Culture
Life In My Neighborhood
Island Students Share Their Lives Through Art
Catherine Iwami was on her sabbatical from teaching art at Honolulu’s Maryknoll School when she began to study Pacific art at the University of Hawaii. But she knew from her experience with her sixth grade students that Hawaii children know very little about the Pacific region.
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“My students live in Hawaii,” she says, “they know all about mainland America, but they don’t know very much at all about other Pacific Islanders.” Iwami says that most of the text books used in Hawaii schools are very centered on American themes, but don’t teach anything about the Pacific region. The same is true of schools in many Pacific Islands, which use textbooks produced in the U.S., New Zealand or Australia.
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So Iwami got the idea to organize an art exchange with students at Maryknoll-affiliated schools in the region. This is how an art exhibit called Life in My Neighborhood came into being. “It’s a very simple question,” Iwami says, “What is life like where I live?” More than 50 students, ages 11-12 contributed works of art with short written narratives answering Iwami’s question. In addition to Honolulu’s Maryknoll School, students from Ltyentye Apurte CEC in Alice Springs, Australia; Assumption School in Majuro, Marshall Islands; St. Mary’s School in Colonia, Yap in the Federated States of Micronesia and St. Francis School in American Samoa participated in the project.
Each student who was accepted into the art exchange entered both a piece of art and a short narrative answering Iwami’s question. For instance, 12-year-old American Samoa student Luaipou Tooala entered a drawing called Leaders of the Village. Here is Tooala’s narrative:
“My picture is about a Samoan fale where the important people of the village have their meetings, like the matai and pulenu’u, the chiefs and the mayor. These leaders talk about the rules of the village and organize church and village celebrations. The village people respect them.”
“This is a very rich way of teaching students about other Pacific places,” Iwami says. “The students really talk about what they learn from eachother.”
Life in My Neighborhood opened at Honolulu Hale (city hall) in March. A virtual gallery including all the students’ art and stories may be seen by clicking here.
