Alika Bourgette (He/Him)

Doctoral Candidate
Photo of Alika Bourgette in a red shirt standing under a cherry tree with blossoms.

Contact Information

abourget@uw.edu

Fields of Interest

American Indian/Native American Environment Hawaiian Studies Indigenous Labor Queer Studies

Biography

M.A., History, California Polytechnic State University, 2017
B.S., Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of California, Davis, 2012

Alika Bourgette (Kanaka Maoli) is a PhD Candidate in the University of Washington Department of History. His dissertation historicizes the long struggle for land and water justice in the ways Native Hawaiians in the early twentieth century resisted their own eviction from the urbanizing Honolulu waterfront through abundant sharing practices of puʻuhonua (refuge and abundance). He corroborates the intimate accounts of childbirth, youth education, and family life from community oral interviews with Native Hawaiian practices, protocols, and beliefs to detail the decisions Native Hawaiian women and queer parental stewards made to provide mutual aid to their community and upended carceral efforts enforced by U.S. settler lawmakers. In his community work, Alika has participated in Tribal Canoe Journeys with the UW and Carvers' Camp Canoe Families. Through his ties to voyaging canoe families in Hawaiʻi and Western Washington, he hopes to bring Coast Salish and Pacific Islander voyaging to the University of Washington. Alika is a Mellon-Social Science Research Council IDRF Fellow and upcoming Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellow for 2023-2024.

Awards

Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship. Academic Year, 2023-2024.
Mellon-Social Science Research Council International Dissertation Research Fellowship. Academic Year, 2022-2023.
Collaborative Learning and Interdisciplinary Pedagogy Teaching Fellowship, Academic Year 2021-2022. University of Washington, Department of Comparative History of Ideas.
American Indian and Indigenous Studies Scholars’ Workshop Fellowship, Academic Year 2021-2022. University of Washington, Center for American Indian and Indigenous Studies.
Rosenbloom Scholarship in Applied History. Academic Year, 2021-2022. University of Colorado, Boulder, Center of the American West.
Mellon Collaborative Summer Fellowship for Collaboration in the Humanities, Summer 2020.
Yale Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies Fellowship, Academic Year 2019-2020.
Frank Jenkins Jr. Fellowship in Labor Studies, Academic Year 2019-2020.
Graduate Opportunities and Minority Achievement Program (GO-MAP) Presidential Fellowship, Academic Year 2018-2019.
Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship Competition, Honorable Mention. Academic Year, 2020-2021.
Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship Competition, Honorable Mention. Academic Year, 2019-2020.
WHA Graduate Student Prize. Western History Association 59th Annual Conference, Las Vegas, NV, October 16-19, 2019.
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