Māhealani Ahia (she/her/ʻo ia) is a Kanaka ʻŌiwi artist, scholar, activist, songcatcher and storykeeper with lineal ties to Maui. With a background in theatre arts, writing and performance from U.C. Berkeley and U.C. Irvine, Māhea is committed to creating artistic and educational projects that elevate voices of Indigenous feminist decolonial storytelling. She is a PhD candidate in English (Hawaiian Literature) and Graduate Certificate student in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, where she has taught “Indigenous Women’s Health,” “Writing For Healing,” “Indigenous Feminisms,” and currently “Intro to LGBTQ+ Studies.” Māhea serves her community as a cohort member of Leadership Education in Neurodevelopmental and Related Disabilities (LEND), as a Hawaiʻi Pacific Foundation/East-West Center scholar, as Grievance Chair for UHM graduate Academic Labor United (ALU), as editor for Hawaiʻi Review and ʻŌiwi: A Native Hawaiian Journal, as co-organizer of the Mauna Kea Syllabus Project, and as co-facilitator of “Committed: A Decolonial DeTour” which re/stories “asylum” mental health history in Hawai’i and is sponsored by the Indigenous Dis/abilities Hui Hawaiʻi and Mānoa Center for the Humanities And Civic Engagement.