Lilikalā K. Kame’eleihiwa is a senior professor and the recent director [2014-2017] at the Kamakakūokalani Center for Hawaiian Studies at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa.
Trained as a historian, she is an expert in Hawaiian Ancestral Knowledge, Mythology, Genealogy, History of the Hawaiian Kingdom, in Traditional Hawaiian Food Sustainability and in the Hawaiian sovereignty movement. She has written over 23 courses never taught anywhere else in the world, including with Nainoa Thompson the first 2 semester course on Hawaiian Navigation. She served as executive producer of the 2005 DVD Natives in New York, Seeking Justice at the United Nations, and as co-scriptwriter of the 1993 award winning documentary An Act of War: The Overthrow of the Hawaiian Nation. She is a founding member of the Kualiʻi and Pukoʻa UH Native Hawaiian Advisory Councils.
Her chapters, articles and books include “Kaulana Oʻahu me he ʻĀina Momona Mamuli o Nā Haʻawina ʻAumākua: [Famous is Oʻahu as a Land Fat with Food because of Ancestral Teachings]” [2016], “Hawaiʻi-nui-akea Cousins: Ancestral Gods and Bodies of Knowledge are Treasures for the Descendants” [2009], Nā Wāhine Kapu: Sacred Hawaiian Women [1999, 2016 reprint], He Mo’olelo Ka’ao o Kamapua’a: A Legendary Traditional of Kamapua’a, the Hawaiian Pig-God [1996], and Native Land and Foreign Desires: Pehea Lā E Pono Ai? [1992].
Dr. Kameʻeleihiwa is the lead professor in the field of Kumu Kahiki: Comparative Hawaiian and Polynesian Studies, and has travelled extensively in Polynesia, including to Aotearoa, New Zealand, to Borabora, Maupiti, Moʻorea,Tahiti, and Raʻiatea in the Society Islands, to Hivaʻoa, Nuku Hiva and Ua Pou in the Marquesas, and to Rapa Nui.