Jason Momoa’s Ethnicity and Family Roots

Father’s side

Joseph Momoa grew up in Nānākuli, on the west side of Oʻahu, and still lived there in 2018. He works with students at a Hawaiian charter school in Waiʻanae and runs sailing canoe tours off Ko Olina, and friends describe him as a waterman who paddles, sails and surfs.^[1] He visited Iowa when his son was a boy and stayed for longer stretches, but found it hard to be so far from the islands. During the summers in Hawaii, his father told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, Jason “learned how to be Hawaiian”.^[1]

In 2025 Momoa starred in Chief of War, a series about Kamehameha the Great that he also produced and co-directed with his cousin. Its first two episodes are in the Hawaiian language. He described it as a production written, directed and acted by Hawaiians.^[2]

Mother’s side

His mother, Coni, is from Norwalk, a town south of Des Moines. She came to Hawaii in the 1970s, met Joseph Momoa and had her son there. After the marriage ended she returned to her family in Iowa.^[1] It was in Iowa that Jason learned about his Native American ancestry on this side of the family, along with its German and Irish roots. The sources we checked do not name a tribe. His father summed up his son’s heritage as “both Indian and Polynesian bloodlines”.^[1]