Ka Lei Kumupaʻa
NATIVE HAWAIIAN PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM
To feel akin to indigenization and the creation of college as a homestead to homesteaders, we establish roots and reliance in a safe space. Through this culture, He Loa Ke Aho lays a foundation for growth in Ka Lei Kumupaʻa Native Hawaiian Professional Development Program. The program secures blossoms together, surely and firmly. This program will consist of five professional development opportunities for faculty and staff to access in creation of their own foundational lei.
Hahai | Pursue
UNPACKING THE WHY BEHIND INDIGENIZATION
Pulelo | Rise
PEERING INTO THE DISPROPORTIONATE IMPACT OF INDIGENOUS AND INTERGENERATIONAL TRAUMA
Wehena | Opening
GROUNDING IN PROTOCOL
Punia | Permeate
ENGAGING IN LANGUAGE REVITALIZATION
Mālama | Protect, Serve
Native Hawaiian Learning Community
Mālama, Protect, Serve: Native Hawaiian Learning Community
The program that paved the way for He Loa Ke Aho professional development is Kawaimanomano. In Spring 2020, Kawaimanomano, The Many Waters, offered a Native Hawaiian professional development program out of the Innovation Center for Teaching and Learning. The program includes Hawaiian language, culture, history, and worldviews from Leeward campus Hawaiian Studies and Hawaiian Language division faculty. With 100% of participants strongly agreeing that the program is a valuable, impactful professional development series that should continue. Comments focused on strong community building, fellowship, self-awareness, growth, and appreciation for Hawaiian culture and learning.
Na ke kaikuaʻana e mālama i nā pōkiʻi. The older sibling takes care of the younger ones. Mālama is to protect and serve. In this professional development opportunity, we lean on this Hawaiian worldview of care, service and protection in our relationship to one another on this learning journey. In this module, we hui pū as diverse learners in an indigenous learning community by cultivating a safe, protected and growing Native Hawaiian Place of Learning. We acknowledge the multitudes of learners be it a settler, budding learner of Hawaiian worldview, a Hawaiian language learner or speaker, Hawaiian studies learner, a Hawaiian practitioner, or a Hawaiian thinker as employees of Leeward CC. We nurture safe space by recognizing our diversity and commitment to learning, respectfully and openly, to grow and honor these ancestral lands. We mālama one another as resources, learning partners, mentors, mentees, consultants, and ʻohana, always for the purpose to elevate one another and the collective indigenous learning community that we build together. Through the Mālama module we establish this Native Hawaiian learning community with reverence and aloha.
Hahai, Pursue: Unpacking the Why Behind Indigenization
Hahai nō ka ua i ka ululāʻau. Rains always pursue the forest. (ʻŌN 405) We, faculty and staff, are the forest. Our students are the rains. When we go towards indigenization, our students follow and pursue the same. This PD program identifies, explores and examines opportunities and reasons behind the efforts to create and improve this space and engagement for Native Hawaiian and all students. When we understand why, going towards what is clear, more impactful, and makes relevancy towards indigenization a rich, meaningful and poignant journey.
Punia, Permeate: Engaging in Language Revitalization
Ke kani o ka ʻōlelo makuahine punia ai ke kai o Kaʻahupāhau. The sound of the mother tongue permeates the sea of Kaʻahupāhau. Punia is permeate. In 1986, with advocacy from ʻAha Pūnana Leo, the Hawaiʻi State Legislature passed a bill that removed the 90 year ban of Hawaiian Language taught in schools. 2023 celebrates 40 years of ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi taught in Hawaiʻi schools. Punia creates opportunities for our puana, pronunciation and intonation of ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi to grow. The more and more we speak sing, chant, read, write, and engage through ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi, the more we expand our access to language and deepen our understanding of the Hawaiian world view.
Wehena, Opening: Grounding in Protocol
Ka wehena o ke ao – The opening up of light or daybreak. Likened to the first rays of sunlight that engage with ʻāina, and the initiation of dawn at the start of each new day is Wehena. Upon the opening of gatherings, events, ceremonies or before work is started, it is a Hawaiian world view to ground and set intentions appropriately, connect individually or collectively, to people, ancestors, ancestral homelands, and spaces. Levels of protocol vary based on appropriateness and practitioner. Often, wehena will include silence, stillness, chant, song, prayer, greetings or introductions. By increasing our knowledge base through multiple and layered experiences, we increase our level of comfort and participation alongside one another and our students. That which is opened, is also intentionally closed through protocol.
Pulelo, Rise: Peering into the Disproportionate Impact of Indigenous and Intergenerational Trauma
Ka mea nani kai Pali-uli ʻeā, Ke pulelo aʻela i nā paliʻeā. The beauty at Pali-uli rises fine as the cliffs of Pele’s fire. Pulelo is to rise. In the chant Aia la o Pele, Pele’s rising plume and fire mirrors the hae Hawai’i, Hawaiian flag. Similarly, as do Native Hawaiian students who face adversities and obstacles within their families, communities and ‘āina. Since 1893, the illegal overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom and occupation of Hawaiʻi, the banning of Hawaiian language in schools and use in everyday life, intergenerationally impacts the people of Hawaiʻi. Through indigenization, we acknowledge the historical events and colonialism of Hawaiʻi, the trauma of Native Hawaiians and non-Native Hawaiians with ancestral or settler roots, and the waiwai, value and richness, of the host culture of Hawaiʻi that sustains us. We authentically include Hawaiian studies and language in ways that collectively heal and traject us on a path of student success in a Native Hawaiian Place of Learning.
Paeʻāina
CROSS DISCIPLINARY PROFESSIONAL LEARNING COMMUNITIES
The Cross Disciplinary Professional Learning Communities in ASNS and AST degree programs is Paeʻāina. Paeʻāina is an archipelago or group of islands. The PLC replicate a lei of islands where each island is distinctive on itʻs own, as a discipline. It is a part of a strand that collectively creates a lei naʻauao, a garland of knowledge that adorns. Here, faculty develop and produce indigenized lesson templates for use in ASNS and AST degree programs. The lesson templates will be an open educational resource for all to access and customize for implementation.
He Loa Ke Aho offers coaching and advising to faculty with culture based lesson plan proposals. He Loa Ke Aho implements a curriculum development proposal process to include a review panel, cultrally relevant rubric, recommendations and commendations, a test of the lesson, and evaluation process. Paeʻāina will be offered to cohorts of Ka Lei Kumupaʻa Native Hawaiian Professional Development Program and Kawaimanomano Program. Paeʻāina will engage four cohorts over the course of the grant to contribute to a Native Hawaiian Place of Learning.
- ASNS DEGREE PROGRAM PLC
- AST DEGREE PROGRAM PLC
- ACCESS TO CROSS-DISCIPLINARY PLC AND CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT
- COHORT TIMELINE
Indigenized ASNS Lesson Templates
Indigenized AST Lesson Templates
Eligibility for participation in Paeʻāina Cross-Disciplinary PLC and Lesson Plan :
- Completion of Kawaimanomano Program
- Completion of Ka Lei Kumupaʻa Program
Eligibility for OER cultural based curriculum:
Part 1: Initial Draft Process
- Faculty choose content to be taught in the next 2 months
- Facutly to develop cultura based lesson plan using indigenous rubric
- Faculty to submit lesson plan proposal to HLKA
- HLKA to review proposal
- HLKA to provide date of faculty presentation
- Faculty to present proposal
- HLKA to use rubric to evaluate proposal
- HLKA to calibrate and provide feedback (commendations and recommendations)
- HLKA to provide feedback to faculty
Part 2: Final Draft Process
- Faculty to add recommendation to lesson plan
- Faculty to test lesson plan with students
- HLKA to administer evaluation (with faculty and student)
- Faculty to review evaluation and amend the lesson plan
- Faculty to submit second draft to HLKA
- HLKA to determine eligibility for OER
- HLKA to post OER in Indigenous Repository or recommend third draft
- HLKA to announce OER and offer certificate of completion
Eligibility to participate in E ʻImi Naʻauao program: Moʻolelo
- Faculty reflection on indigenous curriculum development journey
- HLKA to post reflection in Ka ʻUmeke Kāʻeo Indigenous Website as a resource
Cohort 1 Hinihini, February 2025 – April 2025 (Registration January 2025)
Cohort 2 Pololei, August 2025 – November 2025 (Registration July 2025)
Cohort 3 Kāhuli, January 2026 – April 2026 (Registration December 2025)
Cohort 4 Naka, July 2026 – September 2026 (Registration June 2026)
*Paeʻāina will launch for each Cohort following the completion of Ka Lei Kumupaʻa Video Series
E ʻImi Naʻauao
Originally planned as professional development programs in Ka Lei Kumupaʻa, these blossoms emerged as practices that will be offered throughout the PD programs to strengthen the journey for knowledge as we seek it.
Moʻolelo, Chronicle: Chronicling Our Journey
Moʻolelo means story, tale, myth, history, tradition, literature, legend, journal, log, chronicle, record, article, minutes of a meeting. The Hawaiian way of passing on information is to orally communicate (mele, oli, moʻolelo). This is how information of ʻāina and people were chronicled and continued. Through Moʻolelo, we chronicle the journey of indigenization to reflect and establish a Native Hawaiian Place of Learning we collectively and individually build. Moʻolelo is exhibited in our web based repository.
Paoa, Aromatic: Accessing Pacific Indigenous World Views
I kahi ʻē nō e ke kumu mokihana, paoa ʻē nō ʻoneʻi i ke ala. Although the mokihana tree is elsewhere, its fragrance reaches here. Although a person is far away, tales of his good deeds come to us. Paoa is aromatic and long lasting, beyond the engaging time. This PD program supports learning that happens within cultural educational communities outside of our own. Learning and seeking indigenous knowledge away from our own community can reaffirm, introduce and identify common threads of our own practices and foundation of the Hawaiian world view. Paoa opportunities will be posted in our web based repository.