Dr. Denis O'Hearn
Denis O’Hearn is Unangan (Aleut). His research and teaching has concentrated on social theory; colonialism/imperialism and development; and imprisonment. He is author of many books and articles including Inside the Celtic Tiger; The Atlantic Economy; Nothing but an Unfinished Song: Bobby Sands, the Irish Hunger Striker Who Ignited a Generation; Living at the Edges of Capitalism: Adventures in Exile and Mutual Aid; and Migration, Racism and Labor Exploitation in the World-System. His current research compares Russian and US administration of enslavement of the Unangax̂ population on the Pribylov and Aleutian Islands in the 1860s-1880s. His great grandmother, Evdokia Sorokina (Makulova) was an Unangan orphan on Tanax̂ Amix̂ (St. Paul Island) in the Bering Sea during the 1860s and 1870s. Her community of 300 was enslaved and forced to kill 100,000 fur seals in June-August each year and then left to survive during the harsh winter months in the Bering Sea. His grandmother, Mariia O’Hearn (Sorokina), grew up in Unalaska, the main island in the Aleutian chain, amongst severe poverty and abbreviated life expectancy due to the extinction of sea mammals, tuberculosis and starvation. Mariia’s children were taken from her and sent hundreds of miles away by sea to a Baptist orphanage/”Indian school” near Kodiak. They escaped and the family, including O’Hearn’s father, migrated to Tacoma, Washington where she died of tuberculosis a few years later.
Email: daohearn@utep.edu