Relational Governance via Strategic Non-Incorporation: Vā and the U.S. Imperialism in American Sāmoa

• In Event: The Future of Indigenous Sociology

Abstract

The U.S. Territories—American Sāmoa, Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, Guahan, Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands—demonstrate that U.S. settler-imperialism is sustained through differentiated political incorporation and calibrated jurisdiction (Jung and Kwon 2013; Young 2001; Lutz 2009). As part of a larger project that explores identity, belonging, and political possibilities across three U.S. Territories, this paper draws on ethnographic fieldwork in American Sāmoa and interviews with diasporic Sāmoans. I find that U.S. territorial status operates as a form of relational governance that structures land, mobility, and recognition across island and diaspora. Centering vā as Indigenous relational theory (Lister 2025), I demonstrate that modern settler-imperialism in the present is structured through the management of relational space, even as Sāmoan communal land tenure and diasporic obligations sustain Indigenous authority within and across imperial formations.

Author

• Sione Lynn Pili Lister, Arizona State University-Tempe