He kama no ka ua Kanilehua 

I hōpoe a lehua aʻela i ka uka o ʻŌlaʻa

No Keaukaha kahi i hoʻopulapula ʻia 

E nā mākua a me nā kūpuna

Eia mai au, he muʻo, he pua 

ʻO HalenakekanakalawaiʻaoMiloliʻi nō ē

Dr. Halena Kapuni-Reynolds (Kanaka ʻŌiwi/Native Hawaiian) was born and raised on the island of Hawaiʻi in the rainforest of ʻŌlaʻa and the Hawaiian Home Lands community of Keaukaha. He is the Associate Curator of Native Hawaiian History and Culture at the National Museum of the American Indian. 

Halena’s academic work, service, and scholarship reflect his commitment to serving the Hawaiʻi Island community, Hawaiʻi’s museum profession, and the fields of museum anthropology and Indigenous studies. He is a board member of the International Institute for Indigenous Resource Management and the Hawaiʻi Council for the Humanities. He serves on the advisory board for the East Hawaiʻi Cultural Center. Previously, Halena has served on the boards for the Hawaiʻi Museums Association, the Council for Museum Anthropology, and the Piʻilani Hawaiian Civic Club of Colorado. His essays and reviews have appeared in The Contemporary Pacific, Pacific Arts, Museum Anthropology, Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy, the Journal of Pacific History, and Amerasia. 

In 2024, Halena completed his Ph.D. in American Studies at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa after successfully completing his dissertation titled "Kuʻu Home ʻO Keaukaha: He Lei Moʻolelo No Ka ʻĀina Aloha (Keaukaha, My Home: A Lei Of Stories For Beloved Lands). This interdisciplinary project utilizes a lei kui (a type of lei made by stringing flowers on thread) methodology to analyze Hawaiian and English primary source materials to reconstruct aspects of Keaukaha's history during the late 19th to mid-20th centuries. Additionally, Halena develops the concept of huli kanaka, the Hawaiian translation for anthropology and "profound studies of any kind," to develop a Hawaiian approach to anthropology that privileges Hawaiian categories of social analysis for understanding Hawaiian life. His dissertation ends with a chapter envisioning a cultural center for the Keaukaha and Panaʻewa Hawaiian Home Land communities inspired by previous iterations and models of cultural centers in Keaukaha that homesteaders have developed over the decades.