teaching

An Indigenous People’s History of Hawaiʻi
What you know about Hawai‘i is most likely untrue. An archipelago in Oceania, Hawai‘i has been locally constructed and globally consumed as a tropical paradise for pleasure and play, attracting tourists, settlers, corporations, and military forces to the islands. It is a fantasy paradise produced through the dispossession, elimination, appropriation, and exploitation of Indigenous people, institutions, worldviews, and practices. This course tells a truer story about Hawai‘i. Because ideas and narratives crafted about the history, politics, economics, law, ecology, and society of Hawai‘i are dominated and often distorted by non-Indigenous writers, we turn to Kanaka Maoli scholars to learn from their subjugated knowledge. The course examines interdisciplinary research, from the 19th century to the present, and excavates the truths advanced through it: the development of the Hawaiian Kingdom and its government, political order, economy, and society; the illegal US overthrow of the Hawaiian government and subsequent occupation and annexation of its territory; legal constructions of race and gendered techniques of sexualization in the territorial period; the creation of the State of Hawaiʻi in relation to World War II and the Cold War; the birth and evolution of the modern Hawaiian sovereignty movement; Kanaka Maoli struggles with federal recognition, militourism, and technoscientific development; and contemporary convergences in the diaspora and in solidarity.

Indigenous Thought on Decolonization
What does decolonization mean for Indigenous Peoples? The “post” in post-colonial carries a unique meaning for Indigenous communities and nations since, broadly speaking, the after of colonialism has not yet arrived. Indigenous Peoples subject to settler colonization have endured invasion as an ongoing structure, not a past event. Yet, this importantly situates scholars in Indigenous studies with an acute expertise on formations of colonialism and therein ideas about decolonization. While postcolonial studies is a vital domain of research and writing to understand the praxis of decolonization, revolution, and freedom globally, it can tend to overlook and devalue the political situation and material circumstances of Indigenous communities, at best, and reproduce the subjugation of Indigenous Peoples and indeed colonization of territory, resources, and bodies, at worst. As the third course in the Colonizations sequence, this seminar takes seriously Indigenous thought, politics, and praxis concerning decolonization, as well its limitations and possibilities otherwise. We look principally to the rich work of Indigenous thinkers, cultural producers, and activists to consider pressing questions relevant for our current moment about not just decolonization but also deoccupation, nationalism and internationalism, self-determination, abolition, solidarity, relationality, and collective liberation.

Land and Indigenous Politics
This course examines Indigenous politics through land. Specifically, the course explores transnational Indigenous politics by focusing on material struggles over land. The course further considers how global Indigenous land struggles are constituted through and cultivate relationships between Indigenous peoples, environmental elements, and more-than-human subjects. As a seminar, we discuss Indigenous politics through geontologies of land, water, and air. Our content is oriented around material struggles over and relationalities with a sacred mountain, lakes and rivers, shoals, the atmosphere, and more. In this course, we track fresh, groundbreaking scholarship in Indigenous Studies that intersects with other fields like Latin American Studies, Pacific Island Studies, and Black Studies.

Indigenous Feminist and Queer Theories
This course explores Indigenous feminist and queer theories, tracing theories about race, class, gender, sexuality, and Indigeneity as identity formations and categories of power in relation to imperialism and settler colonialism. Looking at political theory in the field of Indigenous, gender, and feminist studies, the course tracks two important genealogies. First, we examine how Indigenous feminisms expand the discipline of Indigenous Studies and intervene into feminist thought. Second, we investigate how queer Indigenous studies extend Indigenous feminist ideals and contribute to queer theory. Along the way, the course mines a myriad of Indigenous feminist and queer theories on affect, decolonization, demilitarization, erotics, utopia, and much more.

Settler Colonialism and Enduring Indigeneity:
This First-Year Foundations Seminar explores the politics of representation in Indigenous multimedia. We examine Indigenous cultural productions of memoir, documentary, graphic novel, film, poetry, music, and video games to discuss representations of settler colonialism and Indigeneity. Through multiple forms of media, students investigate how Indigenous people endure colonialism. While Indigenous peoples have endured settler colonization, Indigeneity endures despite it. As a system of power structured upon dispossession, elimination, and genocide, settler colonialism nonetheless is a failing project. Indigenous multimedia illustrates this failure by signifying the survival and endurance of Indigenous peoples, political thought, legal orders, and social ecologies. In addition to reading, watching, listening, playing, and creating multimedia content, students engage with new research by Indigenous scholars on the politics of knowledge production in textual, visual, sonic, and virtual representation.

Truth, Reconciliation, and Settler Colonialism
This course examines settler colonialism in reconciliation policies and their regimes of truth. We discuss realities, theories, and critiques of settler colonialism through the truth and reconciliation commission. The course focuses on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada and also looks at truth commissions and reconciliation policies in the Africa, America, and Oceania. The course is thus organized into three parts: (1) Canadian Truth and Reconciliation; (2) International Case Studies; (3) Reconciliation’s Afterlife in Canada. A comparative political study that is transnational and intersectional, we address the following questions: What is truth and reconciliation?; How do truth commissions, and the discourses and ideologies of reconciliation generated through them, produce (in)justice?; What do the political imperatives and operations of these commissions teach us about settler colonialism?; Why do Indigenous peoples refuse ‘reconciliation’ and how does the refusal reveal limits in colonial power? To answer these questions, we explore commission and inquiry reports, laws and court cases, policy briefs, and an array of interdisciplinary scholarship.