LiC: Noho Hewa

On November 19, 2009, I visited a Hawaiian Studies class to watch the film, Noho Hewa. Although I attended the meeting where director Keala Kelly presented and discussed parts of her film, I was interested in watching the entire movie before writing about it. The film highlighted the illegal occupation of various outsiders, including the military and corporate farms, in the Hawaiian Islands. The footage was shocking, disturbing and heartbreaking. At times it was hard to watch without being moved to tears.

While the film did not specifically focus on language, there were situations that I felt related to some of our assigned readings. In Consequences of Contact, we read a chapter that focused on heart languages and trade languages. For a lot of Americans, English is the first language they learn and acts as their heart language. Because the majority of the people living in America speak English, English serves as a trade language as well. However, not all people living in the United States identify English as their heart language. Specifically in Hawai'i, the first language many people learn is Pidgin or Hawaii Creole English. In the film, many of the people who were interviewed spoke Pidgin, while others spoke standard or “proper” English.

In one scene, a man named Jimmy Medeiros began speaking to a panel of board members overseeing a discussion about the building of Hokuli'a over burial sites on the Big Island. When Jimmy began speaking to the board, he used standard English to get his point across about how inconsiderate it was of the archaeologists to sledgehammer the area where Hawaiian ancestral bones were located. When one of the archaeologists responded, he spoke in a disrespectful tone and seemed as if he could care less about how the bones were found or how they were handled. After hearing these remarks, Jimmy became visibly upset and began speaking in Pidgin, not only to the archaeologist who had upset him, but to the board as well. This was interesting to see because he switched from a language he probably was not the most comfortable speaking or grew up speaking, to the language that allowed him to speak from his heart. Many people in Hawai'i may feel the need to speak standard English around people new to Hawai'i or in formal situations. However, when it comes to speaking about something close to their heart, people will most often speak in their heart language, like Jimmy Medeiros did in the film.

To find out more about the film, visit this site.