Keynote

Amy Lonetree, PhD

Dr. Amy Lonetree is an enrolled citizen of Ho-Chunk Nation and is an Associate Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her scholarly work focuses on the representation of Native American history and memory in national and tribal museums and she has conducted research at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, British Museum, Mille Lacs Indian Museum in Minnesota, and the Ziibiwing Center of Anishinabe Culture and Lifeways in Michigan. Her publications include, Decolonizing Museums: Representing Native America in National and Tribal Museums (University of North Carolina Press, 2012); a co-edited book with Amanda J. Cobb, The National Museum of the American Indian: Critical Conversations (University of Nebraska Press, 2008); and a co-authored volume, People of the Big Voice: Photographs of Ho-Chunk Families by Charles Van Schaick, 1879-1942 (Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2011). She is currently working on a visual history of the Ho-Chunk Nation from 1879-1960.

Panelist & Other Speakers

Ben Garcia

Ben Garcia is Deputy Director at the San Diego Museum of Man. He has worked for sixteen years in various roles as an arts educator, museum educator, exhibit developer and administrator. His museum experience includes six years in the Education Department at the J. Paul Getty Museum, three years as Associate Director of Education at the Skirball Cultural Center and three years as Head of Interpretation at the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology at UC Berkeley. He has presented internationally and published on the museum’s role in learning, public value and social change. In 2010, Garcia was named Pacific Region Museum Art Educator of the Year by the National Art Education Association.

Kelly Hyberger

Kelly Hyberger is Director of Collections at the San Diego Museum of Man. She brings over eight years of experience managing large collections-based projects. During her tenure at SDMoM, she has implemented the first comprehensive inventory of the collection since 1976. She sets departmental priorities, including a renewed focus on NAGPRA compliance and decolonization efforts, and serves on the Museum’s Decolonization Working Group.

Kippen De Alba Chu

Kippen de Alba Chu worked for many years in the Hawaii State House of Representatives, then spent two years at the Hawaii Insurers Council as Assistant Executive Director before assuming his present position in 2006 as Executive Director of ʻIolani Palace. A graduate of the American University of Paris, France, he has also studied in Urbino and at the University of Bologna, Italy. He is the Chair of the American Alliance of Museums board of directors, and a board member for the Western Museums Association, the Chamber of Commerce of Hawaii, and the Native Hawaiian Hospitality Association. He is also a member of The Royal Order of Kamehameha and the Hawaiian Civic
Club of Honolulu.

Teresa Valencia

Ihilani Gutierrez

Ihilani Gutierrez is the Education Coordinator at Iolani Palace. She has received a Marine Option Program Certificate, Hawaiian Studies degree, and an English Degree from the University of Hawaii Institutes.  Ihilani is a published author, poet, and activist rapper. She has a passion for educating Hawaii’s youth and she uses her literature to share Hawaii’s rich culture and history.

Matt Mattice

Matt has been the executive director of the King Kamehameha V Judiciary History Center since 2003, and spearheads the Judiciary’s legal history and civic education efforts. He ran ‘Iolani Palace’s education program and taught high school Social Studies prior to joining the Judiciary in 1993.

Keahe Davis

Keahe Davis is the Education Director at the King Kamehameha V Judiciary History Center in Honolulu. In addition to his work at the Judiciary History Center, Keahe is a docent at ʻIolani Palace, ‘ōlapa hula dancer with Hālau Nā Wainohia, outrigger canoe paddler with Kamehameha Canoe Club, and is pursuing a MEd in Learning Design and Technology at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.

Leah Pualahaʻole Caldeira

Leah has worked worked in the Bishop Museum Library & Archives for 15 years, serving as Collections Manager for the last eight. Her knowledge of Hawaiian and Pacific history and experience researching primary source materials is rooted in this expansive collection. Ms. Caldeira earned her Master of Arts degree from the University of Hawaiʻi in art history, and serves on the board of the Hawaiian Historical Society. She has assisted with numerous publications, including as an editor for the 2015 publication Royal Hawaiian Featherwork: Nā Hulu Aliʻi and as a contributing author to the 2018 publication Hoʻoulu Hawaiʻi: The Kalākaua Era.

Kamalu du Preez

Kamalu is a cultural practitioner and the Assistant Ethnology Collections Manager at the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum. She has been immersed in the care of Hawaiian and Pacific collections since 2001. She co-authored the article “Hawaiian Hawaiian Barkcloth from the Bishop Museum Collections: A Characterization of Materials and Techniques in Collaboration with Modern Practitioners to Effect Preservation of a Traditional Cultural Practice” (2014) with Christina Bisulca and Lisa Schattenburg-Raymond, in Art and Archaeology. Kamalu recently traveled to London as a representative of the Bishop Museum to dress the Kū image from the British Museum with a kapa malo. The image Kū is featured in the exhibition Oceania at the Royal Academy of Art (Sept-Dec 2018).

Mike Nāhoʻopiʻi

As Executive Director of KIRC, Mike has been involved with Kahoʻolawe from virtually every perspective in its recent history. A long-time Protect Kahoʻolawe ʻOhana (PKO) member and former US Navy Officer-in-Charge of Kahoʻolawe during the conveyance of the island to the State of Hawaiʻi, he was a senior manager during the early Model Cleanup and the later Navy Unexploded Ordnance (UXO) clearance project.

Halealoha Ayau

For over three decades, Ayau has been at the forefront of the repatriation of Native Hawaiian ancestral remains, facilitating the return of approximately 6,000 individuals and funerary objects from museums in Hawai‘i, the United States, Canada, Australia, Switzerland, Sweden, England, Germany and Scotland. As an attorney and reburial advocate, he helped draft and promulgate the Hawaiʻi state burial laws, aided in the passage of NAGPRA and its amendments, and is considered a leader within the national and international indigenous repatriation communities.

Kamanaʻopono Crabbe

Uplifting the cultural and spiritual wellbeing of the Hawaiian community through transformation and research excellence has been the mission of Dr. Kamana‘opono Crabbe since his appointment as Ka Pouhana of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs in 2012. His administrative practice is informed by a strong cultural foundation and decades of leadership in the Hawaiian community as a cultural practitioner and advocate. He was a principal participant in the return of chiefly treasures from Aotearoa/New Zealand (2016) and the repatriation of ancestral remains from Germany (2018). Dr. Crabbe holds a doctorate in clinical psychology from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.

Moderators

Noelle Kahanu

Noelle M. K. Y. Kahanu is an assistant specialist of Public Humanities and Native Hawaiian programs in the American Studies Department, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. A Native Hawaiian writer, artist, film-maker and scholar with twenty years of program and exhibition experience, she remains active in the Native Hawaiian visual arts community as an artist, curator, and arts organizer. Formerly of Bishop Museum, Kahanu served on the renovation teams for Hawaiian Hall (2009), Pacific Hall (2013) and facilitated the landmark exhibition, E Kū Ana Ka Paia (2010). She has a law degree from the William S. Richardson School of Law.

Karen Kosasa

Karen is the director of the Museum Studies Graduate Certificate Program and Associate Professor of American Studies, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. She is a third generation Japanese American whose research interests are in museum studies, visual culture, critical pedagogy, and settler colonialism.  She is especially interested in the relationship between settler populations and indigenous peoples, and the representation of this relationship in museum exhibitions, in the promotional literature produced by museums, and in references to this relationship by museum professionals, scholars, and critics.

Graduate Assistant

Halena Kapuni-Reynolds

Halena is the Graduate Assistant for the Museum Studies Graduate Certificate Program at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. He is working closely with Noelle and Karen to organize the “Seeding Authority” conference. Halena received a B.A. in Anthropology and Hawaiian Studies from the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo in 2013, and an M.A. in Anthropology with an emphasis in Museum and Heritage Studies from the University of Denver in 2015. His most recent publications include “Mōʻokuʻāuhau (Genealogies) of Care: Curating Aliʻi Collections at the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum” (2017), and “Voyaging Through the Oceanic Collection at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science” (2018). He is currently enrolled in the UHM American Studies doctoral program.