Research
The Politics of Indigenous Anticolonial Nationalisms
Indigenous sovereignty movements are alive and well today. While they are internally heterogeneous, they largely converge on the overarching goal of increasing Indigenous administrative and political autonomy over Indigenous lands and waters. Currently, this research focuses particularly on my own Indigenous nation of Låguas yan Gåni, which spans the entirety of the Mariånas archipelago in the Western Pacific Ocean, and which is administratively organized into two U.S. territories—Guåhan (where I’m from), and the Northern Mariana Islands. Deploying participatory action research methodologies and large-N surveys, I am currently analyzing the 2021 Guåhan Survey, the largest contemporary survey of Chamoru political attitudes towards decolonization in Guåhan. In this capacity, I work closely with Chamoru activists and local community-based organizations back home at every step of the research process, while translating research findings into actionable tools to strengthen Chamoru sovereignty movements. Through this work, I hope to help realize a world where Indigenous peoples are once more able to steward relations with our human and other-than-human kin in accordance with our distinct Indigenous cultural and political traditions.
Indigenous Social Movements
Political sociology offers instructive conceptual tools to analyze how social movements are formed, how they respond to shifting contextual dynamics, and the conditions under which they succeed (or fail) at accomplishing their designated political goals. However, the field falls short in attending to Indigenous social movements: it frequently treats Indigeneity as a racial rather than a political category, reifies the nation-state’s formal political apparatus as the sole target of Indigenous mobilizations, and effaces how Indigenous peoples also belong to Indigenous nations—which maintain their own distinct apparatuses of political governance, and which are forcibly incorporated into contemporary nation-states. Drawing on 4+ years of participant-observation and hundreds of interviews with Pacific Islander leaders and elders, this ongoing project analyzes the distinctive dimensions of Indigenous social movements from the vantage point of Pacific Islanders in the continental United States. Through this work, I hope to deepen how we understand contemporary dynamics of Indigenous dispossession, and to strengthen contemporary Indigenous movements for self-determination and sovereignty.
Indigenous Political Thought of Oceania
Oceania is a region distinguished perhaps foremost by its intertwined contemporary navigation of both postcolonial transition and Indigenous dispossession, which situates it at the critical intersection of Third World and Fourth World struggles. Frequently in collaboration with political theorist Josh Campbell, I analyze the contemporary Indigenous political thought of Oceania (1970s—present) as a lens to engage methodological and substantive questions at the heart of Indigenous politics. Previous and ongoing research focuses on topics ranging from Epeli Hau’ofa’s articulation of mobile Indigeneity to Chamoru modes of global Indigenous solidarities. Through this work, I hope to celebrate the underappreciated insights of Indigenous thinkers, expand the critical vernaculars through which we analyze Indigenous anticolonial politics, and to construct actionable pathways forward for Indigenous sovereignty movements.
Indigenous Methodologies
Since Māori scholar and whaea (teacher) Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s 1999 monograph Decolonizing Methodologies, Indigenous methodologies have become a veritable subfield within Indigenous studies, and are slowly gaining traction across the humanities and (secondarily) social sciences. Defined foremost by the primacy of “relationality,” such methodologies often demand researcher accountability to Indigenous struggles against ongoing colonialism, and emphasize the honoring of Indigenous cultural and political traditions in any community engagement process. Building on my decade-plus experiences doing participatory action research with community organizations and Indigenous peoples, I am interested in how the field of Indigenous methodologies can help strengthen methodological tools for engaging in community-engaged, comparative, and/or global social science research.