This story was produced by Honolulu Civil Beat, a nonprofit news organization covering Hawaiʻi that specializes in accountability and in-depth enterprise coverage. For more stories like this, subscribe to their newsletters.
Growing up on Oʻahu in the 1950s, Maile Keamoai-Kane learned a lot from her father: how to prepare laulau, gather ʻopihi, and catch and clean fish. He never excluded her.
But being deaf, Keamoai-Kane struggled to learn another key aspect of Hawaiian culture: the language. Her father did the best he could teaching her improvised gestures with his hands to teach her some words, but there was no established sign language based in ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi, the Hawaiian language.
Instead, as a student at the Hawaiʻi School for the Deaf and the Blind, Keamoai-Kane said she was forced to read lips. Later in high school, she learned American Sign Language, or ASL, which uses signs based in American and French culture.
“I wanted to learn ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi,” she said. “But at the time, the deaf school did not have a program. That is one of my regrets.”
Today, there is a small but growing effort to establish hand signs rooted in Hawaiian words and cultural values. Called ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi Kuhi Lima — Hawaiian Language Hand Signs — the community-led initiative is working to create signs that preserve and honor ʻŌlelo and make the islands’ Native language more accessible to the Deaf community.
“We want to ensure that Deaf Kānaka have a meaningful place within the greater lāhui (collective identity),” said Keamoai-Kane, whose married name is Paongo.
The effort was started in 2024 by University of Hawaiʻi student Kekai Kaaumoana-Cummings, who is majoring in ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi and is the first deaf person at UH Mānoa in Kawaihuelani Ka Hālau ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi — the Department of Hawaiian Language.
Kaaumoana-Cummings hopes to become a teacher and bridge the gap so Deaf Native Hawaiians have greater access to learning their Indigenous language.
“The project aims to develop new programs for Hawaiian immersion education that are academically accessible and community-based, providing opportunities for future growth,” he wrote in messages with Civil Beat.
The group has already created and discussed dozens of signs, but the system is still unofficial and developing. Some signs focus on everyday vocabulary, Hawaiian cultural concepts and ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi grammar structures.
Kaaumoana-Cummings shared that they are still organizing and developing the signs carefully before publicly releasing an official list. However, simple words such as no, yes, house, land and mountain have been established.
In ASL, “house” is signed as though you were to outline the shape of a house with both hands, starting from the tip of the roof down to the sides of the walls. In ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi Kuhi Lima, “hale” is signed with fingertips touching to form the shape of a roof, tapping them together.
“ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi Kuhi Lima continues to evolve,” Kaaumoana-Cummings wrote, “laying a foundation for future generations to learn, use, and expand our language visually.”
Similar to spoken languages, sign languages vary by country, according to Keane Nakapueo-Garcia, a hearing PhD student at UH Hilo who is currently doing his own research into the signs historically used by Deaf Native Hawaiians to communicate.
For example, American, British, Australian and New Zealand sign languages are all distinct despite those countries sharing English as a spoken language. And American Sign Language (ASL) is not as simple as English communicated through hand movements. It is an independent language with its own culture — Deaf culture.
There is evidence that hand signs were used in Hawaiʻi prior to the introduction of ASL in the islands in the 1940s, and University of Hawaiʻi researchers in 2013 declared the existence of a Hawaiʻi Sign Language. But those signs don’t have a foundation in ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi or Native Hawaiian culture, according to Kaaumoana-Cummings and Nakapueo-Garcia.
HSL is based on different cultures and spoken languages that were prevalent during the plantation-era — including Chinese, Japanese and Filipino — and is more akin to Pidgin. For example, in HSL the sign for “yellow” is related to cutting pineapple, a reference to plantation work that has no relation to ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi.
The work of ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi Kuhi Lima is about protecting Native Hawaiian history and identity, Keamoai-Kane wrote in messages with Civil Beat.
“Our group came together because we saw an urgent need to give a clear and primary voice to Deaf Kānaka Maoli,” she said. “To tell our own stories, on our own terms.”
