Indigenous Knowledge represents a corpus of sciences and technologies that have been highly optimized over millennia to allow a community of people to live indefinitely and regeneratively within the carrying capacity of its landscapes. Indigenous communities, as holders of these ancestral sciences and technologies, represent an ecosystem of Innovation that hold practices and epistemologies that are vital not only to their survival, but to the global effort that humanity is undertaking to recalibrate its relationship with the finite-biosystem that is our planet. In Hawaii, these ancestral sciences and technologies are still alive, well, and are advancing in our home communities. This presentation will showcase how the University of Hawaii (the state’s sole R1 university) developed the Office of Indigenous Knowledge and Innovation (OIKI)- embedded with in its system’s level Office of the Vice President for Research and Innovation- to act as systems intrapreneurs and build out a suite of practices and Centers able to interface with these regional ecosystems of innovation. OIKI founding director Kamuela Enos will provide an overview of the center’s trajectory, highlight the key funding and co-design opportunities it has unlocked allowing for robust community/university collaborations, share some of the lessons it has learned, and advocate for the opportunities that exist for other R1 universities to replicate this model.
Kamuela Enos is the director of the Office of Indigenous Knowledge and Innovation for the Office of the Vice President for Research and Innovation for University of Hawai’i System.
Born and raised in Wai’anae, Kamuela comes from a family of cultural practitioners and farmers committed to using ancestral frameworks as the basis for contemporary restorative socio-ecological work. Kamuela has an undergraduate degree in Hawaiian Studies and a M.A in Urban and Regional Planning from the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa.
Kamuela previously served as Director of Social Enterprise at MA‘O Farms and was also a Commissioner on President Obama’s White House Initiative on Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders.