Val Kalei Kanuha

Val Kalei Kanuha is a scholar, teacher, and activist on gender violence against Native women and community based justice. Being both a Kanaka Maoli of mixed heritage and a lesbian has influenced her exploration of how race and ethnicity intersect with gender and sexual identity in academic and professional work.

Kanuha was born in Hilo, Hawaii, United States, in the 1950s. She is of mixed heritage, her mother being Nisei and her father a Native Hawai’ian. Kanuha received her Bachelors in Social Work from the University of Wisconsin, Masters in Social Work (MSW) from the University of Minnesota and her Phd from the University of Washington’s (UW) School of Social Work.

Starting in 1997, Kanuha taught sociology and social work at the University of Hawai’i (UH). In 2017, she left her position as a professor and the Chair of the Sociology Department at UH and returned to UW as the Assistant Dean of Field Education. Much of her work focuses on gender violence, building a domestic violence program using Native Hawai’ian cultural values, and interventions for children who have experienced domestic violence. Her work has focused on ending violence against women and girls, lesbians, women of color especially Native Hawai’ian, Asian, and Pacific Islander women.

For 15 years, Kanuha worked as a field instructor in Minnesota, focusing on community health social work. Kanuha is one of the founding members of Incite! Women of Color Against Violence, an organization of feminists of color whose work has greatly contributed to fighting sexual violence that is centered around gender women, non-conforming, and trans people of color. She co-founded the University of Hawai’i at the Hilo Women’s Center, which provides a space for women to discuss the intersections of feminism, racism, ethnicity, indigeneity, class and other systems of hierarchy and conceptualizations. She also co-founded the Asian Pacific Islander Center on HIV/AIDS in New York. Kanuha is a Board member of the Joyful Heart Foundation which was founded in 2004 with the aim of helping survivors of sexual assault, and is a stakeholder in the Move to End Violence organization which works to end violence against women and girls.

Kanuha met her partner, Kata, in 1993 when Kanuha was going for her Phd, and together they have their child, Anela.

• Colonization and Violence Against Women, 2002
• Transcript of Panel on Colonization, Culture, and Resistance, 2015
• Relationships So Loving and So Hurtful": The Constructed Duality of Sexual and Racial/Ethnic Intimacy in the Context of Violence in Asian and Pacific Islander Lesbian and Queer Women's Relationships, 2013
• Strange Bedfellows: Feminist Advocates and U.S. Marines Working to End Violence, 2004
• The Use of Temporary Restraining Orders (TROs) as a Strategy to Address Intimate Partner Violence, 2004
• HIV and women in Hawaii: risk and protective factors in HIV/AIDS prevention, 2003
• The impact of sexuality and race/ethnicity on HIV/AIDS risk among Asian and Pacific Island American (A/PIA) gay and bisexual men in Hawai'i, 2001
• "Being" Native versus "Going Native": Conducting Social Work Research as an Insider, 2000
• The social process of "passing" to manage stigma: Acts of internalized oppression or acts of resistance? (1999)
• Local and gay: addressing the health needs of Asian and Pacific Islander American (A/PIA) lesbians and gay men in Hawaii (1999)