Act 57 Hawaii was a statute passed by the Republic of Hawaiʻi and signed by President Sanford Dole on June 8, 1896, that made English the sole medium of instruction in every public and private school in the islands. Its Section 30 read: “The English language shall be the medium and basis of instruction at all public and private schools.” Any school that used another language without explicit permission from the Department of Public Instruction risked losing recognition. The law stayed on the books for ninety years, until the Hawaiʻi State Legislature repealed it in 1986.
Act 57 did not name the Hawaiian language. Scholars William Wilson and Kauanoe Kamanā have described it as a “de facto ban” given how central Hawaiian was to schooling and daily life; others read it as an English-medium requirement rather than a prohibition on speaking Hawaiian, noting that Hawaiian-language newspapers kept publishing into the 1940s. Both readings hold some truth. The text targeted the classroom; the practical effect on the language was devastating.
Why the Republic Passed It
The law came out of a political rupture. On January 17, 1893, Queen Liliʻuokalani was overthrown by the Committee of Safety, a group of non-native businessmen and politicians led by Sanford Dole and backed by U.S. Minister John Stevens and Marines from the USS Boston. President Grover Cleveland’s investigation concluded the overthrow was illegal, but Dole refused to step aside. In 1894 the provisional government declared itself the Republic of Hawaiʻi, with Dole as president.
The republic’s leaders treated the Hawaiian language as a political threat and pushed English as the “language of the land” in part to demonstrate readiness for U.S. annexation. That annexation followed in 1898.
How It Reshaped Hawaiian-Medium Schooling
Before Act 57, Hawaiian-medium schooling was the norm. The Hawaiian Kingdom maintained roughly 1,100 Hawaiian-medium schools in 1841, and Hawaiian literacy later in the century exceeded 90 percent. By 1848, about 19,644 students — 99 percent of total enrollment — attended Hawaiian-language schools, against just 200 in English schools. That balance had shifted by 1888, when Hawaiian-language enrollment was down to about 16 percent.
Act 57 finished the collapse. In 1897, one year after the law took effect, only 26 students remained in Hawaiian-language schools. By 1902, the number was zero. The last three Hawaiian-language public schools on Oʻahu closed in 1896, leaving only one in the entire territory, on Niʻihau.
Enforcement often went beyond textbooks. Teachers and administrators punished students for speaking Hawaiian by slapping or hitting them, withholding food, or forcing them to pull weeds for every Hawaiian word they said. In 1902 the Board of Education wrote that “the gradual extinction of a Polynesian dialect may be regretted for sentimental reasons, but it is certainly for the interest of the Hawaiians themselves.” Parents who feared their children would fail in an English-dominant system began discouraging Hawaiian at home. Gladys Kamakakūokalani ʻAinoa Brandt recalled in 2004 the pressure her parents put on the family to drop the language, adding, “If they were alive today, they would feel differently.”
The children taught in the last years of Hawaiian-medium schooling were the last generation to speak Hawaiian as a first language. By the 1970s an estimated 2,000 native speakers remained, nearly all elderly. By 1982 only 150 to 200 second-language speakers could be counted. A UNESCO report found that by 1985, just 32 children under 18 in the entire state spoke Hawaiian, a figure that included children on Niʻihau.
Niʻihau, the One Place Hawaiian Survived
The privately owned island of Niʻihau, held in private hands since 1864, was the one place Hawaiian survived as a living, intergenerational language through the twentieth century. Its isolation meant Hawaiian remained the medium of instruction at Niʻihau School longer than anywhere else, even after that eventually shifted to English. Families never stopped speaking Hawaiian at home. A state-commissioned report called the Niʻihau community “the last intact community of native speakers of Traditional Hawaiian in the world,” while noting that their linguistic needs have been largely overlooked in state policy, with interpreter services provided on an ad hoc basis.
The 1986 Repeal and Immersion Revival
The repeal happened almost by accident. In the early 1980s, a group of educators led by Larry Kimura, a Hawaiian language professor at the University of Hawaiʻi, set out to build Hawaiian-medium preschools modeled on the Māori Kōhanga Reo language nests in New Zealand. They founded ʻAha Pūnana Leo — “nest of voices” — in 1983 and opened the first Pūnana Leo immersion preschool at Kekaha, Kauaʻi, in August 1984. Others followed in Hilo and Honolulu the next year.
As the programs grew, organizers realized Act 57 still technically prohibited using Hawaiian as the medium of instruction. ʻAha Pūnana Leo lobbied the Legislature, which repealed the ban in 1986. The following year, the Department of Education partnered with ʻAha Pūnana Leo to launch the first Kula Kaiapuni (Hawaiian Language Immersion Program) pilot classes at Keaukaha Elementary in Hilo and Waiau Elementary in Pearl City, the first elementary-level indigenous language immersion classes in the United States.
Voters had already laid a constitutional foundation in 1978, ratifying amendments that designated Hawaiian as an official language of Hawaiʻi alongside English and called for promotion of Hawaiian culture, language, and history. That mandate gave the new immersion programs an institutional basis beyond simply removing Act 57’s prohibition.
Where the Language Stands Now
Immersion enrollment climbed from those 32 children in 1985 to about 1,760 students by 1999, a level not seen since the 1880s. As of 2025 the Kaiapuni program operates at 26 Department of Education sites and seven charter school sites, with instruction conducted entirely in Hawaiian through grade four; English is formally introduced in grade five. More than 4,000 students now learn and speak the language daily in immersion settings from preschool through high school. The state estimates that more than 27,000 people aged five and older speak Hawaiian at home.
The main obstacle to further growth is a shortage of qualified Hawaiian language teachers. ʻAha Pūnana Leo and Ka Haka ʻUla o Keʻelikōlani College of Hawaiian Language at the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo launched the ʻAukūkui teacher certification program in 2019, investing more than $100,000 in professional development.
In April 2022, the Legislature adopted House Concurrent Resolution 130, a formal apology to Native Hawaiians for Act 57 and the effort to erase the language. The resolution was written in both English and ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi. In the 2025 session, House Bill 1496 referenced Act 57 by name and proposed a dedicated Kaiapuni complex area superintendent within the Department of Education, along with a requirement that at least one at-large Board of Education member be a Hawaiian educator or language scholar. The bill includes $200,000 annually for the superintendent and $75,000 for a supporting secretary.
The law’s legacy still surfaces in courtrooms. In 2017, Samuel Kaleikoa Kaeo, an associate professor of Hawaiian studies, was issued a bench warrant by a Maui district court judge after he responded in Hawaiian during a proceeding and no interpreter was available. The warrant was recalled within days, and in January 2018 the Hawaiʻi State Judiciary adopted a new Hawaiian Language Interpreter Policy, committing to provide or permit qualified interpreters “to the extent reasonably possible” when parties choose to speak in Hawaiian. Hawaiian has been an official state language since 1978; its practical acceptance in institutional settings has moved more slowly.