Larry Kimura

Ethnolinguistic work: Twenty years, from 1969 to 1989 recording among Hawaiʻi’s last native Hawaiian language speakers born in the late 19th century to the early 20th century, representing a very significant and voluminous collection under the name of Ka Leo Hawaiʻi, of over 700 hours. It is the largest collection of audio documentation of native Hawaiian language and represents the last of native Hawaiian speech from the turn of the 19th century. The only remaining fluent native speakers of Hawaiian are among some 250 people from the privately owned island of Niʻihau. The Ka Leo Hawaiʻi collection is currently being programmed into an electronic database for preservation and as a resource for the Hawaiian language revitalization movement.

Co-Founder of Hawaiʻi’s Pūnana Leo Hawaiian Language Immersion Schools, the first Native American language immersion school in the United States. This work spearheaded the first US indigenous language immersion education program with the Hawaiian language as a medium of instruction for the State Department of Education in 1987.

Chairman of the Hawaiian Lexicon Committee to create new Hawaiian words under the publication title of Māmaka Kaiao. The first edition was published in 1989 and subsequent editions followed in 1996, 1998 and 2003. Professor Kimura is active in the Hawaiian language and culture revitalization efforts continuing as a member of the Board of Directors of the ʻAha Pūnana Leo. He also serves as the Secretary General of Te Waka Reo, The Polynesian Languages Forum, whose membership represents fourteen different Polynesian countries and whose goal is indigenous language maintenance and revitalization.

Hawaiian Cultural Planner and Interpreter for the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo’s ʻImiloa Center, a bilingual, Hawaiian and English, education center featuring both Hawaiian culture and the latest discoveries of astronomy from the summit of the Pacific’s tallest mountain, Maunakea.