Overview:
Two Kanaka Maoli youth from Hilo, Hawaii, are using an interactive ArcGIS story map to connect Hawaiian history and governance with the 2026 elections, providing culturally relevant voting resources to encourage Native Hawaiian voter registration and turnout.
Native Vote 2026
The Center for Native American Youth’s (CNAY) Democracy Is Indigenous campaign mobilizes Native youth leaders ages 11 to 24 to enhance lives and engage local communities. Native youth design their own community action projects, and the Democracy Is Indigenous team offers training, a prominent national platform to spotlight their initiatives, and funding to support their projects.
Ahead of the 2026 elections, Kamaha’o Halemanu and Cajohn Mar, both Kanaka Maoli Native youth from Hilo, Hawaii, designed an ArcGIS story map that connects the history and governance of the Hawaiian Kingdom era to modern elections through a Native perspective. It also serves as a portal directing users to official websites for district maps, polling places, and voter registration — a political GPS of sorts.
ArcGIS is a geographic information system (GIS) software that allows users to create and analyze spatial and geographic data. It is commonly used by city planners and the military for mission-critical mapping. Halemanu and Mar’s Hawaii and the Ballot Box uses ArcGIS as an interactive map that illustrates the intersection of the past and present.
One of their driving forces was to increase voter turnout. In the 2024 general election, voter turnout in Hawaii was nearly 14 percentage points below the national average. Halemanu and Mar hope to change the narrative and shift the paradigm when it comes to Native voter turnout.
“When half of our local population chooses not to return their ballots, a critical power vacuum is created. Crucial decisions regarding housing affordability, the protection of our ʻāina (land) and wai (water), educational funding, and economic development are left entirely in the hands of outside interests and a vocal minority,” their Kuleana Oiwi website states.
Kuleana Oiwi roughly translates to Native privilege or ancestral sacred duty. They use their language to illustrate the importance of voting to protect their land and water. Through their nonpartisan resource website, they hope to engage Hawaiian voters while connecting them to their history and cultural practices.
They view their project as a “digital gathering place” that provides accurate information and ensures it resonates culturally with Native Hawaiian voters.
“Native advocates, youth, and community members finally have a centralized, nonpartisan resource that reflects their heritage, which they can now confidently share with their families and friends to encourage voter registration ahead of the upcoming elections,” their CNAY Democracy Is Indigenous bio states.
CNAY’s Democracy Is Indigenous campaign encourages Native youth to actively pursue civic engagement that “indigenizes democracy” and promotes “narrative change.”
Indigenizing democracy refers to governance systems anchored in traditional cultural frameworks, collective decision-making, and consensus-building.
For information on other Democracy Is Indigenous projects, visit the Center for Native American Youth’s website. To bring Democracy Is Indigenous to your community, visit its website.
