UC San Diego

“Tiny Rebellions:” Epistemology, Settler Colonialism, and (Queer) Indigenous Decolonization in Hawaiʻi is both a critique settler colonial knowledge production, ranging from Eurocentric Hawaiian history textbooks to the University of Hawaiʻi’s role in the construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope, and a case study of queer Indigenous resistance to colonialism, turning to case studies that range from ʻzines to theater performances. Bridging Critical Hawaiian Studies, queer Indigenous Studies, and Critical Ethnic Studies, “Tiny Rebellions” moves through these case studies to elucidate how, as Avery F. Gordon (1997) and Maile Arvin (2019) compel us, we might understand the world we live now in order to imagine living elsewhere. As a study of institutions, epistemology, and Kānaka Maoli movements for life, land, and sovereignty (Goodyear-Kaʻōpua et al., 2014), “Tiny Rebellions” examines how Kānaka Maoli resist normative settler structures that seek to produce subjectivity and citizenship and foreclose the possibility of ea, the holistic project of sovereignty that exceeds governmentality and the state. Through looking at queer Indigenous and māhū leadership in Hawaiʻi, this dissertation illustrates how these “tiny rebellions” against normativity create and catalyze moves towards decolonization. Ultimately, through this analysis, “Tiny Rebellions”’s goal is to center queer Indigenous knowledge production and world making in the face of settler colonial violence to demonstrate that envisioning ways of relating beyond the here-and-now towards a then-and-there (Muñoz, 2009) might push us towards decolonized horizons.