Noelani Goodyear-Ka'opua

Noelani Goodyear-Kaʻōpua is a Kanaka Maoli scholar and educator whose work centers on Native Hawaiian social movements, culture-based education, and energy and food politics.

She has published several books concerning the Hawaiian sovereignty movement and Native Hawaiian education initiatives. Since 2007, she has taught at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa as an associate professor of Political Science and the Vice Chancellor of Academic Personnel.

Birth Goodyear-Ka'ōpua was born on the island of O'ahu, Hawaii, in the 1970s. Her parents were student activists engaged in the growing Native Hawaiian land rights movement at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. Hālau Kū Māna opened in 2001 and remains one of the few Hawaiian culture-based charter schools in Honolulu.

Community service Goodyear-Ka'opua founded and served as Board President of Mana Maoli, a non-profit organization supporting Native Hawaiian community-based education, from 1999 to 2008. from 2005 to 2010. a non-profit founded in 1989 to support Native Hawaiian fishpond restoration, education, and research, since 2015. and the advisory board for the Hawai'i Center for Food Safety.

Publications

Books Goodyear-Ka'opua is the author of The Seeds We Planted: Portraits of a Native Hawaiian Charter School, published in 2013. The book examines the history of the Hālau Kū Māna Charter Public School in Honolulu and outlines the challenges of implementing traditional Hawaiian culture-based education under the context of U.S. occupation. ) of The Value of Hawai'i 2: Ancestral Roots, Oceanic Visions, and A Nation Rising: Hawaiian Movements for Life, Land, and Sovereignty (with Ikaika Hussey and Erin Kahunawaika'ala Wright), both published in 2014.

In 2019, Goodyear-Ka'opua published Nā Wāhine Koa: Hawaiian Women for Sovereignty and Demilitarization, a collaboration with four activist elders who helped catalyze Hawaiian movements of the late 20th century.

Her current work is an upcoming intellectual biography on Dr. Haunani-Kay Trask.

Articles in referenced journals

Goodyear-Ka'ōpua, N. "Protectors of the Future, not Protestors of the Past." South Atlantic Quarterly, 116, no. 1 (2017): 184-194. Ka'ōpua, L.S., Goodyear-Ka'ōpua J.N., Ka'awa, J., Amona, S.K., Browne, C.V., & Robles, A.S. "Look to the Source: Gathering Elder Stories as Segue to Youth Action-Oriented Research." International Public Health Journal, 8, no.2 (2016), 271-281.