182 Lillis
955 E. 13th St.
University of Oregon, Eugene
The Hawaiian Experience: The Hawaiian Model for Language Revitalization
An Indigenous Peoples in the Americas Event
Dr. William H. “Pila” Wilson is professor and chair of the Hawaiian Studies Division at the University of Hawai’i at Hilo. Kauanoe Kamana is a founding member of ‘Aha Punana Leo immersion school and has been very active in developing legislation both on the state and national levels in support of the use of Native American languages in education. Tony Johnson is a Chinook Tribal member, a linguist and an artist. He is advisory board chair for the Northwest Indian Language Institute (NILI) at the University of Oregon, Chinuk Wawa instructor, and immersion language consultant.
Pila Wilson and Kauanoe Kamana were the first of a number of couples in Hawai‘i who revived Hawaiian as the first language of their home, and Dr. Wilson is founding chairperson of the program that developed into the Hawaiian Language College. They will speak about the immersion program’s development and discuss the many challenges in navigating school systems and sometimes conflicting community interests, with suggestions for addressing them.
Cosponsored by the College of Arts & Sciences, the Office of Institutional Equity & Diversity, the Center for the Study of Women in Society, the English Department, the Center for Latino/a & Latin American Studies, the Ethnic Studies Department, the Northwest Indian Language Institute, the Honors College, the Latin American Studies Department, the Education Studies Department, the Anthropology Department, Department of Linguistics, and the Romance Languages Department.