| When: | Thursday, May 29th, 2025 |
| Time: | 1:30 pm — 2:30 pm |
| Location: | Herzberg Laboratories, 5345 |
| Audience: | Anyone |
| Contact: | Rima Mattar, rima.mattar@carleton.ca |
Join Carleton Science and Uahikea Maile—Assistant Professor in the Department of Race, Diaspora, and Indigeneity at the University of Chicago for On Being Late: Cruising Mauna Kea and Unsettling Technoscientific Conquest in Hawaiʻi.
Drawing on a decade of research about the Thirty Meter Telescope sited for construction atop Mauna Kea on Hawaiʻi Island, this presentation will explore how technoscientific desires for discovery in outer space depend upon the conquest of Indigenous people and their sacred land and unceded territory 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 overseas in Hawaiʻi.
This presentation is part of the ACE EDI Event Series which aims to increase Awareness, Collaboration and Engagement (ACE), and advance Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) efforts in the Faculty of Science.
About the speaker:
Dr. Uahikea Maile is a Kanaka Maoli scholar, organizer, and practitioner from Maunawili, Oʻahu. He is an 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. Their work is published in American Quarterly, American Indian Culture and Research Journal, Native American and Indigenous Studies Journal, Hūlili: Multidisciplinary Research on Hawaiian Well-Being, and Cultural Studies <-> Critical Methodologies. His work also appears in Biopolitics, Geopolitics, Life: Settler States and Indigenous Presences (Duke University Press, 2023), Detours: A Decolonial Guide to Hawaiʻi (Duke University Press, 2019), and Standing With Standing Rock: Voices From the #NoDAPL Movement (University of Minnesota Press, 2019).
Maile’s current book manuscript, Gifts of Sovereignty: Capitalism, Settler Colonialism, and Indigenous Politics 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. Their statements appear in The Guardian, CBC, CNN, NBC, Democracy Now!, Toronto Star, The Breach, Canada’s National Observer, Yahoo! News, and Honolulu Star-Advertiser. Before Chicago, Maile was assistant professor of Indigenous Politics in the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto, St. George. While there, he was the founding director of Ziibiing Lab and received the Terry Buckland Award for Diversity and Inclusion in Education (2024), Milner Memorial Award (2023), and Early Career Teaching Award (2023).Maile earned their Ph.D. in American Studies in 2019 from the University of New Mexico, and continues serving as vice president of Red Media.