The Women in Pacific Studies Program presents
Wednesday, 29 April 2026 5:30-7:30 PM in Hālau ‘o Haumea at the Kamakakūokalani Center for Hawaiian Studies
Registration required: https://go.hawaii.edu/ioG
In this conversation, we invite students and the broader community into Dr. Aikau’s journey, from studying Polynesian-Mormon identity to working alongside Indigenous land and water stewards. We will discuss how purpose, responsibility, and community have shaped her path, as well as her understanding of the academy as both a site of struggle and of profound possibility. As an Indigenous feminist in higher education, how does she move beyond survival? What does it take to truly thrive—and how might her experiences speak to the challenges and hopes that Pasifika women carry today?
Hōkūlani K. Aikau (Kanaka ‘Ōiwi) is Professor and Director of the School of Indigenous Governance at the University of Victoria. She is the author of A Chosen People, A Promised Land: Mormonism and Race in Hawaiʻi (University of Minnesota Press, 2012). Amongst her work, she also coedited with Vernadette V. Gonzalez, Detours: A Decolonial Guide to Hawaiʻi (2019).
Vicky Lukan (Yapese) is an MA student in the Department of Pacific Islands Studies and an alumna of the Women in Pacific Studies Graduate Student Fellowship. Her research focuses on the impacts of out-migration on Yapese cultural systems and the roles communities play in mitigating them.
Reception to follow with dinner provided by Highway Inn.
