Hawaiian scholars recognized for educational research

Faculty members from the University of Hawaiʻi Maui College Department of Humanities/Hawaiian Studies, UH Mānoa Kawaihuelani Center for Hawaiian Language and UH Mānoa Kamakakūokalani Center for Hawaiian Studies will be recognized for their outstanding research by the American Educational Research Association (AERA) at its 2015 annual meeting to be held in Chicago, Illinois. Kaleikoa Kaʻeo from UH Maui College and Kapā Oliveira, Laiana Wong and Kekailoa Perry from UH Mānoa will be participants on an Invited Presidential Session panel titled The Burden of Being the 50th State: The Role of Educational Research in Claiming Justice for the Hawaiian People.

Annually, more than 13,000 scholars from around the world attend the AERA meeting, making it the largest professional gathering of educational researchers. Invited Presidential Sessions are reserved for those scholars who are recognized by the AERA Annual Meeting Program Committee as leading authorities in their areas of research.

This Invited Presidential Session will highlight the research of these Native Hawaiian scholar-activists seeking justice for the Hawaiian people in the aftermath of a conspiracy between U.S. diplomatic and military personnel and a group of anti-monarchical insurgents that resulted in the illegal overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy in 1893. Their research will document the injurious nature of the relationship that the Hawaiian people have had to endure with the U.S. government since the overthrow. Each presenter will examine the role that research plays in bringing about the conscientization of people and the eventual return of Hawaiʻi to a state of sovereignty. This session will emphasize the moral obligation of researchers to “apply principles and evidence from social science research and theorizing to the problems of injustice.”

The paper presentations are as follows: Ea Mai Hawaiinuiakea: Educate and Liberate; Rise Hawaiʻi! (Kaʻeo), Ancestral Voices and Contemporary Choices: Carrying the Weight of Hundreds of Generations of Ancestors on our Shoulders (Oliveira); The Good, the Bad, and the Illusion of Language Revitalization in Hawaiʻi (Wong); and Forging Educational Gorilla Warfare: Rendering unto Caesar and Living to Fight Another Day (Perry).

Margie Maaka, UH Mānoa, will serve as the session chair and Bryan McKinley Jones Brayboy, Arizona State University, will serve as the session discussant.

—By Talia Ogliore