Kawaiola‘akeali‘i Kili Kapuni is an intelligent, driven young woman with an affinity for her Native Hawaiian heritage. Born and raised on Maui, she attended Kamehameha Schools’ ʻAʻapueo campus from sixth to 12th grade. When her high school counselors encouraged her to consider colleges on the continent, she applied to and was accepted at Chapman University in Orange County, California, with the intent of majoring in Political Science and Peace Studies.
But after a year, Kapuni knew something was missing from her studies. It was the disconnect of her love for Hawaiʻi, and wanting to speak Hawaiian and affecting its political destiny, while being away from home. “I realized that what I truly craved was the immersion into my mother tongue, as well as indigenous politics – spanning solidarity, sovereignty and liberation,” said Kapuni, 23. “Being removed from my community, while also attempting to learn and contribute to its knowledge production, became increasingly difficult.”
Taking a summer course at UH Mānoa on Native Hawaiian politics clinched the decision. Kapuni transferred to the flagship campus of the UH System and never looked back. Today she has no regrets, as she prepares to walk at UH Mānoa’s Commencement on May 16 with the laurel of being the College of Social Sciences‘ Outstanding Graduating Senior in 2026. It is the College’s top student award for excellence in scholarship, leadership and service.
Her honors are plentiful. Kapuni has regularly made the Deanʻs List; won scholarships from entities including the Pauahi Foundation and APIA (Asian Pacific Islander American); and has focused recent research on the recovery of ʻāina through its female stewards. She has secured grants to travel to the Pacific Sociological Conference in Bellevue, Washington; and has presented three times at the Lahui Hawaiʻi Research Conference. Kapuni has also been elected as an ASUH (Associated Students of the University of Hawaiʻi) senator, serving as chair of undergraduate academic affairs to oversee the integrity of academic freedom.
After graduation, the triple major in Political Science; Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies; and ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi (Hawaiian language) aspires to travel to New Zealand to earn her master’s degree in Indigenous Politics, and possibly pursue study at the UH William S. Richardson School of Law. Kapuni considers the late Haunani-Kay Trask as her earliest mentor, and credits her award-winning 1993 book, From a Native Daughter, as having a profound effect on shaping her destiny as a Native Hawaiian feminist.
She also thanks a long list of faculty, graduate students and scholars, at CSS and beyond, for their continuing impact on her: Māhealani Ahia, Kainehe Chun-Lum, Monisha Das Gupta, Kahikina DeSilva, Ulla Hasager, Chiyeon Hwang, Alicia Miyagusuku, Mire Koikari, Noʻu Revilla, Eirik Saethre, Noenoe Silva, Nevzat Soguk, Haʻalilio Solomon, Nohelani Teves, Laiana Wong and Helen Wong Smith.
But perhaps most of all, Kapuni thanks her Maui grandparents, Valerie and Chivo Ching-Johnson, and her mother, Alana Kapuni, for their support throughout her formative years to the present. Thanks to them, she has future aspirations to establish a bilingual – ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi and English – ʻāina stewardship program on the Valley Isle.
“My hope is that a space in ʻUlupalakua will serve as a refuge and site of liberation for kānaka ʻōiwi to engage in discussions on sovereignty, abolition and the reclamation of their mother tongue, ancestral lands, foods and knowledge systems through bilingual research and farming,” Kapuni said. “I also envision our stewardship program expanding to the point where we can provide farm-to-table goods to kānaka ʻōiwi families. There is so much that I want to do in and for Hawaiʻi.”
