UC Riverside

This dissertation examines diasporic Native Hawaiians who embody their Indigeneity through a praxis of kuleana—responsibilities/privileges. Maintaining reciprocal relationships with land and people are essential qualities of being Indigenous. I argue that treaty-making between Native nations is one method whereby Native Hawaiians living in the diaspora can embody their understandings of ‘āina—land and engaged in a praxis of kuleana by acknowledging the genealogical caretakers of the places where they now reside. I highlight the Treaty of Friendship and Mutual Recognition between Ka Lāhui Hawai‘i and the Juaneño Band of Mission Indians, Acjachemen Nation, ratified in 1992. Tracing the history of treaty-making by Native nations, I demonstrate that treaty-making among Native nations is neither a colonial by-product nor a historical anomaly. Rather, treaty-making represents a unique form of Indigenous statecraft: one that recognizes Native nationhood and self-determination and one that refuses the authority and interference of a settler colonial government.

Diasporic Native Hawaiians living in California, engaging in social-political forms of recognition, such as treaty-making, that acknowledge other Indigenous people and the traditional tribal territories on which they reside can also be understood as a praxis of kuleana. I articulate kuleana as praxis through ethnographic interviews with Hawaiians living inside and outside of the homeland. Around fifty percent of Native Hawaiians now live outside of their homeland. Displacement is a specific modality of settler colonialism and California is residence to the largest populations of Hawaiians who have become displaced from their homeland. Additionally, I interview Native Hawaiians and Acjachemen to understand the contemporary significance of the Treaty of Friendship and Mutual Recognition. Alongside my interviewees, I argue that this treaty is a direct expression of sovereignty beyond the American nation-state. While both groups remain federally unrecognized, they engage in treaty-making to recognize each other as Indigenous self-determining nations, thereby subverting dominant state institutions. My research reveals that trans-Indigenous collaborations, such as the one central to this study, are invaluable in combatting settler colonial institutions that continue to displace both California Indians and Native Hawaiians from their own lands and resources actively regenerating social and political futures for their communities.