Inquiry through academic research — particularly through the University system — offers critical opportunities to provide new insights, connect disciplines, and in some cases inform and affirm traditional knowledge, particularly in the context of man-made environmental change, including climate change. Yet, these opportunities are not without challenges, including things like inequity in relationships, exclusion, lack of reciprocity, and cross-cultural misunderstanding.
In 2014, KUA convened an informal committee of friends, advisors, and emerging professionals to articulate thoughts and ideas about how to foster more equitable, productive relationships between communities and research entities. As a backbone organization for community-based natural resources management, KUA initiated this effort as a leaping point for broader community discussions around this topic.
After discussing the landscape of issues and needs in the realm of community-based and/or participatory research, this group decided to compile their own ideas, best practices, and values based on their personal hopes and experiences, and drawing upon inspiration from many other robust resources and publications from the environmental, social, public health sectors and beyond.
In 2016, Hawaiʻi Sea Grant launched an initiative to explore how it might better support community-based research, particularly through training for both beginning and mid-career researchers, and the creation of a shared protocol for both communities and researchers. KUA contributed in an advisory role and helped to facilitate pieces of this Hawaiʻi Sea Grant project, later given the name Kūlana Noiʻi by Dr. Rosie Alegado. Various ideas from the KUA research committee convened in 2014 were incorporated throughout the Kūlana Noiʻi process initiated by Sea Grant in 2016, as well as within the living document first used in a graduate student training in November 2017.
KUA research committee participants in alphabetical order by first name:
Adam Ayers
Aurora Kagawa-Viviani
Eric Tong
Jade Delevaux
Kaipo Perez
Kanoe Morishige
Ron Vave
Rosie Alegado
Sarah Henly-Shepard
Wendy Tan