Research into the history of government-run reformatories in Hawaiʻi during the early 1900s is getting a boost in funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).
The North Shore Community Land Trust received NEH funding for oral history research and story mapping of the Waialeʻe Industrial School for Boys and the Kawailoa Industrial School for Girls.
While the schools had children of all ethnicities, Native Hawaiians were disproportionately overrepresented at Waialeʻe and other institutions.
“The broader and long-term project is really just trying to understand what was happening at these institutions and what it means for Hawaiian history, and what Native Hawaiian people today think about it, and what they need in terms of understanding it or making peace with it or things like that,” said History and Gender Studies Professor Maile Arvin.
Arvin is the director of Pacific Islands Studies at the University of Utah and is one of the lead researchers on the project called Nā Lei Poina Lei ʻOle.
“And especially because these places were named in that federal report on Indian Boarding Schools, I think there’s a lot of interest and need to understand what it means that these places are in that report,” Arvin said.
The NEH awarded $411,000 to similar research projects across the country that shed light on the legacy of Federal Indian boarding schools operating in the U.S. from 1819 to 1969.
