The stewardship of wahi kūpuna (Hawaiian ancestral places and resources and the knowledge systems and practices inherently tied to them.) requires an interdisciplinary approach that weaves together Hawaiian and Western knowledge systems. However, for the past century, those not native to Hawaiʻi have held the authority to “manage” Hawaiian heritage. To transform and restore this unbalanced system, there remains a critical need to increase opportunities for Native Hawaiians to care for our own cultural heritage. In 2010, the Native Hawaiian-led non-profit organization, Huliauapa‘a, established the Wahi Kūpuna Internship Program (WKIP). The primary goal of the WKIP is to develop leaders and advocates in Hawaiʻi’s cultural heritage fields by training the next generation of stewards in both Indigenous and Western knowledge systems, so they have a strong cultural foundation, elevate their roles and responsibilities to our lands and communities, obtain higher education degrees, and gain professional career-ready skillsets. The Internship takes a progressive approach that recognizes the constraints of a conventional indoor learning environment, and instead creates an authentic experience for students outside the classroom, on the land, and in the community. Our goal is to re-establish our connections to and care of these ancestral places in order to re-invigorate our cultural practices as a key element of perpetuating our Hawaiian identity and self determination.

Indigenous scholars have much to teach political scientists about recognizing and addressing the ways in which power, politics, and colonialism irrevocably shape the data-generating process. In this article, we present a methodological framework for a decolonial quantitative political science, outlining how it was operationalized in the design and execution of the 2019 Native Hawaiian Survey. We demonstrate the utility of this methodological framework through a descriptive analysis of Native Hawaiian respondents' self-identification. Aligned with the theoretical insights of kanaka (Native Hawaiian) scholars, we provide empirical support for the intertwined political relationship between Native Hawaiian identity and national identity––a finding that demands further empirical study among all Indigenous populations. This article offers two main contributions. First, it provides a methodological framework to guide quantitative political science research on Indigenous populations. Second, it adds empirically to the growing literature on Indigenous self-identification.