Sunaina Keonaona Kale (Kanaka Maoli) (she/her) is a multiracial Indigenous scholar, and is also Asian Indian, and white. She is from Orinda, California, which sits on Muwekma Ohlone and Bay Miwok land, also collectively known as the Confederated Villages of Lisjan. Orinda exists between the Ohlone ancestral village of Huchiun and the Bay Miwok ancestral village of Saclan.

Sunaina is a UC President's Postdoctoral Fellow based at the University of California, Davis in the Department of Native American Studies. She holds a Ph.D. in ethnomusicology from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her current book project on reggae in Hawai'i focuses on Indigenous and Black relationality and formations of Kanaka Maoli, local, and global identities in the music. Her other research interests include the intersections of food sovereignty and music in Hawai'i. She is a former Charles Eastman Fellow at Dartmouth College (2020-2022) and received the Robert Walser and Susan McClary Fellowship from the Society for American Music (2019).

Photo by Susan Jacob