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?
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.
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