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This paper offers an analysis of why the Hawaiian model of language revitalization, while quite successful so far in Hawaii, has not extended well to the mainland US and Native America, despite extensive contact between the two communities and assistance from Hawaiians. After a brief summary of the Hawaiian model, it first offers an analysis of socio-economic and demographic factors that make the extension difficult. It then suggests more profound reasons for the Hawaiian success, rooted in the particular history and socio-cultural conditions of Hawaii: in particular in the nineteenth-century independent monarchy, the twentieth-century multi-ethnic territorial experience, and the resultant “political” and “dispersed” nature of Hawaiian identity, across multiple practices and a large part of the population of Hawaii. The conclusion situates events in Hawaii within larger trends in the Pacific, suggesting that the “dispersed cultural” rather than “ethnic” form of Hawaiian-ness currently dominant is both a result of Hawaii’s unique history, and a crucial factor for the current success of language and cultural revitalization there, while being largely absent in Native America.
