KC3 Mid-Quarter Exam Rough Draft Essay

In the 2010 census of Hawaii statistics showed that 23.6% of Hawaii’s residents had a multi-cultural background. 10% of which is of Hawaiian ancestry while the rest are Asian, Hispanic, Caucasian, etc. The Hawaiian language, ethnicity and culture is at stake of becoming extinct while the culture has been disappearing over the years. Native Hawaiian culture isn’t as strong as it used to be and the new generation isn’t understanding or even knowing their own roots, thus the reason for the declining native Hawaiian culture.

            Hawaiian as a language is on the brink of being endangered and the people are to blame. When a survey was conducted it showed that native speakers of Hawaiian amounted to under 0.1% of the state’s population. That means only several thousand people know the native tongue. The people are not sticking to their roots because of what happened in the past, like how Hawaiian and everything with the culture was suppressed after the annexation. Many of the people that come to Hawaii from other places mostly speak English so that influences what the main language spoken is in Hawaii. The amount of schools that teach Hawaiian dwindle in small amounts and those schools either don’t teach it fully or don’t teach the language at all. The official language of Hawaii is Hawaiian yet so many of the people living here speak only English. Most people won’t try to learn the language both since it’s been known that learning a language gets harder with aging and because so little people speak the language. The language is isn’t doing well because of the fact that English is such a popular language and it’s leaving Hawaiian to fade away.

            The ethnicities of the Hawaiians are also dying out, not as rapidly as when the missionaries came to Hawaii but it’s almost at a standstill. When Captain Cook came to Hawaii the Hawaiians flourished in numbers between 300,000 and 400,000. Once more foreigners started coming they brought many diseases such as small pox, influenza, measles and whooping cough. That made the decline of Hawaiians by 80-90% since all of the Hawaiians were dying. This is how many Hawaiians had died within one century now and at that time native Hawaiians still comprised about 75% of the population in Hawaii. They all died so fast it’s scary and it’s all because they didn’t have immunity towards diseases like how the foreigners did. Plus Hawaiians didn’t have enough money to go to hospitals until the Kapiolani hospital was made, but that was way later in the years. There are fewer than 8,000 pure Hawaiians living today and most of those Hawaiians have less than 50% of Hawaiian blood in them. Interracial marriages thin out the blood line and since there are so many mixed races here, the amount of Hawaiian is getting smaller and smaller. It is against the law for family to marry each other as well so they can’t keep the blood as pure as they could before. The Hawaiian ethnicity is disappearing and will keep doing so as long as the more new people come to Hawaii and change the next generations to come.

            The Hawaiian culture is slowing coming to a standstill as Hawaii continues to modernize with the rest of the world and it’s starting to forget about its roots and culture. Hawaii has become more westernized since the arrival of the whole annexation and missionaries coming to Hawaii. If you look at the majority of the people living in Hawaii they are all eating many westernized foods and wearing westernized clothing. We don’t live in grass huts anymore and some of us even live in nice apartments in Waikiki next to the beautiful ocean. With western ways, it makes the people’s jobs in Hawaii much easier and since many of the people in our generation rely on technology so much it’s almost a must for all of these new equipment items and technologies. Hawaii is also a much known tourist spot attracting almost 8 million tourists a year. Tourism promotion and development are usually controlled by the people with money and power in Hawaii who are able to take over beaches and sacred land from the Hawaiians, yet again threatening their culture. Hawaii’s economy also relies heavily on tourism as a source of income and without all of the tourism we receive and all of the imports Hawaii would easily use up all of the resources and die. Tourism is the state’s primary industry and because of this and the modernization of Hawaii continuing the culture of our state will always be behind and hidden from the people that don’t see past the nice hotels and fruit cocktails on the beach.

            Altogether the language, ethnicity and culture will cease to exist at the rate the declination is going at. Native Hawaiian culture isn’t as strong as it used to be and the new generation isn’t understanding or even knowing their own roots, thus the reason for the declining native Hawaiian culture. This issue is important because once something turns extinct there is no hope in bringing it back and it will be gone forever. This means the Hawaiian language will be gone forever and no one will be able to revive it back to how it once was. It matters in society because we live in the islands of Hawaii therefore should be surrounded in the culture and not forget the roots of its people.