Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 10, Number 10, 1 October 1993 — Kamehameha school teacher looks to language to heal 'ohana [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Kamehameha school teacher looks to language to heal 'ohana

by Patrick Johnston "Language ean be a foundation to heip build families." Ke'ala Kwan believes this idea and has a spent a good part of his career spreading it. He is definitely in a position to know. Kwan is chairman of the language department at Kamehameha Schools, has a child enrolled in the Hawaiian language Pūnana Leo schools, and worked for five years at Hale Ola Ho'opākōlea, a Hawaiian healing center in Nānākuli that uses 'ohana to heip drug abusers eliminate their dependency. "With the overthrow of the Hawaiian kingdom,"

explains Kwan, "Hawaiian was banned and the law wasn't really changed until 1987. Many customs were lost with the destruction of the language."

With the revival of the Hawaiian language, Kwan believes Hawaiian families ean recover these lost cultural traits, traits that made the family stronger and built up its self-esteem. With added self-

esteem family members would be more inclined to avoid destructive habits that are tearing apart a disproportionately large number of Hawaiian homes. As an example he uses

ho'oponopono, a Hawaiianstyle confiict resolution and conflict prevention technique that all but disappeared in the 100 vears after the takeover.

"Ho'oponopono is a process that Hawaiians of old had. It was clear and recognized a greater power. Many Hawaiian families today don't have a problem-solving nrocess and I

think they would be better off if they did." Kwan believes that recovery of the language ean open the mind to different ways of dealing with problems and reawaken awareness of the

culture that may have been submerged by years of living in a predominantly Englishspeaking environment.

"It would not be realistic to think that Ianguage ean solve all problems but if they (Hawaiians) didn't have it there would be no ehoiee." Central to the revival of the Hawaiian language, and in turn the strengthening of the Hawaiian family, Kwan says is the Pūnana Leo lan-

guage immersion preschools that have started up around the the state in the past ten years. Starting from one school in Kaua'i the program now has 400 students statewide and requires that parents get involved. "What I've seen is dedicated parents trying to learn the language themselves. This brings the eulture into the household. ... Ten years ago this would have been unthinkable but now you ean hear Hawaiian spoken when you walk into McDonald's. ... The whole effort has had a spinoff: Being Hawaiian has begun to be thought of as good. In the past this was not the case."

"It would be unrealistic to think that language ean solve all problems but if they didn't have it there would be no ehoiee."

Ke'ala Kwan