Early Education for Extinction in Post(colonial) Hawai’i: The Genocidal Legacy of the Hawaiian Chiefs’ Children’s Residential Boarding School

• In Event: Roundtable Session 52
  In Roundtable Session: De/Colonizing Gender and/in Early Childhood Education

Abstract

While recent scholarship has brought to light the traumatic experiences of Native American and Canadian boarding school students of the 19th and early 20th centuries, there exists little, if any, comparable scholarship concerning the removal of indigenous Hawaiian children of the same time period. This paper sheds new light on the (mis)perception of the historical absence of Native Hawaiian boarding schools. It argues that, while boarding schools were not compulsory in 19th century Hawai‘i, there were a few, select missionary-run residential schools for Native Hawaiian children, which, although comparatively small in number, were far-reaching in their devastating impact upon the Native Hawaiian community and were largely instrumental in the erosion of Hawaiian sovereignty and the decline of the Hawaiian nation.

Author

• Julie L. Kaomea, University of Hawaii - Manoa