“Kūlia i ka Huliau – Transforming Law and Policy” – Malia Akutagawa & Denise Antolini

Kūlia i ka Huliau – Transforming Law and Policy

Around the world and in Hawaiʻi, leaders in our conservation and legal communities have been working to implement existing laws and policies that enable effective conservation while developing new innovative approaches to meet our biocultural resources stewardship goals.

Please join two local leaders in environmental law, Malia Akutagawa and Denise Antolini, both of the University of Hawaiʻi Richardson School of Law, as they discuss the ways in which we can transform our laws and policies to realize our vision of thriving, abundant lands and seas with their native ecosystems actively cared for by generations of stewards, steered by excellent science and Hawaiian values and practice.

SPEAKER BIOGRAPHY – Malia Akutagawa

Malia Akutagawa is a Native Hawaiian Rights and Environmental Law attorney.  She is an Associate Professor with the Hawai‘inuiākea School of Hawaiian Knowledge – Kamakakūokalani Center for Hawaiian Studies and the William S. Richardson School of Law – Ka Huli Ao Center for Excellence in Native Hawaiian Law.  Malia is part of Hui ‘Āina Momona, a consortium of scholars throughout the university community charged with addressing compelling issues of Indigenous Hawaiian knowledge and practices, including the legal regime and Native Hawaiian rights associated with mālama ‘āina (environmental stewardship), and with a focus on cross-disciplinary solutions to natural and cultural resource management, sustainability, and food security.

Malia is a founder and board member of Sustʻāinable Molokaʻi, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that focuses on maintaining Molokaʻi’s cultural legacy of ʻāina momona (abundant land) while embracing modern pathways to a sustainable future.  Sustʻāinable Molokaʻi has been instrumental in helping to organize COVID 19 response efforts on Molokaʻi through forming Hoʻokuʻikahi Aloha Molokaʻi, a network of partners working to secure island produce and meat from farmers, hunters, and fishermen and distributing locally-sourced food to needy families through the food bank and other volunteer organizations.

Malia is a board member of the Pesticide Action Network – North America (PANNA), one of five regional centers throughout the globe that challenges the “proliferation of pesticides, defend[s] basic rights to health and environmental quality, and work[s] to ensure the transition to a just and viable food system.”

Malia is the poʻo (lead) of the ʻAha Kiole o Molokaʻi, a local and Indigenous governance system that works with government agencies and lawmakers at the county, state, and federal levels for the protection and care of the natural environment, cultural sites, and resources.

She also is a member of Kiaʻi Kanaloa, an island-wide network of Native Hawaiian cultural and religious practitioners who interface with government agencies; assist in response work associated with distressed, stranded, and injured marine species; and care for their remains as ancestral beings and kinolau (physical embodiments) of Kanaloa (the Hawaiian ocean god).

Malia is currently serving on the Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary Advisory Council and is chair of the Huhuli Native Hawaiian Culture Committee.  She has served in the past as Chair of the Molokaʻi Planning Commission, member of the State Environmental Council, and Chair of the Molokaʻi Island Burial Council.  Malia is a member of the Conflict Management Institute at the law school and is part of a cohort with the Native Hawaiian Bar Association learning hoʻoponopono (traditional conflict resolution) from respected kupuna (elder) Lynette Paglinawan.  Malia trains government agencies, legislators, environmental court judges, and conservation enforcement officers on Native rights issues and helps them to avoid conflict with and the criminalization of Native Hawaiians engaging in mālama ʻāina and exercising traditional subsistence and religious practices.

SPEAKER BIOGRAPHY – Denise Antolini

Denise Antolini is a Professor of Law and served as the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs from August 2011 to December 2019.  She is on sabbatical the Spring 2020 Semester.  She joined the Law School faculty in 1996 and directed the nationally recognized Environmental Law Program for several years.  Since 2006, she has spearheaded the Law School Building Excellence Project that led to completion of the construction project for the $9.3 million Clinical Building in 2019.

She served as a State Water Commissioner and on the Nominating Committee, the inaugural Chair of the Honolulu City Council’s Clean Water and Natural Lands Commission, Chair of the State Environmental Council, and Chair of the Hawai`i State Bar Association’s Natural Resources Section.  Her courses have included torts, environmental law, environmental litigation, domestic ocean and coastal law, IUCN motions seminars, and legal writing.

She received the 2006 University of Hawaiʻi Board of Regents’ Excellence in Teaching Medal.  She served as Chair of the American Association of Law School’s Environmental Law Section and, from 2005 until 2008, was on the ABA’s Standing Committee on Environmental Law.  Dean Antolini was selected by Hawaiʻi Women Lawyers as the 2002 recipient of the Distinguished Community Service Award.  In 2003-2004, she served as the Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Environmental Studies at the Politecnico in Torino, Italy.

In 2016, she was appointed as Deputy Chair of the World Commission on Environmental Law (WCEL) of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).  She was elected to the inaugural Executive Committee of the IUCN U.S. National Committee in 2017 and co-coordinates the Hawaiʻi Hui of IUCN members.  She was appointed as the Elections Officer for the IUCN World Conservation Congress in Marseille, France (June 2020).

Dean Antolini graduated from Harbor High School in Santa Cruz, California in 1978; Princeton University in 1982; obtained a Masters in Public Policy at UC Berkeley (1985) and concurrently a J.D. from Boalt Hall School of Law, UC Berkeley in 1986, where she was editor-in-chief of Ecology Law Quarterly. After a two-year federal district court clerkship in Washington, D.C., she spent eight years practicing public interest law with the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund (now Earthjustice) in Seattle and Honolulu, serving as Managing Attorney of the Honolulu office from 1994 until 1996.  Dean Antolini litigated several major citizen suit environmental cases involving coastal pollution, water rights, endangered species, environmental impact statements, and Native Hawaiian rights.

Dean Antolini lives on Oʻahu’s rural North Shore in the ahupuaʻa of Pūpūkea.  She is a founding and current member of the North Shore Community Land Trust (advisory board), Save Waimea Valley Coalition, Mālama Pūpūkea-Waimea (President, 2005-present), and the Save Sharks Cove Alliance.