This story illustrates that even at an institution that aspires to be “indigenous serving,” and a “Native Hawaiian place of learning,” there will still be unexpected opportunities to recommit to these promises. It also illustrates the importance of the leadership of the Native Hawaiian Place of Learning Advancement Office within UH’s institutional structure.
One of our first actions when the grant began in August 2021 was to request a website for the project, to be hosted on the UH server. This is a process managed by UH Information Technology Services (ITS).
We requested www.hawaii.edu/kawaihapai. A logical URL given the name of our project. The response from UH ITS:
“The UH System Web Content Coordinator will only approve the URL if the it has hyphens to break up the name… There is concern that allowing the words to be combined can be mistakened [sic] for the pronunciation and translation of “cute pregnancy”.” (Kawaii is a Japanese word that means cute.)
The team discussed changing the URL as ITS demanded. My first response (as an anxious rule-following white woman) was “someone is telling us we aren’t following the rules, let us capitulate.” The Project Leads were annoyed with UH ITS’s response and wanted to push back. Keahiahi contacted Kaiwipunikauikawēkiu Punihei Lipe, UH’s Native Hawaiian Affairs Program Officer, charged to advance UHM’s goal of becoming a Native Hawaiian place of learning. With her agreement that it was unreasonable of UH ITS to demand this change, Keahiahi wrote the following in response to UH ITS:
Aloha,
Mahalo nui for considering our URL request, we appreciate you folks getting back to us so quickly.
After discussing the URL with my colleagues, we’d like to request again that the URL be “www.hawaii.edu/kawaihapai”
We acknowledge that others might have concerns about potential misinterpretations of our chosen URL/project name. However, the suggestion to use a URL like “www.hawaii.edu/ka-wai-hapai” privileges foreign interpretations of ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi and diminishes the depth and expansiveness of ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi. Additionally, to use a URL like “www.hawaii.edu/ka-wai-hapai” limits our communities to a specific understanding and use of our project title, which is oppositional to our intent for both the URL and the essence of our project.
To give some background, our Project Leads – all Hawaiian language speakers – named our project “Ka Wai Hāpai” because this phrase holds many meanings, literal and metaphorical, that relate to our project’s mission to increase and improve access to information for Hawaiʻi communities. Ka Wai Hāpai can be understood as “the carried waters” as Pukui, Elbert, and Mookini (1976) point out that “water is said to have been carried here [to the place, Kawaihāpai] by a cloud in answer to the prayers of two priests.” Additionally, Kawaihāpai is the name of an ʻāina between Waialua and Kaʻena here on Oʻahu – which are both places that hold lots of mana and history for Hawaiʻi communities.
We carry these multiple meanings (and others) simultaneously, and would like the URL to reflect this, as the URL might be the first point where our communities are introduced to this project. We believe our goals and intentions for the URL of our project site align with the University’s strategic direction to become a Native Hawaiian Place of Learning.
So, again, we ask that our project URL be “www.hawaii.edu/kawaihapai”
If there are any questions, please let me know. I am also cc’ing Dr. Punihei Lipe, the UHM Native Hawaiian Affairs Program Officer, to this email in case there are any questions she can help to answer.
Mahalo,
Keahiahi
Conclusion of the story: UH ITS gave us the URL we requested.
