Kēhaulani Natsuko Vaughn’s career trajectory changed after reading an article by the late ʻŌiwi academic Haunani-Kay Trask. Motivated by Trask’s work as a scholar, activist and artist, Vaughn wanted to use her work as a researcher and an academic for community good too.
“It really blew up my world in a great way,” she said. “My education became more healing.”
Vaughn, 45, is now an associate professor of Indigenous feminisms at University of California, Riverside. She’s also writing a book, Trans Indigeneity: The Politics of California Indian and Native Hawaiian Relations.
Though Vaughn currently lives in Southern California, she was raised in Hayward in the northern part of the state. There, her youth was spent celebrating and participating in cultural events like May Day with other Pacific Islanders.
“I didn’t feel like we were absent of other Hawaiians,” Vaughn said. “It was more like, why are there so many Hawaiians living here?”
Her mom, Suzanne Kalaniwahine Naomi Spencer, taught Vaughn and her twin sister, Karalee Mahealani Vaughn, Hawaiian values. With Kānaka Maoli, Japanese, Portuguese and English roots, Spencer’s ʻohana hails from Waimea and Kohala on Hawaiʻi Island, with a family ranch in Laupāhoehoe.
“My mom always taught us that, when people asked ‘What are you?’ Hawaiian was always first,” Vaughn said laughing.
Her father, Robert Vaughn, worked for United Airlines, so the family returned to Hawaiʻi often. After her parents divorced, Vaughn was largely raised by her mother, who worked as a bank teller and occasionally sold lei.
Vaughn spent holidays and summer vacations on Oʻahu with her grandparents – who met on a sugar plantation in Laupāhoehoe. Vaughn remembers her tūtū kāne as a dynamic spirit: a fisherman who sewed nets; a gardener who grew nīoi (chili peppers), ʻōlena (turmeric) and kalo; an entrepreneur who ran a construction business; and a practitioner of lāʻau lapaʻau.
Vaughn’s elders emphasized the importance of education, and she gravitated toward culture and academics. Growing up, she dreamed of being a teacher.
At Mt. Eden High School in Hayward, Vaughn established its first Pacific Islander Club before graduating in 1998. When she started at Occidental College in Los Angeles, she was shocked by its lack of diversity and wondered why there weren’t other Pacific Islanders in the classrooms or featured in coursework.
Vaughn became increasingly passionate about educating others about colonialism’s impact on Hawaiʻi and the displacement of Kānaka Maoli. She studied hula, learned more about the Hawaiian sovereignty movement, and wrote her senior thesis on the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom and its effects on the people.
In 2002, Vaughn and her sister became the first of their family to graduate from college.
Vaughn spent the next year teaching English in Chiba, Japan, where she learned more about her grandmother’s ancestry. After applying to jobs in Hawaiʻi and to graduate programs in the U.S., she found herself back in Los Angeles enrolling at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
She pursued a master’s degree in Asian American studies, satiating her interest in Indigenous sovereignty by taking courses in American Indian studies. Vaughn met her future partner, Dr. Charles Sepulveda (of Tongva and Acjachemen heritage), in an Indigenous methodologies course.
After finishing her program in 2006, she earned a second master’s degree in higher education in 2007. Vaughn then worked at UCLA as an academic advisor and a program coordinator. In 2009, she helped form Empowering Pacific Islander Communities (EPIC), an organization that advances social justice for Pacific Islanders.
“It reminded me of what Haunani would do,” Vaughn said.
She then enrolled in the graduate program in ethnic studies at UC Riverside. Her time on Turtle Island as a Hawaiian made her contemplate our kuleana to both the land and its genealogical caretakers in places where the Hawaiian diaspora resides.
Vaughn earned a master’s degree in ethnic studies in 2012 and a Ph.D. in 2017. Her dissertation focused on a 1992 Treaty of Friendship and Mutual Recognition between Ka Lāhui Hawaiʻi and the Acjachemen Nation.
For almost two years, she served as associate dean of students and director of the Asian American Resource Center at Pomona College in Claremont, California.
In 2018, Vaughn moved to Utah where for seven years she was an assistant professor of Pacific Island education at Salt Lake City’s University of Utah. Inspired by the culture-based education model of a local school, Mana Academy, in West Valley City, Vaughn served as chair of its board of directors.
During that time, she welcomed another big change: the birth of her and Sepulveda’s daughter, Kaheawai Neshuun.
The family moved back to Riverside in 2024 where Vaughn assumed her current role as a tenured associate professor. She’s also the co-director of the California Center for the Native Nations where she fosters reciprocal, collaborative relationships with tribes in the area to break down barriers to education. “I consider that a huge responsibility as someone who is Kanaka,” she said.
Although she feels the yearning to return to the ʻāina, that will probably be for her retirement.
“For now, I think there’s also such need here in Turtle Island for Hawaiians to know that they’re Hawaiian enough,” she said.
Still, she describes herself as being “in awe” of the resources and support available for the lāhui in the diaspora now, as compared to her youth.
“Our culture is grounded in ʻāina, but our kūpuna have always been travelers,” Vaughn said. “We’ve always created expansive worlds.”
This article is reprinted with permission from Megan Ulu-Lani Boyanton, “Uplifting Indigeneity on Turtle Island," OHA's Ka Wai Ola newspaper, December 2025, Vol. 42 No. 12. Read more at kawaiola.news.
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