Doctoral Dissertation Research: Legal Geographies of U.S. Indigenous Land Use/Property Rights Regimes: The Case of Hawaii and Guam

University Of California-Los Angeles, Los Angeles CA

Investigators

Abstract

With the adoption of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples by the United Nations' General Assembly in 2007, indigenous rights were for the first time spelled out in a comprehensive manner by an international governing body. While the Declaration technically is non-binding, several countries did not sign the declaration, one of which was the United States. The colonial history of the United States remains understudied especially with respect to non-mainland groups and legal geographies of land. In particular, while continental US tribal nations have begun the process of Federal Recognition and of regaining their ancestral lands, this process has only just begun for indigenous Pacific Islanders. As historians assert that the Western cooptation of Pacific Islander ancestral land led to the contemporary marginalized socio-economic status of indigenous groups, they have rallied around 'return' of ancestral land as the key to socio-economic and community rejuvenation. However, native Pacific Islanders cannot be 'returned' to their ancestral lands in the same ways that mainland tribal nations might be. Unlike mainland tribal nations, indigenous Pacific Islanders experienced micro spatial displacement, defined in this project as displacement but on the same land mass or onto nearby land masses. Doctoral student Beth Tamayose, under the supervision of Professor Lois Takahashi, will conduct a study that clarifies the complexities of the legal geographies of land in the Pacific Islands, by exploring the legal land/property rights in two Pacific Island contexts (Hawaii and Guam). The timeframe for analysis centers on the entrance of US interests (1850s for Hawaii, 1940s for Guam) followed by formalized relationships (statehood for Hawaii in 1959, and Guam's annexation as a US territory in 1950). The underlying presumption for this historical and legal geographic analysis is that gender, indigeneity, and class played vital roles in how land was viewed and 'owned' prior to and post-US involvement. Archival documents and interviews comprise the primary data sources. Archival data include mid-1800s property claims and purchase records in Hawaii; maps and property records for Guam during Spanish colonialism, Japanese Occupation, and the establishment of US Military presence during World War II; and interviews with scholars and government officials concerning the roles of indigeneity, gender, and class with respect to land rights, value, and use. Qualitative coding of the text documents and interview transcripts will enable linkage between documents and oral histories. For the archival maps, methods include comparative spatial morphology to track the evolution of 'urban' form, identification of spatial characteristics and typical spatial arrangement(s), and identification and examination of expansion areas. Pacific Islander Federal Recognition would provide a legal distinction by the US federal government to indigenous groups that would allow for, though not always to the same extent across all groups, 'nation-within-a-nation' status, thereby providing monetary assistance and program eligibility to designated groups. Although this study does not make any claims either in support of or against such federal acts, the results will highlight the ways in which land governance intersect with socio-economic and political marginalization.