Monday, January 26, 2009
From: "jakemahan@live.com"
To: ken_conklin@yahoo.com
You must be english or american. You are so full of crap. The hawaiian languaage was forbidden to be spoken! Just because you could not find a written law that proves it , it doesn't mean it didin't happen. Just as the native american indians were forbiden to speak their language. The english seem to think in their own greedy arrogant way that their language and their ways are the best.They were the immigrants on hawaian land that robbed , rapped and killed to satisfy their lust for cruelty just as they did to the First Nations People of Turtle Island(the bnative american indians) Enough of this lying crap - you must be a white man!
Little Breeze
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http://www.indiancountrytoday.com/national/hawaiialaska/Convention-comes-at-a-pivotal-time-for-Hawaiians-103714874.html
Indian Country Today, September 28, 2010
Convention comes at a pivotal time for Hawaiians
By Rebecca Jacobs
** Excerpts showing the context, ending with the claim that Hawaiian language was banned.
From throughout the Hawaiian islands, countries and territories across the Pacific, Alaska, the U.S. and beyond, Native leaders and community members will gather for the 9th Annual Native Hawaiian Convention hosted by the Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement.
The momentous event, themed Kukulu Aupuni~Kukulu Ea!, Building on Greatness-Sovereignty In Action!, comes at a pivotal time in contemporary Hawaiian history as Hawaiians near the point of federal recognition.
"We're right at the helm," Jade Danner, Native Hawaiian, CNHA vice president said. "Sovereignty is, really, having the resources to do the work on a full-time basis, so we don't need to fight, but can get to the business of health care, homelessness, education and language."
Danner explained that Native Hawaiians and supporters have been working at the legislative level for approximately 40 years pursuing the issue of Hawaiian self-determination. At this point, she said, CNHA is trying to rally enough support from Republican representatives ... mustering 60 votes on the Senate floor to overcome a filibuster, and continuing work with Gov. Linda Lingle to garner her support of the movement and verbiage of the Akaka Bill H.R. 2314, or Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act.
Jade Danner, Native Hawaiian, CNHA vice president said ... "It's about solving our own problems and ensuring that our children are learning our ways. In 1988, there were only 500 [Native Hawaiian] speakers left. Now there are 9,000 to 10,000. Up until the mid-90s, it was a banned language. That's what this convention is about recognizing."
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** Here's another example showing how the "language was made illegal" claim is asserted right in the middle of a bunch of other victimhood claims. It only takes a little poison to kill you. By the way, the letter to editor immediately before this one on the same day in the newspaper was a warning about "chemtrails" -- airplane contrails which, the writer said, are actually poison being sprayed by the government to weaken and kill people. Two crazy letters in a row in the Kaua'i newspaper!
http://thegardenisland.com/news/opinion/mailbag/article_268eeab0-fb73-11df-bff5-001cc4c03286.html
The Garden Island (Kaua'i), November 27, 2010, Letter to editor
Cultural survival at stake
Dear people of Kaua‘i and visitors, I am writing to express my opinion. I am a father of four children who are half kanaka maoli (native). Their family owned thousands of acres of land post-Kamehameha and millions held communally before his dynasty took hold.
After the overthrow, due to racial inequalities their families suffered huge losses, including the outlawing of their language, exile of some to Kalaupapa, diseases and poor education.
I am American and this is my second tour to Iraq. I am in the infantry. We have spilled blood and sacrificed so the Iraqi people will have freedom to the tune of more than a few trillion dollars.
As we have been told this is not our land it is theirs. My dilemma is how do you tell a 10-year-old or a grandmother that we took your lands and its too bad and we are giving theirs back? Oh, and by the way, there are a lot of kanaka maoli here fighting for your freedoms — they deserve theirs — solutions take compromise and respect which is where I hope the future takes us.
My grandfather always said before you judge try walking in that person's shoes for a bit. My children who are well educated would all want everyone to know that as kanaka maoli there needs to be some change to ensure their cultural survival and I believe it too.
David Denson, Tikrit, Iraq
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A strange little article asserting Hawaiian language victimhood was published in a strange place. "Island Scene" is the quarterly magazine sent to HMSA policy-holders. HMSA describes itself as "an independent licensee of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, ... we are the largest and most experienced provider of health care coverage in the state. Over half of Hawaii's population have chosen HMSA for their health care coverage."
The magazine is mostly filled with articles about asthma, colonoscopies, healthy recipes, exercising, sports and physical fitness. The Winter 2011 edition is the last one for 6-year editor Lucy Jokiel, who moved on to a new job as editor of the "Honolulu Weekly" alternative newspaper. On the last page of her last edition of "Island Scene" editor Lucy Jokiel authored an article "A new generation of Hawaiian speakers" based mostly on information told to her by Keao NeSmith. He is a Hawaiian secessionist who uses his fluency in Hawaiian language to write frequent articles for the weekly Hawaiian language column "Kauakukalahale" in the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. Most of his articles are virulently anti_American and filled with false or badly twisted narratives about the history of Hawaii during 1887-1898 (bayonet Constitution, revolution that overthrew the monarchy, annexation to the U.S.).
It's interesting that Jokiel chose to write this article as her swan song to the large audience of "Island Scene", since her new venue, the "Honolulu Weekly", serves as a megaphone for the Hawaiian secessionist and Hawaiian victimhood propaganda line. It's also interesting that the internet links inside the "Island Scene" website that point to this article are now dead:
http://islandscene.com/Article.aspx?id=4038
now returns an error message "The page you have requested could not be found." Perhaps the HMSA magazine was embarrassed by the article and decided to "disappear" it to a place where "the sun don't shine." Perhaps Ms. Jokiel could request one of those colonoscopies to find it!
Perhaps Mr. NeSmith is chiefly responsible for telling Ms. Jokiel the language victimhood nonsense. But Ms. Jokiel is the one chiefly responsible for propagating those lies in the magazine she edited. She's the one who chose the topic for the article. She's the one who selected a secessionist history-twister as her source of information. And she's the one who wrote the article stating the lies as though they are truth (not stating that these are the things Mr. NeSmith told her, but actually asserting these things in her own voice). She imagines herself to be a journalist, and has taught journalism at the University of Hawaii; so she should know better!
Let's copy and refute three Hawaiian language victimhood lies in this article one at a time.
1. Jokiel writes "In the years following the 1893 overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawai'i, the new government worked tirelessly to eradicate the Hawaiian language." That's totally false. Here's what's true.
Immediately after the revolution of January 17, 1893 there were a few weeks when some royalist newspapers (both Hawaiian and English language ones) were suspended by the Provisional Government, as is normal in any revolution anywhere in the world both then and now. But after a few weeks all the newspapers resumed publication, with zero censorship.
Noenoe Silva published a book in 2004 entitled "Aloha Betrayed: Native Hawaiian Resistance to American Colonialism." Her book is strongly pro-royalist as can be seen from its title, and portrays ethnic Hawaiians as poor downtrodden victims of American colonialism (just as NeSmith and Jokiel do). Her book is based mostly on research in the Hawaiian language newspapers of the 1890s. She's an expert. On page 181 Silva says there were both Hawaiian-language and English-language newspapers supporting Lili'uokalani after the overthrow and throughout the Republic period; and also newspapers in each language that were pro-Republic.
Furthermore, in July of 1894, when the Republic of Hawaii was created, its Constitution was published in both English and Hawaiian. The continued publication of Hawaiian language newspapers, and the publication of the Republic's Constitution in Hawaiian, clearly disprove Jokiel's assertion that "the new government worked tirelessly to eradicate the Hawaiian language." Incidentally, at least 5 members of the Constitutional Convention were native Hawaiians (as can be seen in a list of names of Convention delegates), and also the Speaker of the House of the Republic whose name was John Kaulukou.
2. Jokiel writes "Three years later the state Legislature passed Act 57, which decreed, 'The English language shall be the medium and basis of instruction in all public and private schools.' " There are several falsehoods or half-truthts in that sentence.
First of all, there was not yet a State of Hawaii. Thus there was no "state Legislature." But that's a minor misstatement. The major lie in that sentence is that the quotation from Act 57 is only the first part of a much longer statement, which makes clear that Hawaiian language is not prohibited in the schools. Here's the complete statement.
1896 Laws of the Republic of Hawaii, Act 57, sec. 30: "The English Language shall be the medium and basis of instruction in all public and private schools, provided that where it is desired that another language shall be taught in addition to the English language, such instruction may be authorized by the Department, either by its rules, the curriculum of the school, or by direct order in any particular instance. Any schools that shall not conform to the provisions of this section shall not be recognized by the Department."
As the webpage
http://tinyurl.com/6zrka
has conclusively proved, the primary purpose of the law was not to ban Hawaiian or any other language, but rather it was directed mostly against the babble of multiple languages being spoken by the children of tens of thousands of Japanese, Chinese, and Portuguese plantation workers, who greatly outnumbered the Hawaiians and Caucasians. The purpose of the law was to establish one language that everyone could speak together. When Asians and Europeans arrived in Hawaii and had to choose which language to speak in order to assimilate, nearly all of them were already choosing English rather than Hawaiian. Furthermore, this webpage has cited references showing that in 1892, the year before the revolution, English was already the dominant language in the Kingdom and the actual language of instruction in 95% of the government schools. Most Hawaiian parents were demanding their children attend English-speaking schools, and were also requiring their children to speak only English in the home. So the law had very little actual effect on Hawaiian language. Furthermore, the law did not prevent parents from sending their kids to private academies on afternoons and weekends where the language of instruction could be Hawaiian or any other language -- indeed, nearly all the Japanese kids did attend such academies to preserve their language and culture; but Hawaiians chose not to do so despite the fact that Hawaiians were paid a higher wage than the Asians and could have afforded it more easily.
3. "In 1986, following three years of lobbying by the Hawaiian community, laws banning the Hawaiian language were amended. After 115 years, it was legal to teach students using the Hawaiian tongue."
There's that word "banning." There was never any banning of Hawaiian language. Even in the regular government schools Act 57 made clear that Hawaiian language could be taught in the same way as Spanish, French, Hawaiian, etc. are taught in the schools today. Act 57 did not apply at all to the hundreds of after-school and weekend academies where Japanese, Chinese, or Portuguese were used as the language for teaching all the subjects, and where Hawaiian could also have been used as the language of instruction if parents had wanted that for their children.
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On January 24, 2011, Hawaii Governor Neil Abercrombie gave his first "State of the State" speech. In the written press release of his speech, his falsehood was "In 1896 it was made illegal to teach in the Hawaiian language." The sentence he actually spoke was even worse: "In 1896 it was made illegal to teach the Hawaiian language." These are variations of a commonly told lie, which says that In 1896 Hawaiian language was made illegal. A webpage provides full text of Abercrombie's written speech, an audio podcast and a video of the speech (with timeline and closed captioning), and further analysis explaining why Abercrombie's lie is scurrilous. See
https://www.angelfire.com/big09/HawLangIllegalAbercrombie012411.html
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A regular column is published in The Big Island Weekly, entitled "Wala'au Sessions with Makela", featuring the content first in Hawaiian and then in English immediately afterward. The column on Wednesday June 1, 2011 was entitled "New Hawaiian Language School Approved in Waimea." The third and fourth paragraphs are copied here:
"Hawaiian immersion school of Kea`au, a laboratory school of the University of Hawai`i at Hilo's Ka Haka `Ula o Ke`elikolani College of Hawaiian Language. People of Waimea and surrounding areas will be able to exercise their right to learn and use the Hawaiian language in their daily lives, as it is one of Hawai`i's official state languages.
"This was not the case in 1896, when the use of the Hawaiian language was banned from being taught in schools by United States policy. Teachers were told that speaking Hawaiian to the children would result in losing their jobs. The kupuna of today share countless stories of being reprimanded very harshly for speaking their mother tongue in their younger years. It was a big blow to the hearts of all, as it was recognized that when a language is lost, so is its culture."
Here is the comment posted online by Ken Conklin:
The article says " ... in 1896, when the use of the Hawaiian language was banned from being taught in schools by United States policy."
This falsehood has been repeated so many times that many people have come to believe it.
One reason it is obviously false is that in 1896 Hawaii was still an independent nation, The Republic of Hawaii, and remained independent until annexation in 1898. So the U.S. had no authority to ban Hawaiian language or to impose any other laws in Hawaii.
Several books have documented the fact that English was already the predominant language in the government schools of the Kingdom -- in 1892, the year before the revolution that overthrew the monarchy, English was already the language of instruction in 95% of all the government schools of the Kingdom, because that was what the monarchs and the parents wanted.
It is true that in 1896 the Republic of Hawaii passed an update to the law requiring that all children must attend school. In order to be considered a "school" to satisfy this requirement, the new law said that English must be the language used for teaching all subjects.
The law did not single out Hawaiian -- it was aimed mainly at stopping Japanese and Chinese from being the language used to teach school subjects like science, history, etc. The idea was that all children growing up in the nation of Hawaii should be able to speak the same language as each other, and that language would be English.
The law did NOT prohibit Hawaiian or any other language from being taught as a subject in the curriculum. The law also did NOT prohibit special academies from operating after school or on weekends, where languages other than English could be used as the language in which all subjects were taught. Impoverished Japanese plantation workers did in fact open such special academies for their children to learn Japanese culture and language. But Hawaiian parents chose not to open Hawaiian academies, because they were glad to have their children be taught in English.
Children of all races were punished in school for speaking all languages other than English, in order to be sure they would learn English. Hawaiian parents also punished their children at home for speaking Hawaiian at home -- they wanted their kids to learn English and to use English at home as well as at school.
To read exactly what the law said, and to see heavily footnoted facts about why the law was passed and what effects it had, see this webpage:
http://tinyurl.com/6zrka
Let's all celebrate the revival of Hawaiian language today. To do that, it is not necessary to repeat historical falsehoods whose only purpose is to arouse anger, resentment, and racial hatred.
-----------------------
** On February 1, 2012, Senator Dan Akaka posted the following news release on his official U.S. Senate website. Everything in it is historically accurate, although incomplete. By focusing on the 1896 law, Senator Akaka makes it seem as though Hawaiian language had been the primary language in the schools before that date. But in fact, by 1892, the year before the revolution that overthrew the monarchy, 95% of all the government schools were already using English as the language of instruction. Despite this shortcoming of Senator Akaka's statement, the statement is surprisingly free from the gross falsehoods so often asserted by Hawaiian victimhood mongers.
http://www.akaka.senate.gov/press-releases.cfm?method=releases.view&id=3e3c8a9d-a980-4f1e-bc13-f8d3843e0448
Senator Akaka Commemorates Month of the Hawaiian Language
Wed, February 1, 2012
Washington, D.C. -- U.S. Senator Daniel K. Akaka made the following remarks today in the Congressional Record:
I rise today in celebration of the Hawaiian language. February is designated as the "Month of the Hawaiian Language" by the State of Hawai'i. Speakers and students of the language use this time to foster and promote Hawaiian through festivals, spelling bees, and speech and debate competitions where the Hawaiian language is the primary medium.
Since the first official designation in 1994, February has been a celebration of the Hawaiian language in Hawai'i. However, this modern renaissance happened only after the Hawaiian language came close to extinction, and the people of Hawai'i fought to preserve it.
In 1896, following the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawai'i, English was named as the primary language of instruction in Hawai'i's schools. As a result, students who spoke Hawaiian were subject to physical punishment or public humiliation. As Native Hawaiian families struggled to assimilate with the increasing Western presence in Hawai'i, parents gave children non-Hawaiian first names. Families who carried Hawaiian family names adopted Western surnames to avoid a Hawaiian identity. Parents stopped teaching their children Hawaiian, and maintained English-only households. This was a sad chapter in Hawai'i's history, but fortunately, today, thanks to the effort of many Hawai'i residents, political and community leaders, and educators, the Hawaiian language is thriving.
In 1978, the Hawaiian language, also called 'Olelo Hawai'i by its speakers, was declared one of the two legal languages of the State of Hawai'i. In 1984, the first Hawaiian language preschool was established, 'Aha Punana Leo. Three years later, Hawaiian language immersion expanded to include kindergarten through grade 12, and today, students can study the Hawaiian language from preschool through their doctorate studies.
Use of the Hawaiian language is not limited to its fluent speakers. Those who live in and visit Hawai'i use Hawaiian words and phrases in their everyday vocabulary, whether they are Native Hawaiian or not. Towns, roadways, schools, and parks bear Hawaiian names. Island residents commonly give each other directions using the words mauka - meaning towards the mountains, or makai - meaning towards the ocean. A waitress might ask you if you are pau, or done, with your meal before she clears the table. You might tell her it was 'ono, or delicious.
Some of the more commonly used words, including aloha and mahalo, are known well beyond the shores of Hawai'i. I probably do not have to explain that mahalo means thank you, or that aloha is a greeting that conveys warmth, love, and affection and is used to both welcome someone and wish them well.
The Hawaiian language is thriving in our modern society and it remains relevant as technology evolves around us. The iPhone and Google's homepage are just two instances where the Hawaiian language can be selected as an option in language settings. Developers of the popular website, Wikipedia, borrowed the Hawaiian word wikiwiki, meaning speedy, for its name. Travelers through Honolulu International Airport are greeted every half hour with a public announcement first in Hawaiian, followed by its English translation. Local television reporters and weather forecasters consult with language experts on Hawaiian pronunciation. One of the morning news shows features a segment produced entirely in the Hawaiian language. Cable subscribers receive a channel featuring Hawaiian language reporting.
The Hawaiian language is engrained in our daily lives in Hawai'i, and is important to all of Hawai'i's people. I am extremely grateful for the efforts made by kupuna, our elders, as well as language and cultural educators, to preserve the Hawaiian language. According to the University of Hawai'i at Hilo, there are approximately 7,500 people learning the Hawaiian language today, from preschools, institutions of higher education, and community programs. Parents are again raising their children to speak Hawaiian. While there is an increasing interest in the Hawaiian language, this is still just a small percentage of the population of the State of Hawai'i. I applaud the State for designating February as the "Month of the Hawaiian Language" and bringing awareness to the need to perpetuate our language so that future generations may learn the language of their ancestors.
E ola mau ka 'Olelo Hawai'i! Long live the Hawaiian language.
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** Here's a typical assertion that Hawaiian language was banned -- an assertion made in passing (as though it is a well-established fact) in the middle of a sentence about a different topic, as is so often done. This happened in an Alaska newspaper in June 2012!
http://juneauempire.com/local/2012-06-07/native-language-council-seen-hope-indigenous-culture#.T9u7da4xWzs
Juneau Empire [Alaska], June 7, 2012, **Excerpts showing context of the assertion that Hawaiian language was banned; that assertion comes in the bottom paragraph.
Native language council seen as hope for indigenous culture
Experts say time is dwindling to save threatened languages from extinction
A new Alaska Native Language Council has the potential to bring threatened languages back from the brink of extinction, say experts in the field.
"Our hope is that we can really create living languages, and advocate for the importance of the languages," said Lance Twitchell, an assistant professor of Alaska Native languages at the University of Alaska Southeast. ...
The issue of disappearing languages was highlighted recently with the death of the last speaker of the Eyak language. ...
Other states and nations have dealt with similar issues and have had some strong successes as well.
Hawaii has adopted Native Hawaiian as one of its official languages, giving official support to a language that was once banned, while in New Zealand an effort to restore the Maori language in preschool has successfully expanded into grade school, middle school, high school and finally college.
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** On October 4, 2012 Senator Akaka gave his final speech as a Senator to the annual convention of the Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement. In the middle of his lengthy speech, he asserted that there was a time when the teaching of Hawaiian language had been banned. Here's the offending assertion, in context:
"I have seen so many changes in Hawaii and across the country, and I have been amazed at the resiliency of our Native Hawaiian people, our culture, and our language. Since I was a boy, the United States has grown and evolved. I have witnessed profound change in the status and treatment of all indigenous peoples. Gone are the days when teaching our language was banned, when our culture and traditions were deemed unimportant."
The entire speech is available at
http://www.hawaii247.com/2012/10/05/akaka-gives-final-speech-to-native-hawaiian-convention/
Shame on Senator Akaka for telling such an inflammatory, scurrilous lie.
Here is some information about the laws of Hawai'i concerning Hawaiian language, taken from a sheet distributed by kumu hula John Lake in his Hawaiian culture classes. 1913: $10,000 appropriated for publication of a Hawaiian dictionary; 1919: Law that Hawaiian shall be taught as a subject in all high schools and teachers' colleges; 1923: $2000 appropriated for writing and publishing textbooks in Hawaiian; 1935: Daily instruction of at least 10 minutes in Hawaiian conversation or writing required in elementary schools serving Hawaiian Homes children. Clearly, Hawaiian language was alive, and received government funding in the schools throughout the Territorial period.
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http://www.mauinews.com/page/content.detail/id/572609/Viewpoint--Let-the-Hawaiian-language-live.html?nav=18
Maui News, May 11, 2013, Viewpoint (lengthy letter to editor)
Let the Hawaiian language live
By KALELE KEKAUOHA-SCHULTZ, for The Maui News
** Excerpts focused on the claim that Hawaiian language was banned.
"We are a dynamic community of Hawaiians and non-Hawaiians alike, with a common belief that the children of Hawaii have the right to be educated in ka 'olelo 'oiwi, or the native language of this land. The concept of employing a lottery to determine who will be allowed into an immersion school is oppressive in nature. ... in a time that requires due diligence, recognition and thoughtful consideration of state responsibilities to na kupa o ka 'aina, or natives of this land. ... It is not acceptable to hold us down by refusing support an equal opportunity for education on Maui. Learning our language is a right, not a privilege. This right was legally banned from 1896 to 1978, and public education helped to implement this ban. As a result, a generational gap occurred in the usage and what would have been the natural evolution of our mother tongue. In fact, by the 1980s, Hawaiian language was near extinct."
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http://www.midweek.com/anuenue-schools-pono-pookumu/
Midweek (weekly newspaper on O'ahu), Wednesday October 23, 2013
Anuenue School's Pono Po‘okumu
by Mufi Hannemann [Former mayor of Honolulu]
"Political and linguistic repression after the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy nearly brought an end to the language of its people, but deep in the lush vegetation of Palolo Valley, you hear old Hawaii flowing through the voices of Ke Kula Kaiapuni ‘O Anuenue students. They are pupils of Anuenue School, one of a dozen Hawaiian Language Immersion Programs (HLIP) operating in our state aimed at perpetuating the Hawaiian language and culture. ..."
** Letter to editor submitted by Ken Conklin
The very first clause in Mufi Hannemann's essay on Anuenue School (Midweek 10/23/13) is factually false and racially inflammatory.
Mr. Hannemann wrote "Political and linguistic repression after the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy nearly brought an end to the language of its people ..."
I have a fact-filled webpage with plenty of footnotes disproving that often-repeated falsehood, whose only purpose is to stir up bitter resentment among ethnic Hawaiians. In 1892, when Lili'uokalani was Queen, 95% of all the government schools were already using English to teach all subjects, because that's what Hawaiian parents wanted for their children. Please see
http://tinyurl.com/6zrka
Can't we please celebrate and take pride in the revival of Hawaiian language without writing historical falsehoods that only serve to create racial hatred?
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** Here's a letter to editor showing how the allegation of Hawaiian language ban is inserted casually in the midst of other statements, as though everyone already knows it is true.
http://www.staradvertiser.com/editorialspremium/letterspremium/20131112_Letters_to_the_Editor.html?id=231530541
Honolulu Star-Advertiser, November 12, 2013, Letters to Editor
Not all Hawaiians oppose Senate Bill 1
Hawaiian baby boomers, young and old, need to stop waving the Hawaiian flag, Ka Hae Hawaii, at the Iolani Palace grounds or even at the Capitol and stating that all Hawaiians believe in marriage only for one man and one woman.
Our alii, our people and throughout history, Hawaiians had polygamous relationships. A gay person (mahu) was known in every family. Acts of aikane, po‘olua and punalua were accepted by Hawaiians prior to the arrival of Western people.
Christians came in and slammed Bibles in our faces and indoctrinated our people to become like them, speaking one language and banning the Hawaiian language.
Well, times have changed. It's 2013, not 1913. Same-sex marriages will be established. May the people who support SB1 prevail.
Kalani Pe‘a
Kihei, Maui
** Here's my comment published online under the letter:
To Kalani Pe'a:
There's one sentence in your letter which has several falsehoods and borders on hate-speech. You said "Christians came in ... speaking one language and banning the Hawaiian language."
The Christian missionaries created the written Hawaiian language, translated the Bible into Hawaiian, preached in Hawaiian, and taught thousands of natives to read and write in Hawaiian. The missionaries certainly were not "speaking one language" -- unless that language was Hawaiian!
Neither the Christian missionaries nor anyone ever banned the Hawaiian language. The assertion that Hawaiian language was banned is one of the most widely believed lies about Hawaiian history. The grievance industry loves to perpetuate that scurrilous lie because it would be so awful if it were true. Telling that lie does nothing but stir up hate against Caucasians and demands for reparations.
I have a detailed webpage filled with footnotes proving that it is false and explaining how that lie got started. See
http://tinyurl.com/6zrka
I'm adding your letter to my collection of other similar hateful assertions of the alleged language ban, at
http://tinyurl.com/83xmb
You need to get educated with facts to overcome your edumacation by the "Hawaiian Studies" brainwashers.
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Here's another example of the false assertion that Hawaiian language was banned in all public and private schools in Hawaii until 1986. As usual, the falsehood is asserted in passing, as though it is a commonly-known fact. See the final sentence in the excerpts, which provide context.
http://www.civilbeat.com/articles/2013/11/20/20453-learning-hilo-defending-hawaii/
Honolulu Civil Beat, Wednesday November 20, 2013, feature article by staff writer Alia Wong.
"Nawahi is one of 20 schools in the state where a total of about 2,400 students learn in Hawaiian, not English. These Hawaiian immersion programs are publicly funded, and many are housed on regular public school campuses. ... The three-decades-old Nawahi has spearheaded the movement to revitalize the Hawaiian language by establishing immersion schools that are a form of blowback against what activists see as a generations-long strategic effort to extinguish the Native Hawaiian identity. ... While Hawaii in 1978 adopted a constitutional amendment requiring that its public education system promote the Hawaiian language and culture -- and also made Hawaiian one of two official languages -- on-the-ground change was slow to follow. Linguistics scholars, including Nawahi Principal Kauanoe Kamana, estimate that by 1983 fewer than 50 children spoke Hawaiian fluently. The state's complicity was apparent; it didn't repeal a long-standing law banning the Hawaiian language from public and private schools until 1986."
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On February 4, 2014, the 'Aha Punana Leo issued a news release falsely asserting that Hawaiian language was banned in Hawaii schools. Here is that assertion in context, taken from
http://www.ahapunanaleo.org/index.php?/resources/puunana_leo_establishing_standards_for_early_education_through_indigenous_l/
"The 'Aha Punana Leo's system of eleven Punana Leo preschools, one infant daycare program and State-wide Administrative office was evaluated last week in a new preschool through high school (P-12) accreditation standards based on indigenous education guidelines under the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. This accreditation is part of the long process of revitalizing the language and reestablishing high quality distinctive Hawaiian language medium education. ... Use of Hawaiian was illegal in schools for 90 years. The 'Aha Punana Leo lead [sic] the movement to remove that ban and has been the primary private entity supporting development of education through Hawaiian from preschool on to the doctorate level."
Comment: As we have noted before, a law passed in 1896 required that for a school to be certified as meeting the definition of "school" for the mandatory attendance law, it must use English as the language of instruction. The law did not single out Hawaiian, and its main purpose was to require all children to grow up speaking English as their common language regardless of whatever other language they might speak at home -- especially Japanese and Chinese children whose parents were working on the sugar plantations. The law required all courses in the regular curriculum (science, math, history, etc.) to be taught through the English language, but it specifically allowed for languages other than English (including Hawaiian) to be taught in language courses in the schools, much as students today might study French or Spanish in school. The law did not in any way prohibit parents from creating after-school or weekend academies where all subjects could be taught in whatever language the parents wanted -- indeed, the Japanese parents created hundreds of Japanese language/culture academies during a period of many decades, but Hawaiian parents did not create Hawaiian academies, even though by law the Hawaiian parents were paid higher wage rates than the Japanese. Many Hawaiian parents also demanded that their children speak only English in the home, because they wanted their children to speak English fluently as the pathway to success.
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Noelani Goodyear-Kaopua, Associate Professor at University of Hawaii, authored an article in the Winter 2014 issue of the Harvard International Review entitled "Hawai'i: An Occupied Country" available at
http://socialsciences.people.hawaii.edu/publications_lib/Goodyear-Kaopua,%20Hawaii%20Occupied%20Country%202014.pdf
On pages 58-59 she wrote the most flagrantly false version of the claim about Hawaiian language being banned: "The onset of prolonged US occupation that began in 1898 abruptly halted the growth of Hawaiian national life. Control of the national land base was wrested from the Hawaiian Kingdom. The Hawaiian language was also banned and ..." Her article had numerous other falsehoods and distortions about Hawaii's history, and what's especially disappointing is to see it published in a publication of the prestigious Harvard University.
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Honolulu Star-Advertiser, letter to editor, February 28, 2014 explaining and justifying a series of outrageously racist public remarks by Faye Hanohano, chairperson of a committee in the state legislature.
http://www.staradvertiser.com/editorialspremium/letterspremium/20140228_letters_to_the_editor.html?id=247725771
"Poor Hawaiians. At one time the Hawaiian language and the hula were banned in Hawaii. Things haven't changed. So state Rep. Faye Hanohano needs to show more aloha?"
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http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2014/05/30/hawaiian-language-preschools-garner-international-recognition-155079
Indian Country Today, May 30, 2014
Hawaiian Language Preschools Garner International Recognition
[News release from 'Aha Punana Leo]
"The 'Aha Punana Leo's Hawaiian language preschools in Hilo, Hawaii have been granted by the World Indigenous Nations Higher Education Consortium (WINHEC) the first accreditation of an early education program conducted through an endangered and indigenous language worldwide. ... For 90 years the use of Hawaiian was illegal in schools. The 'Aha Punana Leo lead the movement to remove that ban and has been the primary private entity supporting the development of education through Hawaiian from preschool on to the doctorate level. Language revitalization programs worldwide widely recognize the 'Aha Punana Leo as the model for education in an endangered and indigenous language revitalization movement."
** But of course Hawaiian language was never illegal in schools. It could be taught as a language course on the same basis as Japanese or French or Spanish; and it could be used as the language of instruction in after-school or weekend academies -- the Japanese plantation workers established hundreds of Japanese-language academies, but the Hawaiians chose not to establish their own language schools.
----------------------
http://www.staradvertiser.com/featurespremium/20150405_Summoning_our_stories.html?id=298665611
Honolulu Star-Advertiser, April 5, 2015, ** excerpts
Artists explore the Americanization of Hawaii and its impact on the land and its people
By Mindy Pennybacker
Solomon Enos spoke about his installation, "A Struggle of Narratives," part of the exhibit "Contact" at the Honolulu Museum of Art School. ... In his shady Nu'uanu carport, Solomon Enos stepped onto his papier-mache model-in-progress of Central Oahu being attacked by white giants and defended by action figures. As he narrated the gory scenes, the artist threw back his head and laughed. "I'm retroactively changing people's legacy. Seeing how you built your wealth, you're not so beautiful after all!"
The invaders were "papering over natural areas with the documents that gave them power," including newspapers that supported the businessmen who overthrew Hawaii's monarchy. The defenders included Hawaiian and Asian deities and St. Francis of Assisi confronting a monster who's chewing up a Hawaiian-language newspaper "because the language was banned."
** Ken Conklin's note: The news reporter quotes the artist who flat-out said the most extreme version of the lie: "the language was banned." The outrageousness of that lie is magnified in this case by the fact that the news report shows that the artist and reporter are both aware of the Hawaiian language newspapers, which continued publishing continuously right up until the last one finally died out for lack of readership in 1948.
------------------
http://thegardenisland.com/news/local/saving-the-hawaiian-language/article_030b3a97-54b5-596c-996e-031cd74de457.html
The Garden Island (Kaua'i), Sunday May 31, 2015
"Pua Rossi-Fukino, instructor of Hawaiian language and studies at Kauai Community College, said ... she finds the funding for Hawaiian language ironic since an 1896 law, which was lifted in 1987, banned the teaching of the language in public schools. "It just caused a ripple effect: families stopped teaching it, families stopped sharing it because they were not supported," she said. "What happened in 1896 was that (a U.S. policy) banned the practice of Hawaiian language, the teaching of Hawaiian language in public schools, and they took away the funding to the people who wanted to continue that." Rossi-Fukino said the incorporation of the 1896 law led to Hawaiian speakers rarely sharing the language. She added that her family is an example of that.
"My great-grandmother was a native speaker and she was an educated woman, but she was a native speaker of olelo Hawaii and a speaker of English and she refused to teach Hawaiian language to my grandmother," she said. "My grandmother had to go and learn her own indigenous language from somebody else outside of the household. In turn, she herself didn't teach it to my father. My father had to go to other ohana and learn his language. ..."
** Comments by Ken Conklin: Rossi-Fukino says the 1896 law banned Hawaiian language from being taught in the schools. That's false. The law only required that English must be the language used for teaching all the subject-matter in science, history, mathematics, etc. And it only applied to schools which were government-certified as meeting the requirement that all children must go to school. The 1896 law specifically allowed other languages to be taught as language courses. The 1896 law also did not stop anyone from opening after-school or weekend academies where other languages could be used for teaching all subjects. Impoverished Japanese plantation workers set aside money to establish academies for perpetuation of Japanese language and culture for their children; Hawaiian laborers chose not to create Hawaiian-language academies even though Hawaiians were by law paid a higher wage rate than Japanese, and even though wealthy ali'i could have donated money for that purpose but chose not to do so. Rossi-Fukino says the 1896 law was U.S. policy. That's false. In 1896 Hawaii was still a sovereign, independent nation -- the Republic of Hawaii. Annexation did not happen until 2 years later. Rossi-Fukino does tell the truth when she says her great-grandmother refused to teach Hawaiian to her own daughter, who in turn refused to teach Hawaiian to the next generation in the family. That's the real reason the language nearly died -- not because it was banned in schools (it was not banned), but because Hawaiians themselves voluntarily abandoned Hawaiian in favor of English, even in the privacy of their own homes. Native parents wanted what was best for their kids, and realized that the pathway to success for the future was through English, not Hawaiian.
-------------------------
Here's an example showing how the lie that it was illegal to speak Hawaiian language in school continues to be stated, as though it were true, on February 15, 2016 in both of the Hawaii Island newspapers (West Hawaii Today [Kona] and Hawaii Tribune-Herald [Hilo]). Notice that the lie is stated very briefly, in passing, as though it is an accepted fact which everyone accepts without needing any discussion.
http://www.westhawaiitoday.com/news/local-news/hawaiian-language-radio-show-first-aired-1972-be-made-available-online
and
http://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/news/local-news/labor-love
Excerpt from article: "It was 1972. Hawaiian was dying out. Most native speakers were kupuna -- and there were not many left. It was still technically illegal to speak Hawaiian in schools. Who was going to listen to a program conducted entirely in Hawaiian?"
Excerpt from Conklin online comment: "Article says "It was 1972. ... It was still technically illegal to speak Hawaiian in schools." That's false. It was NEVER illegal to speak Hawaiian anywhere, including in the schools. The lie that it was illegal to speak Hawaiian has been repeated so often, for such a long time, that many people believe it. The purpose for repeating the lie is to portray ethnic Hawaiians as poor, downtrodden victims, and to stir up racial resentment and bitter anger against those evil haoles who (allegedly) oppressed the natives and made it illegal for them to speak their own language in their own homeland. It's very easy to say a scurrilous lie in a single sentence, and much more complicated to explain and prove the truth. ... Larry Kimura, glorified in this article, is a leader in perpetuating this lie and milking it for propaganda purposes. Larry Kimura and Pila Wilson, both professors of Hawaiian language at UH Hilo, cling tightly to this lie, repeatedly ignoring and denying proven facts presented to them in public, perhaps because their huge salaries and status in the community depend on having people believe this nonsense; and they keep teaching the lie to their students. After all, they are the experts, right? So who would dare to contradict them with facts! Search for their names -- especially Wilson -- in this webpage"
--------------------
Lilikala Kame'eleihiwa is Professor of Hawaiian Studies at the University of Hawaii where she has sometimes been department chair, and she has taught thousands of students during several decades. For four weeks in February 2016 she was a delegate to the Na'i Aupuni convention that wrote a proposed constitution for a Hawaiian tribe. In an article in Honolulu Civil Beat on February 24, 2016 she explained her view on why the race-based convention should write a constitution for the race-based tribe in which citizenship should be limited to racial Hawaiians exclusively, bu pointing out some treasonous things Caucasian subjects of the Kingdom had done.
http://www.civilbeat.com/2016/02/native-hawaiian-citizens-in-a-native-hawaiian-government/
Here she repeated the lie she has undoubtedly taught thousands of students in her classes:
"1896: Banning of the Hawaiian language in the public schools and the beating of Native Hawaiian children for speaking Hawaiian"
-------------------
The Na'i Aupuni convention in February 2016 not only produced a proposed tribal constitution, they also had an independence committee that produced and published its own declaration.
http://www.aha2016.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/NativeHawaiianDeclaration-022616.pdf
After reciting a litany of grievances, in the 6th paragraph from the end, the declaration says "We declare that these are but a few of the truths about the injustices our people and lands have endured, including the banning of our Native tongue, since foreigners came to our islands."
------------------
On February 18, 2016 The Honolulu Star-Advertiser published an article entitled "Google service translates Hawaiian." The first sentence says "The Hawaiian language, once banned in the public schools and teetering on the edge of extinction two decades ago, is now being translated by Web giant Google." Ken Conklin wrote to the reporter who wrote the article, and to the editor in charge of corrections, asking for a correction to be published about the false allegation that Hawaiian language had been banned in the public schools. Conklin explained about the falsehood and provided a link to Conklin's lengthy and detailed webpage proving it is false. The reporter responded "I hear what you're saying but even the state Department of Education's own website describes the language as being 'banned.'" Conklin tracked down the "History of Hawaiian Education" webpage on the Department of Education website, and saw that the falsehood is prominently asserted in three places on the two-page webpage. Conklin then wrote to the Director of Hawaiian Studies, whose name and email are displayed on that history webpage. Conklin's lengthy email provided detailed proof that the assertion is false, and requested that the DOE webpage be corrected. The Director of Hawaiian Studies entire reply was: "The Department appreciates your attention to the information provided on our website. We will review the website and make changes as deemed necessary." Anticipating bureaucratic delays and probable stonewalling, Conklin created the following webpage where the offending DOE webpage, Conklin's detailed email, and further events are tracked. During April 2016 Ken Conklin wrote directly to Superintendent of Schools Kathryn Matayoshi, who replied two weeks later that the offending webpage would not be corrected. Ken Conklin then issued a Goebbels Award For Outstanding Use of Media for Propaganda Disguised As Fact -- awarded jointly to Director of Hawaiian Studies Dawn Kau'ilani Sang, Superintendent Kathryn Matayoshi, and the Hawaii Department of Education; for refusing to correct a scurrilous falsehood on their website and in their curriculum despite being provided with massive irrefutable proof that it is false. A followup email was sent to every member of the Board of Education asking them to order Director Sang and Superintendent Matayoshi to correct the falsehoods on the webpage and to remove the falsehood from the school curriculum. THIS IS A MAJOR CASE STUDY. "HOLDING THE STATE OF HAWAII DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION ACCOUNTABLE FOR PROPAGATING THE LIE THAT HAWAIIAN LANGUAGE WAS BANNED."
https://www.angelfire.com/big11a/DOEHawnLangBan.html
See also
The Goebbels Award For Outstanding Use of Media for Propaganda Disguised As Fact -- awarded jointly to Director of Hawaiian Studies Dawn Kau'ilani Sang, Superintendent Kathryn Matayoshi, and the Hawaii Department of Education; for refusing to correct a scurrilous falsehood on their website and in their curriculum despite being provided with massive irrefutable proof that it is false.
-------------------
HCR190 and HR136: A resolution in the legislature of 2016 requested the Department of Education's Office of Hawaiian Education to conduct a study on how to provide access to instruction in the Hawaiian language in all public schools statewide. This resolution included as its first "whereas" clause the following falsehood: "Whereas the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom in 1893 led to a ban on teaching and learning through the medium of the Hawaiian language beginning in 1896, thereby eradicating the Hawaiian language from all formal education for the next four generations" which was taken directly from the Department of Education webpage noted above. Ken Conklin submitted detailed testimony disproving that assertion, requesting that no further administrative authority or funding should be given to the Office of Hawaiian Education until the falsehood is removed from its webpage and school curriculum, and demanding removal of the first "whereas" clause from this resolution. However, the committee passed the resolution with no votes against it and no amendments.
Resolution text, history, committee hearings, pdf of all testimony submitted to each committee, YEAs and NAYs, committee reports:
http://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/measure_indiv.aspx?billtype=HCR&billnumber=190&year=2016
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In March 2016 Kahookahi Kanuha gave a 75-minute lecture, recorded as a YouTube video, "presenting historical findings on how the Hawaiian language was eliminated from society in Hawaii." The lecture provided some important details about the development of Hawaiian as a written language, and the slow but stead emergence of English as the dominant language. However the lecture greatly overstated the importance of the 1896 law, and falsely asserted that there was a deliberate suppression of Hawaiian language by Caucasians from the mid-1800s until about 1980. The lecturer is Kaho'okahi Kanuha, who was one of the two top leaders of the protest on summit of Mauna Kea. He was arrested for trespass, and put on trial. He succeeded in demanding that his trial must be conducted in Hawaiian language. His father is an elected member of the Hawaii Island County Council. Kaho'okahi Kanuha is highly intelligent, knowledgeable, and charismatic. The video is available at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2I4fRRpnxtE#t=83
Ken Conklin's online comment to the video:
This video has lots of valuable facts about Hawaiian and English languages in mid-1800s Hawaii. Thank you! But note that by 1892, BY DECISION OF SOVEREIGN NATIVE MONARCHS, 95% of all government schools were already using English as medium of instruction. So the 1896 law made no practical difference for native kids. The main purpose and effect of 1896 law was to force Japanese kids attending plantation schools to use English as language of instruction instead of Japanese, because it's important for all people in nation to have one language which they all can speak 1896 law was NOT directed against native kids or Hawaiian language. Japanese parents responded by creating after-school and weekend Japanese-language academies to perpetuate their language and culture; Hawaiian native parents chose not to do that, even though by law the natives were paid higher wages than the Japanese. Think about it -- do kids in today's Hawaiian immersion schools not learn English because they speak only Hawaiian in school? No! They learn English because English is the dominant language in everyday life. The same would have been true in reverse for native kids -- speak only English in school, but IF Hawaiian was really the dominant language on the street, then the kids would never have lost Hawaiian. The downfall of Hawaiian language and rise of English was by gradual choice and lifestyle of native parents and native government leaders, not because of evil haoles suppressing Hawaiian language or passing the law of 1896.
For details and proof of all main points, see these three webpages:
Was Hawaiian Language Illegal? Did the Evil Haoles Suppress Hawaiian Language As A Way of Oppressing Kanaka Maoli and Destroying Their Culture?
http://tinyurl.com/6zrka
Holding the State of Hawaii Department of Education accountable for propagating the lie that Hawaiian language was banned.
http://tinyurl.com/z77ogbq
Examples of Some Angry or Bitter Published Articles Claiming That Ethnic Hawaiians Were Victimized by Having Their Language Made Illegal or Suppressed
http://tinyurl.com/83xmb
-------------------
http://www.staradvertiser.com/2017/03/19/travel/hawaiis-backyard/event-celebrates-schoolsperpetuation-of-language/
Honolulu Star-Advertiser, Sunday March 19, 2017
Event celebrates schools' perpetuation of language
By Cheryl Chee Tsutsumi
** The first paragraph of this article is as follows:
If a group of Hawaiian educators hadn't met in 1982 to develop the immersion concept of Punana Leo, Kili Namau'u is certain the Hawaiian language would have been lost. "For many years, teaching Hawaiian was banned in public schools; it couldn't be spoken or taught," said Namau'u, who is of one-fourth Hawaiian ancestry. "By the mid-1980s only about 500 people in Hawaii could speak Hawaiian, and most of them were elders."
** The credit at the end says:
Cheryl Chee Tsutsumi is a Honolulu-based freelance writer whose travel features for the Star-Advertiser have won several Society of American Travel Writers awards.
** Here is Ken Conklin's online comment:
Article says "For many years, teaching Hawaiian was banned in public schools; it couldn't be spoken or taught."
That is totally false. That lie has been repeated so often that people have come to believe it. The main result of repeating it is to build feelings of anger and resentment which are not justified by the facts.
It's easy to tell a lie in one or two sentences.
The truth needs to be explained thoroughly.
See "Was Hawaiian Language Illegal?" at
https://www.angelfire.com/hi2/hawaiiansovereignty/hawlangillegal.html
and also
"Holding the State of Hawaii Department of Education accountable for propagating the lie that Hawaiian language was banned." at
https://www.angelfire.com/big11a/DOEHawnLangBan.html
--------------------
Below are the first two sentences in a story broadcast on an evening newscast and published on the TV station's website, with brief online rebuttals attempted by Ken Conklin but which the station's censors did not allow to be posted.
http://www.kitv.com/story/37406646/british-native-speaks-fluent-hawaiian-turns-heads-at-state-capitol
KITV 4 news, February 1, 2018
British native speaks fluent Hawaiian, turns heads at State Capitol
By Moanike'ala Nabarro
Before the Hawaiian monarchy abruptly ended in the late 1800's, Hawaiian was the primary language of the islands. Court trials, day to day business, everything was conducted in Hawai'i's native tongue.
FALSE. In the year 1892, the year before the revolution, when Liliuokalani was still the head of state, 95% of all the government schools in the Kingdom were using English as the language of instruction, to teach all the subjects.
The Hawaiian Kingdom was overthrown in 1893 and following Hawaii's annexation, the language was banned.
FALSE. This piece of nonsense is constantly asserted, and the main reason for saying it it to stir up racial hatred. If it were true that Hawaiian language was banned, how do you explain the fact that Hawaiian language newspapers continued to be published and sold openly on the streets right up until 1948. ???
--------------------
A Facebook page caught my attention on September 18, 2018. A company named Kumucards is selling Hawaiian language flashcards. The company's website
https://kumucards.com
currently offers only one set of flashcards and and they apparently seek only ethnic Hawaiians to be their customers:
"OUR MISSION
Is to provide the Kanaka Maoli around the world with the resources they need to reinforce the Hawaiian language in their daily lives. We work tirelessly to developing immersive & interactive curriculum that makes learning fun.
CHANGING THE WORLD ONE HAWAIIAN AT A TIME."
Here's what their Facebook page says (9/18/18):
"Aloha and Welcome to the @Kumucards page. Here is a little history of Hawai'i and the reason why we founded our company.
In 1893 the kingdom of Hawai'i was illegally taken with force by the United States of America. Shortly after in 1896 the Hawaiian language would be banned from being spoken in the Public school system and in the work place. Children were disciplined for speaking their native tongues, for 25 years this would be law. A heroic few would hold fast, without them surely our language would have been lost to history.
As you could imagine this wreaked havoc on our people and brought many socioeconomic hardships to the indigenous peoples of Hawai'i. Since the 80's the Hawaiian language has recovered slightly; schools have been formed with the sole purpose of teaching the language. Sadly the vast majority of Hawaiians don't necessarily have access to these awesome resources.
Our goal is simply to normalize the Hawaiian language being spoken and make learning the Hawaiian language (Olelo Hawai'i) more accessible to all.
Mahalo nui for stopping by!
Here's Ken Conklin's comment posted on that Facebook page:
It's good to revive Hawaiian language and provide a product to help people learn it. But it's sad that you feel a need to spew falsehoods about Hawaii's history as a marketing tool -- falsehoods which only serve to fill people with hate.
The U.S. did not "illegally take Hawaii by force" in 1893. The revolution was done by an armed militia entirely composed of local men, half of whose leaders were native-born or naturalized subjects of the Hawaiian Kingdom. U.S. peacekeepers came ashore to prevent rioting and arson, but were held in reserve and did not participate.
The 1896 law did not ban the Hawaiian language in the schools or work places -- it required that in order for a school to be certified by the government as BEING a school that would satisfy the law that required all children to attend school, the school must use English as the language of instruction in all subjects. This law was aimed mainly to ensure that the children of Japanese and Chinese plantation workers must attend a school where they would learn English -- they could not continue attending only schools taught in Japanese or Chinese. Japanese workers then created Japanese-language academies where their kids could learn Japanese language and culture after school and on weekends; Hawaiian parents could have done that but chose not to do so. The idea was that all the children of Hawaii, regardless of race, should grow up having one language everyone could understand (English) in addition to whatever other languages they might speak at home or in the workplace. A Ph.D. dissertation at UH found that in 1892 (year before the revolution, while Liliuokalani was still in control) 95% of all the government schools in Hawaii were already using English as their language of instruction, because the Hawaiian parents wanted it that way. That's why English was chosen instead of Hawaiian to be the language required by the law. For details see
http://tinyurl.com/6zrka
----------------------
In October/November 2018 someone behind the scenes at OHA and/or University of Hawaii and/or Kamehameha Schools was circulating an article published in several news venues celebrating the revival of Hawaiian language, which asserted in passing, in the middle of a lengthy article, that the language had been suppressed for decades because of a law passed by the Republic of Hawaii in 1896 that had made it illegal to use Hawaiian language as the medium of instruction in Hawaii's schools. Ken Conklin was successful in countering this falsehood in two of those venues.
West Hawaii Today [Kona], Monday October 22, 2018
"Saving a Language" By Cameron Miculka
http://www.westhawaiitoday.com/2018/10/22/hawaii-news/saving-a-language/
"The language had been suppressed for decades, with an 1896 law that banned education through Hawaiian widely seen as a pivotal part of the language's decline."
The Garden Island [Kaua'i], Sunday October 28, 2018
"Talk Story with Keala Ching"
http://www.thegardenisland.com/2018/10/28/lifestyles/talk-story-with-keala-ching/
"The language had been suppressed for decades, with an 1896 law that banned education through Hawaiian widely seen as a pivotal part of the language's decline."
Honolulu Civil Beat [online-only newspaper], Thursday November 1, 2018
"The Hawaiian Language Shall Survive
UPDATED: In spite of the huge challenges of moving a language forward after near extinction, outcomes have been impressive."
by Monica Morris [public policy advocate with Office of Hawaiian Affairs] and William H "Pila" Wilson [professor of Hawaiian language, Hawaiian studies and linguistics at Ka Haka ‘Ula O Keʻelikōlani College of Hawaiian Language at the University of Hawaii-Hilo.]
https://www.civilbeat.org/2018/11/the-hawaiian-language-shall-survive/
"Considering that teaching through Hawaiian was illegal from 1896 to 1986, the progress made has been quite amazing."
Here is full text of Ken Conklin's online comment to the Civil Beat article [comment limit 1000 characters and links are prohibited]
Article says "teaching through Hawaiian was illegal from 1896 to 1986." That's false, and elicits resentment by implying racial oppression.
In 1862 Kamehameha IV said "...it is important to change all Hawaii's schools to English speaking schools." In 1882 the Kingdom's Board of Education ruled that in English-language schools, students should be forbidden to speak any other language even among themselves because total immersion is best for language learning. By 1892 (when Lili'uokalani was still reigning monarch) Reinecke says 95% of all the government schools were already using English as the classroom language. Parents could establish after-school or weekend academies using other languages -- Hundreds of such academies were established using Japanese language to teach Japanese history and culture. Hawaiians could have done that but chose not to because they wanted their kids to become fluent in English. Most Hawaiian parents insisted their kids speak only English even at home.
Ken Conklin made a detailed online comment on Sunday October 28 to The Garden Island article, and the comment was then later published as a guest commentary in the printed newspaper on Saturday November 3, 2018. Here is full text of the printed guest commentary:
http://www.thegardenisland.com/2018/11/03/opinion/hawaiian-language-was-never-suppressed-banned/
Hawaiian language was never suppressed, banned
By Kenneth R. Conklin, Ph.D.
An article published in TGI Sunday (Oct 28) says "[Hawaiian] language had been suppressed for decades, with an 1896 law that banned education through Hawaiian widely seen as a pivotal part of the language's decline."
That's a frequently heard but badly misleading explanation of what happened. It perpetuates nasty implications of racial oppression, serving only to elicit resentment or even hatred. Let's correct the record. A webpage at
https://tinyurl.com/4gspl
provides extensive citations from two books by UH scholars John Reinecke (Ph.D. dissertation 1935) and Albert J. Schutz (1994), confirming the following points:
In 1862 Kamehameha IV addressed the Kingdom legislature "… it is important to change all Hawaii's schools to English speaking schools, and I once again put this forth to all."
In 1882 the Kingdom's Board of Education adopted the policy that in the growing number of schools where English was the language for teaching all the subjects, the students should be forbidden to speak any other language even among themselves because total immersion is best for language learning.
By 1892 (when Lili'uokalani was still reigning monarch) 95 percent of all the government schools were already using English as the classroom language for teaching all the subjects (thus the 1896 law had almost no effect on stifling Hawaiian).
By 1896 the majority of kids in Hawaii were children of Japanese, Chinese, or Portuguese plantation workers. The 1896 law was aimed at ensuring that Hawaii's kids would master one language they all could speak. English was chosen rather than Hawaiian because it was already the dominant language in commerce and government.
It was expected that Hawaii would soon become part of the U.S., and all kids born in Hawaii (including Chinese and Japanese) would thereby become U.S. citizens who would need to speak English to be successful.
The 1896 law affected only government or private "schools" which wanted to be certified as meeting the law requiring that all kids must attend "school."
But parents and community groups were free to establish after-school or weekend academies where other languages could be used — Hundreds of such academies were established where Japanese history and culture were taught using Japanese language. Hawaiians could have done that but chose not to because they wanted their kids to become fluent in English. Most Hawaiian parents insisted their kids speak only English even in the home.
Thus we see that the 1896 law was the natural outgrowth of English-only school policies adopted by sovereign Hawaiian monarchs; English was already the language of instruction in 95 percent of government schools while Lili'uokalani was still in power; the 1895 law was not adopted to suppress Hawaiian language but to require Asian, European and Hawaiian kids to learn English as the one universal language everyone could speak; and the law allowed private after-school academies which could use whatever language they wished to perpetuate whatever culture they preferred.
-----------------------
On March 26, 2019 the Smithsonian Magazine published a lengthy article entitled "How the Music of Hawai'i's Last Ruler Guided the Island's People Through Crisis."
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/how-music-hawaiis-last-ruler-guided-islands-people-through-crisis-180971783/
Here are excerpts:
"Amy Stillman, who is a native Hawaiian and a professor in the departments of American culture and musicology at the University of Michigan, says her parents' generation had the Hawaiian language 'beat out of them' and that her generation was denied access to their ancestors' language ... You will find no opposition to the annexation if you're reading in English. The minute you go into Hawaiian language sources, it's nothing but opposition. Because of our language loss, we were cut off from the sources. ... Hawai'i never regained its sovereignty and Lili'uokalani died in 1917, leaving her people to face decades of cultural oppression. Nobody can rewrite history, and no one can right the many wrongs the Hawaiian Islands have suffered. But the future is still malleable, and Hawaiians across the United States are working to ensure Hawaiian culture and the legacy of Queen Lili'uokalani is passed on to future generations. ... we must look to our children. They are the future, ... they are the ones who will speak our language so that that language and those thoughts will be heard again."
Ken Conklin made two attempts to post comments, but both were held up "awaiting moderation"
(1) It is unfortunate that an institution so prestigious as The Smithsonian has fallen victim to the propaganda of a Hawaiian sovereignty activist (Amy Stillman). It is completely false to say that Hawaiian language was made illegal or suppressed, or that it was "beaten out" of the natives. That is one of many assertions put forward by the Hawaiian grievance industry to arouse racial hatred against "haoles" and to seek sympathy from the public for an agenda to divide the lands and people of Hawaii along racial lines to create a fake Hawaiian tribe, or else to produce secession of Hawaii from the U.S. Please read this webpage for detailed proof that Hawaiian language was never made illegal nor suppressed, and that English had already become the language of instruction in 95% of the government schools by order of the Kings and native leaders, before the monarchy was overthrown:
"Was Hawaiian Language Illegal? Did the Evil Haoles Suppress Hawaiian Language As A Way of Oppressing Kanaka Maoli and Destroying Their Culture?"
https://tinyurl.com/4gspl
(2 intentionally omitting internet link in hopes of avoiding censorship):
It is false to say that Hawaiian language was made illegal, or that it was suppressed or "beaten out" of the natives. Such an assertion only serves to arouse racial resentment and hatred. Fact: Newspapers in Hawaiian language continued to be published continuously up to 1948 when the last one finally died out for lack of readership. Fact: Native Hawaiian kings and leaders, and parents, demanded that the schools adopt English as the language for teaching all the school subjects -- as a result, by 1892 (the year before the monarchy was overthrown) 95% of all the schools were already teaching all their classes in English. For additional details, please see this website: (copy/paste its title into your browser including quote marks):
"Was Hawaiian Language Illegal? Did the Evil Haoles Suppress Hawaiian Language As A Way of Oppressing Kanaka Maoli and Destroying Their Culture?"
-----------------------
On Thursday March 28, 2019 PBS-Hawaii televised a live hour-long panel discussion with four Hawaiian language revival activists. An announcement about the show was sent to perhaps thousands of subscribers on the Friday beforehand, and posted on the TV station's website at
https://www.pbshawaii.org/insights-on-pbs-hawaii-the-hawaiian-language/
The first sentence of the announcement was also broadcast many times for several days on TV:
"Ka 'Ōlelo Hawai'i, the Hawaiian Language, once forbidden in schools and nearly lost, is flourishing again in these Islands."
The racially incendiary statement that Hawaiian language was "forbidden in schools" is false, and Ken Conklin sent an email to the TV station's President/CEO Leslie Wilcox and several other station executives demanding that the falsehood be corrected. But of course the email was ignored, and the publicity avalanche continued. Ken Conklin therefore created a Goebbels Award containing the announcement, providing proof that the assertion is false that the language was forbidden in schools, and providing three ways for the TV station to correct the falsehood. See webpage
"The Goebbels Award For Outstanding Use of Media for Propaganda Disguised As Fact -- awarded jointly to PBS-Hawaii and Leslie Wilcox, its President and CEO; for refusing to correct a racially inflammatory falsehood about the alleged banning of Hawaiian language in the schools of Hawaii. The falsehood was asserted repeatedly in advertisements through email, televised teasers, and website announcements ahead of an INSIGHTS panel discussion televised live on March 28, 2019 regarding the history and revival of Hawaiian language; and was also asserted by panelists during the discussion."
See the Goebbels Award webpage at
http://big11a.angelfire.com/GoebbelsAwardPBSLeslie032819.html
----------------------
On Friday August 9 retired lawyer, judge, and mayor Bill Fernandez, a Kamehameha School graduate recently honored with a Waikiki parade as a distinguished alumnus, authored a lengthy commentary in The Garden Island [Kaua'i newspaper]. Fernandez supported the Mauna Kea protesters on account of a very long list of Hawaiian victimhood historical grievances, most of which are either false or badly twisted.
One of the numerous assertions by Judge Fernandez was: "Colonizers also know that suppression of native language is key to subjugating a native people. Look at Hawaii. After the overthrow of the monarchy in 1893, they banned the use of the Hawaiian language (Act 57, section 30 of the 1896 Laws of the Republic of Hawaii). This law led to the suppression of native newspapers unfavorable to the new government, and the end of teaching Hawaiian language in schools."
Ken Conklin wrote a lengthy rebuttal to those falsehoods, including the allegation that Hawaiian language was banned; that the language was banned in the schools; and that native newspapers unfavorable to the new government were suppressed.
Please read my point-by-point rebuttal debunking those falsehoods. These claims are publicized all the time by the tycoons of the Hawaiian grievance industry. Their attitude is: Here are the bad things that have made us victims, now you owe us sympathy, political power, money and reparations (like stopping TMT).
The rebuttal was published on a blog on Saturday August 11 at
https://historymystery.kenconklin.org/?p=648
Both the full text of Mr. Fernandez' newspaper commentary and Conklin's detailed point-by-point rebuttal are provided in the form of a webpage "dialog" published Sunday August 12 at
https://tinyurl.com/yxtq33az
-------------------
On November 19, 2020 the Smithsonian Magazine published an article "What the Survival of the Hawaiian Language Means to Those Who Speak It -- A Smithsonian curator recalls his own experience learning the native tongue" by Jennie Rothenberg Gritz, a senior editor at Smithsonian magazine who was previously a senior editor at the Atlantic.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/what-survival-hawaiian-language-means-those-who-speak-it-180976323/
This article contains two sentences near the beginning, which have outrageous errors of history. Here is Ken Conklin's online comment, which might be deleted by viewpoint censors who adore the article's author and love to assert historical falsehoods to bolster the Hawaiian grievance industry.
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Sorry to say, this article has numerous historical falsehoods. It's astonishing to see them published by such an esteemed institution as the Smithsonian. Here's a quote of 2 sentences containing numerous errors which need detailed corrections.
"In 1896, just a few years after the king died, the U.S. government overthrew Kalākaua’s sister, Queen Liliuokalani, and annexed the islands as a U.S. territory. Part of the overthrow involved banning the Hawaiian language from all schools."
1. The revolution that overthrew the monarchy happened in January 1893, not 1896.
2. The revolution was done by an armed militia of 1500 local men led by a group of 13 men of whom 7 were native-born or naturalized subjects of the Kingdom, and all were local property-owners or businessmen including some from Britain, Germany, Portugal, U.S. Only one shot was fired, by a local revolutionary, lightly wounding a policeman in his shoulder.
3. The U.S. government landed 162 sailors from a ship in Honolulu harbor as peacekeepers to protect American lives and property and to prevent arson and rioting; but they were never actually used, did not patrol the streets or take over any buildings; did not give money, food, or arms to any revolutionaries.
4. The revolutionary Provisional Government produced a Constitution for a new government, the Republic of Hawaii. Speaker of the House was full-blooded native former royalist John Kaulukou. The Republic got full-fledged diplomatic recognition conferred in letters personally signed by Emperors, Kings, and Presidents of at least 19 nations on 4 continents including Britain, China, France, Russia, Switzerland, USA.
5. The Republic offered a Treaty of Annexation to the U.S. in 1897, which the U.S. Senate, House, and President agreed to in 1898 and implemented in the Organic Act of 1900.
6. Hawaiian language was never banned from any schools, let alone all schools. Starting in the 1870s the monarchs began deliberately adopting English as the language used for teaching all school subjects, so the kids would grow up ready for the modern world. By 1892, when the monarchy was still in power, 95% of all the government schools were using English to teach all subjects. In 1896 the Republic passed a law requiring English to be the language of instruction in all schools (government or private) seeking to be certified as satisfying the law that all children must attend "school." Hawaiian could be taught as a language course if enough parents requested it. The law allowed after-school or weekend academies where any language could be the language of instruction -- hundreds of such academies teaching Japanese culture, science, history etc. through the Japanese language were established by Japanese laborers on the sugar plantations; but ethnic Hawaiians chose not to do anything like that even though they had higher pay. Hawaiians wanted their kids to be educated in English, as the monarchs had begun in the government schools three decades previously.
-----------------------
Kai Kahele is Hawaii's newly elected Congressman to replace Tulsi Gabbard. On November 27, 2020 he published an outrageously false tweet, to which Ken Conklin replied.
https://twitter.com/kaikahele/status/1332405823432126464
Kai Kahele
@kaikahele
In 1893 the hawaiian language was banned for 100 years after the illegal overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom. #NativeAmericanHeritageDay is an opportunity to not only celebrate our indigenous cultural heritage but the revitalization of our indigenous languages like ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi.
** Ken's reply on Twitter:
Kahele, what you wrote is totally false, and serves only to inflame racial hatred. Shame on you! For facts see
http://tinyurl.com/6zrka
and
https://tinyurl.com/y6phnzeh
=============
On January 4, 2021 Jose Cabrera authored a commentary in Honolulu Star-Advertiser: "In statehood search, Puerto Rico should learn from Hawaii"
Excerpt: "Like Puerto Rico, Hawaiians faced intrusion over matters of culture because of Hawaii’s territorial status. The teaching of the Hawaiian language in public schools was banned after 1896."
Ken Conklin's online comment:
Mr Cabrera, you have unfortunately helped to keep a falsehood circulating. You said "The teaching of the Hawaiian language in public schools was banned after 1896." I have three major webpages filled with proof that is false. Google this line:
Was Hawaiian Language Illegal? Did the Evil Hs Suppress Hawaiian Language?
1896 Laws of the Republic of Hawaii, Act 57, sec. 30: "The English Language shall be the medium and basis of instruction in all public and private schools, provided that where it is desired that another language shall be taught in addition to the English language, such instruction may be authorized by the Department, either by its rules, the curriculum of the school, or by direct order in any particular instance. Any schools that shall not conform to the provisions of this section shall not be recognized by the Department."
Please notice that the law does not ban Hawaiian or any other language; does not even mention them. IT SPECIFICALLY SAYS OTHER LANGUAGES CAN BE TAUGHT IN SCHOOLS. Says only that all school subjects must be taught through English language. The main purpose was to force plantation schools to use English instead of Japanese or Chinese. It was expected that local-born kids would become U.S. citizens after hoped-for annexation. Japanese parents sent kids to perfectly legal weekend and after-school academies to learn their cultures and languages; Hawaiians chose not to do that.
===============
To: gb8528@princeton.edu
CC: newsroom@dailyprincetonian.com, eic@dailyprincetonian.com
Aloha Gisele Bisch
I'm writing to help you understand the truth in relation to a falsehood you stated in your article of September 30, 2021 in The Daily Princetonian.
https://www.dailyprincetonian.com/article/2021/10/nativehawaiians-history-representation-princeton
I don't blame you for ignorantly repeating a falsehood you have probably been told many times by people you trust; however, it is indeed false. It's worse than false, because it stirs up racial hatred based on something that did not happen. I hope you will never again propagate this falsehood, and that you will find some way to set the record straight to repair the damage your published statement has caused and will continue to cause as people in the future, including high school and college students, find your article on the internet and cite your statement as authoritative in the term papers they write.
The falsehood comes in the first paragraph of your essay where you wrote: "... dealing with the loss and misrepresentation of our culture ... after decades of a disconnection due to events like the Hawaiian-language ban (which was only lifted in 1986) ..."
First: Let me give you proof it is false by reminding you of something true you might have heard: Hawaiian language newspapers were published continuously during the years from 1834 to 1948, when the last one finally died out for lack of interest. Indeed, a massive project has been underway for many years and continuing, to digitize and make those newspapers available on the internet in Hawaiian and also in English translations of them. If it were true that Hawaiian language was banned at any time during that period, especially after the 1893 overthrow of the monarchy, then how was it possible for newspapers in Hawaiian language to be openly published and sold on the streets? Why were no people arrested or imprisoned for publishing articles in Hawaiian?
Second: I invite you to read a webpage I published about 20 years ago after hearing the falsehood so many times that I was motivated to do extensive research to find out the truth: "Was Hawaiian Language Illegal? Did the Evil Haoles Suppress Hawaiian Language As A Way of Oppressing Kanaka Maoli and Destroying Their Culture?"
https://www.angelfire.com/hi2/hawaiiansovereignty/hawlangillegal.html
Third:
In your essay you cite as authoritative a webpage published by the State of Hawaii Department of Education, which would probably occupy two pages if printed out, which actually emphasizes that falsehood in three places! Your citation is embedded as a clickable link, functioning as a footnote, in the red-letter phrase "like the Hawaiian-language ban". Clicking that phrase takes a reader to this webpage:
https://www.hawaiipublicschools.org/TeachingAndLearning/StudentLearning/HawaiianEducation/Pages/History-of-the-Hawaiian-Education-program.aspx
I first came across that webpage when I asked an author of an article in the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, and his editor, to publish a correction to a sentence they had published which said Hawaiian language had been banned. They refused to make the correction, citing that DOE webpage as their evidence. After reading that DOE webpage, I made a major effort to get DOE to remove the falsehood, for fear that journalists would continue relying on it to continue to justify publishing the falsehood in their articles. My effort was met with bureaucratic stonewalling and eventually an outright refusal from the Superintendent, who basically said: that's the story our [unnamed] sources have told us and we're sticking with it without doing any research. Wow! Here's a large webpage I wrote describing step by step my effort to get DOE to correct the falsehood. I hope you'll read this chronology, partly because of the massive evidence I provided to DOE bureaucrats proving that the claim of banning is false, and what actually happened historically. Also, I hope you will not stonewall, and you will do a better job than DOE of correcting your own error.
"Holding the State of Hawaii Department of Education accountable for propagating the lie that Hawaiian language was banned."
https://www.angelfire.com/big11a/DOEHawnLangBan.html
Fourth: I have copied this email to you as the latest example of a long list of examples where people have asserted your falsehood. The assertions usually happen in the same way as yours: as a short phrase buried in the middle of longer comments about how Native Hawaiians have been victimized by colonial oppression. The shortness of the phrase might make it seem to have no lasting consequences. Perhaps like a small dose of poison in the middle of a cupcake might seem to be no problem, but turns out to be deadly. Whether you knew it is false or not, your statement is poisonous to racial harmony. If left uncorrected its consequences can be fatal. Your essay in the Princetonian is now the latest example displaying how the falsehood gets propagated. See my webpage "Examples of Some Angry or Bitter Published Articles Claiming That Ethnic Hawaiians Were Victimized by Having Their Language Made Illegal or Suppressed"
https://www.angelfire.com/hi2/hawaiiansovereignty/hawlangpublvictclaims.html
=============
https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-anti-white-lotus-giving-voice-to-native-hawaiians-and-their-colonialist-struggle
The Daily Beast Saturday October 30, 2021
The Anti-‘White Lotus’ Giving Voice to Native Hawaiians and Their Colonialist Struggle
** Ken Conklin's note: Article touts film "Waikiki" by ethnic Hawaiian filmmaker Chris Kahunahana which celebrates Hawaiian victimhood.
"He describes the decimation of the Native Hawaiian population at the turn of the century, in which a people who numbered almost 1 million was reduced to less than 40,000. ... “We are the ones who are here of our kūpuna [ancestors] who survived genocide. The fact that we’re still here we have a responsibility to speak on this. Our families had to fight to stay alive,” Kahunahana says. “I feel blessed with the opportunity and platform to say something.” Hundreds of years after the genocide of Native Americans, Hawaiians were subjected to the same treatment. The overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom led to the separation and indoctrination of Hawaiian children, criminalization of the Hawaiian language, and thus a rupturing of Hawaiian value systems, culture, and identity."
** Notice that, as usual in these screeds, the false claim that there was "criminalization of the Hawaiian language" is inserted casually into the middle of a lengthy litany of alleged historical grievances, as though it is a well-established fact. What makes this particular example especially outrageous is the assertion that Hawaiian language was "criminalized." There was no law making it illegal to speak or write Hawaiian language. Nobody was ever arrested or imprisoned for violating such a non-existent law. But the assertion is designed to be inflammatory, arousing what the article describes as "righteous anger" and racial hatred.
================
During March 2022 a resolution of sentiment HR130 was introduced in the House Committee on Judiciary and Hawaiian Affairs of the Legislature of the State of Hawaii, entitled: APOLOGIZING TO THE NATIVE HAWAIIAN PEOPLE FOR THE EFFECTIVE PROHIBITION IN HAWAII SCHOOLS OF THE INSTRUCTIONAL USE OF THE HAWAIIAN LANGUAGE FROM 1896 TO 1986. The resolution was referred solely to that one committee, dominated by Hawaiian race-partisans, so of course the committee passed the resolution unanimously. Ken Conklin submitted 15 pages of written testimony debunking numerous falsehoods in the resolution, but of course the race-partisans totally ignored it and chose to knowingly sign on to absolute falsehoods. See the testimony at
https://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/Session2022/Testimony/HR130_TESTIMONY_JHA_03-24-22_.PDF
The two most blatant falsehoods in HR130 were:
(1) "the Hawaiian Monarchy's judiciary; law enforcement; health system; and public systems for education, which were the genesis of Hawaii's public education system, all functioned solely in the Hawaiian language"
(2) "the ‘Ōlelo Hawaii was excluded from Hawaii's public schools for ninety years and would not be heard in official instruction for four generations"
Those lies were proved false by irrefutable factual evidence and historical citations in Conklin's testimony.
In addition was the following misleading statement:
"due to Act 57, many students were punished for speaking ‘Ōlelo Hawaii at school, and the number of Hawaiian language speakers collapsed from nearly forty thousand in 1896 to a mere two thousand in 1978"
which was rebutted by analysis noting that all language-immersion schools, including today's Hawaiian language immersion ones, demand that students speak only the one selected language throughout the school day and that children are punished for violating that rule; but furthermore, the English-only Act 57 had its greatest impact not on native Hawaiians but on the thousands of Japanese and Chinese kids in the private schools on the sugar plantations who could maintain their native language and culture by attending after-school or Saturday academies in their native language (the same was true for Hawaiian kids) but who were forced to speak only English in their full-time school courses. Two scholarly books by John Reinecke and Albert J. Schutz were cited to prove that the official policy of the Kingdom was to gradually replace Hawaiian with English as the language of instruction in the government-run schools, which most of the native kids attended, with the result that in 1892, the year before the monarchy was overthrown, 95% of all the government schools were already using English as the language of instruction.
================
https://www.thegardenisland.com/2023/05/26/hawaii-news/native-hawaiian-group-receives-85k-grant-to-revitalize-hawaiian-language/
The Garden Island [Kaua'i] Friday May 26, 2023
Native Hawaiian group receives $85k grant to revitalize Hawaiian language
By Jackson Healy
LIHU‘E — Native Hawaiian organization Papahana Kuaola has received a nearly $85,000 grant from the Office of Hawaiian Affairs as part of a multi-organizational effort to revitalize ‘olelo Hawai‘i, the Hawaiian language, from keiki to kupuna.
Historically Hawai‘i’s primary language, ‘olelo Hawai‘i was banned from being taught in schools in 1896 by the Republic of Hawai‘i’s governing body, three years after the overthrow of the Hawaiian kingdom.
With punishments for students speaking Hawaiian and educational institutions even discouraging use of the language at home, ‘olelo Hawai‘i’s prominence soon plummeted across all spheres of public life.
This trend would continue for most of the 20th century, until a late-1960s resurgence in cultural pride and identity spurred a renewed interest in embracing Hawaiian culture — and, in particular, the Hawaiian language.
Even while ‘olelo Hawai‘i became an official language of the state in 1978, it wasn’t until 1986 that the ban on teaching the language in school was lifted.
“A lot of people don’t realize that, up until fairly recently, it was illegal for the Department of Education to teach Hawaiian language in school,” said Keoua Nelsen, project manager at Papahana Kuaola. “We’re really talking about just 40, 50 years ago.”
Nelsen continued, considering this shift as likely the most significant for the ‘olelo Hawai‘i’s modern-day resurgence.
“It was when it became legal for the language to be taught in the public school system that we see what I believe is the second renaissance of really growing the language,” he said.
Still, that growth has been slow. According to a 2007 study, only about 2,000 native Hawaiian speakers exist. Additionally, UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization) still classifies ‘olelo Hawai‘i as a critically endangered language — the agency’s most extreme classification for a surviving language.
With the Hawaiian language still threatened, much of kanaka maoli culture is threatened as well. Nelsen summarized this stuggle with a Hawaiian proverb: “I ke ‘olelo no ke ola, i ka ‘olelo no ka make” — or in English, “In language there is life, in language there is death.”
“I believe we really couldn’t start to understand our cultural practices unless we revived our language,” he said. “In the language, culture and cultural practices live and thrive. That’s why, to me, normalizing the use of Hawaiian language becomes very important.”
O‘ahu-based Papahana Kuaola — one of several organizations involved in OHA’s program — is working with 10 Hawaiian families in approximately 40 weekly classes to teach foundational skills and lessons on ‘olelo Hawai‘i across multiple generations. Making use of the organization’s 63-acre Kane‘ohe property, much of the lessons are meant to be immersive and hands-on, tying in Hawaiian language with cultural practices.
“Whether it’s stream restoration or identifying native plants and things like that, (we’re) kind of making it a more living type of lesson versus a classroom setting,” Nelsen said. “The focus will be, of course, with the parents and the grandparents, so that they can take these skill sets and reinforce them in the home with their children and grandchildren.” Ultimately, OHA intends to gather data from Papahana Kuaola’s project, as well as similar projects conducted by other organizations across Hawai‘i, in order to create a report on the state and use of ‘olelo Hawai‘i. With this guide, OHA intends to better inform future efforts to further revitalize the Hawaiian language.
-----
** Ken Conklin's email response to reporter, with copy to editor and other reporters
Aloha Jackson Healy,
I was greatly saddened by your "news report" on Friday, May 26, 2023 entitled "Native Hawaiian group receives $85k grant to revitalize Hawaiian language". Your article appears to be based entirely on some sort of politically biased news release. I'm guessing you are not familiar with the facts of Hawaii's history related to the so-called language ban, so I encourage you to read a couple of detailed webpages (see below) which explain exactly what happened and why.
It is false to say that there was a ban against teaching Hawaiian language in the schools. The law passed in 1896 allowed Hawaiian, or any other language, to be taught as a language. Numerous languages, including Hawaiian, have been taught in both public and private schools throughout all decades of the Republic, Territory, and State of Hawaii. What the law actually required was that English must be the language used as the vehicle for teaching every subject in the schools (such as math, history, science, etc). Please read what the law actually said -- I have its full text in the first webpage mentioned below.
The law never singled out Hawaiian language or mentioned Hawaiian at all. The law also was not focused only on the public schools as your article says -- the law applied to ALL the schools in Hawaii, public or private, which wanted to be certified by the government as "schools" for the purpose of satisfying the compulsory attendance law which stated that all children must attend "school." By 1892, the year before the monarchy was overthrown, 95% of all the public schools in Hawaii were already using English as the language of instruction (see proof from authoritative sources cited in my webpages), with enthusiastic support of native parents -- thus, the law had almost no effect on causing the decline of Hawaiian language, since 95% of the kids were already speaking English all day in school and most native parents were also demanding their kids speak English at home.
The underlying reason for passing the law was directed against the private schools run by the sugar plantations where nearly all the children were of Japanese or Chinese ancestry and the parents wanted their kids to have their lessons taught in those languages -- the Republic government was looking ahead to annexation to the USA; all kids born in Hawaii would then become U.S. citizens and would have voting rights when they grew up and should be fluent in English so they could have one language which they would all share and could understand the laws and participate in civic and business activities. The resurgence of Hawaiian language in recent decades has been done for ethnic cultural pride and for political purposes as part of a race-based and highly divisive sovereignty movement, which the unfortunate victimhood grievance tone of your article displays and encourages.
For a general overview of this topic see webpage "Was Hawaiian Language Illegal? Did the Evil Haoles Suppress Hawaiian Language As A Way of Oppressing Kanaka Maoli and Destroying Their Culture?" at
https://www.angelfire.com/hi2/hawaiiansovereignty/hawlangillegal.html
For a more detailed discussion, including an effort to get the Department of Education to correct falsehoods in its webpage, see "Holding the State of Hawaii Department of Education accountable for propagating the lie that Hawaiian language was banned" at
https://www.angelfire.com/big11a/DOEHawnLangBan.html
I am adding your news report and this email to the following webpage: "Examples of Some Angry or Bitter Published Articles Claiming That Ethnic Hawaiians Were Victimized by Having Their Language Made Illegal or Suppressed"
https://www.angelfire.com/hi2/hawaiiansovereignty/hawlangpublvictclaims.html
You might also want to see how the claim of language banning is part of a much broader and pernicious political battle: "Hawaiian Language as a Political Weapon"
https://www.angelfire.com/big09/HawLangPolitWeapon.html
Thank you for your attention to these matters. You are welcome to contact me for information and a diverse viewpoint about Hawaiian history in general and Hawaiian sovereignty in particular, especially before you write other news reports based on news releases or contacts from Hawaiian political activists.
Ken Conklin
================
This webpage compiles some examples displaying how the lie is asserted that Hawaiian language was suppressed or actually made illegal. What follows is a very lengthy critique of what is a very brief assertion of the most extreme version of the lie -- that the language was banned -- unqualifiedly banned, absolutely, completely banned from books, newspapers, public speech, cultural performances, schools, etc. Of course the assertion did not mention all those ways of banning it; but failure to say where it was allegedly banned "innocently" creates the impression that it was a ruthless total ban. The reason for devoting so much space to analyzing this small example is that the author is typical of the most dangerous sort of spreader of lies -- a nice person in the drive-by media who seems to be innocently telling a sweet story, mentions the lie casually while focusing on a different topic, is highly credible because of education and professional activities, seems to be beyond reproach and would easily get public sympathy when accused of nasty behavior. That's why, after citing the lie in the context where it is asserted, there will be some attention to the nature of the newspaper and the background of the author. In her own biography page at Arizona State University, the author holds herself out to be a journalist with a masters degree in mass communication and wide experience; so surely she must realize that it's important for a writer of a newspaper article to be accurate, especially when making a statement that is racially incendiary and will be seen by tens of thousands of people including many zealous activists.
Here is a portion of the newspaper article providing the context in which the lie is asserted, but making the innocent-looking poison near the end visible by showing it in ALL CAPITAL LETTERS:
"In her living room in Port Orchard, Wash., Daisy Ann Young-Kiu Akuna Goodall, 83, still strums the strings of the ‘ukulele she first learned to play as a teenager in Hawai‘i. “I learned it by ear – and watching,” said Goodall, a native of Ke‘anae in rural Maui. Today, drivers pass by the small coastal community when they traverse the Hana Highway. But in Goodall’s birth year of 1941, before the Road to Hana was even paved, Ke‘anae was predominantly made up of kalo farmers, including the Akunas. “I grew up in the country,” Goodall said. One of 15 siblings, she was raised in a Catholic household. Instead of learning hula, Goodall tried out ‘Ori Tahiti, or Tahitian dance. With Kanaka ‘Ōiwi lineage on both sides of her ‘ohana, she remembers her Tūtū Wahine occasionally speaking ‘ōlelo Hawai‘i. However, WITH THE HAWAIIAN LANGUAGE BANNED SINCE 1896, keiki like her learned English. “That was in the ‘40s,” Goodall said. “We didn’t know how to use pidgin English – how to say it, pronounce it.”"
The Office of Hawaiian Affairs is a government agency which the State of Hawaii created in 1978 for the race-focused purpose of "betterment of Native Hawaiians." But over the years, instead of spending most of its money to actually provide help, it has accumulated a hoard of more than $804 Million. OHA repeatedly files lawsuits demanding more money from revenues the State earns from leasing government lands, and annually lobbies the legislature to appropriate even more revenues and tax dollars for racially exclusionary projects. OHA's monthly newspaper "Ka Wai Ola" publicizes cultural events and editorializes on political topics. In Vol. 41 No.4 for April 2024, the newspaper devoted its entire page 7 to a biographical commentary entitled "Faces of the Diaspora Series: A Ke‘anae Girl 'Left Hawai‘i for Good'" by Megan Ulu-Lani Boyanton.
https://kawaiola.news/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/KaWaiOla-April2024.pdf
In her article Ms. Boyanton displays the way in which the racially incendiary lie about the alleged banning of Hawaiian language most frequently gets hurled -- it is stated very quickly, in passing, in a cavalier, routine, matter-of-fact way. Ms. Boyanton herself might not even know that it is a falsehood. Perhaps she is merely parroting what other people told her. But the editors of the OHA newspaper were happy to spread the lie because it's a major item in a long list of trumped-up historical grievances which ethnic Hawaiian race-mongers love to propagandize for the twin purposes of soliciting sympathy from left-leaning voters and bolstering demands for money and political power as restitution for colonial oppression and American imperialism.
Here is a portion of Ms. Boyanton's commentary providing the context in which the lie is asserted, but making the innocent-looking poison visible by showing it in ALL CAPITAL LETTERS:
"In her living room in Port Orchard, Wash., Daisy Ann Young-Kiu Akuna Goodall, 83, still strums the strings of the ‘ukulele she first learned to play as a teenager in Hawai‘i. “I learned it by ear – and watching,” said Goodall, a native of Ke‘anae in rural Maui. Today, drivers pass by the small coastal community when they traverse the Hana Highway. But in Goodall’s birth year of 1941, before the Road to Hana was even paved, Ke‘anae was predominantly made up of kalo farmers, including the Akunas. “I grew up in the country,” Goodall said. One of 15 siblings, she was raised in a Catholic household. Instead of learning hula, Goodall tried out ‘Ori Tahiti, or Tahitian dance. With Kanaka ‘Ōiwi lineage on both sides of her ‘ohana, she remembers her Tūtū Wahine occasionally speaking ‘ōlelo Hawai‘i. However, WITH THE HAWAIIAN LANGUAGE BANNED SINCE 1896, keiki like her learned English. “That was in the ‘40s,” Goodall said. “We didn’t know how to use pidgin English – how to say it, pronounce it.”"
Was Ms. Boyanton herself naively ignorant that what she said was false? We will never know. But what we do know is that she is well-educated, has academically-certified expertise and wide experience with news media, is familiar with how historic grievances are used for financial and political gain, and is herself politically active in leftwing movements. The list of her accomplishments and activities is astonishingly wide-ranging -- indeed, it might show her to be a scattershot, superficial, unfocused, attention-seeking dilettante.
Ms. Boyanton described herself in her profile on the Arizona State University website as follows:
She "has served as a faculty adjunct at Arizona State University since the spring of 2023, occasionally teaching Media Issues in American Pop Culture. She joined The Denver Post in January 2022 as a business reporter, focusing her coverage on social inequities in business. She now covers the new Denver neighborhoods beat on the public affairs desk. She writes for Better Homes & Gardens, Vox, Smithsonian Magazine, Delish, Eater, Viator Travel and other publications. She covers the Hawaiian diaspora for Ka Wai Ola, a Hawaiʻi-based newspaper. For two years, she chased after lawmakers on Capitol Hill as Bloomberg Government's agriculture and trade policy reporter. Megan has covered the Venezuelan refugee crisis in Peru, socioeconomic issues in Guatemala, parliamentary affairs in England, White House press briefings in Washington, D.C., and the cannabis industry in Colorado. During her stint at Arizona PBS, she worked two beats: borderlands and social justice. Megan received her master's in mass communication from Arizona State University. She is a 2023 Goldschmidt Data Immersion Fellow, a 2022 Cannabis Media Fellow at UVM, a Beltz Award for Editorial Excellence winner, a Denver Post “I Heart Readers” Award runner-up and a past White House Correspondents' Association scholar. She's a member of the Overseas Press Club and NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ Journalists. Master's degree in mass communication from Arizona State University's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism. Bachelor's degree in liberal arts and communications from Northwestern State University's Louisiana Scholars' College"
As noted many times on this website, Hawaiian language was never banned. We have obvious proof of that fact because dozens of newspapers published in Hawaiian language were openly sold on the streets of Hawaii continuously from 1834 to 1948 until the last one finally died for lack of interest; many of them have now been digitized and are available on the internet. Hawaiian language was also used in the legislature of the Territory of Hawaii during its first two decades, both in oral floor debate and written bills.
Following the Hawaiian revolution of 1893 which overthrew the monarchy, the Republic of Hawaii hoped for and worked toward annexation to the United States. One consequence of annexation would be that every person born in Hawaii would become a citizen of the United States and, upon reaching adulthood, could vote. This was true not only for native Hawaiians but also for the many thousands of Japanese and Chinese babies born in Hawaii to parents who were immigrant laborers on the sugar plantations. Immigrants not born in Hawaii could seek to become naturalized citizens with voting rights; over a thousand Chinese men did that during the Kingdom. The plantations had private schools where the kids were being taught in Japanese or Chinese, which they also spoke at home, so the kids never had a chance to learn English (or Hawaiian). The Kingdom of Hawaii, and successor Republic, had long had a law requiring all children to attend school. Then, as now, government schools attended free of charge satisfied the requirement to attend school. There were also many private schools. Then as now, a private school could be certified by the government as satisfying the requirement that kids must attend school. In 1896, anticipating annexation to the English-speaking United States and desiring that all children should grow up having a single language they all could speak in common (in addition to whatever other language they might speak at home), the Republic of Hawaii passed a law that all government and private schools wanting to be certified as acceptable for the compulsory attendance law must use English as the language through which all school subjects must be taught. The law did not ban Hawaiian or Japanese or Chinese or any other language from being taught in a language course. The law did not ban any private afternoon or weekend private schools from using other languages to teach their courses -- indeed, hundreds of private academies for evenings and weekends were created for Japanese kids to be taught through Japanese language about Japanese culture, history, etc. -- native Hawaiian parents chose not to do that despite the fact that by law Hawaiian plantation laborers were paid higher wages than Japanese or Chinese laborers. The simple fact is that most native Hawaiian parents strongly preferred that their children should learn through English at school -- two books by scholars provide research showing that by 1892, the year before the monarchy was overthrown, 95% of all the government schools in the Kingdom of Hawaii (under control of King Kalakaua [the "merrie monarch" who actually brought back public hula which had been banned by a previous monarch]) were already using English as the language for teaching all the subjects, because that's what the native parents wanted. Because nearly all native Hawaiian kids were attending the government schools where English was the language of instruction, most native kids were not affected by the 1896 law. For more details and proof, including full text of the actual 1896 law, see
https://www.angelfire.com/hi2/hawaiiansovereignty/hawlangillegal.html
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