Settler Colonial Resignification and Indigenous Resurgence: cultural sovereignty in Hawai‘i

• In Event: 1170 - Feeling Settler Colonialism: Indigenous and Non-indigenous Perspectives

Abstract

It is commonly understood that colonial powers attempt to solidify their sovereignty by erasing and then rewriting the history of the colonized. Meaning making plays a large role in legitimating colonial rule by distorting Indigenous identity, symbols, language, and cultural practices. Less scholarly attention has been given to the ways that Indigenous peoples continue to exist, organize, and participate in collective action to perpetuate their own meaning systems. This paper intends to link various strands of settler colonial studies and sociological theory by addressing the epistemological and ontological violence of settler colonialism as well as the counter efforts of Indigenous resurgence. The case of the Polynesian Voyaging Society, alongside other Hawaiian social movements, challenges reigning theories in political sociology by blurring the boundaries between social movements, revolutionary action, and nation building. This case includes agentic efforts that respond to cultural opportunities rather than structural or more explicitly political opportunities. I argue that both colonial hegemony and Indigenous resurgence involve processes of resignification. Colonial resignification adds and connects layers of meaning while simultaneously debasing and disrupting Indigenous meaning systems. In decolonial resignfication, political and cultural processes reassert sovereignty by reconnecting relationships including kinship ties, national ties, and relationships to land and sea. While Indigenous collective action is not solely a response to empire, decolonial social movements regain control over meaning making through creatively subversive strategies that reach back into the colonial and precolonial past while envisioning decolonial futures.

Author

• Heidi Christine Nicholls, University of Virginia