Professor Uahikea Maile is a Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) scholar, organizer, and practitioner from Maunawili, Oʻahu. An Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at St. George, he is also an affiliate faculty member in the Centres for Indigenous Studies and the Study of the United States. Professor Maile is finishing a book on the development of settler colonial capitalism in Hawaiʻi, and how Kanaka Maoli (the Indigenous people of Hawaiʻi) issue gifts of sovereignty to overturn it by balancing relations between kanaka and ʻāina, people and the land who feeds. They are the inaugural Director of the recently established Ziibiing Lab, a research collaboratory focusing on Indigenous politics in a unique global, international, and transnational perspective.

Like their research, Professor Maile’s teaching is interdisciplinary with experience across myriad disciplines, departments, and fields. He has been a teacher for 13 years in postsecondary institutions across North America. Joining the University of Toronto in 2019, Professor Maile is revolutionizing Indigenous Politics in the Department of Political Science. Integrating place-based and global education for transformation, he offers an abundance of courses: Settler Colonialism and Enduring Indigeneity; Indigenous Politics of Hawaiʻi; Indigenous Feminist and Queer Theories; Land and Indigenous Politics. Professor Maile strives to educate students, in and beyond the classroom, to be pragmatic critical thinkers about the problems of here and now for a better then and there. In Ziibiing Lab, they are cultivating an alternative learning community for faculty, students, and community members, notably through educational programming like a Lunch and Learn series featuring postdoctoral fellow researchers and graduate students. Professor Maile dedicates this award to his first ever teacher and mother—Patricia Dunkin-Maile—who led the way.