Ignite the Night to Keep Talk Story: Hānai Pedagogy as an Act of Liberation

Abstract

Acting as a roadmap for doctoral students, scholars, and pedagogues, this narrative explores my journey through education and how I have used the confines of the academy to pursue research back home in Hawai’i using Kanaka ‘Ōiwi methodologies (Oliveira & Wright, 2016) to interview 10 Kanaka community members who entered into teaching as part of a homegrown teacher program called Ka Lama in the most densely Hawaiian populated area of Hawai’i to better serve their community and as an act of social justice. Additional data includes 12 semi-structured interviews with school administrators and Ka Lama-associated personnel and over 150 hours of classroom and community observations. As a result of this research, the Hānai Pedagogy framework (Brandehoff, 2023a) emerged, which is grounded in Indigenous ways of knowing and encompasses the values of Hands-on activities, Aloha, Navigation, Authenticity, and Interrelations, which are discussed at length in the findings. This study is limited to the specific area and participants of the setting; however, Hānai Pedagogy is now deeply woven throughout the curricula and doctoral programs designed and taught by the researcher to move toward action and liberation.