As an Indigenous Chamoru researcher of Indigenous politics, I engage with theories and methodologies in Indigenous and Pacific Studies, sociology, and political science to improve our understanding of what is distinctive about Indigenous mobilizations against and around contemporary formations of empire and settler-colonialism. Motivated by an underlying interest in the political sociology of Indigenous social movements, my research is broadly sorted into three interrelated streams:

(1) Chamoru politics of decolonization in Guåhan: drawing on original survey data from a decolonial participatory action research project in my homeland of Guåhan (guamstudy.org), I analyze Chamoru political attitudes towards the multifaceted dimensions of US empire, including US military occupation, notions of citizenship and belonging, and economic and national security anxieties. Publications to date have focused on bridging Indigenous methodologies and social-scientific methods. Manuscripts in preparation center on Chamoru women’s political attitudes towards decolonization, on the role of economic and security uncertainties in perpetuating Guåhan’s colonial status quo, and on Indigenous multilevel governance.

(2) Pacific Islander social movements in the continental United States: drawing on interviews and participant-observation from an ongoing, multiyear decolonial participatory action research project with the Oregon Pacific Islander Coalition (OPIC), where I serve as Research Lead, I illuminate how Pacific Islander social movements challenge and expand our understanding of key social movement processes, including brokerage, resource mobilization, rhetorical framing, and boundary work. A manuscript in preparation centers on the challenges and opportunities of enacting Indigenous data sovereignty within Pacific Islander community organizations in Turtle Island.

(3) Indigenous Oceanic political thought: largely in collaboration with political theorist Josh Campbell (UCLA), I employ discursive and historical methods to study Indigenous Pacific Islander thinkers, with a particular emphasis on the complex politics of Indigenous nationalisms, Oceanic regionalisms, and trans-Indigenous kinships. Manuscripts in preparation center on the Chamoru notion of gai’ase’ as trans-Indigenous analytic; Teresia Teaiwa’s dialogical method as an alternative to the dominant strains of dialogic comparative political theory; on how Oceanic notions of mobile lands challenge dominant models of state territoriality; and on the early reception history of Tongan-Fijian visionary Epeli Hau’ofa’s classic essay, “Our Sea of Islands.”

I am a member of the Scholars Strategy Network, and affiliated with the MIT Data + Feminism Lab and Macquarie University's Centre for Global Indigenous Futures. My research has received awards from the Labor Research and Action Network and Western Political Science Association, and has been supported by the US Fulbright Program, the BAMIT Community Advancement Program, the MIT Priscilla King Gray Public Service Center, the MIT Center for International Studies and the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning. For my teaching, I was awarded an MIT Graduate Student Council Teaching Award in 2021, presented annually to an instructor per school for “excellence in teaching a graduate-level course."

Currently, I am an Assistant Professor of Indigenous Studies at the University at Buffalo. Before coming to Seneca territories, I was a Killam Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of British Columbia’s Department of Political Science. I hold a PhD in Urban Planning and Politics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, an interdisciplinary MA in Social Sciences from the University of Chicago, and a BA in Philosophy and the Study of Religion from UCLA.

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At core, I’m an organizer first. I love connecting with others, learning from their wisdom, and co-conspiring to tackle pertinent and persistent social problems impacting marginalized peoples.