Transnational Law and Racial Justice Network Speaker Series on Legal Geographies of Occupation and Racial Extraction presents Dr. Uahikea Maile– On Being Late: Cruising Mauna Kea and Unsettling Technoscientific Conquest in Hawaiʻi

Wednesday, February 5, 2025 - 12:00

Transnational Law and Racial Justice Network Speaker Series on Legal Geographies of Occupation and Racial Extraction presents

Dr. Uahikea Maile– On Being Late: Cruising Mauna Kea and Unsettling Technoscientific Conquest in Hawaiʻi   Register Here

Drawing on a decade of research about the Thirty Meter Telescope sited for construction atop Mauna Kea on Hawaiʻi Island, this presentation explores how technoscientific desires for discovery in outer space depend upon the conquest of Indigenous people and their sacred land on Earth. However, Native Hawaiians have successfully prevented the development due to decades of direct action and legal activism. The presentation considers Canadian involvement in the project and ongoing forms of legal noncompliance concerning Indigenous rights in Hawaiʻi.

About Dr. Maile: Dr. Uahikea Maile is a Kanaka Maoli scholar, organizer, and practitioner from Maunawili, Oʻahu. He is Assistant Professor in the Department of Race, Diaspora, and Indigeneity at the University of Chicago. Maile’s research interests include: history, law, and activism on Hawaiian sovereignty; Indigenous critical theory; settler colonialism; political economy; feminist and queer theories; and decolonization. Maile’s current book manuscript, Nā Makana Ea: Settler Colonial Capitalism and the Gifts of Sovereignty in Hawaiʻi, examines the historical development and contemporary formation of settler colonial capitalism in Hawai‘i and gifts of sovereignty that seek to overturn it by issuing responsibilities for balancing relationships with ‘āina, the land and that who feeds.

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