Aloha & Welcome

The University of Hawai‘i Indigenous Politics (UHIP) Program is a specialization option for students accepted into the MA or Ph.D. programs in the Department of Political Science at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.

Indigenous Politics offers students a unique opportunity to study indigenous cultures, histories, and politics informed by the cultural and geographical specificity to Hawaiʻi nei.

The study of Indigenous Politics in Hawai‘i must start with and be rooted in Kanaka ‘Ōiwi Hawai‘i, the indigenous people of our islands. This means that we are also Pacific-centered because of our familial, genealogical, linguistic, and historical relations to the other Indigenous Peoples of Oceania.

Our program considers indigeneity a political category that recognizes both the connection of autochthonous peoples to their lands and the international alliances and interconnections amongst peoples who identify as indigenous.