V. Pauahi Souza is Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) from Kailua, O’ahu, an island within the occupied Hawaiian Kingdom. She is a 2020 graduate from Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. Currently, she is working on her PhD at the Social Justice Institute at the University of British Columbia. Her organizing and activism reflects and combines her passion in areas related to mental health and how it interconnects with politics. Her research considers the mental health of Diasporic Kānaka Maoli women and how cultural historical trauma is a vast part of Hawaiian history that is only now being increasingly investigated. Her ambition is to one day be a professor and a life-long researcher regarding the mental health of Kānaka Maoli. Her award winning presentations regarding the conceptualization of Hawai’i as “paradise” and the harms this creates continues to be approved for presentations at various conferences from interdisciplinary health to Decolonizing methodologies. Due to this ideology, her PhD framework focuses on defining terms that are interrelated at the intersections of politics and mental health.