Land and Indigenous Politics

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How is land, a complex material ecology that is assigned diverse and oftentimes conflicting meanings, central to Indigenous politics? In this course, Kanaka Maoli scholar-activist Dr. Uahikea Maile discusses how Indigeneity is not simply a political status or legal-identity category tied to territory, but that colonial dispossession and Indigenous practices of counterdispossession are at the heart of what constitutes Indigenous politics.

In a period of accelerating anthropogenic climate crisis on Earth, what might Indigenous movements to protect land teach us about how to live in more balanced relations together on a planet overwhelmed by the forces of both capitalism and colonialism?

Resources:

Books/Literary Texts/Articles

A Nation Rising by Noelani Goodyear-Ka’ōpua, Ikaika Hussey, and Erin Kahunawaika’ala Wright
Aloha Betrayed by Noenoe K. Silva
As We Have Always Done by Leanne Simpson
From a Native Daughter by Haunani-Kay Trask
Hawaiian Blood and Paradoxes of Hawaiian Sovereignty by J. Kēhaulani Kauanui
Mohawk Interruptus by Audra Simpson
The Red Deal by The Red Nation
Red Skin, White Masks by Glen Coulthard
The Seeds We Planted by Noelani Goodyear-Ka’ōpua
Theft is Property! by Robert Nichols
The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon
A Fictive Kinship by Iokepa Casumbal-Salazar
At Home on the Mauna by Hi‘ilei Julia Hobart
Consent’s Revenge by Audra Simpson
Decolonization is not a metaphor by Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang
I ka Piko, To the Summit by Emalani Case
Precarious Performances by Uahikea Maile
Protectors of the Future, Not Protestors of the Past by Noelani Goodyear-Ka‘ōpua
Resurgent Refusals by Uahikea Maile
Settlers of Color and ‘Immigrant’ Hegemony: ‘Locals’ in Hawai‘i by Haunani-Kay Trask
Threats of Violence by Uahikea Maile
Why Asian Settler Colonialism Matters by Dean Itsuji Saranillio

Videos/Podcasts

Dr. David Uahikeaikaleiʻohu Maile

Dr. David Uahikeaikaleiʻohu Maile is a Kanaka Maoli scholar, activist, and practitioner from Maunawili, Oʻahu. He is an Assistant Professor of Indigenous Politics in the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto, St. George. He’s also an Affiliate Faculty in the Centre for Indigenous Studies and Centre for the Study of the United States. Maile’s research interests include: history, law, and activism on Hawaiian sovereignty; Indigenous critical theory; settler colonialism; political economy; feminist and queer theories; and decolonization. His book manuscript, Nā Makana Ea: Settler Colonial Capitalism and the Gifts of Sovereignty in Hawaiʻi, examines the historical development and contemporary formation of settler colonial capitalism in Hawai‘i and gifts of sovereignty that seek to overturn it by issuing responsibilities for balancing relationships with ‘āina, the land and that who feeds.