(Re)imagining Asian / Indigenous Relationalities (2022-2023)

The Asian Settler Colonialism Caucus will be hosting an online speaker series for the academic year of 2022-2023 to feature emerging conversations at the intersections of Asian American and Indigenous Studies. The speaker series will bring together scholars, activists, and community members across Turtle Island, the Caribbean and the Pacific to reflect on Asian/Black/Indigenous relationalities. It will also offer online workshops with speakers to collaborate with undergraduate and graduate students. The purpose of the workshop is to bridge community and to think more capaciously about the multiple place-based genealogies and sites of resistance in which conversations on Asian Settler Colonialism are unfolding. The board members of the Asian Settler Colonialism caucus are also proposing to transform the various presentations into an edited anthology.

Upcoming Events

Insurgent Diasporic / Indigenous / Afro-Asian Ecologies | March 10, 2023

This panel explores intersections between (anti/de)colonial ecologies across the Caribbean, Oceania (Hawaiʻi), and the Philippines. Unsettling discourses that de-historicize the relationship between colonialism and our contemporary climate crises, we highlight insurgent diasporic, Indigenous, and (Afro) Asian negotiations with ecologies of extraction and racial capitalism. In doing so, we aim to respond to climate justice scholarsʻ calls to attend to the interlapping relationship between the making of colonial earth (Yusoff) and uneven experiences of climate injustice. We ask: How might bringing Caribbean, Pacific, and Asian geographies expand conversations on colonial ecologies? How might our understanding of Black, Indigenous , Diasporic and Asian ecologies expand in thinking archipelagically about various sites of U.S. empire? What kinds of futurities might we glean from engaging diasporic / Indigenous / Asian / Black epistemologies and everyday acts of refusal? Click here to register for the event.

Past Events

Oceanic Filipinx Studies in Occupied Hawai’i | March 3

This panel features contributors from the recently published “Oceanic Filipinx Studies” special issue (ALON: Journal for Filipinx American and Diasporic Studies, 2023). It highlights emerging debates in the field of Filipinx Studies highlighting the potentiality and limitations of what has been described as an “oceanic turn” in the field. Through featuring various contributors who wrote articles on Ilokano resurgence, Filipinx movements for demilitarization, Filipinx foodways, and Filipinx settler colonial critique, this panel invites panelists and community members to share how they envision Filipinx Studies pivoting towards oceanic methodologies. In doing so, we navigate the complexities of engaging oceanic methodologies and metaphors in the context of Filipinx diaspora in occupied Hawaiʻi. Co-sponsored by the Asian Indigenous Relationalities Speaker Series (AAAS), Department of American Studies (UH Mānoa), Department of Ethnic Studies (UH Mānoa), and Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (UH Mānoa), Center for Philippine Studies (UH Mānoa). Click here to register for the event.

Asian-Indigenous Refugee Relationalities | February 15, 2023

As the second event in the speaker series, this panel focuses on Asian and Pacific Islander refugees of different positions and how they navigate U.S. militarization and the global impacts of settler colonialism. Co-sponsored by UCLA’s Asian American Studies Center, the panel will feature Evyn Lê Espiritu Gandhi (UCLA), Olivia Quintanilla (Miracosta College), and Aree Worawongwasu (UH Manoa) and be moderated by Josephine Faith Ong (UCLA). Click here to learn more and register for the event.

Asian-Indigenous Refugee Relationalities | November 4, 2022

As the second event in the speaker series, this panel focuses on Asian and Pacific Islander refugees and how they navigate U.S. militarization and the global impacts of settler colonialism. Featuring Evyn Le Espiritu Gandhi (UCLA), Olivia Quintanilla (Miracosta College), and Aree Worawongwasu (UH Manoa), the panel hopes to further conversation between Indigenous refugee and Asian refugee communities that may have been similarly impacted by the U.S. empire. The panel will feature brief presentations from each panelist, followed by an audience Q&A. Click here to learn more and register for the event.

Queering Asian Settler Colonialism | October 6, 2022

In recent years, the literature on Asian Settler Colonialism has initiated important conversations on the intersections between Asian American and Indigenous Studies. These publications have remapped how diasporic Asian critiques might reimagine a more defiant anti-colonial and decolonial project in conversation with movements for abolition and Indigenous sovereignty (Trask; Fujiakne; Lawrence and Dua; Phung; Saranillio; Farrales; Jafri). This panel will trace various geneaologies of Asian settler activism in Oceania and Turtle Island and will further consider how queer politics might expand our current conversations in the field. Click here to learn more and register for the event.