As I sung “Oiwi E” along with the students of Punana Leo o Waimea on Tuesday as part of a Mahina ‘Olelo (Hawaiian Language Month) event, I had a thought I couldn’t shake.

How do we help these kids live a full life, all the way to its end, in Hawaii, after they’ve thrived here, helped raise their mo’opuna (grandchildren) and, hopefully, meet their great-mo’opuna?

As we work through the different definitions of what it means to be a local and, therefore, truly belong here in Hawaii, I heard someone recently say his definition of “local” is not if you were born in Hawaii, but if you planned to die in Hawaii. 

In Hawaiian, one hanau means sands of one’s birth. The sad problem is that a staggering number of people with ancestral ties to Hawaii will die far from their one hanau, the sands of their birth.

When Joseph Nawahi, a Native Hawaiian political leader and newspaper publisher, died in San Francisco in 1896, his last words were “How sad it is to die away from your homeland.”

How do we keep that sadness from befalling this generation of children?

How do we keep them happy and in Hawaii?

If you’re an adult in Hawaii, it has been hard to consistently find that happiness. We are grieving Maui, navigating the echoes of Covid-19 and the continued departures of our ohana due to the cost of living and few economic opportunities.

How can locals be happy knowing that they have no prospect of living out a life to its end here. Can they maintain their local identity if they die in California, Nevada or Texas?

The anxieties of everyday life in Hawaii — many that have been mentioned in the comments of my previous columns — can make it hard to think about peacefully dying here. 

But there are reasons for hope. 

The young children at Punana Leo o Waimea are today immersed in learning a language that had been kept from my generation and the two generations before. These students are rooted in the language, the culture and the land. 

I admire the people who decided that the education system could better serve local students. There are now more than two dozen Hawaiian language immersion schools. There were none between the start of the 20th century and the late 1980s.

These students need the funding and facilities we repeatedly promise them.

When I was at Punana Leo o Waimea earlier this week, I followed through with my promise from last year to try to dance with the language. I told the students that I was proud of them and later awkwardly did an introduction in Hawaiian where I’m pretty sure I used a couple of French words instead of olelo Hawaii. As the ‘ōlelo no’eau says, “‘A’a i ka hula, waiho ka hilahila ma ka hale. (If you want to dance hula, leave your embarrassment at home.)”

It’s been a struggle to educate this generation of students. Besides the baseline of under-funded school systems, the hardships of the pandemic are still being resolved. Hope exists, but it does not come easy. These students need the funding and facilities we repeatedly promise them.

Punana Leo o Waimea is one example of how we can create conditions and a culture that can help root Native Hawaiians in their homeland.

My dad, lying in a hospital room in San Antonio just after Christmas, raspily asked me if he could come visit me in Waimea. I said of course, I wanted that more than anything. I wanted him to come home.

He said he was part of the lost generation of Native Hawaiians. His generation was lost because the language and culture was forbidden in their schools in the effort to Americanize them in the lead up to statehood.

He took great pride in our family members who speak the language and dance hula. He would have loved seeing the keiki sing and later walk into a classroom where only Hawaiian was being spoken. Such a different Hawaii than the Hawaii he grew up in and then left in 1967.

Sadly, two months ago, he died far from Hilo, the sands of his birth. He lived a long, quietly remarkable life but he never returned home to Hawaii to live and thrive through the end of his days.