Cultivating Culture Q&A
Kayla Toves spoke with Cultivating Culture about her work in language revitalization and what she's learned living between cultural and academic settings.
Kayla Toves took her own advice and stood up for herself. The senior at Cornell University faced pushback when she recently petitioned the institution to accept Ōlelo Hawaiʻi as her second language required to graduate.
“I made sure to petition for why I believe I deserve to have Ōlelo recognized as my language proficiency here on campus. It ended up working, even though my advisors had told me otherwise,” she told Native News Online.
Toves was born in Oahu, Hawaii and is Kanaka‘ Oiwi and Acoma Pueblo. From the time she was 3-years-old, she attended Ōlelo immersion language programs. After her family moved to California, her Ōlelo language fluency waned and added her to the diaspora that other Native Hawaiians experience when they live off the island, further away from culture and the people that create it every day.
The Pūkoʻa Fellows Program is her response to connect kin in the Hawaiian diaspora. The 12-week leadership and advocacy fellowship connects Native Hawaiian college students who have never visited their home islands. It gets them, some for the very first time, to cultural practices and Moʻolelo, stories important to their Pacific Island heritage. That work is done in collaboration with the Center for Native American Youth, which recently honored Toves as a 2026 Champion for Change.
“We have developed a curriculum that teaches them a lot of the main individualist theories surrounding their homelands and how that fits into language and how that fits into all of these cultural aspects that really shape Pacific identity,” she said.
She spoke with Cultivating Culture about her work in language revitalization and what she’s learned living between cultural and academic settings.
“Don’t be afraid to stand up for yourself,” she said. “As soon as you realize that being Indigenous is almost like a superpower, it’s a different lens, a different way to see the world and good opportunities start coming to you.”
Parts of this interview have been edited for clarity.
Cultivating Culture: How did you begin to focus on language revitalization?
Kayla Toves: I went to Hawaiian immersion for the first few years of my schooling, and then I ended up moving to California for a while for the rest of my elementary years and a little bit of middle school.
There was a really huge educational shift for me. From learning everything in my native language and then moving to California and having to do everything in English.
That had shifted something in my Hawaiian identity that I hadn’t realized at the time until I grew older and I ended up going to college here in New York. I realized that language was a lot more central to my life.
I went to Kamehameha schools where I had the privilege of taking language courses my entire time there and just being surrounded by a lot of Native educators was something I’d also not appreciated until I came to Cornell. That’s why when I came here, it just became more relevant to my studies that I wanted to focus on language revitalization and language policy.
CC: How do you define language revitalization, does it begin with immersion programs?
Toves: It does begin with immersion programs. I also want to draw back from that as well because I think Native Hawaiians specifically have a really large diasporic community with over 50% of Native Hawaiians living on the continental U.S., living outside of Hawaii and because of that, I could also understand how language revitalization efforts might not be as mobile on the mainland as for the those who don’t live in Hawaii.
I think language revitalization efforts can also start online in some ways, like for those who don’t have access to Native educators or access to elders in their area or other people to speak with.
But definitely at home (in Hawaii) I would say that immersion programs are at the forefront of language revitalization, specifically for Ōlelo Hawaiʻi.
CC: Something profound that is proven from immersion programs, especially those that start young, is that you begin to see not only true revitalization of languages that are lost between generations, but greater connection between kids and their elders. We’ve reported on kids in immersion programs teaching their language to their parents, or other people older. Is that something you’ve experienced?
Toves: Yes, when I was in ʻAha Pūnana Leo, my immersion school, my mom actually had to take Hawaiian courses on the side in order to converse with me at home.
When I would speak with my mom, I would be using things that I had learned in school and then she would also be learning things in those classes.
That was just something that was inherent within me as a Native Hawaiian, that (language) was something that I got to practice. I deserved to be able to practice that in my household with my family.
CC: Could share any more details or experiences of the challenges that you faced transitioning from immersion school programs into mainland coursework?
Toves: Here at (Cornell) one of the challenges I faced was trying to get my language requirement for graduation waived because I am nearly a fluent speaker. I have taken two college courses Hawaiian One and Hawaiian Two, and I have college credits for them.
My advisors here were kind of giving me a hard time, saying that it wouldn’t be possible to get that verified because they couldn’t provide me with an instructor to test me on certain things.
They said that I had the option to take different languages here on campus, which I understand, that is a reality that other kids have to do, but I know in my heart that I could speak Ōlelo and just because my language isn’t offered here on campus doesn’t make it any less real.
I made sure to petition for why I believe I deserve to have Ōlelo recognized as my language proficiency here on campus.
It ended up working, even though my advisors had told me otherwise.
CC: Are you the first person to do that with Ōlelo at Cornell?
Toves: Yes. to my knowledge. My advisor said, they never heard of an Ōlelo speaker here on campus. And then I ended up finding one girl on campus who could speak Ōlelo. We started an Ōlelo language hour at the language center here on campus.
CC: What was it like when you found that other Ōlelo speaker at Cornell?
Toves: It was interesting too because she was from Oregon, so she actually wasn’t from Hawaii itself, which is why when you had asked me earlier, if I felt like immersion schools were at the center of language of revitalization, I pushed back because the only other Ōlelo speaker I had here on campus was someone who had a different background than me, but she could also speak Ōlelo, even though she grew up in Oregon.
That just goes to show that language revitalization is also not just the resources we get it from, but just the action of living that lifestyle, the normalization of it every day.
When I met her it was so refreshing to have someone familiar with me here on campus.
And then it also reminded me to Onipa‘a Kākou, which is to remain steadfast, which is a word that we use a lot in reference to sovereignty. It reminded me that continuing to show up every day for myself in my language, I can get rewarded for that by getting to meet other Ōlelo speakers out here in such a far place.
CC: Could you share any of your personal perspectives on the use of artificial intelligence in Native language revitalization spaces.
Toves: I’ve given it some thought, that’s definitely for sure. I think A.I. in some ways can be used intentionally. It should be used more intentionally, for documentation or maybe helping building teaching curriculum, or even accessibility to those who don’t have access to an elder to learn from or a kumu, which is a teacher to learn Ōlelo from, I could see how that could be helpful, especially things like Duolingo. The high school I actually went to partnered with Duolingo and some of the Hawaiian teachers helped build the curriculum for the Hawaiian platform on Duolingo.
So I definitely see how that can be beneficial for diasporic communities.
I definitely don’t believe that A.I. should replace intergenerational knowledge or Indigenous knowledge systems, or ‘ike, which is knowledge, the ‘ike of our elders are ‘Ike Kūpuna, which is the term for that.
CC: Who are the people in your life that impacted your relationship with language?
Toves: My papa, he’s a Hawaiian language practitioner. I grew up in a household where language was at the center. Every single morning when he would drive us all to immersion school, we would buckle up in the backseat of a car and then we would all pule, which is pray in Hawaiian, as we’re driving off to school. Then every day when we would come home from school, he would ask us, ‘Pehea ʻoe? how are you?’ And we would always have a conversation about how our day went.
It’s just crazy to think that there’s some people out there who didn’t get to experience that. I am just so beyond blessed and grateful to have been able to grow up in a culture like that.
Also my cousins who still speak Ōlelo, they didn’t move away to California like I did.It’s interesting to see how much they’ve grown in their Ōlelo compared to me who had a little bit of a pause during my journey, but it’s awesome to see them going to grad school and working on Native Hawaiian plants and stuff like that.
And then also my baby cousins who are currently in immersion school, Keiki O Ka ʻĀina, which is for younger children. Just seeing how they get to learn about the world around them through their culture and how important that is for them.
And outside of my family, I definitely was super blessed to have amazing educators at Kamehameha Schools, which was the all Native Hawaiian school I had the privilege of going to, and they really helped me on my journey to remind me that even though I grew up in diaspora for a bit, it didn’t diminish my Hawaiian identity.
CC: To follow up, you mentioned there’s a privilege to your background and to your upbringing and how you were raised. So much of this work in embracing and expanding traditional language use is to meet people who didn’t have that, who are coming at it very cold at times or were disengaged for a number of reasons. Have you come across any best practices that have worked for you in meeting people who are coming at this very cold or at learning for the first time?
Toves: Yes. I am currently co-directing The Pūkoʻa Fellows Program, which focuses mostly on diasporic Hawaiian communities or Pacifica communities to be exact. A lot of our kids have never been to their home islands before, have never learned their language, have never done certain cultural practices, or don’t know certain important Moʻolelo, stories about their culture.
We have developed a curriculum that teaches them a lot of the main individualist theories surrounding their homelands and how that fits into language and how that fits into all of these cultural aspects that really shape Pacific identity. It’s currently in collaboration with the Center for Native American Youth and Hawaiian Diaspora. We have a cohort of 15 students where we meet twice a week.
We have two different sessions every week and we just talk about what it needs to be Indigenous in the diaspora, just feelings of both belonging and feelings of alienation they’ve ever had living in the diaspora and even what it means to be a settler here on Turtle Island as an Indigenous person to the Pacific.
