Kealani Cook is Kanaka Maoli originally from Waimea on Hawaiʻi Island. He is an Associate Professor of History in the Humanities Department at the University of Hawai‘i at West O’ahu. Cook believes that history should be a study of power structures and how power is negotiated and fought over. At the University of Hawai’i he teaches classes on Hawaiian and Pacific Hisotry. His research interests focus on ties between the peoples of OCeania.
Cook is the author of the book Return to Kahiki: Native Hawaiians in Oceania (2018), which shows how between 1850 and 1907, Native Hawaiians sought to develop relationships with other Pacific Islanders that reflected how they viewed not only themselves as a people but their wider connections to Oceania and the globe. Kealani Cook analyzes the relatively little-known experiences of Native Hawaiian missionaries, diplomats, and travelers, shedding valuable light on the rich but understudied accounts of Hawaiians outside of Hawaiʻi. He also illuminates how Native Hawaiian views of other islanders typically corresponded with their particular views and experiences of the Native Hawaiian past.
P.S. he is not related to Captain “Kapena Kuke ‘Ia” Cook.
Contact Information:
• kealanic@hawaii.edu • 808-689-2486
Select Recent Work:
Cook, Kealani. “Native Hawaiians in Oceania,” Puuhonua Puuhuluhulu. September 21, 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuwH2ugiMr0
Cook, Kealani. Return to Kahiki: Native Hawaiians in Oceania. Studies in North American Indian History. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2018.
Cook, Kealani. “Ke Ao a Me Ka Pō: Postmillennial Thought and Native Hawaiian Foreign Mission Work.” American Quarterly 67, no. 3 (2015): 887–912.