Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 40, Number 1, 1 January 2023 — From Engagement to Evidence [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

From Engagement to Evidence

J 'AHA HO'ONA'AUAO 'OIWI HAWAI'I V ^ NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION COUNCIL *

By Elena Farden One of the most important tasks the Native Hawaiian Education Council (NHEC) prepares for eaeh December is presenting powerful

recommendations on education to the U.S. Department of Education. These recommendations are born from, and for, the community. NHEC works annually in community eonsultations and engagement sessions, diverse dialogue, and ongoing education research and advocacy in existing educational programs addressing Native Hawaiians in our process to bring forward these annual recommendations. The stories and data gathered from eommunity are synthesized combining muhiple data sources into major findings to understand commonalities between individual data points, analyzed against trends including previous priority recommendations on education by NHEC, and benchmarked with external research sources in education and community wellbeing. NHEC is focusing this months eolumn on our first priority of Hawaiian languagemedium instruction. Here is our full priority recommendation write up from our annual report: "PRIORITY FUNDING RECOMMENDATION: Assert Hawaiian language-medium instruction and culture-based education programs, frameworks, and values as principal in addressing equity, resiliency, and socialemotional wellbeing for increased Native Hawaiian learner outcomes and closing achievement gaps. "The ability for a stabilized learning eontinuum and connection for Native Hawaiian communities to engage in cultural practices in a pandemic crisis of emerging COVID variants remains critical. This is critical to life as Native Hawaiian and Paeihe Islanders (NHPI) have the highest death rates from COVID-19 eompared with any other racial group (Hofschneider, 2020). This is also critical to healthcare access as NHPIs have the highest rate of COVID-19 cases compared to other racial and ethnic groups (UH News, 2020). "The pandemic put a historical context of disease population decimation of Native Hawaiians due to American imperialism and its impact on loss of cultural practices, language,

and land (NHEA, 2015). Ramifications of this - directly and indirectly - adversely affects long-standing mistrust of government institutions and increased vaccination hesitancy of NHPIs in the pandemic (UH News, 2022). To address this crisis, the Native Hawaiian Paeihe Islander COVID-19 Response, Recovery, and Resilience Team was formed. This multi-agen-cy team understood that culture-based programs and cultural belief systems and practices are powerful tools for helping Native Hawaiian communities make sense of and interpret the pandemic and its effects. For example, the team supported the creation of a CommunityBased Subsistence Fishing Area to connect culturally based practices, sustainable food systems, and puhlie heahh benefits for NHPI communities (Kamaka, et al., 2021). "Native Hawaiians have strong connections to aina (land, plaee), culture, and language and thus are socially and culturally impacted by the pandemic (Kaholokula, Samoa, Miyamoto, Palafox, & Daniels, 2020). Participants of NHEC's 2022 community consultations reported a strong connection to culture and language in order to be successful. 'Cultural programming, values, learning olelo Hawai'i, aina work is all so necessary,' reflected an O'ahu participant, 'and that's not what I used to say, but this pandemic has completely changed my perspective.' (Native Hawaiian Education Council, 2022) "Priority funding for Hawaiian languagemedium education and Hawaiian culturebased education programs in the next NHEP grant competition is paramount for supporting Native Hawaiian learner outcomes including resiliency and social-emotional wellbeing." The work that goes into producing these priority recommendations eaeh year is a labor of love. To see our full report and priority recommendations, please visit our website at nhec.org ■ Elena Farden serves as the executive directorfor the Native Hawaiian Education Council, established in 1994 under the Native Hawaiian Education Act, with responsibility for coordinating, assessing, recommending and reporting on the effectiveness of educational programsfor Native Hawaiians and improvements that may be made to existing programs, policies, and procedures to improve the educational attainment of Native Hawaiians. Elena is a first-generation college graduate with a BS in telecommunications from Pepperdine University, an MBA from Chaminade University and is now in her first year ofa doctorate program.