about me

Dr. Uahikea Maile is a Kanaka Maoli scholar, organizer, and practitioner from Maunawili, Oʻahu. He is assistant professor in the Department of Race, Diaspora, and Indigeneity at the University of Chicago.

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. Their work is published in American Quarterly, American Indian Culture and Research Journal, Native American and Indigenous Studies Journal, Hūlili: Multidisciplinary Research on Hawaiian Well-Being, and Cultural Studies <-> Critical Methodologies. His work also appears in Biopolitics, Geopolitics, Life: Settler States and Indigenous Presences (Duke University Press, 2023), Detours: A Decolonial Guide to Hawaiʻi (Duke University Press, 2019), and Standing With Standing Rock: Voices From the #NoDAPL Movement (University of Minnesota Press, 2019).

Maile’s current 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.

Their statements appear in The Guardian, CBC, CNN, NBC, Democracy Now!, Toronto Star, The Breach, Canada’s National Observer, and Yahoo! News.

Before Chicago, Maile was assistant professor of Indigenous Politics in the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto, St. George. While there, he was the founding director of Ziibiing Lab and received the Terry Buckland Award for Diversity and Inclusion in Education (2024), Milner Memorial Award (2023), and Early Career Teaching Award (2023). Maile earned their Ph.D. in American Studies in 2019 from the University of New Mexico, and continues serving as vice president of Red Media.