Indigenous Peoples of the Pacific SIG Business Meeting. Research, Democracy, and Contested Spaces: Getting Down to Business

Session Type: Business Meeting

Abstract

Colonialism serves a significant role in creating and sustaining modern democracies. The democracy/colonial relationship underscores how democracy’s universalist and inclusionary claims are always bound up in colonial exclusionary practices that are implemented through the deployment of violence. The achievement of sociopolitical/geopolitical goals by democracies through colonial muscle is evidenced by the violent exclusion of indigenous peoples from our traditional lands and resources through confiscation, as well as from our traditional knowledge and practices as a result of our assimilation into the broader culture of the democratic state. What role has public education played in stripping away the fundamental markers of indigenous identity—sovereignty, ancestral lands, language, and cultural knowledge? And what impact has this stripping had on the indigenous psyche?

Sub Unit

• SIG-Indigenous Peoples of the Pacific

Chair

• Tanya Wendt Samu, University of Auckland

Participants

• Kahele Dukelow, University of Hawai‘i Maui College

• S Kaleikoa Kaeo, University of Hawai‘i Maui College

• Katrina-Ann R. Kapā‘anaokalāokeola Oliveira, University of Hawaii - Manoa

• Leonie Pihama, The University of Waikato

• Graham H. Smith, Te Whare Wānanga o Awanuiārangi

• Linda T. Smith, The University of Waikato

• Kerry Laiana Wong, University of Hawaii - Manoa

• Erin Kahunawaika'ala Wright, University of Hawaii