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The relationship between the discipline of political science and the territory of Hawai'i began inauspiciously. Shortly after the provisional government came to power (after the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy), its leader, Sanford Dole, seeking advice on the establishment of a "republican government," wrote to Professor John W. Burgess of Colombia University, an acknowledged founder of American political science. Although Dole's initial remarks were somewhat elliptical, Burgess got the general drift: "I understand your problem to be the construction of a constitution which will place the government in the hands of the Teutons [read whites], and preserve it there, at least for the present." Being wholly sympathetic to Dole et al's project, Burgess proceeded to make specific recommendations--a two-house legislature, voting requirements that would exclude much of the local populations, and only Teutons (in military office).

 

The Dole-Burgess exchange (in 1894) was a prelude to the subsequent role of political science (and social sciences in general) in the exclusion--and ultimately the erasure--of an indigenous political presence, not only in the U.S. but throughout the world. As political science emerged from its initial focus on constitutions, it aided and abetted state nation-building projects, providing conceptual orientation and "methods" of analysis that would locate indigenous peoples in frames of meaning that deprive them of collective political eligibility. For example, as American anthropology "became" in the words of John Borneman, "more intensively involved in imperial policies," it participated in turning the Euro-American relationship with Native Americans from foreign to domestic policy. And, similarly, American political science developed area studies and "modernization theory," both of which diminished the significance of non-state peoples, refusing them autonomous territorial identities and quarantining them within a pre-modern, politically ineligible status.

 

However, despite the lack of affirmation of indigenous political integrity in dominant political discourses and in the mainstream knowledge practices of academic disciplines, the centers of power as well as the academy have been unable to ignore a growing tempo of indigenous politics activity in local and global venues. Near the end of the twentieth century, representatives from all over the "fourth world"--120 "nations" without states--met in Quito to declare that "[We] have never abandoned our constant struggle against the condition of oppression, discrimination and exploitation which were imposed on us as a result of the European invasion of our ancestral territories." As the new millennium commences, we are witnessing increasing indigenous political initiatives, for example a Mayan Renaissance in Guatemala and a Hawaiian Renaissance in the state of Hawai'i, which are two examples among many.

 

Seeking to expand the language of politics beyond the disclosure of state citizenship and to provide a political pedagogy that serves a broader range of students and constituencies, the Department of Political Science has instituted a new Master's Degree option in Indigenous Politics. The Indigenous Politics MA option will facilitate inquiry in a variety of indigenous political issues--including (but not restricted to), the history of interaction between states and indigenous nations, impact of state-oriented nation building projects on indigenous peoples, and the indigenous responses: political movements, alternative epistemologies, counter-political narratives, and politically oriented artistic performances.

 

 

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