DLC Funded Research

Research Project

This project expands a DLC-supported research trip from two years ago, when I travelled to Hokkaido, Japan to interview the surviving Indigenous Ainu elders who travelled to China in the 1970s. This trip is part of my larger project called “Transpacific Indigenous Articulations” where I explore Indigenous-led efforts of transnational diplomacy, especially during the Cold War from 1968 to 1988. This project contributes to scholarship on the rise of global Indigenous rights and identity in two ways. First, most studies are focused on the Americas and Europe, as a Transatlantic engagement. Second, in turn, most of these studies look at the rise of an Indigenous presence in international institutions such as the United Nations. My project, on the other hand, reveals what was happening in the Transpacific. It takes a more grassroots approach, looking at a number of Indigenous-led trips, workshops and gatherings. I suggest that these were critical experiences in creating forms of global solidarity and exchange that turned “Indigenous peoples” from an idea into a political force and identity.

This work is important in two main ways. First, it contributes to growing scholarship on international Indigenous diplomacy. This project regards Indigenous peoples as active agents, explorers and diplomats, rather than the vast majority of accounts where they are framed as more passive victims of colonialism. These new narratives are important to help shift academic conversations as well as public conversations, to highlight Indigenous initiative and agency. Second, this is important to help shift the academic focus away from the Transatlantic that has tended to focus on Europe and institutional sites, such as the United Nations. My project, in contrast, explores the Transpacific and a diverse number of grassroots efforts. Groups across the ocean learned about each others’ situations and worked together to challenge the specific legacies of colonialism that each faced in Japan, Canada and New Zealand. Presently, there are almost no accounts of these travels in the scholarly literature, and I aim to make these histories widely available in publications and a public-facing website that documents these trips and their ongoing legacies.