ABOUT OUR SPEAKERS/MODERATOR:
Anne Spice is a Tlingit member of Kwanlin Dun First Nation. She grew up on Treaty 7 territory in so-called Alberta, Canada. She works with Indigenous peoples resisting resource extraction, and her political and academic interests intersect on the frontlines of Indigenous territory defense movements. She is especially attentive to the spaces opened by and for queer, trans, non-binary, and two-spirit people as a part of their work for decolonization. She teaches and studies in Lenapehoking (NYC) as a doctoral candidate in Anthropology at the CUNY Graduate Center.
Jaskiran Dhillon is a first generation anti-colonial scholar and organizer who grew up on Treaty Six Cree Territory in Saskatchewan, Canada. Her work spans the fields of settler colonialism, anthropology of the state, environmental justice, anti-racist feminism, colonial violence, political ecology, and youth studies. She is the author of Prairie Rising: Indigenous Youth, Decolonization, and the Politics of Intervention (2017) and co-editor of Standing With Standing Rock: Voices from the #NoDAPL Movement (2019). She is associate professor of global studies and anthropology at The New School in New York City.
Noelani Goodyear–Ka‘ōpua is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. Her research focuses on Indigenous and Native Hawaiian politics, with an emphasis on education, social movements, Indigenous resurgence and Indigenous futures. In addition to her publications and research, Noe is an award-winning teacher at UH Mānoa and a dedicated volunteer in the Hawaiian community. She serves on the boards of Hawaiian community organizations doing land- and ocean-based cultural resurgence work, as well as on the executive council of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association. Noe was born and raised on Oʻahu, and her genealogy also connects her to other islands within the Hawaiian archipelago, as well as to Southern China and the British Midlands. She is a graduate of the Kamehameha Schools. Noe earned her BA in Hawaiian Studies and Political Science from the University of Hawaiʻi, and she earned her PhD in History of Consciousness from the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Her writing is one aspect of a lifetime commitment to aloha ʻāina.
Dr. David Uahikeaikaleiʻohu Maile is a Kanaka Maoli scholar, activist, and practitioner from Maunawili, Oʻahu. He is an Assistant Professor of Indigenous Politics in the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto, St. George. He’s also an Affiliate Faculty in the Centre for Indigenous Studies and Centre for the Study of the United States. 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. His book manuscript, Nā Makana Ea: Settler Colonial Capitalism and the Gifts of Hawaiian Sovereignty, 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 which feeds.
From Kula, Maui, Brandy Nālani McDougall, is of Kanaka ʻŌiwi (Hawaiʻi, Maui, and Kauaʻi lineages), Chinese and Scottish descent. She is the author of a poetry collection, The Salt-Wind, Ka Makani Paʻakai (Kuleana ʻŌiwi Press 2008) and the co-editor of Huihui: Navigating Art and Literature in the Pacific, an anthology focused on Pacific aesthetics and rhetorics (University of Hawaiʻi Press 2014). A former Mellon and Ford postdoctoral fellow, her monograph Finding Meaning: Kaona and Contemporary Hawaiian Literature (University of Arizona Press 2016) was awarded the 2017 Beatrice Medicine Award for Scholarship in American Indian Studies and a Ka Palapala Poʻokela Honorable Mention. Aside from her scholarship and poetry, McDougall is the co-founder of Ala Press, an independent press dedicated to publishing creative works by Indigenous Pacific Islanders. In addition, she currently serves on the American Quarterly board of managing editors as well as the board of the Pacific Writers’ Connection.
McDougall is an Associate Professor specializing in Indigenous Studies in the American Studies Department. Courses she teaches in American Studies include AMST 220: Introduction to Indigenous Studies; AMST 405: Indigenous Literature and Film; and AMST 620: Indigenous Identity. She received a College of Arts and Humanities Excellence in Teaching Award in 2017. She is on sabbatical leave for the 2017-18 academic year. Her current research focuses on the rhetorics and aesthetics of Indigenous women’s activist fashion within land/water protection movements.