UH Hilo to lead $6.6M National Native Language Resource Center
The university will lead a three-university consortium awarded a $6.6 million, five-year grant from the U.S. Department of Education to establish a National Native American Language Resource Center.
It was recently announced that the University of Hawai‘i at Hilo, a worldwide leader in advancing Hawaiian and Indigenous language and culture revitalization, will lead a three-university consortium awarded a $6.6 million, five-year grant from the U.S. Department of Education to establish a National Native American Language Resource Center.
The award is the first of its kind to lead, advocate for, and implement training and resource development for Indigenous language education pathways in the U.S.
“I am thrilled to see the years of effort by our Hawaiian language faculty getting national recognition in this way,” says UH Hilo Chancellor Bonnie Irwin. “The future work with our Indigenous partners through this center will enable us to further revitalize languages across the U.S.”
Along with UH Hilo, the consortium includes the University of Alaska Southeast and Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe University in Wisconsin, programs that have long-standing ties with the ʻImiloa Institute and have been working relentlessly to reclaim their languages.
Ka‘iu Kimura, director of the UH Hilo Hawaiʻi ʻImiloa Institute and interim director of UH Hilo’s Ka Haka ʻUla O Keʻelikōlani College of Hawaiian Language, says the award is “not only an acknowledgment of the value of Native languages but is also a testament to the hard work the community has put into renormalizing our ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi (Hawaiian language) over the past 40 years, while also working to uplift other ʻōlelo ʻōiwi (Indigenous languages) nationally and internationally.”
Read full story at UH System News.
