Video interview: Kaʻiu Kimura talks about consortium to establish National Native American Language Resource Center at UH Hilo

Joining Hawaiʻi News Now for an interview on the program “Sunrise,” Kaʻiu Kimura, director of Ka Haka ʻUla O Keʻelikōlani College of Hawaiian Language at the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo, talks about the university leading a first-of-its-kind, three-university consortium to establish a National Native American Language Resource Center on the Hilo campus.

The interview is part of the local news network’s reporting on the 10-campus University of Hawaiʻi system’s extramural funding record announced earlier this month: $615.7 million in fiscal year 2024 (FY 2024).

Announced in November last year, UH Hilo was awarded $2.3 million of a $6.6 million grant by the U.S. Department of Education to establish the center, which will advocate for and implement training and resource development for Indigenous language education pathways in 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 been working relentlessly to reclaim their languages.

Learn more about the project:

• UH Hilo to lead $6.6M National Native Language Resource Center (UH Hilo Stories, Nov. 20, 2023)