Lilikalā Kameʻeleihiwa

Who is Lilikalā Kameʻeleihiwa?

Lilikalā K. Kameʻeleihiwa is a Hawaiian historian and director and professor at the University of Hawaiʻi's Center for Hawaiian Studies. Her earliest work was published under the name of Lilikalā L. Dorton.

Trained as a historian, she is also an expert in Hawaiian cultural traditions and in the issues driving the Hawaiian sovereignty movement. She served as a co-scriptwriter of the 1993 award winning documentary An Act of War: The Overthrow of the Hawaiian Nation.

Fluent in the Hawaiian language, she has served as protocol officer and crew for the double hulled Polynesian voyaging canoes Hōkūleʻa and Hawaiʻiloa, and has written the first year long course in traditional navigation offered at any university in the world. Since 1987, she has written another dozen courses in Hawaiian history, mythology and culture for the Center for Hawaiian Studies.

Currently, she is working on a book on Hawaiian sexuality as reflected in Hawaiian mythology, history, poetry and literature, wherein multiple partners, brother-sister mating, and bisexuality were considered a celebration of life.