Pele Harman defines new role as UH Hilo’s director of Native Hawaiian engagement
In a brand new role at her alma mater, Pele Harman has “hit the ground running,” connecting staff to cultural resources, making space for Native Hawaiian students, and raising cultural awareness.
Pelehonuamea Harman’s first seven months on the job as the appointed director of Native Hawaiian engagement at the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo have been both exciting and thought provoking.
Harman is a UH Hilo alumna whose position is newly created as part of the Hawaiʻi Papa o Ke Ao team established throughout the statewide 10-campus UH System to help develop UH as a leader in Indigenous education.
- Pelehonuamea Harman appointed UH Hilo’s inaugural director of Native Hawaiian engagement (UH Hilo Stories, June 7, 2024)
Describing herself as a “three-time alum” of UH Hilo, she has a bachelor of arts in Hawaiian studies, an Indigenous teacher education graduate program certificate from Kahuawaiola, and a master of arts in Hawaiian language and literature.
Now in a brand new role at her alma mater, Harman says she has “hit the ground running” starting from the basics of connecting staff to cultural resources, making space for Native Hawaiian students, and raising cultural awareness.
Last summer she launched Mālama ʻĀina Campus Beautification Day, campus clean-up events happening a couple of times each semester, asking for everyone’s kōkua in the spirit of laulima (many hands working together). In January, she started a new web-based series called ʻŌlelo Resource of the Month to share Native Hawaiian protocols on the use of ōlelo Hawaiʻi (Hawaiian language), cultural traditions, traditional ways of Indigenous learning, and more.
“There’s a lot of good positive work I’ve been getting pulled into,” she says. “And I find that I enjoy it.”
Harman receives around four to five campus engagement invitations every day. Since coming to UH Hilo she has given a public talk for the Kuleana and Community Talk Story series, lectured for classes, given interviews, and observed new professors. She notes how important it’s been for her to jump straight into the work and meet the needs of the campus community.
“I thought I was giving myself a year to kind of figure things out,” she says. “It’s been a lot of doing what needs to be done at this point in time. People are very willing and excited about the work. I just have to meet people where they are at, too.”
While striving to bring students, faculty, and administrators together, Harman is using skills she’s developed through 20-plus years as a Hawaiian immersion educator working with UH Hilo’s K-12 laboratory school Nāwahīokalaniʻōpuʻu and the university’s Ka Haka ʻUla o Keʻelikōlani College of Hawaiian Language. For Harman, centering Hawaiian language and values on campus is key to forging a more resilient and resourceful community.
“One of my big goals is to build a strong sense of ʻohana at UH Hilo so that when we do face challenges we’re able to move closer and support each other,” she says. “To think about our ʻohana, our community as a whole.”
Building connections to culture and to each other
A significant focus of Harman’s activities is in the classroom. She has helped faculty design curriculum and “Hawaiianize” existing syllabi. She also stresses facilitating understanding between Native Hawaiian students and their professors.
“The Native Hawaiian population makes up about 30 percent of our current student body at UH Hilo,” she says. She enjoys when professors come to her with questions about patterns they’ve noticed in classes with a large Native Hawaiian demographic, trying to better connect with their students.
For example, one professor noted to Harman how their kānaka maoli (Native Hawaiian) students tend to sit in the back of the class and remain quiet during discussions, despite turning in thoughtfully written assignments.
“I understand why it’s that way,” Harman says, “I’m thankful that an observation was made that these students are super bright and their assignments are very thoughtful. But speaking in front of their peers who they don’t know — because it’s the beginning of the semester, too — is not a comfortable space for a lot of local kids.”
Harman puts effort into connecting faculty with the right knowledge and resources so they can better understand the context they’re teaching in.
“There’s so much to do,” she says. “I realized that people have been waiting for a resource at UH Hilo that they can tap into. It doesn’t matter if it’s the business college or the pharmacy college, they do want to actualize the goal of connecting their students to this place, to Hawaiʻi.”
Native Hawaiian or not, everyone has a kuleana to perpetuate the host language and culture
Harman notes that her work is not only to help Native Hawaiian students but also to enable all students and campus community members to gain insight and confidence from Hawaiʻi’s unique culture and language.
“If you become a part of Hawaiʻi and this becomes your home then you have a kuleana [responsibility] to perpetuate the host language and host culture whether you’re Hawaiian or not,” Harman states. “I think everyone earnestly wants to fulfill that kuleana, they just sometimes don’t know how.”
Harman recognizes the anxiety some campus leaders feel walking the fine line between cultural engagement and cultural appropriation. “Another thing I’m realizing in this position is that the non-local people, or people who haven’t been in Hawaiʻi very long, or even those who have been in Hawaiʻi but aren’t Native Hawaiian, sometimes, they need permission. They want to be respectful of the host culture. I don’t think of them as outsiders, but they see themselves as outsiders to our culture.”
Harman feels it’s her responsibility not to just give permission but provide tools and ask the right questions so that faculty, administrators, and students can feel comfortable engaging with Hawaiian language and culture. She notes the importance of workshops, choosing appropriate cultural representatives, and networking with cultural knowledge holders.
“It’s giving permission and also pulling the right people in because you want them to be able to sustain this knowledge. And, you know, I can’t be in a hundred places at a hundred events all at the same time,” she says with a laugh.
Sometimes, the people asking questions already hold answers. Harman reflects that at times rather than educating faculty, administrators, and other campus leaders in Hawaiian culture, her work is simply to remind them of knowledge they already hold.
“If you’ve been here for a long time and get stuck in the humdrum, you get stagnant sometimes,” she says. “Reminding them that they have knowledge — institutional knowledge or historical knowledge — of this place that nobody else does. It’s your kuleana to help us newbies along and help us understand why this is that way and that is that way so we can move forward together.”
Harman feels confident in what UH Hilo’s campus community has to offer.
“We have stellar, very intelligent, very passionate but also super Hawaiian people. And I don’t think they’re [Native] Hawaiian necessarily, but Hawaiian in how they show aloha to our students, to students that come from all over the place.”
Communicating with respect
As UH Hilo’s first director of Native Hawaiian engagement, Harman often has many questions to consider when handling projects and events that have never been done before. She lists some example questions, “What is appropriate for this particular event? What are the appropriate chants to do? Who should be invited? What is the intention of that particular event?”
She often leans on experience from her prior positions as well as the knowledge of those before her. “You know, a lot of times people default to what’s happened before. But if nothing’s happened before or this is the first time that you’re doing it then I really try to think about what my kūpuna would do, what my mentors would do.”
Harman has found that one of the valuable lessons she brings with her from years of teaching and serving as a board member both for Nāwahī and other community organizations is open communication. She values “honest candid conversations with a respectful tone.”
She says the key to success with these discussions is to be very good at listening and observing. “You don’t always have to be the one who speaks the most. But when you do speak up make sure you’re not just taking up air space but you have things to say to help move things forward.”
She credits her years of open conversations around Indigenous education for giving her the ability to be a bridge builder, but that it comes with humility.
“You have to truly believe that people have something valid. Their opinions and thoughts are valued,” she says. “If someone is responsible for a certain thing those are the people you have to listen to prior to deciding something that is going to affect their work area. Not just operating in isolation is something I’ve learned from being in Hawaiian education for a very long time. That doesn’t work.”
Reflection
Reflecting on the past seven months on the job, Harman says the best part of the job is meeting all the people who love UH Hilo as much she does. She enjoys working with fellow colleagues who share her affection for the campus.
“The unifying thread is that they’re thankful to be in Hawaiʻi. They want to do good by our students and very quickly they fall in love with the community. That is our biggest asset here in Hilo. That sense of community. We just need to continue to build on that.”
Story by Sophia Kim-O’Sullivan, a graduate student in library science and information at UH Mānoa.
