We are not waves. A wave is moved by forces outside itself, carried wherever the water pushes, spending itself on a shore it did not choose. Kānaka have never been that. We are the people who looked at the largest ocean on earth and chose to cross it – who read the stars and the swells and set out on purpose, carrying everything we were in the hull of a canoe. Hawaiʻi sits at the northern apex of Polynesia because our ancestors voyaged to reach it.

Movement is not something that happens to us. It is something we do, and have always done, and it is written into who we are.

I am one of the Hawaiians who left. I have spent much of my adult life away from the Islands – in Aotearoa and now in Canada – teaching, building programs, and mentoring young Indigenous scholars.

I know that for some at home, a Hawaiian who lives abroad can invite a quiet question: are they still truly one of us? I want to answer that question – not for myself alone, but for all of us who have gone out. The answer is older, and prouder, than the question.

Consider Henry ʻŌpūkahaʻia. Born in Kaʻū around 1792 and orphaned young, he boarded a ship as a teenager and sailed all the way to Connecticut. There, far from any face that knew him, he hungered for learning and began the work of setting his own language down on paper. He longed to bring that learning home.

He never made it; typhus took him in 1818, at age 26. But his last words, spoken in a New England winter, were “Aloha ʻoe” – my love be with you. His body lay in Cornwall for 175 years, until his people brought him home to Kona in 1993. One of the first of us to venture out carried Hawaiʻi within him to his final breath – and in the end, Hawaiʻi brought him home.

He was not the last. Through the 19th century, Kānaka shipped out aboard whaling and trading vessels and earned a reputation for being among the finest seamen afloat. Many settled along the Northwest Coast of the American continent, married into the Native nations there, and became beloved of them. They were called Kanaka – and they wore the name gladly. It stuck.

You can still find it written across the map, up and down the coast of British Columbia and inland: the homeland, planted wherever our people came to rest. Generations later, their descendants still turned their faces toward Hawaiʻi. A people do not leave their name across a coastline because they have forgotten themselves. They do it because they carry home so completely that they leave a piece of it everywhere they land.

And we did not only sail outward on others’ ships. We sent ourselves, deliberately, as a matter of national purpose.

Between 1880 and 1892, King Kalākaua and the Hawaiian Kingdom dispatched 18 young Hawaiians to study in six countries – Italy, Scotland, England, China, Japan, and the United States – in the program known as Hawaiian Youths Abroad.

They studied engineering, medicine, art, music, and military science, chosen to become the leaders of an independent nation. The going out was not exile; it was a commission from the crown. They were sent to gather the knowledge the lāhui needed – and to show the world that here was a nation of character, intellect, and talent, fit to stand among the nations of the earth. They were our representatives. We have never stopped sending them.

My own family is woven into this same current. My father, Herman Piʻikea Clark – whose name I carry – and his older brother, my uncle James Kalaeone Clark, both went from Punahou to Oregon State and into the National Football League.

My father, an all-pro guard for the Chicago Bears in 1955 and 1956, was later named to the NFL’s Half- Century team. Decades after his passing he was inducted into the Polynesian Football Hall of Fame by a committee that knew him only by reputation. My uncle, a guard for the Washington Redskins, came home to serve his people in the Hawaiʻi Legislature.

My great-uncles Duke and Sam Kahanamoku stood on Olympic podiums, Duke with three gold medals among the five he won across three Games, the brothers sharing the stand together at Paris in 1924. They competed against the whole world and beat it. Duke lived many years on the West Coast and carried Hawaiʻi with him wherever he went, becoming the man who gave surfing to the world. Not one of them became a drop less Hawaiian for having gone.

Even our treasures have made this journey and kept their meaning. In Chicago, Kulamanu McWayne Nash – a woman of aliʻi descent, connected by blood to Queen Liliʻuokalani herself – kept the kāhili, the feathered royal standards of our chiefs, through a lifetime far from home.

She carried her lineage and her mana with her, held these treasures in trust across the years away, and in 1949 gave them onward, knowingly, as Hawaiian things. The mana traveled. It was held, honored, and passed on. That is not the story of a people losing themselves at a distance. It is the story of a people keeping faith across one.

I left for the same reason my ancestors did: because the work I was called to do required knowledge that, at the time, I could not pursue at home. Years ago, I made the first attempt to begin a Native Hawaiian art and design course at the University of Hawaiʻi – the first taught from an Indigenous Hawaiian perspective – and it took root, carried forward by others after me.

But the deeper questions I needed to ask reached beyond what the institution, as it then was, could hold. I looked to Canada, to Australia, to programs across the United States, and I came to a clear conclusion: the world leader in the indigenization of higher education and the decolonizing of arts education was Aotearoa.

I was fortunate to be invited to live and work there as an academic, and there, as a Kanaka Maoli scholar, I earned my doctorate – supported and encouraged to study from within my own knowledge system. I stayed 20 years. I did not leave Hawaiʻi behind. I went to fetch what Hawaiʻi had sent me for.

And I am in good and current company. Kānaka Maoli now hold some of the most distinguished posts in the world.

Kēhaulani Kauanui is the Eric and Wendy Schmidt Professor of Indigenous Studies at Princeton University. Noelani Arista directs the Indigenous Studies Program at McGill, one of Canada’s finest universities, where she organizes Hawaiian knowledge for a new century. The baritone Quinn Kamakanalani Kelsey based in Chicago is the premier Verdi baritone of his generation; he has sung the title role in Verdi’s Rigoletto on the great stages of the world, and not long ago came home to sing in ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi. I had the privilege of sitting in the audience in Toronto for his Rigoletto, swept up and overawed by the power and presence of that Hawaiian voice filling the hall.

These are not disconnected Hawaiians. They are among our finest – our leading minds and voices in the very fields of our excellence, representing the lāhui on the world’s largest stages.

This is why I believe we should think differently about our diaspora. With more Hawaiians now living away from the Islands than within them, the old anxiety – that to leave is to fade – has things exactly backward.

We are not refugees, scattered and diminished. We are voyagers and carriers, doing what we have always done: going out into the world and bringing our culture, our kūpuna, and our way of seeing with us, as a gift we give wherever we land.

Our diaspora is not a weakness to be explained away. It is an exemplar of our strength, our resilience, and our continuing excellence proven, as it has been for two centuries, in open competition on the world stage.

So, when someone asks whether a Hawaiian who lives abroad is still truly Hawaiian, I think of ʻŌpūkahaʻia with aloha on his lips in the Connecticut cold, and of the seamen who left our names along a far coastline, and of Kalākaua’s young scholars sent out to announce a nation. I think of a king who understood that to love your country can mean crossing an ocean for it.

We have always gone out. We have always carried home with us. And like ʻŌpūkahaʻia, in the ways that matter most, we always find our way back. We are voyagers still.

The post Nā Holomoana: We Are Voyagers Still appeared first on Ka Wai Ola.

Growing up in Olympia, Washington, during the days of grunge and riot grrrl (a 1990s underground feminist punk movement), Peoples recognized that she stood out from the homogeneity of the local Caucasian community. In second grade, a young Peoples wrote: “I look different than everybody else here.”

But “I didn’t try to, like, hide or shrink myself,” the Seattleite added. Instead, Peoples has consistently embraced her differences – a quality that has furthered her time and again as an artist, a student and a teacher.

“I’ve lived a lot of life somehow,” she said.

Born in 1980, Peoples is the descendant of Oregon loggers and farmers on her father’s side and Kānaka Maoli and Hakka Chinese on her mother’s side. Her mom, Harriet Kaholokula, met her dad, Philip Peoples, as students at Central Washington University.

Peoples is the youngest of three and the only daughter. Though her parents lived on the continent, a hāpai Kaholokula flew to Hawaiʻi with the hopes of giving birth to Peoples on the ʻāina. “For her, it was very important that we were all born there as Hawaiians,” Peoples said.

But Peoples entered the world on her own time in Yuba City, California. Her ʻohana resettled in Olympia when she was 3 years old. Her parents sold the trailer park they owned and managed, then they bought several ice cream stores, running Baskin-Robbins locations in Washington State from Tacoma to Centralia. Peoples remembers helping decorate the iconic clown cones.

In kindergarten, Peoples was asked what name she wanted to be called. She answered with her inoa Hawaiʻi, Malia. “I always knew that I was a Hawaiian person,” she said.

Peoples was a keiki of many passions. She once dreamed of being a choreographer because she loved to dance and took ballet for many years. She played piano and saxophone in the band and nurtured a budding interest in languages.

At Capital High School in Olympia, Peoples felt that she knew everyone, and everyone knew her. She sported combat boots and dyed her hair blue, orange and purple. Peoples frequented thrift stores and was enamored with Japanese street fashion.

“I was, like, this weird Pacific Northwest Kanaka punk,” she said.

After meeting a Chinese teacher through an exchange program, Peoples took a few trimesters of Mandarin and was extended the opportunity to attend Tsinghua University in Beijing.

She graduated high school in 1998, and, one week after turning 18, she was off to China. Peoples called it “life changing.” Over a year and a half, she traveled and learned more about her ancestors from southern China. Peoples completed a program at the Beijing Language and Culture University.

At the dawn of the Y2K era, she enrolled at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. Freshly returned from China, Peoples felt culture shock in reverse.

She moved on to Seattle Central College before transferring to the University of Washington as a junior. She graduated in 2004 with a bachelor’s degree in Chinese language and literature.

Her goal: To work as an interpreter.

Peoples headed to New York City for an internship at China Labor Watch, a nonprofit that reports on labor conditions at Chinese factories. She split her time between the Manhattan office and her residence in the Queens neighborhood of Flushing. Peoples translated documents smuggled out of China into English.

“Through that whole experience, I started to realize how harmful production was to workers overseas,” she said.

It prompted her decision to go to New York Fashion Academy in Seattle. She learned how to operate a sewing machine, make patterns and other skills. Peoples finished the program with a certificate in fashion design and construction in 2007.

She stayed to teach sewing, pattern making, grading and product development for 8 years. Peoples also served as a teaching artist at the Seattle Art Museum, Atlas Obscura and the Seattle Public Library, as well as a sewing and ceramics teacher at The Northwest School’s summer program. Peoples has also worked with the Seattle Housing Authority to teach refugees how to sew and repair clothing.

“I’m not trying to gatekeep knowledge,” she said. “I’m trying to share it as much as possible.”

In 2011, she launched her brand, Other Peoples Polyester, a line of clothing and accessories made of vintage, reclaimed and designer fabrics. Two years later, she got her own workspace studio in the Belltown neighborhood.

Feeling burnt out from clothes, in 2018 Peoples branched out to explore porcelain jewelry-making.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, she was drawn to learn more about her Kanaka roots – particularly through kapa making. She received a grant to travel to Oʻahu and learn kapa. While Peoples doesn’t have a kumu yet, she’s sat with several expert practitioners.

“I have learned about the process of turning a tree into fabric, but I’ve also learned a lot more about our ancestors,” she said. “All these doors to ʻike just started opening up.”

Peoples is reclaiming aspects of culture through art, which leaves her feeling excited and empowered. Now, she’s moving full steam ahead.

Peoples recently received a grant to film a documentary about kapa. She’s wrapping up her Hummingbird Indigenous Pasifika Storytelling Artist Residency and finishing art projects. She’s part of a Molokaʻi-based ʻoli group that learns chants together online. On top of that, Peoples continues to model for TCM Models and Talent.

As Hawaiians, “we should, as people, be so, so proud of the fact that the 5% who survived are still here,” Peoples said. “It’s a good time to be Kānaka today.”

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Hawaiʻi isn’t home in the same sense as her drizzly birthplace, Renton, Washington, or the swampy suburbs of New Orleans, Louisiana, where she grew up. But it is her motherland – the place where her grandmother waded in East Maui loʻi and where generations thrived before her.

This July, Boyanton will follow in their footsteps, making the leap from Miami, Florida, to Hilo. She’s accepted a school psychology internship at the Kaʻū-Keaʻau-Pāhoa Complex Area, where she aspires to uplift Kānaka Maoli students among others.

“The American education system was imposed upon our people,” Boyanton said. “The systems need to change to better respect and integrate our values, especially on the islands.”

Her next steps are a childhood wish coming true.

Boyanton was raised in a traditional nuclear family of four. She glowingly referred to her father, Carl Boyanton, as “the epitome of a Southern man.” Her mother, Heidi Ululani Goodall Boyanton, is primarily of Kānaka and white descent, although her great-grandfather emigrated from China to work in Hawaiʻi.

Boyanton, the youngest of two, spent her earliest years toddling behind her older sister. She was only a keiki when her ʻohana left Renton for a yearlong stint in Diamondhead, Mississippi, before settling down in Slidell, Louisiana.

She felt grateful for the insulation of her close-knit neighborhood where kids romped outside, set up lemonade stands, and chased after the ice cream truck. Boyanton said it was “just joy.”

But “as much as I loved growing up in the South, there obviously was not a big Hawaiian community,” Boyanton said. “I was always kind of chasing my Hawaiian identity.”

Born with blonde hair like her father, she didn’t feel like she looked Kanaka. Though her tresses darkened over time, the sentiment stuck. Still, she can recall pidgin words slipped into conversations at home. Boyanton leaned on her inoa Hawaiʻi for grounding.

Her dad, who owned a produce company, worked grueling hours almost every day. Her mom balanced an accounting job at the family business with parenting demands, packing lunches and dropping the girls off at extracurriculars.

Though Boyanton painted herself as an anxious and shy child, she found outlets for expression – including a budding sense of humor. She swam competitively from a young age, and, for 15 years, she chased after balls on soccer fields. Boyanton learned how to play piano and tried her hand at the violin.

Life took a turn when the middle schooler explored the attic of her home, rummaging through boxes. Boyanton found a dusty psychology textbook. Her mom had hoped to be a psychologist, and she’d stowed the book away.

Boyanton inherited that dream.

She described her four years at Slidell’s Pope John Paul II Catholic High School as “formative.” Boyanton looked forward to her literature and art classes, painting in her bedroom late into the night.

After graduating in 2016, she started college at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge before transferring to the Lone Star State’s Houston Community College. But she really hit her stride when she landed at Northwestern State University of Louisiana in Natchitoches.

“It was everything I wanted it to be,” Boyanton said.

The small-town undergraduate experience served as the launchpad for her psychology career. In the pursuit of a bachelor’s degree in psychology and addiction studies, she seized opportunities in her field. Boyanton served as an administrative and research assistant at her school’s counseling center, and she drove to nearby Winnfield, Louisiana, to work with children with disabilities as a registered behavioral health technician.

She also embraced leadership roles, presiding over both the psychology club and the local Psi Chi International Honor Society.

After earning her degree in 2020, Boyanton debated her next steps. She decided to move in with her sister in Washington, D.C., in 2021 and enjoyed a gap year.

“When I think about my favorite time in life, it was my time spent in D.C.,” Boyanton said.

It was work and play: She took on roles as a therapy aide at a clinic and a test development assistant at Cambium Assessment, along with an internship as a grant researcher and writer at Empowerment through Integration, a global nonprofit.

Boyanton also touched Hawaiian soil for the first time that year when she traveled to Kauaʻi. “You can just feel the mana,” she said.

Miami, Florida, beckoned in 2022 when she decided to pursue her master’s degree in school psychology.

While learning at Barry University, she worked as a psychometric research associate at Cambium Assessment and a learning specialist under a school psychologist. A work trip on Oʻahu helped Boyanton begin to bridge the gap between her Hawaiian identity and her career ambitions.

After graduating in 2024, Boyanton went on to enroll at Florida International University for her specialist’s degree in school psychology, which she will complete in May 2027.

Like kalo, Boyanton has unfurled her lau.

She worked as an adjunct instructor and teaching assistant in psychology courses. She published several academic papers, including one with a Kanaka school psychologist on supporting Native Hawaiian adolescents. She served as president of her university’s school psychology student association. Boyanton presented at conferences and took on roles within the National Association of School Psychologists, representing the Pacific Islander faction.

As she prepares for her move from Miami to Hilo, Boyanton said, “I am more rooted now in my Hawaiian identity than ever. Less than 1% of school psychologists identify as Native Hawaiian, so I’m happy to be a part of that.”

Author’s note: Melissa Momi-Lani Boyanton is the sister of Ka Wai Ola writer Megan Ulu-Lani Boyanton.

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There, Hilo did her part by hauling flora, making lei and filling buckets. The spot in the historic San Francisco flower market not only developed her work ethic; it also imbued her with a sense of being Hawaiian.

She watched her makuakāne build a network of Bay Area Kānaka, serving local hālau hula through the late 1980s until the store shuttered in the mid-1990s.

“This small shop in the wholesale flower district in San Francisco was kind of the footprint for my identity,” Hilo said. “For being in the diaspora, I very much lucked out in still being very connected to the culture.”

Hilo, now 42, has established a successful career in media, having worked at powerhouse outlets such as CBS Interactive, NBC News and USA TODAY. The Los Angeles resident found that her strength lies in intertwining her career goals with her Kanaka identity.

“Journalism is part of our culture,” Hilo said, referring to the plethora of Native Hawaiian newspapers – numbering over 100,000 pages – that were published by Kānaka Maoli writers between 1834 and 1948. “That is [often] forgotten.”

Born in Burlingame, California, Hilo is the eldest of three children. Her father claims Kānaka Maoli roots from both of his parents, plus Chinese and Japanese on his mother’s side. Hilo’s mom, Marcia Rapozo-Hilo, was raised by her Austrian Jewish mother who was displaced by World War II. Her Kauaʻi-born father was a descendant of Portuguese plantation workers.

Beginning at age 4, Hilo learned hula under nā Kumu Hula Esther Correa and Renee Price of Hālau Hula ʻo Kuʻuleinani in San Mateo. For the next 14 years, she regularly performed and competed at continent-based festivals like Iā ʻOe E Ka Lā Hula Competition and Festival. Hilo recalls long days and demanding practices.

Other interests blossomed, too. In fourth grade, Hilo began playing saxophone, and she added ʻOri Tahiti to her middle school routine. After watching an episode of the TV series Matlock, Hilo set her sights on becoming a lawyer. She also served as the editor-in-chief of her middle school’s newspaper.

As a teenager, Hilo took advanced placement classes at Carlmont High School in Belmont, California, and joined mock trial. She also played soccer, swam on the varsity team, and continued to dance hula, earning a scholarship worth one year of hālau tuition when her family fell on hard times.

For a child from a working class ʻohana, academics were Hilo’s key to success. Though she excelled at math, she was enamored with history and English. “You can see the connective tissue between that and journalism,” she quipped.

After graduating in 2001, she attended University of California, Santa Barbara. Hilo pursued a double major in political science, with an emphasis in international relations, and English, plus a minor in music.

But by the end of college, she was disenchanted with her legal aspirations. In a mock Congress class, she assumed the role of a journalist and unlocked a new passion. When she graduated in 2005, she was faced with a decision: enroll in a graduate program in English literature or focus on freelance writing?

Freelance journalism won. At first, Hilo was “writing for beer money,” publishing stories with local news outlets. She supplemented her income with a job at the Santa Barbara Symphony.

During that season of her life Hilo met her future husband, Matthew Andersen, at a party in 2008.

Soon afterwards, she enrolled in a master’s degree program focused on specialized journalism at the University of Southern California finishing in 2010. Later that year, she wrote stories for Patch.com, a local news platform, which took her to Connecticut for a three-month internship.

After returning to the West Coast, Hilo was hired in 2012 by Yahoo! as a content producer and social media editor. The following year, she secured a role in media outside of journalism at CBS Interactive. Hilo spent four years producing live social and digital events, leading marketing campaigns and creating editorial content.

Galvanized by the state of the press and democracy, in 2017 Hilo pivoted joining NBC News as a social media editor. She rose through the ranks and became the senior manager of social programming and specials in 2021. Hilo led the coverage of historic events like presidential elections and spearheaded DEI initiatives, which helped her reconnect with her Kanaka identity.

Often, she was the only Native Hawaiian in the newsroom. “We’re just not there,” Hilo said about those spaces. “It’s so hard to find that community.”

Beyond her professional ventures, Hilo was growing her family. She married Matthew in 2017. Their eldest son, Clifford, was born in 2020, followed by Charles in 2023.

Following layoffs at NBC in 2024, Hilo was hired by USA TODAY as the deputy managing editor of social. That year, she also founded Nā Lei Hilo, a monthly newsletter and digital community that strives to connect Kānaka in the diaspora.

In 2025, Hilo found herself drawn to academia after teaching a semester course in public relations at Santa Barbara City College. Today, in addition to publishing Nā Lei Hilo, she works as a part-time lecturer on cross-cultural journalism at California State University, Dominguez Hills.

Returning to Hawaiʻi someday feels like a colossal decision to Hilo, but she’s open to it, particularly as she dives further into her genealogy. “I’ve been listening more to my ancestors,” she said. “Now, I have the bandwidth to really hear them when they’re saying hello.”

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Generations of her ʻohana have grown up in Honolulu’s Kalihi neighborhood. Her parents, grandparents and great-grandparents all attended Farrington High School and married their high school sweethearts.

Those connections continue to ground her in Hawaiʻi even though she’s lived on the continent since 2013. Over the years, she has built a successful career as a strategic communications leader and angel investor, making the list of Pacific Business News’ 40 Under 40 last year. But Quiamno never forgets who she is.

From her mother, Shannan Lokelani, whose ʻohana hails from both Hawaiʻi Island and Oʻahu, Honolulu-born Quiamno claims Kānaka Maoli, Chinese and Portuguese ancestry. Her father, Roy, is Filipino.

When Quiamno was growing up, her mom was a manager at Hawaiian Telcom while her dad worked in maintenance at Outrigger Resorts & Hotels in Waikīkī and ran his own auto body shop. Their urban neighborhood was a blend of recent immigrants and Native Hawaiians, characterized by the sounds of conversations in English, Samoan, Tongan, Tagalog, Chamorro and ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi echoing through its streets.

“What I really learned in my time growing up in Kalihi is that we get a bad rep, but to me it probably provided the most eye-opening and character-building childhood,” Quiamno said. “It’s really working-class families and that hard work mentality bridging the gap across cultures.”

She attended St. John the Baptist Catholic School, which exposed her to the wealth disparities in Hawaiʻi. Kamehameha Schools’ Explorations program taught Quiamno about her Kānaka culture and traditions. Early in life, she developed a love for paddling that persisted for years.

Raised in the age of blockbuster movies like Erin Brockovich and Legally Blonde, Quiamno dreamed of becoming a defense attorney. “I wanted to defend and advocate on behalf of others,” she said.

She credits her aunt, Erin Kahunawaikaʻala Wright, as associate professor at UH Mānoa, with inspiring her from a young age. A mentee of Haunani-Kay Trask, Wright taught Quiamno about activism, social justice, equity and Hawaiian identity, taking her to protests at ʻIolani Palace. Together, the pair would speak in ʻōlelo and discuss their family’s genealogy.

Quiamno’s time at Saint Francis School were formative years for the then-teenager. She studied Japanese and served as class president. She joined speech and debate, which left her enthralled by the concepts of building a case and structuring an argument.

And she found herself pushing back against the school administration and its rules, which she deemed unfair. Quiamno especially remembers administrations’ reprimands of LGBTQ+ classmates. “I knew it wasn’t right,” she said.

After graduating in 2009, Quiamno accepted a full-ride scholarship to UH Mānoa. She attended classes in both the business and communication schools. While at the university, Quiamno served as a student senator and joined a co-ed business fraternity.

But within the university’s student body, she distinctly felt the absence of other Kānaka students. Native Hawaiian Student Services filled that gap. “It was a gift and a privilege to be able to learn and live and breathe my culture in college,” Quiamno said.

Although she completed internships at McNeil Wilson Communications and for former Gov. Neil Abercrombie, she realized that working for the hotel industry or the government didn’t appeal to her.

She was ready for new experiences and before she graduated in 2013, Amazon offered her a job in Seattle. When Big Tech rang, she answered the call.

After graduation, she relocated to the Pacific Northwest. Initially, she found it difficult to get used to its weather, culture and social scene. “Deep down, Seattle is such a beautiful, rich community,” Quiamno said. “If you invest in Seattle, it will invest back into you. But when I first moved here, it was a rough go.”

After one year at Amazon, she pivoted to real estate development and pay equity startups. They fed her appetite for entrepreneurship.

And in 2019, Quiamno took the entrepreneurial plunge and launched Future for Us, a community platform for women of color along with a co-founder. For her contributions, she was named one of Seattle Magazine’s Most Influential People, a Gates Foundation’s 100 Changemakers in 2019, and a Vital Voices Global Leadership Incubator Fellow, which helped her build up her company.

Then, in 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Feeling burnt out in her late twenties, she moved back to Hawaiʻi. Her company was acquired in 2021, and she took a 10-month career break. “Being able to slow down and take a breath, that really helped me gear up for my next thing,” Quiamno said.

During the pandemic, she was recruited to lead diversity, equity and inclusion at Amazon Prime Video, which brought her back to Seattle. Quiamno shaped the streaming service’s talent and inclusion strategy for its labor force around the world from 2021 until early 2025.

After layoffs hit the tech giant, Quiamno poured her energy into her own fractional public relations firm, catering to early-stage startups. She also used her position as an angel investor to fund Kānaka women entrepreneurs.

And earlier this year, Yoodli, an enterprise AI roleplay platform, hired Quiamno to spearhead its strategic public relations, communications and marketing. She’s eager to learn more about the new frontier of artificial intelligence.

However, “my end goal is to move back home,” Quiamno said, “once I’m ready.”

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By Jayden Kepoʻo-Caspino

Situated on the traditional homelands of the Kalapuyan people, more than 2,400 miles away from Hawaiʻi, is a 3,500-square-foot puʻuhonua for poʻe Hawaiʻi and Pacific Islanders in Oregon – the AloHā Resource & Community Center (ARCC).

This dream of creating a community space came to fruition in 2022, when the leaders of Ka ʻAha Lāhui o ʻOlekona Hawaiian Civic Club (KALO HCC), an Oregon and Southwest Washington-serving nonprofit and member of the Association of Hawaiian Civic Clubs, recognized the need for a place where Kānaka ʻŌiwi, Pacific Islanders, and poʻe Hawaiʻi could gather, heal, and unapologetically express their shared values.

The name itself – AloHā – emphasizes the importance of pilina and the need for a physical puʻuhonua, where people can be he alo a he alo (face to face), grounded in Native Hawaiian values, and connected through the exchange of hā (breath).

The inoa piha (full name) of this puʻuhonua – AloHā Resource & Community Center – and its acronym, ARCC, reflects KALO HCC’s role as a bridge for community living away from Hawaiʻi, offering a place where people can still “feel Hawaiʻi,” no matter where they are.

Today, ARCC holds space for community connection and growth in many forms. The center houses a library of some 1,300 books – over 80% of which are Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander-focused. In 2025 alone, community members donated over 300 books to share in the ARCC.

With the understanding that access to traditional and local Hawaiʻi foods are limited, ARCC opened a small community pantry where people can “shop” for non-perishables and available produce like kalo leaves free of charge.

Most impactfully, KALO HCC keeps Native Hawaiian culture alive at the ARCC through hands-on, in-person workshops and community gatherings.

Each month, KALO HCC hosts cultural workshops on topics ranging from lei-making to kōnane. Other activities include regular ʻohana game nights. Our work reflects the strong-willed commitment of our organization’s founder, Prince Jonah Kūhiō Kalanianaʻole, to the rehabilitation of his lāhui. As Prince Kūhiō once stated, “Stick together and try to agree to the best of your ability to meet the most important problem: the rehabilitation of our race.”

With more than half of Native Hawaiians now living on the continent, KALO HCC’s vision continues to center on Prince Kūhiō’s call to uplift the lāhui beyond the pae ʻāina. This is accomplished through scholarships, support for Native Hawaiian artists and businesses, increased access to health and traditional food services, the opening of spaces to learn mele, hula, oli, and traditional crafts, and culturally immersive summer programs; ARCC stands as a living example of ʻike kūpuna guiding community wellbeing.

ARCC is also a place for elevating ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi. After about three years of planning, KALO HCC has finally launched its Hiʻikua Program, an immersive ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi program that bridges generations. KALO HCC recently wrapped up a 10-week ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi 101 cohort taught by Kumu ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi Haia Ku, an alumna of Ke Kula Kaiapuni ʻo Ānuenue and Kamehameha Schools Kapālama.

Another ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi 101 cohort and an ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi 201 cohort will open this spring to help our communities build fluency.

Each year, KALO HCC’s community center hosts an annual Prince Kūhiō Celebration during the week of his birthday to hoʻohanohano (honor) his legacy. This always brings together more than 150 community members for protocol, to commemorate Prince Kūhiō’s many notable achievements, to enjoy live music from Kānaka artists living in Oregon, and to share a meal together. Each person who attends is a living testament of Prince Kūhiō’s belief in organizing Native Hawaiians to take charge of their own destiny.

The AloHā Resource & Community Center stands as a living puʻuhonua shaped by ʻike Hawaiʻi, sustained by pilina, and guided by the collective efforts of our poʻe on the continent. As KALO HCC continues to grow in this space, ARCC exists to remind us that culture is not bound by geography, but thrives wherever the community chooses to nurture it.

Here in Oregon, Hawaiʻi is not left behind. We carry it forward through AloHā.

Jayden Kepoʻo-Caspino is a Waiʻanae-raised Native Hawaiian who moved from Oʻahu to Oregon in 2019. Now serving as the Communications & Marketing director at Ka ʻAha Lāhui O ʻOlekona Hawaiian Civic Club, Jayden shares his passion for Indigenous storytelling with poʻe Hawaiʻi living on the continent.

The post Building Pilina on the Continent appeared first on Ka Wai Ola.

Kaila Chung is bringing hula to Kentucky’s Bluegrass region. As an alakaʻi of Kumu Kawika Keikialiʻi Alfiche, Chung has led Hui Kaululehua in Louisville since 2022.

“The hui is my soulmate, and hula is the most important thing that I do,” said Chung, 34. But it took time for her to forge that path.

Born in Stuttgart, Germany, Chung spent her childhood traveling the world because of her parents’ U.S. Army careers. Her dad, Norman Kauila Chung, was born in Honolulu to a Hawaiian-Chinese father and a Japanese mother. Her mom, Dei Chung, claims mostly German ancestry.

The young family moved to Richmond, Virginia, where Chung’s brother, Zach Kauila Chung, was born. They were then stationed in Seoul, South Korea. In third grade, Chung and her ʻohana settled in Louisville.

Throughout her adolescence, Chung mainly connected with her Chinese and Japanese roots. “Culture was always an important part of our household, but our Hawaiian ancestry just didn’t really come up a lot,” she said.

In middle school, Chung recalled standing out: the rare Asian student, an “exoticized” mixed-race kid, a tall girl compared to her peers.

Though she gravitated toward academics, a teacher encouraged her to try out for the basketball team. The sport became a constant for her, in addition to volleyball.

Her call to do mission work came during middle school. Chung accompanied her family, conservative Southern Baptists, on a mission trip to China. And after graduating from Atherton High School in 2009, Chung joined her youth group on a mission trip to Brazil.

At the University of Kentucky, she majored in English education for her first two years before switching to being an English major. Chung’s college life revolved around the Christian Student Fellowship. Her junior year, she attended Passion, a convention for Christian youth, in Atlanta, Georgia. The focus: human trafficking.

“I felt this very sudden shift that this is the work that I needed to be doing,” Chung said.

After finishing her bachelor’s degree in 2013, she enrolled at the University of Louisville to earn a master’s degree in social work.

2014 marked a monumental year for other reasons, too. Chung began working as a victim advocate on domestic violence and sexual assault cases at the Jefferson County Attorney’s Office. She also started learning hula and ʻOri Tahiti at a studio, ʻIke Roa.

“That really started my journey into connecting with our Kānaka roots,” she said.

Over the next few years, Chung danced. She got married and divorced. She graduated in 2018, and, in 2019, she joined the Louisville Metro Police Department – a job she holds to this day.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Chung met Kumu Kawika and his hālau over Zoom. After separating from ʻIke Roa, she established a hui under Kumu Kawika’s hula lineage in 2022. Her haumāna – many of Polynesian descent – now number around 20 and in May, Hui Kaululehua hosted its first Polynesian cultural festival, Aloha Lou!

Next year’s event is already in the works – along with the concept of the Hui Kaululehua Cultural Center, which Chung hopes will one day serve as “an embodiment of the safe space that we want to create for Polynesian folks.”

While Chung is deconstructing her religious faith, she’s embracing her Kanaka identity.

“The oppression of the Hawaiian people has been long standing, and we’re still here,” Chung said. “We’re still telling these stories, and that’s why we’re doing what we’re doing.”

The post Bringing Hula to Kentucky appeared first on Ka Wai Ola.

Ke laha nei ka hula iā Kaila Chung ma kahi māhele ʻāina o Kenetuke e kaulana nei i ka Bluegrass. Ma ke ʻano he alakaʻi ʻo Chung no Kumu Kawika Keikialiʻi Alfiche, ua alakaʻi ʻo ia iā Hui Kaululehua ma Louisville mai ka makahiki 2022.

“ʻO ka hui kuʻu pili, a ʻo ka hula kuʻu mea koʻikoʻi,” wahi a Chung, 34. He loa naʻe ka helena ma kēia ala.

Hānau ʻia ʻo Chung ma Stuttgart, Kelemānia, a ʻoiai kona mau mākua e hana ana no ka Pūʻali Koa o ʻAmelika, ua piha kona wā kamaliʻi i ka huakaʻi ʻana a puni ka honua. Ua hānau ʻia kona makua kāne, ʻo Norman Kauila Chung, ma Honolulu. He kanaka hapa Pāke kona makua kāne, a he wahine Kepanī kona makuahine. He wahine Kelemānia ʻo Dei Chung, ka makuahine o Kaila.

Neʻe akula ka ʻohana Chung i Likemona, Wilikinia, kahi i hānau ʻia he keiki kāne, ʻo Zach Kauila Chung, ke kaikunāne o Kaila. Hoʻonoho ʻia ka ʻohana i Seoul, Kōlea Hema, a laila i ke komo ʻana o Chung i ka papa ʻekolu ma ke kula, neʻe hou akula ka ʻohana i Louisville.

No ka hapa nui o kona wā ʻōpio, ʻoi aku ko Chung pilina i kona ʻaoʻao Pākē me kona ʻaoʻao Kepanī. “He mea nui ka moʻomeheu ma ko mākou ʻohana, akā, ʻaʻole i nui ko mākou walaʻau ʻana no ko mākou moʻokūʻauhau Hawaiʻi,” wahi āna.

Hoʻomanaʻo ʻo Chung i kona ʻano kūʻokoʻa mai kona wā hele kula waena: he keiki lōʻihi, ʻoi aʻe ma luna o kona mau hoa papa, he hapa ʻĀkia, he mau mea ʻē ma ia ʻāina.

ʻOiai ua hei ʻo ia i nā hana hoʻonaʻauao, ua paipai kekahi kumu āna e hoʻāʻo e komo i ka pāʻani pōhīnaʻi. Lilo ia i hana maʻamau nāna, me ka pāʻani pōpaʻipaʻi kekahi.

Paʻē maila ka leo kāhea iā ia e komo i ka hana mikionali i kona wā ma ke kula waena. Hele pū ʻo ia me kona ʻohana, he mau lālā o ka hale pule Papekiko Hema, ma ka huakaʻi ʻelele i Kina. A ma hope o kona puka ʻana mai ke kula kiʻekiʻe ʻo Atherton i ka makahiki 2009, huakaʻi akula ʻo ia me kāna hui ʻōpio ma kahi huakaʻi ʻelele hou aku i Palakila.

Ma ke Kulanui o Kenetuke, he haumāna mekia aʻo ʻōlelo Pelekānia ʻo ia no ʻelua makahiki ma mua o kona kuapo ʻana i mekia ʻōlelo Pelekānia wale nō. Ua puni kona ola kula nui i ka hui ʻo Christian Student Fellowship. I kona makahiki ʻekolu, ua hele ʻo ia i ka ʻaha ʻo Passion, he ʻaha no nā ʻōpio Kalikiano, ma ʻAtalana, Keokia. ʻO ke kumu manaʻo o ia aha, ʻo ia hoʻi: ke kālepa kanaka ʻana.

“Ua ʻike koke au ma koʻu naʻau, ʻo kēia nō ke kuleana aʻu e ʻauamo ai,” i ʻōlelo ai ʻo Chung.

Ma hope o ka hoʻokō ʻia ʻana o kāna kekelē laepua i ka makahiki 2013, komo ʻo ia i ka papahana laeoʻo ma ka hana mālama kaiāulu (ʻo ia hoʻi, ka social work) ma ke Kulanui o Louisville.

He makahiki koʻikoʻi ka makahiki 2014 kekahi, ʻoiai ua hoʻomaka ʻo Chun i kāna hana kākoʻo i nā kānaka i hoʻomāinoino ʻia ma ka ʻohana, a me nā luaahi puʻe ma ke Keʻena Loio o ke Kalana o Jefferson. Ma ia makahiki like i hoʻomaka ai ʻo ia e aʻo i ka hula me ka ʻOri Tahiti ma kekahi keʻena hula ʻo ʻIke Roa.

“Ma laila nō i hoʻomaka ai koʻu huakaʻi ʻimi ʻike i ko mākou ʻaoʻao Kanaka Maoli,” wahi āna.

Ma o kekahi mau makahiki ma hope, komo ʻo Chung i ka hula. Male ʻo ia, a laila, ua ʻoki ʻia. Puka kula ʻo ia i ka makahiki 2018 a Laila, i ka makahiki 2019, lilo ʻo ia i limahana ma ke Keʻena Mākaʻi ʻo Louisville Metro – a mau nō kāna hana ma laila a hiki i keia lā.

I ka wā o ka maʻi ahulau ʻo COVID-19, launa akula ʻo Chun me Kumu Kawika me kona hālau ma o ka punaewele, ma ka Zoom hoʻi. Ma hope o kona kaʻawale ʻana maiā ʻIke Roa mai, hoʻokumu ʻo ia i kahi hui ma lalo o Kumu Kawika a lilo ʻo ia he lālā o kona hālau ma ka makahiki 2022. I ka mahina ʻo Mei, na kāna mau haumāna o Hui Kaululehua – he mau kānaka Polenekia ka hapanui o lākou – i mālama i kā lākou hoʻolauleʻa moʻomeheu Polenekia mua loa, ʻo Aloha Lou!

Ua hoʻomaka ʻē ka hoʻolālā ʻana no kēia makahiki aʻe, pēlā pū me ka hoʻolālā ʻana no ka Hui Kaululehua Cultural Center, he wahi ia a Chung e manaʻolana nei e lilo ana i “kahi palekana no ka poʻe Polenekia.”

ʻOiai ʻo Chung e wāwahi nei i kona ʻano haipule iho nō, ke ʻoi aʻe nei kona pilina i kona ʻano he Kanaka Maoli.

“Lōʻihi ka wā i hoʻoluhi hewa ʻia ka lāhui Hawaiʻi, eia naʻe, mau nō mākou ma ʻaneʻi,” i ʻōlelo ai ʻo Chung. “Mau nō ko mākou haʻi ʻana i kēia mau moʻolelo, a ʻo ia ke kumu o kā mākou hana nei.”

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Growing up in the Hawaiian diaspora, these snippets of Hawaiʻi were Sissum’s introduction to her Kānaka Maoli roots. “Culture in my family is very specifically passed through the women,” she said.

Today, Sissum, 27, is the woman passing tangible pieces of culture back to their rightful stewards. She serves as the repatriation fellow at the Field Museum’s Center for Repatriation, Tribal Relations, and Provenance Research in Chicago. There, she helps facilitate the return of human remains and sacred objects to their respective Indigenous communities.

When the position was extended to her, Sissum felt the call to accept. She regularly works with Native American tribal nations.

“It helps us move more pono on the Native lands we visit,” she said, “and it helps us better understand what our kuleana for our ʻāina can look like while in diaspora.”

Sissum was born in San Diego. Kānaka Maoli on her maternal side, her ʻohana originally hails from Hawaiʻi Island then later, Oʻahu. After World War II, her great-grandfather moved the family to California. His daughter – Sissum’s grandmother – married an American Navy sailor of European ancestry and had Sissum’s mother, Lori Luana Anderson.

Her father, Dan Sissum, also claims European genealogy – though Sissum definitively describes him as “very Midwestern.”

Her family moved from San Diego to Loves Park, Illinois, soon after Sissum’s birth. Her childhood revolved around academia. While Sissum’s older half-brother was an athlete, she was academically inclined, absorbing page after page of Magic Tree House and Percy Jackson & the Olympians books at the library. Sissum thrived in the classroom and gravitated toward English, history and math.

She dreamed of becoming a movie director because she and her father connected through film.

One Disney animated movie was played on repeat: Lilo & Stitch. It was one of Sissum’s only ties to Hawaiʻi at that time.

Her mother yearned to dance hula but couldn’t find a hālau to join in Illinois. Regardless, her graceful hula hands made an everlasting impression on Sissum’s developing mind – though she had no desire to learn to dance. Western caricatures of hula dancers made her uncomfortable.

“Now, obviously, I see it with such different eyes, through such a different lens,” Sissum said.

Her world turned upside down at age 11 when her parents divorced. Sissum resettled in Jacksonville, Oregon, with her mom, moving in with her maternal grandparents. She spent summers with her dad. Both of her parents eventually remarried: Lori to Ron and Dan to Debi. Her stepparents played significant roles in Sissum’s life.

Her time in Oregon elicits complicated emotions. There, she finally crossed paths with other Pasifika kids. While her home life could feel heavy, she had a normal high school experience, taking advanced placement courses and performing theatre. Sissum graduated from South Medford High School in Medford, Oregon, in 2016.

It was at Southern Oregon University that she blossomed. Sissum joined the honors college, double majoring in English and history.

She began working as a writing tutor in 2019. Later that year, she became an undergraduate research assistant, diving into the lives of European immigrants in Oregon and handling artifacts. In 2020, Sissum spent six months as a program assistant for the university’s history department. She also served as an audio producer at the Southeastern Council of Latin American Studies.

All the while, she was building her foundation in critical race theory, which would later help her unpack Hawaiian history. Despite her full plate, Sissum managed to write two capstone papers and graduate amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

After taking time off, she decided to pursue a master’s degree in museology/museum studies at the University of Florida. “I’ve always been a fan of museums and heritage work,” Sissum said. She sought to find her niche.

In 2022, she left Oregon for Gainesville, Florida. Sissum looks back on this chapter as transformative. “I was breathing in so much life,” she said. She accepted a research assistant role with the Digital Humanities Project, learning restorative justice as she worked to honor Black heritage in Alachua County.

That same year, Sissum became the public relations and communications associate at the University of Florida College of the Arts. In 2023, she started as the programming and event coordinator at the Cotton Club Museum and Cultural Center, a museum focused on African-derived history.

She ultimately felt pulled to research her own culture, looking into figures leading the charge in Hawaiian historic preservation. “That’s where I was like, ʻOkay, I’m seeing kuleana here. I’m seeing myself more here. And I’m seeing just the fullness of our culture,’” Sissum said.

Her thesis, “Aloha Away from the ʻĀina: Diasporic Kānaka-Informed Considerations for Museal Praxis in the Continental United States,” reflects her passion and contributes to a small but growing body of research from Native Hawaiians in the diaspora speaking to their own lived experiences and desires for themselves and for the lāhui. She graduated in 2024.

This year saw another chapter unfold: a move to Chicago. Sissum accepted the anthropology alliance registration internship at the Field Museum, where she handled donated Native Hawaiian objects and sought to preserve their mana. She’s continued at the museum in her current role as repatriation fellow.

She also joined the team at Hawaiian Diaspora as a community knowledge and stewardship strategist, contributing to research. Sissum believes now is an exciting time to be Kanaka Maoli.

Looking forward she said, “I do deeply long to, at some point, live on the island that my family comes from. I also very much believe that the time will come when it’s supposed to come.”

The post Faces of the Diaspora: Finding Her Niche in Repatriation appeared first on Ka Wai Ola.

“It really blew up my world in a great way,” she said. “My education became more healing.”

Vaughn, 45, is now an associate professor of Indigenous feminisms at University of California, Riverside. She’s also writing a book, Trans Indigeneity: The Politics of California Indian and Native Hawaiian Relations.

Though Vaughn currently lives in Southern California, she was raised in Hayward in the northern part of the state. There, her youth was spent celebrating and participating in cultural events like May Day with other Pacific Islanders.

“I didn’t feel like we were absent of other Hawaiians,” Vaughn said. “It was more like, why are there so many Hawaiians living here?”

Her mom, Suzanne Kalaniwahine Naomi Spencer, taught Vaughn and her twin sister, Karalee Mahealani Vaughn, Hawaiian values. With Kānaka Maoli, Japanese, Portuguese and English roots, Spencer’s ʻohana hails from Waimea and Kohala on Hawaiʻi Island, with a family ranch in Laupāhoehoe.

“My mom always taught us that, when people asked ‘What are you?’ Hawaiian was always first,” Vaughn said laughing.

Her father, Robert Vaughn, worked for United Airlines, so the family returned to Hawaiʻi often. After her parents divorced, Vaughn was largely raised by her mother, who worked as a bank teller and occasionally sold lei.

Vaughn spent holidays and summer vacations on Oʻahu with her grandparents – who met on a sugar plantation in Laupāhoehoe. Vaughn remembers her tūtū kāne as a dynamic spirit: a fisherman who sewed nets; a gardener who grew nīoi (chili peppers), ʻōlena (turmeric) and kalo; an entrepreneur who ran a construction business; and a practitioner of lāʻau lapaʻau.

Vaughn’s elders emphasized the importance of education, and she gravitated toward culture and academics. Growing up, she dreamed of being a teacher.

At Mt. Eden High School in Hayward, Vaughn established its first Pacific Islander Club before graduating in 1998. When she started at Occidental College in Los Angeles, she was shocked by its lack of diversity and wondered why there weren’t other Pacific Islanders in the classrooms or featured in coursework.

Vaughn became increasingly passionate about educating others about colonialism’s impact on Hawaiʻi and the displacement of Kānaka Maoli. She studied hula, learned more about the Hawaiian sovereignty movement, and wrote her senior thesis on the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom and its effects on the people.

In 2002, Vaughn and her sister became the first of their family to graduate from college.

Vaughn spent the next year teaching English in Chiba, Japan, where she learned more about her grandmother’s ancestry. After applying to jobs in Hawaiʻi and to graduate programs in the U.S., she found herself back in Los Angeles enrolling at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

She pursued a master’s degree in Asian American studies, satiating her interest in Indigenous sovereignty by taking courses in American Indian studies. Vaughn met her future partner, Dr. Charles Sepulveda (of Tongva and Acjachemen heritage), in an Indigenous methodologies course.

After finishing her program in 2006, she earned a second master’s degree in higher education in 2007. Vaughn then worked at UCLA as an academic advisor and a program coordinator. In 2009, she helped form Empowering Pacific Islander Communities (EPIC), an organization that advances social justice for Pacific Islanders.

“It reminded me of what Haunani would do,” Vaughn said.

She then enrolled in the graduate program in ethnic studies at UC Riverside. Her time on Turtle Island as a Hawaiian made her contemplate our kuleana to both the land and its genealogical caretakers in places where the Hawaiian diaspora resides.

Vaughn earned a master’s degree in ethnic studies in 2012 and a Ph.D. in 2017. Her dissertation focused on a 1992 Treaty of Friendship and Mutual Recognition between Ka Lāhui Hawaiʻi and the Acjachemen Nation.

For almost two years, she served as associate dean of students and director of the Asian American Resource Center at Pomona College in Claremont, California.

In 2018, Vaughn moved to Utah where for seven years she was an assistant professor of Pacific Island education at Salt Lake City’s University of Utah. Inspired by the culture-based education model of a local school, Mana Academy, in West Valley City, Vaughn served as chair of its board of directors.

During that time, she welcomed another big change: the birth of her and Sepulveda’s daughter, Kaheawai Neshuun.

The family moved back to Riverside in 2024 where Vaughn assumed her current role as a tenured associate professor. She’s also the co-director of the California Center for the Native Nations where she fosters reciprocal, collaborative relationships with tribes in the area to break down barriers to education. “I consider that a huge responsibility as someone who is Kanaka,” she said.

Although she feels the yearning to return to the ʻāina, that will probably be for her retirement.

“For now, I think there’s also such need here in Turtle Island for Hawaiians to know that they’re Hawaiian enough,” she said.

Still, she describes herself as being “in awe” of the resources and support available for the lāhui in the diaspora now, as compared to her youth.

“Our culture is grounded in ʻāina, but our kūpuna have always been travelers,” Vaughn said. “We’ve always created expansive worlds.”

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