nobles) and Makaainana (commoners). The high chiefs looked over the lower chiefs and the king or highest Alii looked over all others. It was with group effort and aloha that all people prospered in an environment that resembled the Garden of Eden but was in fact harsh. Resources were limited and weather was changeable. Water was also limited as was tillable land. Wars and famine threatened the people of the islands. Numbering close to a million people before European contact, the Hawaiian system was carefully monitored by the lesser chiefs, and all people worked together to ensure a safe and prosperous land. However, when the Europeans arrived, they introduced the idea of trade. Forcing the commoners to over-harvest the much-coveted sandalwood from the mountains; the economic and social system of the Hawaiians were drastically changing. Makaainanas may have been forgotten in the process.
      I wonder if some of the homeless native Hawaiians who camp out on our beaches, many generations of them, are the descendants of the Makainana or commoners who had no place to go, not being able to fend for themselves because they had once served an Alii and could not adapt to the modern world. Even if they are not indeed the descendant of such people, I feel as if their spirits linger in these families who have lost hope as they face true poverty each day, chased from beach to beach, camp to camp, unwanted and lost. "Why can they not help themselves? Immigrants who were more impoverished have become prosperous in the islands," some harsh critics will say.
      As an anthropologist, I can see the plight of the homeless native Hawaiians. What if your ancestors had lived in a stone-aged era and were horticulturalists, educated in the traditional fashion with only oral transmission of the language and culture, and all that you learned was handed down generation to generation by key individuals and the kupunas in your community? What if your ancestors had never owned land, never dealt with money, and had lived peacefully, side by side with the nobles to serve and be protected and cared for? And then, in a matter of a hundred years, your culture was crushed, erased, and your people were decimated by disease and by intermixing with other people?

      This is all that has happened to the Native Hawaiians. There are very few pure-blooded Hawaiians, but it is not the percentage of Hawaiian blood that makes an individual a native Hawaiian. It is the heritage. And yet this heritage, too, has been thinned by the imposition of the school culture, the government before statehood, and by the society that created native Hawaiians as outcastes in their own lands.
      Until the late 1950s, Hawaiians were not allowed to practice their culture or speak their language. Even before this happened, the influx of Christian missionaries had already altered the native religions and beliefs as well as their connection with their natural environment. Dressed in uncomfortable long dresses of the Victorian era, that Hawaii's people now wear as muumuus and holokus, the native Hawaiian women were shamed into covering their bodies. Once proud and athletic, they grew sluggish. Even the men were dressed more heavily, so that their movements, too, became restricted. Changes in their religious beliefs gave Hawaiians the message that their own beliefs were not valid and should be replaced.
      In addition to this, their expressions of aloha also became sources of shame. In the pre-Christian era, many Hawaiians were polygamous, priding themselves also on the size of their families and often adopting children in a system called hanai, where children were openly shared with couples who were childless or were meant to be important influences in the child's life. The eldest child was traditionally given to his or her grandparents to be raised. This allowed the child to learn the ways of the culture and freed the parents from some of the burdens of raising all children by themselves.
      Deep respect for the elders comes from children who have been raised by their grandparents or have close relationships with the elders in their community. In addition to being taught at home, children who join a hula group also learn from their kumus or teachers not only how to dance but the values of Hawaiian art and music, religion or spirituality, and the discipline that young people often need in order to grow up respectful, responsible, and a contributing member of their community.

      When the school culture of the United States filtered into Hawaii, even before 1959, when Hawaii was a Territory of the United States, Hawaiian children, including non-native Hawaiian children, were converted to its norms. Some children responded positively, and as a result, were successful in the modern world and in capitalistic society. And yet, many others languished, feeling oppressed, invisible, shamed, disconnected, and unhappy.
      In the dark era, when speaking the Hawaiian language was outlawed and practicing the Hawaiian culture, including dancing the traditional hula (hapa-haole or half-Caucasian style hula was okay), the native Hawaiian people were deprived of their rights as a culture and as a people. In today's world, ethnic pride is of primary importance, but in the dark era, even non-Hawaiian people, often of Asian descent, also suppressed their ethnicity in favor of assimilating into the mainstream American culture.
      "Is that not the natural path?" some of you might say. Many diverse cultures in the United States have found a home on American soil and have successfully assimilated. The Western Europeans and some Africans have become truly American. And yet, was there not a painful path to such assimilation? Why have African-Americans, who have been in North America longer than other minority groups not have become as successful and prosperous as the Western Europeans who came later? Native Americans, like native Hawaiian, who are the original people of the land, who trace their ancestry to the land for millennia, also are a conquered people who have been oppressed. They too are shamed, invisible, and unhappy as well as unsuccessful in the mainstream school culture.

      What does this tell us about mainstream American school culture? I am a product of that system, having gone through most of my years not in private Catholic schools as I had hoped to be but in the public school system in Hawaii, where the school environment was generic and the large, bureaucratic system silenced our voices. Many things that were taught at home or by our kupunas were not valid at school. The manners we learned at home of respect, of not voicing our thoughts, of listening and observing, of working together as groups, of helping someone less skilled, were all thought of as lack of initiative, introversion, non-participation, cheating or enabling. In Hawaii, where many of us come from Asian-Pacific Islander origins, learning in groups or in collaborations, helping those less able as ourselves, and allowing our elders to dictate our movements and our actions, all work to make us less successful in the school environment as well as in some businesses and in the world of work.
      Perhaps some of this is changing. Harsh individualism is not always admired and many companies have been training their employees to be team-players and to collaborate and not compete against one another. Many intelligent leaders see the merit of team work and encourage this more and more.

      In my school days, idyllic as they seemed, we were also missing an element in our education. Living in the land of the Hawaiian, in the midst of a potentially rich language and culture, we learned English language in school, studied American history and not Hawaiian history, learned the Western sciences, and believed that we would be rich and successful. In the classroom, Hawaiian children learned that their struggles, their culture, their history was not important. Hawaiian words were not taught in school and children were forced only to learn English.
      I met a very generous and kindly older Hawaiian gentleman from Waimanalo who was self-educated and a proud father of an engineer, nurse, and businessman and a proud grandfather as well. "I quit school when I was in eighth grade," he told me. "You know why?"
      I shook my head. "But in the old days, some people went to grammar school and then went to work on the farm," I replied, thinking of my grandparents.
      The Hawaiian gentleman laughed. "I hated learning about Jack and Jill," he said with a twinkle in his eye.
      "I don't really like those nursery rhymes. They do sound sinister," I began.
      He shook his head. "No, it was the words. You know how it goes."
      "Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of waterÉ" I chanted.
      He laughed. "Yep. That really did me in. I couldn't figure out why in the world they taught that stuff."
      I nodded. "I see. It is very foreign for local children."
      The gentleman nodded. "They said fetch. When in the world do you use the word fetch in Hawaii."
      "You use that to command your dog to get something."
      He laughed again. "Yep. That's it."
      "And also in Hawaii, you would never go up a hill to get water. You go down to the stream or to the spring. And the word pail is an East Coast thing. People in Hawaii say bucket."
      The man laughed and agreed. "You are a very smart lady," he said. "That's why I quit. It didn't make much sense staying in school learning nonsense. I worked in construction and operated machinery. Made good money. My children are all educated and prosperous."
      I smiled. His was a success story. Self-educated, confident, and hardworking, he built up his family and was a happy man. Not everyone had such happy stories. I saw Hawaiian students in middle school and in high school that were artistic and doodled during class, languishing in a classroom that did not allow them to learn in the best way. In those days, no one took into account that culture and educational background could affect a student so that he or she would either succeed or fail.

      Sometimes if Hawaiian children went home, their elders would be speaking in Hawaiian.
      "Speak English," they would say to their elders. "I do not understand Hawaiian. Don't speak Hawaiian anymore. I have to learn English or our teacher will punish us." Thus, the child and his grandparent, who could have shared their proud traditions, were forced to end the transmission of their culture. Shamed by school into speaking only English, and not having common ground, perhaps the grandparent and the grandchild began to form a gap that they could not bridge years later.
      In traditional Hawaiian culture there is no generation gap. Children are freely cared for by their elders, especially by their tutus, or grandparents. Learning at their grandparents' knees, children learn to respect things of old and their elders.
      I was happily surprised one day while riding the bus seated by a youth who was obviously a juvenile delinquent and possibly a druggie. He sat near me in the back of the bus, but when an older Hawaiian woman walked down the aisle, he sat up and said, "Here, Tutu (grandmother), have my seat." And for those few moments, his face glowed with love and respect. Even if he were angry at the world and probably hated his parents he still had a lot of aloha for a koruna who may have reminded him of happier days spent with his own grandparents.
      In spite of poverty and deprivation, in spite of many obstacles in their way, Hawaiian youths could possibly be saved if the connection of their kupunas and their teachings could again be restored. There are programs in Hawaii that have been established in recent times which emphasize the connection of Hawaiian children to their aina, or land, and teach them the traditional ways that highly emphasize respect, and love of one another and the aina. At Waianae High School, in an area that is predominantly Hawaiian, students who are at-risk are enrolled in a service-learning program that allows them to use their bodies as well as their minds and learn about respect and love for the native land. They have set up gardens where they work in lois, or taro patches, and on aquacultural projects where they grow fish and seaweed for consumption, mimicking the old ways of teaching a mainly horticultural people. Correctional facilities also emphasize incorporating Hawaiian values and teachings since many of the inmates are of Hawaiian descent. Some have programs where inmates do community service by weeding and maintaining natural areas and wildlife preserves, and other work in lois putting in a hard day of labor that allows them to feel valued and have done a good day's work.
      Programs that teach hula to the younger generation bring together the children and their elders in an extended family. The dancers are sisters and brothers, and the teachers are their parents. As they share their daily lives, their troubles, their triumphs, there is much healing. Such groups keep young people from temptations of sex, drugs, alcohol and crime.

      It is at the present day, like the burning brush of the Waianae Mountains, that overlooks the last stronghold of native Hawaiians on the island of Oahu, that anger toward the interference of the American government on the enrollment practices of the Kamehameha Schools (a school and now a school system that was set up in the last days of the Hawaiian monarch by their Princess Pauahi Bishop), to ensure that children who were born into destitution from the epidemics that decimated the native Hawaiians, that was to ensure for generations to come, to provide for the Hawaiian children, a quality education, was being questioned.
      "It is unconstitutional to favor one ethnic group over another when it is a school in the United States," some proponents say.
      "Why must they take the last thing that we have left for us, for Hawaiians," others say.

      As an educator, I see the merit of a quality education. It not only prepares a student for the outside world but will give him or her good self-esteem and confidence, intelligence, good survival skills, and allow the student to turn around and help others. This is what I have seen in the years of the Kamehameha Schools that graduate able, proud, intelligent men and women, who become pillars of their society with the leadership they learned, and the eagerness to go back into their communities to give back and help others who are not as fortunate.
      Kamehameha School is not an option for my nephews who are not Hawaiian. Out of respect, I would not enroll them in the school even if they qualified because I feel that my nephews can go to any Catholic school or private school on Oahu and still succeed. But for a Hawaiian child, most often growing up in poverty, from a broken home, and not having many opportunities for learning, the Kamehameha Schools is an option that could lift a child out of poverty and give him or her skills he or she needs to survive in the modern 21^st century. Every seat that is occupied in the Kamehameha Schools by a non-Hawaiian child is depriving a native Hawaiian child the opportunity to be prepared for the outside world successfully.
      The school is not a school. It was a gift, bequeathed to the native Hawaiian children, by a childless Alii (noblewoman), Princess Pauahi, who wished to have all the Hawaiian children, considered her hanai (adopted) to be cared for in the form of having a safe place to learn and having a quality education that allowed them to learn traditional values and culture. The Kamehameha Schools teachers classes in Hawaiian language, teaches Hawaiian history and culture and are the proud makers of teachers in their language and culture. Children there learn without being shamed, without feeling invisible, without having their culture and language oppressed. It is in the Kamehameha Schools that Hawaiian children are able to express their culture fully and to grow up confident and happy.

      In today's world, many educators discuss multicultural aspects, bilingual education, and allowing children of different ethnicities to express themselves more freely, thus enriching our diverse cultural heritage as a "melting pot" for nations. We must hold more pride to this claim. This can indeed be the land of the free and the brave. It is here, in American, especially in Hawaii, where children of different religions and ethnicities, who may speak different languages, still play together and understand one another. This is a land where individuals of different cultures come together, fall in love and marry, producing children of mixed heritage.
      Our native Hawaiian people are no longer of pure blood, and yet, they are all very homogeneously Hawaiian. We can recognize them by their cultural practices. They are the most loving, most generous, most family-oriented people, who love big parties or luaus where everyone is invited. They invite people of all cultures into their circle of friends and welcome new family members in hanai (adoption) and in marriage. It is their culture that makes our islands so special.

      Even those who are not of Hawaiian blood are touched by their aloha. Many of us support their struggled to be recognized as a people. In their fight for self-determination with the present-day Akaka Bill that will recognized the native Hawaiians as an indigenous people and not only Hawaiian, they can embrace not one flag but two. Lands that had been wrongfully seized can still be returned to them. Apologies that may be needed to recognize their suffering can also be made. It is when the Hawaiian people, who I consider to be my own people by hanai (adoption), are happy and prosperous that I can sleep peacefully in my bed.
      At the present, the fight over not allowing the United States government to interfere with the rights the native Hawaiians see as their right and their heritage to exclusively attend the Kamehameha Schools is not a fight over education of children. It is a struggle to let the world hear their voices and to relate that their traditions, their culture, and their language must all be preserved for their future children, who may be less and less Hawaiian in blood, but can still be Hawaiian in spirit. Their language and culture was once almost lost, but there is still time to preserve it. No one owns the Kamehameha Schools. Like the land that the Aliis once kept in trust, as a steward of the aina and not the owner of a land, the Kamehameha Schools have been held in trust by those who wish to continue the princess' gift of education for generations to come for her hanai children and her hanai descendants.

      It is only in Hawaii that we can truly understand this struggle. Having been raised with Hawaiian culture, only surrounded by aloha and a sense of ohana, we all feel that we must work together to make the dreams of the native Hawaiians come true. It is they who showed us hospitality, or hookipa, after colonizing a harsh but beautiful and remote part of the world. It is they, from their struggles, who were able to harvest the riches of the land and to continue their culture so that in times of peace all its citizens were well-fed and cared for. When the Westerners first arrived, instead of an empty chain of islands with very little edible food, they found friendly natives with an abundance of food and resources that were willing to share their riches with the newcomers. It is this tradition that allowed many other peoples, from all parts of the globe, to become part of Hawaii's diverse culture. Is it not our turn, for the non-Hawaiians, to show our respect and aloha to a kind, hospitable people by supporting their struggles and their fight for social justice so that they will be recognized as a people and so that the United States will make reparations for the land that they lost and the culture that they nearly lost?

      It is the native-Hawaiians, who languished most in our school system, who could not succeed as well in the world of work, and who was dropped into the bottom of the socio-economic ladder in Hawaii. They suffered from the most degenerative diseases, have the highest child mortality rate, the highest domestic violence rate, the highest crime rates, and live in poverty. They are more prone to drug and alcohol addiction, not because they are "hopeless" and "backward" but because they have lost their pride as a people, been scattered and not united as a culture, and have lost some of their valued traditions of passing on their culture from kupuna to keiki (child). It is when we are able to reestablish the connection of the native Hawaiians with one another, with their communities, with their land, and with the heavens above, that we will see pono or justice.
      I watch over my Hawaiian friends, silently praying for them, so that they will struggle on their own and be proud of their results. I write stories of their struggles and write of my love of their culture. Even if not Hawaiian in blood, I have been touched by their aloha. The end of their struggles is very near. I hope that our future generations will have schools that openly teach Hawaiian language and culture to all children of Hawaii, bring kupunas to the community to teach the valued traditions to young children, and we will have a text book in all schools filled with the rich history of Hawaii for all students.

      On a very historic day in August of this year (August 6, 2005), I was able to witness Hawaiians unite in protest. With the issues of the Akaka Bill for self-determination, sovereignty, social justice, and the protest against letting non-Hawaiian children into Kamehameha Schools, native Hawaiian people, donning their red and black shirts, the bold colors of the native Iiwi bird and the favored colors of the nobility, passed through the bridge over the expressway on their way to the Royal Masoleum where the monarchs of Hawaii are buried. Marching from the State Capitol building of Honolulu, the Hawaiian marched proudly, waving in a friendly manner, but their faces showed their determination to seek social justice. Holding up the flag of Hawaii, which resembles the Union Jack and has red, white and blue stripes on the side, they formed a bold, red flow of people. Like the red-hot lava, the mana or spiritual power of the people brought together a new direction.
      "We want to be heard," many say. "We want Hawaiians to have justice."
      Some may not agree. But when each child of Hawaiian descent has a place in society with equal footing due to a good education, good opportunities, self-confidence, and skills needed to survive in the 21^st century I rejoice because they will not live in poverty, be addicted to drugs or alcohol, be guilty of crime and domestic abuse, be prone to diseases, and live unhappy, hopeless lives. It is when the Hawaiians, the people of our land, of our beautiful and isolated islands can prosper that all of us will prosper. They are our family, our relatives, and our friends. They have married into every ethnic group possible in the islands. They are no longer the conquered people, but proud people whose culture should be admired and valued. Their values, their beliefs, their teachings must be perpetuated for the sake of their children and their descendants.

      Many of us in the old days were not given a chance to learn about Hawaiian language and culture as the young students do today. In our public schools, part-time resource teachers, called kupunas, teach Hawaiian song and hula and basic Hawaiian language to our primary school children. It is wonderful to see them latch onto the beautiful language and make their sweet attempts to dance the hula and sing the songs.
      My education in Hawaiian language and culture in the 1970s spanned only one year in public elementary school. Imagine how much richer my education would have been if I had been taught Hawaiian language and culture from an early age and continuously until I graduated from high school. I am presently doing my best to catch up on my lost years. I listen to Hawaiian immersion audio CDs, read up on Hawaiian literature and history. I take hula lessons and listen to my kumu (teacher) as he shares his wisdom and learning in the old tradition by sitting down to talk, softly and gently to his students. My life is fuller and richer now, because I understand and appreciate the native people of this blessed land who made a safer, happier environment for all of us.

      It is our turn then, to create a safer, happier learning environment for their children and a better, more prosperous land for their people. We are not rich if we have poverty and suffering in our community. We are all very rich if we can share our happiness and riches as a large extended family. It is not only in Hawaii, but all over in the United States that we can in the future; make a large effort to incorporate the many rich cultures of the people who make up our vast and diverse country. It is only here that we are safe to cross the streets without being killed or bombed, that we can express our ethnicities and our religious beliefs without fear of persecution, and it is here that all children of the United States and in Hawaii can enrich themselves by learning another language and about another culture to create model global citizens. Until all schools can create such safe learning environments, we must work together to ensure that school will always be a place to share, have fun, and be happy.

Academic Exchange Extra invites reader response to any writings in this issue--especially articles advancing the scholarly debate of issues raised.

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------------------------------  Page Citation Reference: Fukuda, Lynne K. (2005).  AE-Extra. November. Available Online. [URL: < >. Created: 28 October 2005. Updated: --. Accessed: ]