There has been a movement in the Hawaiian Islands to recapture and preserve the native culture and language of Hawaii. There are some reasons why this is quite important.
Over the last couple centuries, there has been a tremendous amount of change that has taken place on the Hawaiian Islands. Originally, the islands were inhabited by Polynesians who emigrated to the islands around A.D. 750-1000. Linguists and archeologists, who have studied historical sites and similarities in different Polynesian languages, not just in the Hawaiian Islands, but throughout the entire Polynesian domain between Asia, South America, and Hawaii, have figured out that the Polynesian peoples originated in lands in southeastern China, where the original inhabitants eventually became enveloped both culturally and biologically through intermarriage and offspring, into mainstream Chinese culture. From there, they traveled to the island now known as Taiwan, using that as a springboard for the next set of islands, and so on. Eventually, the Polynesian people and culture, and the languages that evolved through isolation from one another, proliferated throughout all the islands in the Pacific, spreading all the way to the coasts of New Guinea, Easter Island, the Hawaiian Islands, as well as the western coast of South America before those particular Polynesians got eradicated by Native American communities.
Eventually, as the Polynesians became settled on the Hawaiian Islands, kingdoms and chiefdoms emerged, each covering part of an island, or a whole island, but still meaning that there was political fragmentation that separated the islands from each other. Eventually, after a period of warfare in the Hawaiian Islands, lasting from the 1780’s to the second decade of the 1800’s, a king named Kamehameha finally united the islands under a single political regime. This entity, which lasted for some eighty years, was the first and last time that the Hawaiian natives had self-rule. It was during this time that Hawaii first started to make inroads with other civilizations, particularly the United States, because of its location relatively nearby to North America, allowing for trade and commerce with the mainland, particularly as a place to sell its rice, coffee, and sugar, and also allowing for mail service to the rest of the world through the United States.
It was this connection to the United States, through trade, commerce, and mail, which caused the beginnings of haole immigration to Hawaii. Haole is the term the Hawaiians use for white people. Eventually, by 1891, the Hawaiian queen at the time got deposed during a period that ended in a republican form of government being formed, to be replaced by an American immigrant who became president of that initial republic, that is, until annexation by the United States became complete in 1900. At this time, the territory became governed by a governor. Hawaii eventually became a state in 1959, thereby securing its place alongside all the other states within the United States.
During the last 125 or so years, the population has grown, and immigrations from the United States and Asia have changed the makeup of the Hawaiian population, particularly whites and Japanese, but also some people who came to Hawaii as workers, such as Filipinos, as well. The growth of a very ethnically diverse population in Hawaii has meant negative things to the native Polynesian Hawaiians. They have been separated, or disenfranchised, from their land. As the economy has grown in Hawaii, the natives have not been among the people benefiting from the creation of wealth. On top of that, the people that have emigrated to Hawaii have been using Hawaiian words, and naming their streets, businesses, geographical locations within the islands in that language, but have not been using the language correctly. This, more than anything else, has made the native Hawaiians feel disrespected.
Because of this, in the past 50 years, or so, there has been an effort by the Hawaiian natives to try to correct these grammatical mistakes. They have tried to make sure that people use full names rather than a shortened version of the name; they have tried to make sure that people are using the diacritical markings when writing the Hawaiian names; they have been getting the state government to change street signs to allow for these markings; and they have been educating people on the proper pronunciation of their words. They feel that proper usage of Hawaiian words helps people to respect them and their culture. In fact, they even have immersion pre-schools called ‘Punana Leo’ where native islanders can learn their native language.
Native Hawaiians have come from a place where it was illegal to speak their native language, to a place where it is legal, where they have dictionaries to guide them, and a culture they are trying to help maintain and keep from collapsing due to outside American culture and influence. Will they keep up their language, and get outsiders to have more respect for their language, and thus their culture? Will they get more relevance as time goes on by making inroads into the wealth that outsiders have on the island, and in the laws that are made by the state legislature, as well as the county governments and cities? Will they get other residents to start pronouncing the Hawaiian words right? Time will only tell as they are continuing to make inroads on the ones they have been making for the past half century.
