[4] Her parents were student activists engaged in the growing Native Hawaiian land rights movement at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.

[6] Goodyear-Ka'opua founded and served as Board President of Mana Maoli,[7] a non-profit organization supporting Native Hawaiian community-based education, from 1999 to 2008.

[3] Goodyear-Kā'opua has served as a board member for Hui o Kuapā,[9] a non-profit founded in 1989 to support Native Hawaiian fishpond restoration, education, and research, since 2015.

[3] Since 2014 Goodyear-Ka'opua has served as the lead curriculum developer and facilitator of a series of community organizers' trainings called Movement-Building for Ea.

[12] The book examines the history of the Hālau Kū Māna Charter Public School in Honolulu and outlines the challenges of implementing traditional Hawaiian culture-based education under the context of U.S.

[12] Goodyear-Ka'opua is also the co-editor (with Aiko Yamashiro[13]) of The Value of Hawai'i 2: Ancestral Roots, Oceanic Visions, and A Nation Rising: Hawaiian Movements for Life, Land, and Sovereignty (with Ikaika Hussey and Erin Kahunawaika'ala Wright), both published in 2014.