UCLA Center for the Study of Women

In the "Politics of Indigeneity" (2005), Maaka and Fieras affirm that, to account for differently understood indigenous rights in various indigenous nations and communities, it is important to theorize indigeneity not necessarily as a form of claiming independence or succession but as “a political ideology and social movement by which a politicized awareness of original occupancy provides a principled basis for making claims against the state” (53). It is through this framework that Okinawan indigeneity is articulated to mobilize anti- militarist movements in order to address Japanese colonialism and U.S. militarism, not as a way of claiming independence from Japan, but as a political discourse that helps to transform U.S. militarism neo-colonialist forces in Okinawa.