Noah Dolim

education because what's the point of having a you know politically sovereign nation if you don't have sovereignty over those building blocks of community first i think the the energy has been to kind of take care of those things before we can like move forward to like some grand idea of sovereignty

What a mission you must feel as a professor of history there.

Right.

And it's, you know, and I'm very blessed to have my position and just to see, you know, the generation that I grew up in seeing like my mom's generation of how much education they got, like in, you know, specifically Hawaiian education versus my grandparents' generation.

I was also very lucky to spend a lot of, you know, 25 years with my great-grandfather being alive in my life.

And my great-grandfather,

He was born in 1920 and his parents didn't teach him Hawaiian language.

Interesting.

So that was, you know, that kind of that was the break in our family for like at least language.

You know, we kind of kept parts of culture, of course, because we live it.

But seeing that, I was like, well, that was a break in our family in terms of language.

And then...

The ability for me growing up to learn Hawaiian language from middle school until now, and then now you can do a Hawaiian language degree in the University of Hawaii system or Hawaiian culture.

Both changes have been amazing to see, even within my time,

Like I thought we were so far ahead and then I see the kids now where they're learning about all the, you know, the overthrow and annexation when they're like in elementary.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I didn't even know anything really about the kingdom itself until like middle school, high school.

So seeing that kind of education reach the children earlier has been really special to see.

And, you know, it contributes to the work that I'm trying to do.