Teaching

HWST/SUST 356: Aloha Kanaloa - Marine Resources and Abundance (Fall 2025)

Explore foundational Hawaiian concepts regarding the ocean, kai, and Kanaloa with an emphasis on contemporary ethical issues and management. Aloha Kanaloa exposes students to the resources and processes of the ocean, the realm of Kanaloa. By understanding how this ecosystem functions, students will be able to delve deeper into a Hawaiian worldview of the oceanic elements and the processes they sustain. By immersing ourselves in these places and familiarizing students with our ocean family, we will understand the function, laws, and “people” that inhabit Kanaloaʻs realm.

HWST/SUST 456: Kiaʻi Kanaloa - Guarding our Ocean Resources (Fall 2026)

Hawaiian Studies 456 Kiaʻi Kanaloa is an upper division undergraduate field experience requiring students to actively monitor and practice coastal and ocean stewardship on the land/seascapes of Hawaiʻi. The course explores in-depth places and people that are practitioners of mālama kanaloa and how the Hawaiian worldview plays a role in their actions. This place-based learning approach will allow students to grow their research skills in mālama ʻāina while learning necessary methods and analysis. 

By exploring places, agencies, and the kiaʻi dedicated to the renovation and cultivation of our ocean resources we will learn how to become a kiaʻi while providing the necessary support that these kiaʻi need to continue their work. We will critically assess the context and future of our ancestral Hawaiian places of practice and the role we can each play to mālama kanaloa.

HWST/SUST 652: Kānāwai Lawaiʻa - Hawaii Ocean Governance and Policy (Spring 2026)

This course is a topical graduate seminar on pre-contact, customary laws on fishing and ocean stewardship; their codification into written laws during the Hawaiian Kingdom period in the recognition of konohiki fisheries; and the major changes in laws, policies, and jurisprudence in the post-annexation and statehood era and their real impacts to Hawaiʻi’s nearshore fisheries, fishponds, and ocean resources.  The course offers legal perspectives on remaining traditional and customary Hawaiian rights in the fisheries. The course also covers current models of ocean governance and place-based co-management structures between government and Native communities. The course will offer both in-classroom and experiential learning opportunities for students in order to marry theory and practice and apply their understanding to real situations that Native and local communities, various ocean resource user groups, professionals, scientists, regulators, policy- and decision-makers face.

Prerequisites for this course include HWST 396 - Native Hawaiian Rights and Practices, HWST 356 - Aloha Kanaloa: Marine Resources and Abundance, and HWST 456 - Kiaʻi Kanaloa. Graduate students across the UH campus are also welcome to take this course. Its interdisciplinary nature may attract students and professionals studying and working in different areas, particularly in planning, indigenous issues, law and policy issues, conservation and environmental and ocean sciences.