University of Hawaiʻi faculty members were invited to participate in the American Educational Research Association’s (AERA) Presidential Sessions at its annual meeting in Toronto, Canada in April.
Presidential Sessions are reserved for scholars who are recognized by AERA as leading authorities in their fields of research.
UH Maui College Assistant Professor Kahele Dukelow presented her research in the session, Indigenous Truths in Other People’s Democracies: Education Research in the Contested Spaces of the Pacific. Her commentary on the revitalization of the Hawaiian language and culture, and the politics involved in this endeavor, was informed by her unique roles as a researcher, teacher, policy maker and practitioner.
Dukelow’s co-presenters included Huia Jahnke and Robert Jahnke from Massey University in New Zealand, and Tanya Samu from the University of Auckland in New Zealand.
The panel members discussed their research in the context of claiming that colonialism has served a significant role in creating and sustaining modern democracies, and that the production of people for the citizenry has come about through violent forms of exclusion of indigenous peoples from their ancestral lands, languages and cultural knowledge, and their rights to sovereignty.
Dukelow also holds a Regents Medal for Excellence in Teaching and was recognized as the Native Hawaiian Education Association’s 2019 Educator of the Year.
UH Mānoa Kawaihuelani Center for Hawaiian Language Professors Kapā Oliveira and Laiana Wong, both former AERA Presidential Session scholars, served as discussants. UH Mānoa College of Education Professor Margaret Maaka served as chair of the session.
