Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 33, Number 8, 1 August 2016 — New institute cultivates Hawaiian knowledge [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

New institute cultivates Hawaiian knowledge

The new Institute of Hawaiian Language Research and Translation opened last month at the University of Hawai'i-Mānoa. Led by Puakea Nogelmeier, the new center is a treasure trove of Hawaiian language material dating fromancient times through the 20th century, includng more than 100 Hawaiian language newspapers published between 1834 and 1948.

The newspapers provide a glimpse of daily life in the Hawaiian Kingdom through personal narratives, political reports, cultural or historieal accounts, said Nogelmeier. Only a fraction of the newspapers have been translated - all told they '11 equal more than a million pages of typescript pages. For more than a decade, UH's Sea Grant College Program has been collaborating with the Hawai'inuiākea School

of Hawaiian Knowledge and the nonprofit Awaiulu to locate and translate the material, as

well as to make it widely accessible. The new institute, whose motto is "Mahi 'Ike Hawai'i: Cul-

tivate Hawanan Knowledge," will prov i d e p r o f e s - sional training to prepare the

next generation of translators and scholars, along with

research projects open to faculty and students. "Historical Hawaiian mate-

rial has long been out of reach for scholars and speakers alike, a tragedy of knowledge lying dormant," Nogelmeier said. "The new institute ean change that, generating access and resource people to reconnect historical knowledge for today and the future."

Support is needed to make an Alfred Apaka stamp a reality. - Photo: Courtesyj of U.S. Postal Service ^