Kahuku High Team, Fans Celebrate at PCC

Despite a disappointing second-place finish in the recent 2016 Hawaii state open football championship, “Red Raiders 4 Life” fans and friends celebrated with their Kahuku High football players on Friday night, November 26, at the Polynesian Cultural Center’s Hukilau Marketplace.

PCC Alumna Receives Native Hawaiian Educator Award:

Kamehameha Schools recently awarded Polynesian Cultural Center alumna Ka‘umealani Walk its 2016 Native Hawaiian Community Educator of the Year Award for her work in building educational pathways for several generations of learners in the Hawaiian immersion school program.

Walk — whose husband Kamoa‘e Walk is also a PCC alumnus and involved in Hawaiian language education — has taught in the Hawaii State Department of Education’s kaiapuni or Hawaiian immersion schools for more than 25 years, including establishing the program at nearby Hau‘ula Elementary and Kahuku High. She has also taught Hawaiian at Brigham Young University Hawaii.

The Kamehameha Schools Newsroom quoted Walk as saying: ““All of us are born with kuleana, and as we teach our keiki those things that we remember growing up, they will be equipped with the knowledge that they need to alaka‘i (guide) us into the next several thousand years. It is my hope that we never forget the people who came before us. Our kūpuna are here with us all the time, we just need to make sure to listen and do what we know is right. Every life that we touch, every life that we help, is a success for all of us.”

Story and images by Mike Foley

Mike Foley, who has worked off-and-on at the Polynesian Cultural Center since 1968,  has been a full-time freelance writer and digital media specialist since 2002, and had a long career in marketing communications and PR before that. He learned to speak fluent Samoan as a Mormon missionary before moving to Laie in 1967 — still does, and he has traveled extensively over the years throughout Polynesia and other Pacific islands. Foley is mostly retired now, but continues to contribute to various PCC and other media.