How one Minnesota university is helping preserve a Hawaiian dialect from the ‘brink of extinction’

Tia Koerte grew up speaking Olelo Niihau, a dialect specific to the Niihau Hawaiian island, and knew she wanted to help preserve it.

Niihau has fewer than 500 native speakers in the world, including 70 students at the Ke Kula Niihau O Kekaha immersion school, where the language is taught alongside English. It wasn’t until Koerte became principal at the school that she realized she could seek funding to start building a library for her endangered native tongue.

“Up until that point, our language had been transferred orally only, and so there was no written forms of our language,” she said.

In 2016, she applied for a federal grant and reconnected with Tracy Fredin, director of Hamline University’s Center for Global Environmental Education. The two met years earlier and had stayed in touch. Fredin looked over the application and said the center could do everything Koerte needed.

“Tracy came back with practically the entire thing highlighted, and said he could do all of this,” Koerte said. Hamline University had access to curriculum developers and publishing software.

Since then, Hamline University has published more than 400 Olelo Niihau books with Ke Kula Niihau O Kekaha. Students write and create the art for picture books annually, with a new genre each year. The two schools hope to create 1,000 books.

Taylor Fredin, associate multimedia producer for Hamline’s Center for Global Environmental Education, visits the Hawaiian school a few times a year to facilitate the program.

“It’s a very in-depth process,” Taylor Fredin said. “Those legacy books are just beautiful. They become the core curriculum for students the next year.”

Tracy Fredin said the teams from both the school and university meet weekly and work together to proof the books since no one at Hamline speaks the dialect.

“One of their elders, who is at the school, goes through and makes sure that the Niihau dialect is written correctly,” he said. “At this point, every student there has written two to four books, or even more if they’re older.”

The partnership has been grant funded for the past decade, Taylor Fredin said, something both schools are nervous about because of the current grant climate.

“We’re always concerned about finding more funding for this project,” Taylor Fredin said. “For this year, we’re going to be able to continue at the same level, but the future is always uncertain.”

“We know exactly what it’s going to cost to for a good year, so we use that as a basis,” she said. “I’ve said from the beginning, it’s so important that I would even use my last dollar towards this project.”

The center focuses on environmental literacy and stewardship, and Taylor Fredin said the environment plays a large part in the books as well.

“The endangered language aspect is very similar to a lot of the work we do with endangered species of plants and animals,” she said.

Koerte said the students write about their experiences and often focus on the environment. When a person leaves an environment, Koerte said their language changes. To her, “the environment and language is one in the same.”

Tracy Fredin said preservation of language is intertwined with the center’s mission.