Biocultural Initiative of the Pacific Leadership and Affiliates

Professor of Anthropology, UH Mānoa

Born and raised in Hawai’i, Kirch received his B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania and Ph.D. from Yale University. Before joining the University of Hawai’i faculty in 2019, Kirch held positions at the Bernice P. Bishop Museum, the University of Washington, and at the University of California, Berkeley, where he taught from 1989-2017. An anthropologist and archaeologist of Oceania, Kirch’s research interests include the evolution of complex societies, indigenous agricultural systems, and the dynamic interactions between human populations and their environments. Kirch uses islands as “model systems” for understanding both cultural evolution and the complex dynamics between humans and their island ecosystems. He has carried out archaeological fieldwork in the Mussau Islands, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Samoa, Futuna, the Cook Islands, Society Islands, Mangareva Islands, and Hawaiian Islands. Kirch has published some 25 books and monographs, and more than 300 articles and chapters on the results of his research in the Pacific. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society, and he currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Bishop Museum.

• Senior Scientist & Cultural Advisor, The Nature Conservancy of Hawaiʻi
• Affiliate Faculty, Department of Urban and Regional Planning (UHM)
• Member, Hawaiʻi State Board of Land and Natural Resources
• Kumu Oli, Nā Waʻa Lālani Kāhuna o Puʻu Koholā, Bishop Museum

Dr. Sam ʻOhu Gon III was born and raised in Nuʻuanu, and over a 40+ year career in conservation in Hawaiʻi has advocated for integration of Hawaiian cultural values and knowledge in conservation efforts. He received his bachelors degree in Zoology from UH Mānoa (the first recipient to have Hawaiian accepted as fulfilling the language requirement for a life science degree). He went on to the University of California at Davis to earn his Masters degree in Zoology (Ecology, Evolution and Behavior) and his Ph.D. from the Animal Behavior Graduate Group there, conducting a comparative behavioral ecology study of the Hawaiian Happyface Spider (Theridion grallator). 

He has worked with The Nature Conservancy of Hawaiʻi for >30 years and has amassed great personal experience with Hawaiian ecosystems and species on all islands. He was also traditionally trained in Hawaiian chant and ceremony by Kumu John Keolamakaʻāinana Lake, undergoing ʻūniki huʻelepo in 2003, and was passed the kuleana of continuing the teaching of oli (chant) by Kumu Lake before his passing in 2008. He continues to train chanters in Hālau Mele, currently the hālau-in-residence at The Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum in Honolulu. 

Combining his knowledge of the ecology of Hawaiʻi with the rich traditional knowledge system here, partially documented in the largest indigenous language archive known in the world, his research involves the multidisciplinary exploration ofthe changes that have taken place in natural and human landscapes here from pre-human to pre-contact and post-contact times. In doing so he documented the remarkably small ecological footprint of pre-contact Hawaiʻi — which was also 100% self-sufficient — and contrasts this with the huge loss of native ecosystems today and our current low level of self sufficiency. He advocates for the integration of Hawaiian knowledge, values, and approaches in modern conservation efforts, and for this biocultural approach was designated a Living Treasure of Hawaiʻi in 2014. 

More here: http://www.hawaiiecoregionplan.info/samgon.html 

Department of Oceanography, UH Mānoa

Rosie ʻAnolani Alegado was born and raised in Kaʻiwiʻula Oʻahu, and lives with her family in Āhuimanu, Kahaluʻu. She is an Assistant Professor of Oceanography and Sea Grant at UH Mānoa where she is Director for the Center of Excellence in Integrated Knowledge Systems and a member of the Center for Microbial Oceanography: Research and Education. Rosie completed her postdoctral work in evolutionary biology at UC Berkeley and holds a PhD in Microbiology and Immunology from Stanford and a BS in Biology with a minor in Environmental Health and Toxicology from MIT. Her work focuses on investigating how microbes shape the adaptive potential of their ecosystem across a broad range of biological and temporal scales. In partnership with Paepae o Heʻeia, her group has tracked the influence of restoration, storms and multi-annual climate patterns on the health of Heʻeia Fishpond since 2014. Together with the non-profit Kuaʻāina Ulu ʻAuamo and Hawai’i Sea Grant, she is involved in developing kūlana noiʻi, a process wherein researchers build and sustain equitable partnerships with community. She is deeply committed to increasing participation of underrepresented minorities in STEM and is the Director of the School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology Maile Mentoring Bridge Program, providing individualized mentoring and peer support for undergraduates transitioning from community colleges to Mānoa. In 2018, she was confirmed to the City & County of Honolulu Climate Change Commission.

Website: alegadolab.org

• UH Economic Research Organization
• Associate Director at the Institute for Sustainability and Resilience

I am an Environmental Management Assistant Specialist with the UH Economics Research Organization (UHERO) and the Water Resources Research Center (WRRC). As a geographer by training, I am drawn to inter-disciplinary, collaborative, and participatory research around land and water management futures. I am particularly interested in policies and strategies to support watershed management and planning for multiple cultural, socio-economic, hydrologic, and ecological benefits. My work focuses on water resources management and planning in Hawaiʻi and on water funds and compensation for ecosystem services programs in the Andes. I have an MS in Conservation Biology from Victoria University of Wellington (New Zealand) and Macquarie University (Australia) and a PhD in Geography from UC Santa Barbara and San Diego State University.

William S. Richardson School of Law

Maxine Burkett joined the William S. Richardson School of Law in 2009. She teaches Climate Change Law and Policy, Torts, Environmental Law, International Environmental Law, and International Development.

She has written extensively in diverse areas of climate law with a particular focus on climate justice, exploring the disparate impact of climate change on vulnerable communities in the United States and globally. Professor Burkett has presented her research on the law and policy of climate change throughout the United States and in West Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Caribbean.

Department of Linguistics (emeritus), UH Manoa

Lyle Campbell grew up in rural Oregon. He received a B.A. in Archaeology and Anthropology in 1966, M.A. in Linguistics (University of Washington) in 1967, and Ph.D. in Linguistics (UCLA) in 1971.

Campbell held appointments at the University of Missouri (1971–1974), the State University of New York at Albany (1974–1989), Louisiana State University (1989–1994), the University of Canterbury, in Christchurch, New Zealand (1994–2004), the University of Utah (2004–2010), and currently the University of Hawai’i at Manoa. He has been a visiting professor at Australian National University, Colegio de México, Memorial University, University of Hamburg, University of Helsinki, National Autonomous University of Mexico, Universidad del País Vasco, University of Turku, and at three universities in Brazil. He has held joint appointments in Linguistics, Anthropology, Behavioral Research, Latin American Studies, and Spanish.

Projects: His research and teaching specializations include: documentation and revitalization of endangered languages, historical linguistics, American Indian languages, typology, sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, and Uralic languages. He is the director of the Catalogue or Endangered Languages.

He is the author of 20 books and about 200 articles; two of his books (American Indian languages: The historical linguistics of Native America and Historical Syntax in Cross-Linguistic Perspectives, co-written with Alice C. Harris) were awarded the Leonard Bloomfield Book Award by the Linguistic Society of America for the best book in linguistics published in the previous two years.

Department of Tropical Plant and Soil Sciences, UH Manoa

Jonathan Deenik received his BA in History and Art History (College of Wooster) and then joined the Peace Corps where is served as a teacher and teacher trainer in the forest of southern Cameroon (’85-’87) and remote central Nepal (’87-’91). He came to Hawaii in 1992 and completed his MS and PhD degrees at Manoa in Soil Science. He joined the Dept of Tropical Plant and Soil Sciences in 2003 with a three-way split (extension, research and instruction). His work focuses on soil nutrient management and soil quality across the spectrum of tropical agroecosystems. He works with farmers throughout the Hawaiian Islands and Micronesia.

Projects: Jonathan works closely with graduate students and extension agents to help farmers match nutrient inputs to cropping systems and soil and climatic conditions to maintain target yields while enhancing the soil resource and minimizing negative impacts to air and water quality. His work also includes identifying and promoting the utilization of alternative soil amendments from waste (sewage sludge conversion to biochar, biofertilizers from anaerobic digestion, and composting) in farming systems across the Pacific. Most recently, Jonathan has worked in a large USDA funded obesity prevention project throughout the US Affiliated Pacific. His focus has been on studying the Pacific agroforest systems, their management and their role in the food system in a time of rapid social, economic and environmental change.

Department of Anthropology, UH Manoa

Alex Golub has degrees in anthropology from Reed College (BA) and the University of Chicago (MA and Ph.D.). He is a political anthropologist who studies the Porgera gold mine in Papua New Guinea and its relationship with the local community on whose land it is located. His book Leviathans at the Gold Mine: Creating Indigenous and Corporate Actors at the Porgera Gold Mine was published by Duke University Press in 2014. More broadly, he is interested in social change and resource extraction as they relate to cultural sustainability. In addition to political anthropology and Pacific studies, he has an interest in 20th century intellectual history.

Projects: My long-term research focuses on the Porgera valley in Papua New Guinea. My first project in this respect was my Ph.D. work was focused on the creation and maintenance of corporate groups in this area. the Porgera gold mine in Papua New Guinea, and its findings are described in my book Leviathans at the Gold Mine. My work in this area continues, and in general I think of myself primarily as an area specialist with a focus on Melanesia and the Pacific.

A second project examined the culture of white collar elites in Port Moresby, the capital of Papua New Guinea. How, it asked, do decision makers in government and industry imagine the grassroots people who will live with the consequences of decisions made in the capital? The study found elites’ understanding of grassroots ‘culture’ was tied to their own often-distant relation to the rural ethnic groups they emerged from. This in turn led me to a third focus on Papua New Guinea’s cultural nationalism, and especially the biography and thought of Bernard Narokobi, one of the key thinkers of the independence period.

Finally, I have ‘half’ an interest in anthropology as a discipline and particularly how it is made ‘public’ and thus politically relevant. I call this ‘half’ an interest since my activities in these areas is not scholarly but ‘applied’: I am a founder and contributor to savageminds.org, the most popular cultural anthropology website on the Internet. I am also an active advocate of open access scholarship.

Department of Tropical Plant and Soil Sciences, UH Manoa

Noa Lincoln is kanaka maoli (Native Hawaiian) and kama’aina (native born) to Kealakekua on Hawai’i Island. His childhood consists of unique training by Hawaiian elders in la’au lapa’au (ethnobotany) and traditional management methods for agriculture and ocean resources. Dr. Lincoln completed his formal trainings at Yale University (ʻ03) in Environmental Engineering and Stanford University (ʻ13) in Biogeochemistry and Social Ecology. He has worked and studied across the Pacific Rim in California, Costa Rica, Brazil, New Zealand, Tahiti, and the Marquesas, among other places. Much of his applied training through mentorship has focused on the installation of cultural values into management systems, often through the development of multiple bottom line assessment tools.

Projects: Dr. Lincoln has and continues to research a broad spectrum of areas, including forest ecology and management, restoration ecology, archaeology, personal values and sense of place, and terrestrial biogeochemistry within both natural and human dominated systems (i.e. agriculture). His primary focus, however, is on indigenous cropping systems and their interaction with human societies in both the past and the present. Using development pathways on islands as model systems for understanding the complex interaction between humans and their environment, Noa builds upon the important work of the human biocomplexity project (see Kirch 2010 for a good summary). By working with modern day restoration efforts Noa also seeks to define the role that these systems have today, including their impacts on culture, education, environment, and food.

Department of Ethnic Studies, UH Manoa

Professor McGregor is founding member of Ethnic Studies at the University of Hawai’i, Manoa, is a historian of Hawai’i and the Pacific. Her PhD in Hawaiian and Pacific History was completed at the University of HawaiʻI, Mānoa in 1989. Her ongoing research endeavors document the persistence of traditional Hawaiian cultural customs, beliefs, and practices in rural Hawaiian communities, including the island of Moloka’i; the districts of Puna and Ka’u on Hawai’i; Ke’anae-Wailuanui on Maui and Waiahole-Waikane on O’ahu. This work is featured in her 2007 UH Press book, Kua’aina: Living Hawaiian Culture which won the Kenneth W. Balridge Prize for best book in any field of history written by a resident of Hawai’i from 2005-2007.

Projects: Pōmaikaʻi is conducting research on the original Native Hawaiians who lived in Kalaupapa, Kalawao, Makanalua and Waikolu before it was designated as a place to isolate HawaiʻI residents who contracted leprosy. She is part of a team working on the designation and implementation of the Moʻomomi Northwest Coast of Molokaʻi as Community-Based Subsistence Fishing Area (CBSFA). As a member of the Protect Kahoʻolawe ʻOhana, she helps to steward the island of Kanaloa Kahoʻolawe. She helps to coordinate huakaʻi or cultural field trips for students, faculty and community members to engage in cultural and spiritual practices to heal the island and honor it as a sacred center for learning and mastery of Native Hawaiian cultural beliefs, customs and practices.

Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Management, UH Manoa

 I am an affiliate faculty member of NREM and a social science researcher with the US Forest Service. I am an ethnobiologist with a PhD in anthropology and a certificate in Ecology, Evolution, and Conservation Biology from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. My research investigates the relationships among local knowledge, community-based resource management, and global environmental change. I am interested in the role of natural resources as cultural resources, the interactions between environmental and human health, and collaborative resource management. I am broadly interested in how diverse perspectives can improve our understanding of our reciprocal relationships with nature, and offer insights on thoughtful ways of living in the world.

Projects: Tamara Ticktin and I co-led the project Local Ecological Knowledge and Climate Change based in North Kona, Hawaiʻi Island. This in-depth, community-based, interdisciplinary project investigated traditional Hawaiian and local knowledge-relevant to climate and environmental change; the biological and cultural resources most valued by community members; and coping mechanisms, adaptation strategies and resources that promote social-ecological resiliency to climate change. Our methods centered on an interdisciplinary, community-based process that integrated data from workshops, interviews, focus groups, historical literature, and ecological monitoring. Led by the knowledge and innovation of community participants, we developed a series of products, including a timeline of adaptation, a seasonal calendar, maps of the predicted effects of climate change on key resources in Ka‘ūpūlehu, and an online database that tracks observations of weather and phenology of plants and animals on the land and in the ocean. Collectively these products reveal lessons about how people have adapted and continue to adapt to change, establish reference points for evaluating future observations of change, strengthen relationships to place and knowledge transmission, and support adaptive
management strategies. I continue to be involved with this community, most recently in collaboration with Puaʻala Pascua to identify Cultural Ecosystem Services from a place-based perspective.

Department of Anthropology, UH Manoa

Jonathan Padwe is an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Hawai’i Mānoa. His research explores the production of nature and culture in borderlands and frontiers. He is currently at work on a book manuscript, tentatively titled Written on the Land: Violence and Social Formation on a Cambodian Frontier. The book tells the story of post-war land use change and “development” from the point of view of a small village near the Vietnam border in northeast Cambodia, and is based on years of ethnographic field research with the Jarai highland minority group. He previously conducted extensive field research with Aché foragers in eastern Paraguay.

Projects: I’m particularly interested in farmers’ understandings of nature, and the ways that nature is used in practices of identity formation and the establishment of territory. To date, I’ve worked intensively with a small group of villages along the middle-Sesan River near the Cambodia-Vietnam border. My work traces Jarai plant-knowledge, and practices of remembrance, along networks that stretch from the highlands of Vietnam and Cambodia to communities of the Jarai diaspora in the United States and Europe.
I am currently at work on a book manuscript that explores nature, territory and belonging in Cambodia’s northeast highlands, and examines connections between the region’s turbulent political history and practices of understanding and transforming the environment. For this project, I worked closely with Jarai-speaking swidden farmers, who experienced the Vietnam War and the Cambodian genocide not only as human tragedies, but as environmental crises, too.

I also have several projects under development. These include: (1) research on the idea of indigeneity and its antecedents in mainland Southeast Asia; and (2) a study of the new rubber plantation landscape of northeast Cambodia. In both of these projects, I’m interested to understand how the experience of a rapidly changing agrarian political economy affects the lives and social identities of marginal peoples who are increasingly relegated to interstitial spaces on the margins of large-scale development projects.

Department of Anthropology, UH Manoa

Barry Rolett is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Hawaii. He specializes in the archaeology of French Polynesia and southeast China. His research investigates Polynesian origins and the role of humans in the evolution of island landscapes. Specific themes include deforestation, faunal extinctions, and arboriculture. Rolett has led or participated in more than twenty archaeological expeditions to French Polynesia and Fujian Province (China). He received his Ph.D. from Yale University and has taught at UH-Manoa since 1988 except for two years (1998-99 and 2000-2001) as Visiting Associate Professor of Pacific Archaeology at Harvard University.

Christopher Dunn was named the Elizabeth Newman Wilds Director of Cornell Plantations in April 2014. Prior to this appointment, he was Director of the Lyon Arboretum at the University of Hawai‘i. He previously served as Executive Director for Research at the Chicago Botanic Garden (where he managed one of the largest botanic garden research programs in the country) and as Director of Research at The Morton Arboretum. He received his undergraduate training at SUNY College of Environmental Science & Forestry, Syracuse University, and his PhD at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. He then spent three years completing postdoctoral studies at the University of Georgia.

Projects

Dr. Dunn is a botanist and conservation ecologist who has considerable research experience studying the relationships between people and places, and human impacts on the landscape. More recently, he has been studying the intersection of biological and cultural conservation, particularly in the Pacific Rim. He led the effort to establish a Center for Biocultural Studies at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa which has culminated in the Biocultural Initiative of the Pacific. He has served on various boards, including the American Public Gardens Association (for which he served as President), and is presently Vice Chair of Terralingua, an international nonprofit organization concerned about the future of the world’s biological, cultural, and linguistic diversity. Dr. Dunn is active in several international conservation organizations, including the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Botanic Gardens Conservation International. Currently, he holds adjunct faculty status at Northwestern University, the University of Illinois–Chicago, and in the Graduate Faculty in Botany at the University of Hawai‘i.

For nearly four decades, Dr. Michael Balick has studied the relationship between plants and people, working with traditional cultures in tropical, subtropical, and desert environments. He is a specialist in the field known as ethnobotany, working with indigenous cultures to document their plant knowledge, understand the environmental effects of their traditional management systems, and develop sustainable utilization systems-while ensuring that the benefits of such work are always shared with local communities. Dr. Balick also conducts research in New York City, studying traditional healing practices in ethnic communities of the urban environment.
His scientific research has taken him to many countries including , Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, China, Columbia, Costa Rica, Egypt, Federated States of Micronesia, Haiti, Honduras, India, Israel, Jamaica, Mexico, Palau, Peru, Sri Lanka, Trinidad, Thailand, Vanuatu, and Venezuela. His fieldwork also includes trips to the fruit and vegetable markets and botanicas of New York City.

Dr. Balick currently serves as an Adjunct Professor at Columbia University, Fordham University, and City University of New York. He has been an active mentor to postdoctoral, masters, and international fellowship students. He was a co-founder of a course that taught herbal medicine to practicing physicians and other health care professionals, run in collaboration with Colombia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons and the University of Arizona Program in Integrative Medicine, for a decade, and currently teaches ethnobotany courses at Columbia University and The City University of New York.

Projects

In 1981 he co-founded The New York Botanical Garden’s Institute of Economic Botany with Sir Ghillean Prance. It has become the largest and most active program of its kind in the nation. The Institute is devoted to furthering knowledge of the relationship between plants and people, and includes an interdisciplinary staff of biological and social scientists. Numerous graduates from the Institute’s Ph.D. program have achieved important positions around the world, helping to promote the Garden’s focus on reinvigorating the fields of ethnobotany and economic botany.

He has been active in ethnopharmacological investigations-the search for plants with medicinal properties-particularly in Belize where his research aided in the formation of the world’s first ethno-biomedical forest reserve. He co-founded the Ix Chel Tropical Research Foundation with Drs. Rosita Arvigo and Gregory Shropshire, a center in Belize devoted to traditional healing and cultural preservation. From 1986-1996 he helped lead the Garden’s collaboration with the US National Cancer Institute to survey Central and South America and the Caribbean for plants with potential applications against cancer and AIDS. As part of this work, Dr. Balick established numerous collaborations between communities, governmental and non-governmental organizations, and institutions in the United States and Europe all working towards the common theme of discovering plants with potential therapeutic uses. He was also involved in an ethnobotanical and floristic survey of the Federated States of Micronesia, in particular the island of Pohnpei and its outer atolls. Floristic information collected provided baseline information for conservation planning as the region prepares to meet the goals of the “Microneisa Challenge” (protect 30% of near-shore marine resources and 20% of terrestrial habitats throughout Micronesia by 2020). This work is in collaboration with the National Tropical Botanical Garden, The Nature Conservancy, The College of Micronesia and the Pohnpei Council of Traditional Leaders. A major effort in this work is to study the devolution of traditional knowledge, and its impact on the local environment. Outputs will include a checklist of the local flora, a book on primary health care, and an ethnobotanical manual for the island. Current fieldwork also involves studies of the ethnobotany and floristics of Palau, in partnership with the Belau National Museum, local government and Traditional Leaders and Vanuatu, in collaboration with the Department of Forests, Tafea Kaljoral Senta, other governmental agencies, and local communities in Tafea Province, the southernmost group of islands in the country.

Dr. Balick is the author or editor of 25 scientific and general interest books and monographs, with titles ranging from Useful Palms of the World, to Rainforest Remedies, to Plants, People, and Culture. His latest books include Rodale’s 21st Century Herbal: A Practical Guide for Healthy Living Using Nature’s Most Powerful Plants (2014), and Messages from the Gods: A Guide to the Useful Plants of Belize (2015), co-authored with Dr. Rosita Arvigo Dr. Balick has published more than 170 scientific papers and contributed to nearly 30 horticultural and general interest publications.