The Seeds We Planted: Portraits of a Native Hawaiian Charter School (First Peoples: New Directions in Indigenous Studies)

by Noelani Goodyear-Ka'opua

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Book cover for The Seeds We Planted

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In 1999, Noelani Goodyear-Ka‘ōpua was among a group of young educators and parents who founded Hālau Kū Māna, a secondary school that remains one of the only Hawaiian culture-based charter schools in urban Honolulu. The Seeds We Planted tells the story of Hālau Kū Māna against the backdrop of the Hawaiian struggle for self-determination and the U.S. charter school movement, revealing a critical tension: the successes of a school celebrating indigenous culture are measured by the standards of settler colonialism.


How, Goodyear-Ka‘ōpua asks, does an indigenous people use schooling to maintain and transform a common sense of purpose and interconnection of nationhood in the face of forces of imperialism and colonialism? What roles do race, gender, and place play in these processes? Her book, with its richly descriptive portrait of indigenous education in one community, offers practical answers steeped in the remarkable—and largely suppressed—history of Hawaiian popular learning and literacy.


This uniquely Hawaiian experience addresses broader concerns about what it means to enact indigenous cultural–political resurgence while working within and against settler colonial structures. Ultimately, The Seeds We Planted shows that indigenous education can foster collective renewal and continuity.


  • ISBN10 0816680477
  • ISBN13 9780816680474
  • Publish Date 22 March 2013
  • Publish Status Active
  • Out of Print 6 July 2021
  • Publish Country US
  • Imprint University of Minnesota Press
  • Format Hardcover
  • Pages 352
  • Language English