‘Aha Punana Leo educational videos

Kainani Kahaunaele

length: 8 minutes

Visit ‘Aha Punana Leo on the web: http://www.ahapunanaleo.org

KAINANI KAHAUNAELE: The ‘Aha Punana Leo is a non-profit organization that was established in 1983 to revitalize our ‘Olelo Hawai‘i, our Hawaiian language, and to establish schools where our people, our children could be educated through Hawaiian language only.

And along with the school comes curriculum that needs to be developed – and all in Hawaiian.

We produce videos using contemporary stories, traditional stories .

We've incorporated 3-D animation, regular animation, computer-generated animation, and we've come up with a lot of fun lessons that the children really get a kick out of.

And it's really promising to see that our children have the opportunity to learn their language again and be educated through the language, because within the language is our culture, our code of behavior and if we don't have the language, then our culture is going to be more than lost.

And this video is animated and we use a blue-screen technique where us humans can play around in cartoon land.

Another video we have is NO PUMAI‘A LAUA ‘O ‘A‘ALI‘I, which is a contemporary story that was written by Pila Wilson, one of my teachers. And it talks about the difference or the result of being humble and the result of being haughty.

There's two plants involved, the banana tree, which is the punai‘a and the ‘a‘ali‘i plant. So it's a contemporary story, although it's full of Hawaiian values.

That particular video was created with 3-D animation. And that's something that was very new to us, that was taught to us by our animator, who is GB Hajim.

We have songs in there, we have chants, which I composed because of it being a contemporary story.

Everybody knows that, when cartoons are on, people will watch, especially for children.

Another video we have is E HO‘OPILI MAI, which means to "imitate me."

It's a very active, inter-active kind of video. So we try to do that so the kids just don't have to sit down and watch. They can get up and imitate the actions that are happening on the video.

We have another video named PEHEA I LOA‘A AI KA MINO‘AKA IA NANANA, which means "How the happy face spider got its smile on its back."

And its shows that, when our first Hawaiian person, who is Haloa, was born, nanana, the spider, wanted to offer him a gift. But he didn't have anything to give, so he danced for Haloa.

But, since he had so many legs, he stumbled and fumbled and fell, he made Haloa laugh. And that was the gift of joy and laughter to Haloa.

All of our videos have chants and music in them. So it has been pretty successful so far because our songs and lessons are getting memorized, not only by the children, but by the parents and the families as well. And that's another important part of our ‘Aha Punana Leo organization, which is to have the families involved.

But it's exciting to portray stories using the video medium. We have hula, we have story-telling, we have songs and chant. And now we put them all together in this modern technology.

We have people being trained to be screenwriters, directors, producers, editors. We're learning on the latest technology on the latest machines.

We also have CD's where our music and chants are available to help you learn your lessons better, to help you learn stories, history, our values, our culture.

It's probably one of the most creative facets of the ‘Aha Punana Leo because we have the opportunity to show people that we are taking care of our language, we are educating our own people through our own language, using contemporary technology,