Indigenization & Positionality Statements

Decolonial Wellbeing Theory: Indigenous Psychology and the Return to Psychology’s Spiritual Roots

JQ: Aloha nō. My ancestors are from Kanaka ʻŌiwi, Ainu, Japanese, Portuguese, and Irish lands. I am writing from the island of Oʻahu, where I was born and raised, and where the present study took place. In many ways, my pilina (reciprocal relationship, connection) with the primarily Kanaka ʻŌiwi participants felt very familiar, informed not only through shared ancestry but also through many shared lived experiences with settler colonial stress and trauma. While this positionality provided me with insight leading the study, conducting interviews, coding, and analyzing the data, it no doubt entailed biases as well. To account for these biases, we engaged with quality assurance described in the methods section. I have also lived and worked internationally for 12 years in Asia, the Middle East, and Europe; it was while co-owning a community health center in Brooklyn where I learned about decolonialism in the context of Yoga. These experiences deeply informed the choice to use decolonialism, indigenizing, and the transformative paradigm in this work, and developing the qualitative decolonial intersectionality method, hoʻomana i nā leo (empowering the voices), was particularly important to this end. My diaspora experience and Mixed presentation have entailed experiences of lateral violence; however, engaging in this research was deeply validating for me as a Kanaka, as well as educational. It was a process which I consistently viewed as an offering to kūpuna. Relative to sociopolitical contexts as we write this chapter, I acknowledge, along with some at the United Nations, that Hawaiʻi is an illegally occupied territory (deZayas, 2018) and that scholarly work can and must be a form of resistance to the rise of authoritarianism and other forms of colonial violence. I also acknowledge my identity as a future ancestor with haʻahaʻa, which motivates me to continue this work.

KK: I am a Kanaka ʻŌiwi born and raised in urban Oʻahu whose ancestry is rooted in the islands of Hawai‘i and Maui. As a descendant of Hāloa (the first human), I am mindful and dutiful to the teachings of my ancestors and the values, perspectives, and practices they have handed down to me, and my obligation to do the same for future generations, while being mindful that culture does not operate in a vacuum and changes over time in response to both internal and external forces. Growing up in economically disadvantaged conditions shaped my early understanding of how social, economic, and cultural environments influence health and wellbeing. These ancestral and lived experiences are the lens through which I see the path to Mauli Ola (optimal health) for Kānaka ʻŌiwi and have shaped my perspectives on the social and cultural determinants of health. As a researcher having worked in partnership with Kanaka ʻŌiwi and Pacific Islander communities more broadly, I recognize my position within academic and institutional systems while striving to center community knowledge, leadership, and priorities in the research process. My 20+ years of collaboration with community-based organizations and community leaders have shaped my understanding of health as deeply connected to culture, place, and relationships, and have guided my commitment to advancing health equity through respectful, reciprocal, and community-driven research.

JC-D: As a 1.5-generation Korean immigrant settler in the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi, my worldview is rooted in the stories of my ancestors. Having moved to Oʻahu at age six, I grew up shaped by my Halmoni’s (grandmother) vivid accounts of the Japanese occupation—of watching Korean history and language books burn before her high school and the erasure of her identity through a forced Japanese name. These narratives of war and colonization provide the lens through which I approach community engagement, particularly alongside Kānaka Maoli.

My understanding of community-engaged research and decolonizing methodologies has been molded by the mana of the community leaders—"da hammahs"—with whom I have had the privilege to work since my graduate studies. Over two decades of collaboration, Kānaka Maoli have taught me to embrace my own identity as an immigrant seeking belonging, reviving a deep pride in my own generational knowledge and resilience. While the stories shared in this study resonate with my family’s history of trauma and colonization, I remain mindful that our experiences are not synonymous. Indigenous Peoples hold unique narratives and sacred knowledge that I, as an outsider, will never fully encompass. I am profoundly grateful to Kānaka Maoli for their trust and am humbled to have played a small role in this work.

LN: I am a second- and fourth-generation Asian American cisgender woman of Japanese and Okinawan descent, born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaiʻi. My experiences witnessing the harms of settler colonialism through community-based research and clinical care have deepened my commitment to equity, solidarity, and collective liberation. I aim to continually engage in reflexivity to critically examine the ways my privileges and biases as a settler may impact my assumptions and interpretations in the research process. My training in a scientist-practitioner-activist clinical psychology program informs my research approach, which is grounded in decolonial, feminist, and multicultural perspectives.

AAAS: Dr. A. Aukahi Austin Seabury was unable to submit an Indigenization statement; we invite the readers to explore her trailblazing work at I Ola Lāhui, and for the lāhui more broadly, online.

HP-P: Aloha nō. I was born and raised in Hauʻula, Oʻahu, and currently reside and work on Hawaiʻi Island, where my professional and community-based work takes place. As a Native Hawaiian clinician, leader, and community practitioner, my work is deeply grounded in the ʻike, values, and lived experiences of my lāhui. My positionality is shaped by both my personal and professional roles as a daughter, wife, mother, grandmother, psychologist, and CEO of a behavioral health organization serving individuals and families impacted by substance use, mental health challenges, and systemic inequities.

Through my work, I engage closely with Native Hawaiian and local communities navigating the impacts of historical trauma, colonization, and ongoing disparities in access to care. These relationships inform my understanding of healing as a holistic, relational, and culturally grounded process. My proximity to the communities served provides meaningful insight into the realities, strengths, and resilience of those reflected in this work; however, I also acknowledge that my roles within systems of care and leadership carry influence that may shape interpretation and application.

I locate myself within this research as both a contributor and a practitioner informed by lived experience, community connection, and clinical training. My approach is grounded in a commitment to uplifting Indigenous knowledge systems, supporting pathways to mauli ola (health and well-being), and ensuring that the voices and experiences of the community remain central. I remain mindful of the responsibility to engage in this work with humility, accountability, and respect for the ʻike and narratives shared.

KC: I am Keola Chan, known as Kumu Lapaʻau, a Kānaka ʻŌiwi healer born and raised in Papakōlea on the island of Oʻahu, the same ʻāina on which the present study took place. I am the founder and Kumu Lapaʻau of Ka Pā o Lonopūhā at the Academy of Native Hawaiian Healing Traditions, where I have practiced and taught mauli ola for over 25 years in service of my central vision: a healer in every home. I have graduated 56 Hawaiian healers and, in 2022, re-established the ʻūniki (ceremonial graduation) process, the first time this has been formally conducted in recent history. I situate myself in this research as both a practitioner deeply embedded in the healing traditions under study and as a community member with a profound and ongoing kuleana (responsibility) to the lāhui. My positionality is inseparable from my moʻokūʻauhau: the knowledge I carry was transmitted through pilina (reciprocal, relational connection), not extracted from textbooks, and my understanding of mauli ola as holistic, relational, and grounded in ʻāina and nā akua is not a theoretical lens I apply but a way of being I inhabit. This closeness is both a strength and a source of reflexive awareness: my investment in the perpetuation of Hawaiian healing traditions, my commitment to integrating lāʻau lapaʻau and other ʻŌiwi healing modalities into the fabric of community life, and my experience navigating the tensions between Western medicine and Indigenous practice all inform the ways I engaged with and interpreted the processes described in this study. I acknowledge these as potential biases and name them here in the spirit of pono. I believe deeply that research of this kind, research that centers Kanaka ʻŌiwi knowledge, names the detriments of settler colonialism on our mauli ola, and builds toward a theory of wellbeing grounded in our own ontology, is not simply an academic exercise. It is an act of aloha ʻāina and an offering to kūpuna. For our lāhui to heal, research must be in service of Kānaka ʻŌiwi, and its findings must find their way back to the homes, hale, and communities where healing begins. 

FD-T: I am Francine Dudoit, known to my patients and colleagues as "Aunty Fran," a kupuna and Kanaka ʻŌiwi practitioner and Registered Nurse with more than 50 years of experience at the intersection of Hawaiian healing and Western medicine. My positionality is grounded in moʻokūʻauhau: I come from a lineage of Native Hawaiian healers whose teachings form the foundation of my practice and my understanding of mauli ola across individual, ʻohana, and kaiāulu levels. I have been with Waikiki Health since 1997, and we are the first Health Center fully integrated with Hawaiian modalities and western medicine. Today, Native Hawaiian practitioners (healers) are encouraged to work alongside with the closest health centers.  My areas of specialty include Native Hawaiian healing, Hawaiian cultural education, advocacy for kupuna, chronic pain management, and individual and family counseling, drawing on modalities of hoʻoponopono, lomilomi, and lāʻau lapaʻau. I hold a Bachelor of Nursing from the University of Hawaiʻi and practiced as a Registered Nurse at St. Francis Hospital, where I introduced the first hospital-based hospice care program in Hawaiʻi. I have served as CEO of Mālama Ka ʻOhana a Pau Loa, where I developed programs to promote and perpetuate Hawaiian healing traditions through education, research, and apprenticeship, and I have led pilot initiatives to integrate Hawaiian healing practices with Western medicine.  My prison program Waikiki Health Pu'uhonua Prison Program has been in existence for 11 years, targeting kanaka and Pacific Islanders who are incarcerated.  We apply them to all their social services, replace all their legal documents, assist them in housing and employment. I currently serve on the Waikiki Neighborhood Board, the Nā Hululei Kupuna Council, Judiciary Selection Commission, and the Governor's Policy and Advisory Board for Elderly Affairs (PABEA) and have received recognition from the U.S. Department of Health, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and Molokai General Hospital, among others. I situate myself in this work as both a practitioner and a community member accountable to the people and traditions I serve. My position in this research was to share from my position as a cultural leader though my role in healthcare inevitably informs this practice and vice versa. It is my honor to contribute to research that supports more equitable and acceptable approaches to healthcare and wellbeing.

KKPB: ʻO Keoki koʻu inoa, a he Kanaka ʻŌiwi au no Manōkalanipō, (Kauaʻi). I write as a Kahu and Kumu of lāʻau lapaʻau whose work is grounded in the ʻāina, in moʻokūʻauhau, and in the kuleana entrusted to me by my kūpuna and my kumu. My positionality cannot be separated from the lineages that continue to shape my understanding of healing, scholarship, and pedagogy.

I came into the practice of lāʻau lapaʻau under the guidance of my grandmother, Emily Kīkaha Kuwalu, whose teaching shaped my earliest and most enduring understanding of Hawaiian medicine and the relational ethics that accompany it. I also carry bloodline ties to Papa Henry Auwae, whose stewardship of lāʻau lapaʻau in our time stands as a foundational reference point for those of us who continue this work. My formation in lāʻau lapaʻau and hoʻoponopono has been further deepened by the teachings of Kumu Levon Ohai, and my training in Lua by ʻŌlohe Kamilo. Hula, too, has been a quiet and formative presence in my family upbringing. I serve within Pā Lapaʻau ʻo ʻOhākea and Hālau Lapaʻau ʻo Waitata, alongside collaborations with the Hawaiian Studies program at the University of Hawaiʻi and Waimānalo Health Center.

I approach my work from within a Kanaka ʻŌiwi epistemology that does not partition mind, body, and spirit, nor separate the practitioner from the practice. Lāʻau lapaʻau sits at the center of how I understand healing, and is inseparable from the relational practices that accompany it. Plant, prayer, movement, and right-relation operate together as a single living system. To indigenize the academy, in my view, is not to translate Hawaiian knowledge into Western frameworks, but to allow our knowledge systems to stand on their own evidentiary and ethical ground while engaging Western scholarship as one interlocutor among others. This commitment is methodological as much as it is political: it shapes what I count as evidence, who I count as a teacher, and how I understand the obligations that accompany the production of knowledge.

My positionality has also been informed by prior service as a veteran, an experience that has shaped how I think about embodied suffering, recovery, and the limits of any single therapeutic vocabulary to fully account for the wounds a person can carry. This background has reinforced, rather than redirected, my commitment to lāʻau lapaʻau and its kindred practices as sophisticated modalities for addressing forms of suffering—including moral injury and intergenerational harm—that conventional frameworks alone cannot reach.
I hold my role as Kumu with awareness of its weight. Teaching is not the transmission of information but the stewardship of relationships—with haumāna, with kūpuna both seen and unseen, with the ʻāina from which our medicines come, and with the ancestral protocols that protect this knowledge from misuse. I am committed to research and teaching practices that center Native Hawaiian voices, that observe appropriate consent and reciprocity, and that refuse the extractive logics which have too often characterized academic engagement with Indigenous traditions. In all that I do, my orientation is to mālama—to care for—the people, places, and practices entrusted to me, so that what passes through me to the next generation arrives intact, with its dignity and its sacredness preserved.

KMFHJ: KMFHJ is a Kanaka Maoli scholar whose genealogy is rooted in Kahana, Oʻahu. Approaching his work from a position of kuleana—reciprocal responsibility to the ʻāina (land) and lāhui (people)—he prioritizes ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi (Hawaiian language) literacy to assert moʻolelo (history/narrative/story) as sovereign political philosophy. His practice is a commitment to hoʻōla lāhui: bringing life and health back to the people through archival recovery.

SDS: I am a cisgender, heterosexual, able-bodied White male who was raised in the American Midwest (Minnesota), with ancestral roots in Norway, Germany, and England. I was privileged and honored to have the experience of living on the island of Oʻahu from 2018-2023 while I studied for my PhD in clinical psychology at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. There, I was fortunate to have the opportunity to assist with a project exploring Kanaka ʻŌiwi health and wellbeing using community-based participatory research methods. Reflecting on my own cultural worldviews, and the privilege implicit within my identity, has been a humbling experience, especially when I consider that many of the Kanaka ʻŌiwi individuals I worked with encountered lived experiences of discrimination, colonialism, or prejudice– indignations I have not experienced firsthand. The valuable learning opportunities I encountered within this project have allowed me to bear witness to the pain of historical trauma resulting from generations of oppression and colonialism. The realization that my own ethnic identity aligns with previous generations of such oppressors serves as a stark reminder of the necessity of continuing

KS: I was born and raised on Oʻahu, and while I feel deeply connected to the culture, the land, and the importance of this island chain, I am not of Native Hawaiian descent. I am English, Italian, French, German, Polish, and Lithuanian; in other words, I am haole. Growing up in Hawaiʻi, with parents who have lived here since childhood, and hānai family of Native Hawaiian/local backgrounds, I have learned the importance of mindfulness with regard to “taking up space.” It is my responsibility, as an individual with ancestors foreign to this place, to acknowledge the historical and cultural contexts that exist and to move accordingly. Throughout the data-gathering process, it was crucial to remain cognizant of this, as I often resonated with and empathized with Native Hawaiian participants’ experiences. We, as researchers, engaged in reflective processes to address our intersecting identities and how our backgrounds interacted with the participants and data. To fulfill elements of my postdoctoral training, I was selected by I Ola Lāhui’s, Executive Director, Dr. A. Aukahi Austin-Seabury, to represent our organization. Presently, I work as a clinical psychologist and have served rural and marginalized populations, largely including Native Hawaiian individuals and families.

DM: My name is Diane Andrea Manzana, a second generation Filipino immigrant born and raised on Oʻahu. I have worked with Joanne Qinaʻau since 2021, contributing to Indigenous community-based research through quality assurance and coding, primarily in a supporting and learning role. Although I was raised in Hawaiʻi, I did not fully appreciate Kanaka Maoli history and culture until my undergraduate years, where I learned of the effects of colonization and the efforts of cultural leaders preserving and advocating for their land and culture. As someone without Kanaka Maoli ancestry, I recognize that I am an outsider to these islands. I also acknowledge the responsibility of occupying Hawaiʻi and the importance of contributing ethically to the wellbeing of the community that raised me. As a person of Filipino descent, I understand the impact of westernized colonization and how it can erase cultural practices and language. Through years of education, mental health training, and study participation, I have worked to better understand Kanaka Maoli cultural practices, language, and beliefs. Recognizing similar histories in Hawaiʻi reinforces my commitment to supporting cultural revitalization and community healing. As a kamaʻāina, I remain accountable to the Kanaka Maoli community and approach this research with cultural humility, bias awareness, and a commitment to ethical, respectful, and reciprocal practices.

AF: My name is Arleen Firoozan. I currently reside on Tongva land in Los Angeles, California. The research discussed in this manuscript took place on the occupied lands of the Hawaiian Kingdom. I came to this work during my time at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, where I contributed to the project through transcription and qualitative coding of participant data. My contact with the community was primarily at the data level. I did not design the study or conduct interviews, and I hold no ancestral or genealogical ties to Kānaka ʻŌiwi communities.
I am the eldest daughter of Iranian immigrants and grew up serving as my family's interpreter and systems navigator. My own diaspora experience informed my engagement with this work and deepened my attentiveness to the data, but I want to be clear that it is not equivalent to Indigenous experience. During my years in the occupied Kingdom of Hawaiʻi, I came to understand my position as a settler on those lands, and that understanding shaped how I approached the data: with awareness that these stories were entrusted to the research team and carried responsibilities I took seriously.

JS: I was born and raised on the island of O‘ahu as a fifth-generation descendent of Japanese immigrant plantation workers, via Hawai‘i Island (Big Island). I grew up most formatively with a primary parent and a step-parent of mixed Filipino, Chinese, and Kanaka Maoli descent in a middle class household, and my identities as a mother, sister, partner, and friend shape my reality now. I acknowledge my own privilege from a lineage of settlers, which has led to biases in my views that I continue to discover and re-examine as I learn from mentors, collaborators, and my community. Growing up in Hawai‘i sparked my initial interest in understanding culture, yet much of my adulthood thus far – from my undergraduate and graduate training to my first faculty position – was spent in California and Toronto, places with different histories and people who have influenced me. Now as a cultural psychologist at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, I hope to contribute to the local community in the place I call home. My varied personal experiences across diverse contexts have contributed to my values and strong belief in equity and diversity in many forms. For the current work and the participants, I identify with an in-between space, as I do not claim an insider identity while respecting my connection with them.