The enduring power of aloha aIna: Noelani Goodyear Kaopua at TEDxManoa

Noelani Goodyear Kaopua is a Kanaka 'Ōiwi who was born and raised in Hawai'i. She earned her BA in Political Science and Hawaiian Studies from UH Mānoa before completing her PhD at the University of California, Santa Cruz in History of Consciousness. As an associate professor of Indigenous and Hawaiian politics, Noelani teaches courses in Hawai'i politics, Indigenous politics, and decolonial futures. She also currently serves as the undergraduate chair of the Political Science department.

The ethics and practices of aloha 'āina guide her academic and community work, as she seeks to document, analyze and proliferate the ways people are transforming imperial and settler colonial relations by mobilizing Indigenous political values and processes. For example, her research has focused on the politics of designing and implementing Native Hawaiian culture- and land-based educational initiatives within and against settler state structures. Her book, The Seeds We Planted: Portraits of a Native Hawaiian Charter School (University of Minnesota Press, 2013), discusses some of these tensions and the ways educators and students navigate them. Noelani also teaches and writes about Indigenous social movements, participatory & activist research methods, and Hawaiian sovereignty. Her second book, Ea: Hawaiian Movements for Life, Land and Sovereignty (Duke University Press, forthcoming), is a collection co-edited with Ikaika Hussey and Kahunawai Wright that explores late-20th and early 21st century Hawaiian organizing for justice and self-determination. More recently, she has also become interested in the intersections of energy and food politics with Indigenous social and political health.

In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.* (*Subject to certain rules and regulations)