There is a rich oral and literary tradition in the Pacific Islands and literature exists on Pacific Islands Studies spanning many disciplines. Disciplines themselves and the academy have been structured by colonialism and imperialism. Historically, studies on Pacific Islands and Pacific Islands communities were dominated by anthropologists steeped in a colonialist and Eurocentric worldview. However, there have always been Pacific Islander voices, authors, and scholars and in the last few decades as Pacific Islands Studies and Critical Pacific Islands Studies has become more established, there has been a steady rise in published books and resources.
This guide is intended to help you navigate the UC Berkeley library system, but we also want it to be helpful to community members. Check here for suggested books from librarians, students and community members, relevant subject headings related to Pacific Islands Studies, and tips on how to find books in the UC Berkeley Libraries. These books are intended as a starting point. See below for information on how to access books at UC Berkeley, across the UC campuses, and make requests from the Northern Regional Library Facility, a storage repository which holds books from UC campuses in Northern California. At the Ethnic Studies Library, the Native American Studies Collection is the primary collection for Pacific Islands Studies materials.
Don't see a book or other resource in the catalog? Please help add to the library collections by filling out this Purchase Recommendation Form! To suggest a book for the Ethnic Studies Library, please e-mail Sine at shj@berkeley.edu.
Thanks to a generous donation from Dr. David Palaita in honor of his brother, Matthew Palaita, the Ethnic Studies Library has created the Pacific Islands Collection, which serves to bring together materials previously located in the Asian American Studies, Native American Studies and Comparative Ethnic Studies Collections as well as an establish a collecting imperative to build our materials related to Pacific Islands Studies. Titles will continually be added, so please check back frequently.
Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples by
To the colonized, the term 'research' is conflated with European colonialism; the ways in which academic research has been implicated in the throes of imperialism remains a painful memory. This essential volume explores intersections of imperialism and research - specifically, the ways in which imperialism is embedded in disciplines of knowledge and tradition as 'regimes of truth.' Concepts such as 'discovery' and 'claiming' are discussed and an argument presented that the decolonization of research methods will help to reclaim control over indigenous ways of knowing and being. Now in its eagerly awaited second edition, this bestselling book has been substantially revised, with new case-studies and examples and important additions on new indigenous literature, the role of research in indigenous struggles for social justice, which brings this essential volume urgently up-to-date.
We Are the Ocean: Selected Works by
We Are the Ocean is a collection of essays, fiction, and poetry by Epeli Hau'ofa, whose writing over the past three decades has consistently challenged prevailing notions about Oceania and prescriptions for its development. He highlights major problems confronted by the region and suggests alternative perspectives and ways in which its people might reorganize to relate effectively to the changing world. Hau'ofa's essays criss-cross Oceania, creating a navigator's star chart of discussion and debate. Spurning the arcana of the intellectual establishments where he was schooled, Hau'ofa has crafted a distinctive--often lyrical, at times angry--voice that speaks directly to the people of the region and the general reader. He conveys his thoughts from diverse standpoints: university-based analyst, essayist, satirist and humorist, and practical catalyst for creativity. According to Hau'ofa, only through creative originality in all fields of endeavor can the people of Oceania hope to strengthen their capacity to engage the forces of globalization. "Our Sea of Islands," "The Ocean in Us," "Pasts to Remember," and "Our Place Within," all of which are included in this collection, outline some of Hau'ofa's ideas for the emergence of a stronger and freer Oceania. Throughout he expresses his concern with the environment and suggests that the most important role that the "people of the sea" can assume is as custodians of the Pacific, the vast area of the world's largest body of water.
Research Justice: Methodologies for Social Change by
Challenging traditional models for conducting social science research within marginalized populations, "research justice" is a strategic framework and methodological intervention that aims to transform structural inequalities in research. This book is the first to offer a close analysis of that framework and present a radical approach to socially just, community-centered research. It is built around a vision of equal political power and legitimacy for different forms of knowledge, including the cultural, spiritual, and experiential, with the goal of greater equality in public policies and laws that rely on data and research to produce social change.
Looking Back and Living Forward: Indigenous Research Rising Up by
Looking Back and Living Forward: Indigenous Research Rising Up brings together research from a diverse group of scholars from a variety of disciplines. The work shared in this book is done by and with Indigenous peoples, from across Canada and around the world. Together, the collaborators' voices resonate with urgency and insights towards resistance and resurgence. The various chapters address historical legacies, environmental concerns, community needs, wisdom teachings, legal issues, personal journeys, educational implications, and more. In these offerings, the contributors share the findings from their literature surveys, document analyses, community-based projects, self-studies, and work with knowledge keepers and elders. The scholarship draws on the teachings of the past, experiences of the present, and will undoubtedly inform research to come.
Indigenous Research Methodologies by
Author Bagele Chilisa updates her groundbreaking book to give a new generation of scholars a crucial foundation in indigenous methods, methodologies, and epistemologies. This new edition of Indigenous Research Methodologies addresses the increasing emphasis in the classroom and in the field to sensitize researchers and students to diverse perspectives, especially those of women, minority groups, former colonized societies, indigenous peoples, historically oppressed communities, and people with disabilities. The second edition situates research in a larger historical, cultural, and global context so students can apply the specific methods that are commensurate with the transformative paradigm of social science research. Chapters cover the history of research methods, ethical conduct, colonial and postcolonial epistemologies, relational epistemologies, emergent and indigenous methodologies, Afrocentric research, feminist research, narrative frameworks, interviewing, and participatory methods. New to the second edition are three new applied chapters covering evaluation, mixed methods, and a case study in mixed methods evaluation. These chapters focusing on decolonizing, indigenizing, and integrating these methods and applications to enhance participation of indigenous peoples as knowers and foster collaborative relationships. Additional information on indigenous quantitative research reflects new developments in the field. New activities and web resources offer more depth and new ways for students to extend their knowledge. This book includes features such as key points, learning objectives, student exercises, chapter summaries, and suggested readings, making it an ideal course book for graduate-level students and applied researchers.
Remaking Pacific Pasts: History, Memory, and Identity in Contemporary Theater from Oceania by
Since the late 1960s, drama by Pacific Island playwrights has flourished throughout Oceania. Although many Pacific Island cultures have a broad range of highly developed indigenous performance forms--including oral narrative, clowning, ritual, dance, and song--scripted drama is a relatively recent phenomenon. Emerging during a period of region-wide decolonization and indigenous self-determination movements, most of these plays reassert Pacific cultural perspectives and performance techniques in ways that employ, adapt, and challenge the conventions and representations of Western theater. Drawing together discussions in theater and performance studies, historiography, Pacific studies, and postcolonial studies, Remaking Pacific Pasts offers the first full-length comparative study of this dynamic and expanding body of work. It introduces readers to the field with an overview of significant works produced throughout the region over the past fifty years, including plays in English and in French, as well as in local vernaculars and lingua francas.
Songs from the Second Float: A Musical Ethnography of Takū Atoll, Papua New Guinea by
This book, based on fieldwork spanning a decade, gives a comprehensive analysis of the musical life of a unique Polynesian community whose geographical isolation, together with a local ban on missionaries and churches, combine to allow its 600 members to maintain a level of traditional cultural practices unique to the region. Takü is arguably the only location where traditional Polynesian religion continues to be practiced. This book explores the many ways in which spirit activities impact on both domestic and ritual life, how group singing and dancing give audible and visible expression to a variety of religious beliefs, and how spirit mediums relay songs and dances from the recent dead. Takü's community is well able to articulate the significance of their own strong performance tradition, and this book allows expert singers and dancers to speak passionately for themselves on subjects they understand intimately. Musical ethnographies from the Pacific are rare. Like Moyle's earlier landmark volumes on Samoan and Tongan music, and also his trilogy on Australian Aboriginal music, this work will be of immense value to Pacific studies and will assume a place among the recognized staples of ethnomusicological research.
Huihui: Navigating Art and Literature in the Pacific by
This groundbreaking anthology is the first to navigate the interconnections between the rhetorics and aesthetics of the Pacific. Like the bright and multifaceted constellation for which it is named, Huihui: Rhetorics and Aesthetics in the Pacific showcases a variety of genres and cross-genre forms--critical essays, poetry, short fiction, speeches, photography, and personal reflections--that explore a wide range of subjects, from Disney's Aulani Resort to the Bishop Museum, from tiki souvenirs to the Dusky Maiden stereotype, from military recruitment to colonial silencing, from healing lands to healing words and music, from decolonization to sovereignty. These works go beyond conceiving of Pacific rhetorics and aesthetics as being always and only in response to a colonizing West and/or East. Instead, the authors emphasize the importance of situating their work within indigenous intellectual, political, and cultural traditions and innovations of the Pacific. Taken together, this anthology threads ancestral and contemporary discursive strategies, questions colonial and oppressive representations, and seeks to articulate an empowering decolonized future for all of Oceania. Representing several island and continental nations, the contributing authors include Albert Wendt, Haunani-Kay Trask, Mililani Trask, Chantal Spitz, Jonathan Kay Kamakawiwo'ole Osorio, Flora Devatine, Kalena Silva, Steven Winduo, Alice Te Punga Somerville, Selina Tusitala Marsh, ku'ualoha ho'omanawanui, Craig Santos Perez, Gregory Clark, Chelle Pahinui, Dan Taulapapa McMullin, Michael Puleloa, Lisa King, and Steven Gin. Collectively, their words guide us over ocean routes like the great wa'a, va'a, waka, proa, and sakman once navigated by the ancestors of Oceania, now navigated again by their descendants.
Hawai'i Nei: Island Plays by
Hawaii Nei brings together three plays by one of Hawaii's finest playwrights. A compassionate portrait of early nineteenth- century Hawaii, "The Conversion of Kaahumanu" charts the lives of five women during the traumatic, transforming events that followed Western contact. Set in post-World War II Hawaii, "Emmalehua" tells the story of a young Hawaiian woman struggling to preserve a cherished cultural heritage in a world eager to forget the past and embrace the new American dream. Through history, humor, and a whodunnit plot, the past and present collide in "Ola Na Iwi," which explores the issues surrounding the treatment of indigenous human remains.
Think of a Garden and Other Plays by
By his own reckoning, John Kneubuhl was "the world's greatest Swiss/Welsh/Samoan playwright." The son of a Samoan mother and an American father, Kneubuhl's multicultural heritage produced a distinctive artistic vision that formed the basis of his most powerful dramatic work. Born and raised in Samoa, Kneubuhl attended school in Honolulu and studied under Thornton Wilder at Yale. Returning to Hawai'i in the mid-1940s, Kneubuhl won acclaim as a playwright with the Honolulu Community Theater, then moved on to Los Angeles to write for television. Twenty years later he was back in Samoa, lecturing on Polynesian history and culture and writing plays, including the trilogy offered here. Unlike much of Kneubuhl's earlier work, these plays are touchingly personal in their exploration of alienation and cultural identity. Think of a Garden, the first play of the trilogy and the last written before the playwright's death in 1992, has been called the most Samoan of Kneubuhl's plays--a candid look at the writer's bicultural upbringing that artfully weaves together family memory, history, and mysticism. Think of a Garden makes the work of one of the Pacific's preeminent playwrights available for the first time to a wide audience of theatre enthusiasts, literature specialists, and others interested in Pacific themes.
Community Music in Oceania: Many Voices, One Horizon by
Community Music in Oceania: Many Voices, One Horizon makes a distinctive contribution to the field of community music through the experiences of its editors and contributors in music education, ethnomusicology, music therapy, and music performance. Covering a wide range of perspectives from Australia, Timor-Leste, New Zealand, Japan, Fiji, China, Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore, and Korea, the essays raise common themes in terms of the pedagogies and practices used, pointing collectively toward one horizon of approach. Yet, contrasts emerge in the specifics of how community musicians fit within the musical ecosystems of their cultural contexts. Book chapters discuss the maintenance and recontextualization of music traditions, the lingering impact of colonization, the growing demands for professionalization of community music, the implications of government policies, tensions between various ethnic groups within countries, and the role of institutions such as universities across the region. One of the aims of this volume is to produce an intricate and illuminating picture that highlights the diversity of practices, pedagogies, and research currently shaping community music in the Asia Pacific.
A booming in the night by
When Kakapo is lonely Pukeko tries to find him a friend. Suggested level: junior, primary.
Dawn Raid by
"Imagine this: You're having an amazing family holiday, one where everyone is there and all 18 of you are squeezed into one house. All of sudden it's 4 o'clock in the morning and there's banging and yelling and screaming. The police are in the house pulling people out of bed ..." Sofia is like most 12-year-old girls in New Zealand. How is she going to earn enough money for those boots? WHY does she have to give that speech at school? Who is she going to be friends with this year? It comes as a surprise to Sofia and her family when her big brother, Lenny, starts talking about protests, "overstayers", and injustices against Pacific Islanders by the government. Inspired by the Black Panthers in America, a group has formed called the Polynesian Panthers, who encourage immigrant and Indigenous families across New Zealand to stand up for their rights. Soon the whole family becomes involved in the movement. Told through Sofia's diary entries, with illustrations throughout, Dawn Raid is the story of one ordinary girl living in extraordinary times, learning how to stand up and fight.
Fifty five feathers by
Pukeko is worried about her friend Gecko being cold in the winter. She seeks advice from a wise old tree who tells her to make Gecko a cloak of fifty five feathers to keep him warm. Suggested level: junior, primary.
Ngā raukura rima tekau mā rima by
Pukeko is worried about her friend Gecko being cold in the winter. She seeks advice from a wise old tree who tells her to make Gecko a cloak of fifty five feathers to keep him warm, so Pukeko asks different birds for their feathers. Suggested level: junior, primary.
The Whale Rider by
Eight-year-old Kahu, a member of the Maori tribe of Whangara, New Zealand, fights to prove her love, her leadership, and her destiny. Her people claim descent from Kahutia Te Rangi, the legendary "whale rider." In every generation since Kahutia, a male heir has inherited the title of chief. But now there is no male heir, and the aging chief is desperate to find a successor. Kahu is his only great-grandchild--and Maori tradition has no use for a girl. But when hundreds of whales beach themselves and threaten the future of the Maori tribe, it is Kahu who saves the tribe when she reveals that she has the whale rider's ancient gift of communicating with whales. Now available in simultaneous hardcover and paperback editions. Feature film in theaters in June 2003!
Jacked up and Unjust: Pacific Islander Teens Confront Violent Legacies by
In the context of two hundred years of American colonial control in the Pacific, Katherine Irwin and Karen Umemoto shed light on the experiences of today's inner city and rural girls and boys in Hawai'i who face racism, sexism, poverty, and political neglect. Basing their book on nine years of ethnographic research, the authors highlight how legacies of injustice endure, prompting teens to fight for dignity and the chance to thrive in America, a nation that the youth describe as inherently "jacked up"--rigged--and "unjust." While the story begins with the youth battling multiple contingencies, it ends on a hopeful note with many of the teens overcoming numerous hardships, often with the guidance of steadfast, caring adults.
Pacific Diaspora: Island Peoples in the United States and Across the Pacific by
Pacific Islander Americans constitute one of the United States' least understood ethnic groups. As expected, stereotypes abound: Samoans are good at football; Hawaiians make the best surfers; all Tahitians dance. Although Pacific history, society, and culture have been the subjects of much scholarly research and writing, the lives of Pacific Islanders in the diaspora (particularly in the U.S.) have received far less attention. The contributors to this volume of articles and essays compiled by the Pacific Islander Americans Research Project hope to rectify this oversight. Pacific Diaspora brings together the individual and community histories of Pacific Island peoples in the U.S. It is designed for use in Pacific and ethnic studies courses, but it will also find an audience among those with a general interest in Pacific Islander Americans. Contributors: Keoni Kealoha Agard, Melani Anae, Kekuni Blaisdell, John Connell, Wendy Cowling, Vincente M. Diaz, Michael Kioni Dudley, Dianna Fitisemanu, Inoke Funaki, Lupe Funaki, Karina Kahananui Green, David Hall, Jay Hartwell, Craig R. Janes, George H. S. Kanahele, Davianna Pomoaikai McGregor, Brucetta McKenzie, Helen Morton, Dorri Nautu, Tupou Hopoate Pauu, A. Ravuvu, Carol E. Robertson, Joanne Rondilla, E. Victoria Shook, Paul Spickard, Haunani-Kay Trask, Debbie Hippolite Wright.
Pacific Voices Talk Story, Vol 1 by 
Pacific Voices Talk Story, Vol 2 by
Vol 2 continues book series of conversations conducted by Pacific Islander Margo King Lenson with other Pacific Islanders living in the mainland. Micronesia, Guam, Fiji, Hawaii, Samoa, and Philippines represent an historical, cultural and emotional ever-presence for interviewees who now consider the mainland home.
Pacific Voices Talk Story, Vol 3 by
Volume three continues this first ongoing book series concerning Pacific Islanders in the mainland today. Why? Because not enough attention is given to Islanders in the Asian Pacific American model. Not enough is "out there" that honestly reveals who we are to others or even to ourselves. In this volume, Islanders from Hawaii to Chuuk to Cook Islands confront their American experience upfront and personal with editor Margo King Lenson, herself a Pacific Islander of Samoan Filipina descent in search of heritage, identity, and meaning in America.
Leaving Paradise: Indigenous Hawaiians in the Pacific Northwest, 1787-1898 by
Native Hawaiians arrived in the Pacific Northwest as early as 1787. Some went out of curiosity; many others were recruited as seamen or as workers in the fur trade. By the end of the nineteenth century more than a thousand men and women had journeyed across the Pacific, but the stories of these extraordinary individuals have gone largely unrecorded in Hawaiian or Western sources. Through painstaking archival work in British Columbia, Oregon, California, and Hawaii, Jean Barman and Bruce Watson pieced together what is known about these sailors, laborers, and settlers from 1787 to 1898, the year the Hawaiian Islands were annexed to the United States. In addition, the authors include descriptive biographical entries on some eight hundred Native Hawaiians, a remarkable and invaluable complement to their narrative history. "Kanakas" (as indigenous Hawaiians were called) formed the backbone of the fur trade along with French Canadians and Scots. As the trade waned and most of their countrymen returned home, several hundred men with indigenous wives raised families and formed settlements throughout the Pacific Northwest. Today their descendants remain proud of their distinctive heritage. The resourcefulness of these pioneers in the face of harsh physical conditions and racism challenges the early Western perception that Native Hawaiians were indolent and easily exploited. Scholars and others interested in a number of fields--Hawaiian history, Pacific Islander studies, Western U.S. and Western Canadian history, diaspora studies--will find Leaving Paradise an indispensable work.
Afakasi Woman by
The joys, the trials, the tragedies, and the sensibilities of being a woman of Samoa are highlighted in this superb collection. Afakasi Woman is a collection of 16 short stories, written by 2018 Pacific Laureate Lani Wendt Young. Originally released as a digital collection that won the University of the South Pacific fiction prize, this revised edition includes previously unpublished stories.
Baby No-Eyes by
Tawera and his sister are inseparable, in a relationship that is impossible for others to share. In fact his whole whanau is bonded by secrets, a genealogy stitched together by shame, joy, love and sometimes grief. Patricia Grace's major new novel merges recent headlines with stories of a heartfelt family history. It is an account of the mysteries that operate at many levels between generations, where the present is the pivot, the center of the spiral, looking outward to the past and future that define it.
Black Ice Matter by
"Extremes of heat and cold - across countries, through time and in feelings - thread through these stories: a researcher plummets into a crevasse and finds the unexpected; a child factory worker dreams of the lives of Westerners whose economies are enslaving her; school girls struggle with secrets about an addict; and two women venture into a deathly melt stream. As if on ice, everyone is constantly moving, falling and sliding onto surprising paths"--Back cover. Source: National Library of New Zealand Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa, licensed by the Department of Internal Affairs for re-use under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 New Zealand Licence.
Black Marks on the White Page by
"Stones move, whale bones rise out of the ground like cities, a man figures out how to raise seven daughters alone. Sometimes gods speak or we find ourselves in a not-too distant future. Here are the glorious, painful, sharp and funny 21st century stories of Māori and Pasifika writers from all over the world. Vibrant, provocative and aesthetically exciting, these stories expand our sense of what is possible in Indigenous Oceanic writing. Witi Ihimaera and Tina Makereti present the very best new and uncollected stories and novel excerpts, creating a talanoa, a conversation, where the stories do the talking. And because our commonalities are more stimulating than our differences, the anthology also includes guest work from an Aboriginal Australian writer, and several visual artists whose work speaks to similar kaupapa"
Dogside Story by
There is conflict in the whanau. The young man, Te Rua, holds a "secret for life, the one to die with." But he realizes that if he is to acknowledge and claim his daughter, the secret will have to be told. "The Sisters" are threatening to drag the whanau through the courts. But why? What is really going on? Meanwhile, wider events are encroaching. To this East Coast site visitors will arrive in numbers, wanting to be among the first in the world to see the new millennium sunrise. There are plans to be put into action, there's money to be made, and there's high drama as the millennium turns.... Like Patricia Grace's award-winning novel Potiki before it, Dogside Story is set in a rural Maori coastal community. The power of the land, the strength of the whanau, are life-preserving forces. This rich and dramatic novel, threaded with humor, by one of New Zealand's finest writers presents a powerful picture of Maori in modern times.
Leaves of the Banyan Tree by
An epic spanning three generations, Leaves of the Banyan Tree tells the story of a family and community in Western Samoa, exploring on a grand scale such universal themes as greed, corruption, colonialism, exploitation, and revenge. Winner of the 1980 New Zealand Wattie Book of the Year Award, it is considered a classic work of Pacific literature.
Ola by
When Olamaiileoti Monroe takes her seventy-five-year-old father, Finau, on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, both are caught up in a search for understanding of each other and the ties that bind them. Their story unfolds on an international stage--in Samoa, New Zealand, New York, and Israel--and opposes the modern selfishness of Ola to the moral complexity of Finau.
Potiki by
This compelling novel will resonate for people everywhere who find their livelihood threatened by "Dollarmen" -- property speculators advocating golf courses, high rises, shopping malls, and tourist attractions. In Potiki, one community's response to attacks on their ancestral values and symbols provides moving affirmation of the relationship between land and the people who live on it.
Shark Dialogues by
From the first meeting of a runaway Tahitian princess and a shipwrecked Yankee sailor, the saga of one extraordinary Hawaiian family follows their triumphs, tragedies, intrigues, and involvement in the key events of their times, from the early nineteenthcentury to the present.
Sons for the Return Home by
Originally published in 1973, this story of star-crossed lovers spotlights the complex nature of love, freedom, and racism in New Zealand. Samoan writer Albert Wendt's first novel, Sons for the Return Home, has long been out of print. Yet, readers continue to respond to the clarity of vision in this simple, powerful story of cross-cultural encounter.
They Who Do Not Grieve by
Sia Figiel's powerful, poetic skills weave together the voices of three generations of women from two Samoan families. Their dream worlds and realities intermingle, just as the histories of each generation run through the next. At the center of the novel is the Samoan woman's tattoo, the malu, believed to be brought from Fiji by Siamese twins. The ghosts of the twins watch over the women whose lives are stained by an unfinished tattoo. The shame and grief of not completing the tattoo ceremony go hand in hand with the shame and grief of illicit love and broken promises.
Where the Rēkohu Bone Sings by
From the Chatham Islands/ Rekohu to London, from 1835 to the 21st century, this quietly powerful and compelling novel confronts the complexity of being Moriori, Maori and Pakeha.
Where We Once Belonged by
Thirteen-year-old Alofa Filiga struggles to come to terms with womanhood, her search for identity, and the restrictions of life in her Samoan village.
Birthing in the Pacific by
This collection explores birthing in the Pacific against the background of debates about tradition and modernity. A wide-ranging introduction and conclusion, together with case studies from Papua New Guinea, New Caledonia, Vanuatu, Fiji, and Tonga, show how simple contrasts between traditional and modern practices, technocratic and organic models of childbirth, indigenous and foreign approaches, and notions of "before" and "after" can be potent but problematic. The difficulties entailed confront public health programs concerned with practical issues of infant and maternal survival in developing countries as well as scholarly analyses of birthing in cross-cultural contexts. The introduction analyzes central concepts and themes: questions of survival, safety, and well-being; the significance of postures, practices, and sites; the role of midwives, traditional birth attendants, and nurses; and the role of men in birthing and reproduction. Contributors--four anthropologists, a historian, and a community health worker--offer insights into the ways mothers, midwives, and nurses relate the traditional and the modern, and how ideas of tradition and modernity have shaped representations of Pacific childbirth. The conclusion provides researchers with a guide to relevant literature from several disciplines. As a whole the collection warns against either a celebration of emancipation through biomedicine or a recuperative romance about women's past powers in reproduction. Contributors: Ruta Fiti-Sinclair, Margaret Jolly, Vicki Lukere, Shelley Mallett, Helen Morton, Christine Salomon.
Gender and Power in the Pacific by
Women from the Pacific Islands are often perceived by Europeans as passive beauties dancing the hula with a flower in their hair, as docile companions of European or local men or as naive personalities surrounded by an endangered environment. But far from that male Western reception of women's status, which can be found in documentaries, motion pictures as well as travel and adventure literature, women are active and resolute agents who self-confidently shape their societies through their courageous and determined acting in public as well as in their communities. The current volume of Novara - Contributions to Research on the Pacific wants to deliver insights into the lives of women from the Pacific Islands and shows how they deal with shifting gender relations in changing societies. Traditions and adjustment processes to changing living conditions of women and men in Papua New Guinea, Palau and New Zealand present fascinating research fields, which open up the view to new living models apart from Western gender concepts.
Gender on the Edge: Transgender, Gay, and other Pacific Islanders by
Transgender identities and other forms of gender and sexuality that transcend the normative pose important questions about society, culture, politics, and history. They force us to question, for example, the forces that divide humanity into two gender categories and render them necessary, inevitable, and natural. The transgender also exposes a host of dynamics that, at first glance, have little to do with gender or sex, such as processes of power and domination; the complex relationship among agency, subjectivity, and structure; and the mutual constitution of the global and the local. Particularly intriguing is the fact that gender and sexual diversity appear to be more prevalent in some regions of the world than in others. This edited volume is an exploration of the ways in which non-normative gendering and sexuality in one such region, the Pacific Islands, are implicated in a wide range of socio-cultural dynamics that are at once local and global, historical, and contemporary. The authors recognize that different social configurations, cultural contexts, and historical trajectories generate diverse ways of being transgender across the societies of the region, but they also acknowledge that these differences are overlaid with commonalities and predictabilities. Rather than focus on the definition of identities, they engage with the fact that identities do things, that they are performed in everyday life, that they are transformed through events and movements, and that they are constantly negotiated. By addressing the complexities of these questions over time and space, this work provides a model for future endeavors that seek to embed dynamics of gender and sexuality in a broad field of theoretical import.
Mothers' Darlings of the South Pacific by
Over the course of World War II, two million American military personnel occupied bases throughout the South Pacific, leaving behind a human legacy of at least 4,000 children born to indigenous mothers. Based on interviews conducted with many of these American-indigenous children and several of the surviving mothers, Mothers' Darlings of the South Pacific explores the intimate relationships that existed between untold numbers of U.S. servicemen and indigenous women during the war and considers the fate of their mixed-race children. These relationships developed in the major U.S. bases of the South Pacific Command, from Bora Bora in the east across to Solomon Islands in the west, and from the Gilbert Islands in the north to New Zealand, in the southernmost region of the Pacific. The American military command carefully managed interpersonal encounters between the sexes, applying race-based U.S. immigration law on Pacific peoples to prevent marriage "across the color line." For indigenous women and their American servicemen sweethearts, legal marriage was impossible; giving rise to a generation of fatherless children, most of whom grew up wanting to know more about their American lineage. Mothers' Darlings of the South Pacific traces these children's stories of loss, emotion, longing, and identity--and of lives lived in the shadow of global war. Each chapter discusses the context of the particular island societies and shows how this often determined the ways intimate relationships developed and were accommodated during the war years and beyond. Oral histories reveal what the records of colonial governments and the military have largely ignored, providing a perspective on the effects of the U.S. occupation that until now has been disregarded by Pacific war historians. The richness of this book will appeal to those interested the Pacific, World War II, as well as intimacy, family, race relations, colonialism, identity, and the legal structures of U.S. immigration.
Colonial Dis-Ease: US Navy Health Policies and the Chamorros of Guam, 1898-1941 by
A variety of cross-cultural collisions and collusions--sometimes amusing, sometimes tragic, but always complex--resulted from the U.S. Navy's introduction of Western health and sanitation practices to Guam's native population. In Colonial Dis-Ease, Anne Perez Hattori examines early twentieth-century U.S. military colonialism through the lens of Western medicine and its cultural impact on the Chamorro people. In four case studies, Hattori considers the histories of Chamorro leprosy patients exiled to Culion Leper Colony in the Philippines, hookworm programs for children, the regulation of native midwives and nurses, and the creation and operation of the Susana Hospital for women and children. Changes to Guam's traditional systems of health and hygiene placed demands not only on Chamorro bodies, but also on their cultural values, social relationships, political controls, and economic expectations. Hattori effectively demonstrates that the new health projects signified more than a benevolent interest in hygiene and the philanthropic sharing of medical knowledge. Rather the navy's health care regime in Guam was an important vehicle through which U.S. colonial power and moral authority over Chamorros was introduced and entrenched. Medical experts, navy doctors, and health care workers asserted their scientific knowledge as well as their administrative might and in the process became active participants in the colonization of Guam.
Ho'i Hou Ka Mauli Ola: Pathways to Native Hawaiian Health by
This pioneering collection highlights the historic, groundbreaking, and fascinating work done by doctors, researchers, and healthcare providers to improve the life of Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders. The relevance of their work impacts all of us regardless of ethnicity because the discoveries made in the search for solutions to health problems, cures to diseases, and improvements to healthcare benefit all who call Hawaiʻi, as well as the broader Pacific, home. The majority of the thirty-three contributors are affiliated with the Department of Native Hawaiian Health of the John A. Burns School of Medicine at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa and represent many disciplines, strategies, and programs whose research, findings, and projects are built on the contributions of pioneers in medicine and healthcare in Hawaiʻi. As such, this book is dedicated to the late Richard Kekuni Blaisdell and includes an interview with him, bringing to the fore his essential voice on Native Hawaiian health. Mauli means life, heart, spirit, our essential nature. Ola means well-being, healthy. "Hoʻi hou ka mauli ola," or, bringing back the state of vibrant health, is the chief objective and the passion of the contributors. In addition to interviews, the volume includes historical information, personal narratives, mele oli, research findings, and descriptions of community programs.
Maori and Social Issues by
Maori and Social Issues is a collection of essays by experts in various fields of social sciences which collectively act as a snapshot of where Maori currently sit in relation to contemporary New Zealand society as a whole.The book is the first of a series to be published on research into the state of New Zealand's institutions and sectors of endeavour. This first book in the series focusses on Maori and social issues; the second will focus on Maori and educational endeavour. Each essay tackles the subject as it impacts on Maori now with perspectives on likely effects and solutions into the future: Maori demographics; smoking rates; educational achievement; incarceration; parenting; mental health; obesity and poverty are analysed in detail. Key statistics, past and future trends, opinion and fact are brought together in one volume to act as a reference for students, academics and others interested in New Zealand social sciences.
Pacific Identities and Well-Being by
Filling a significant gap in the cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary literature within the field of Pasifika (Polynesian) and Maori identities and mental health, this volume focuses on bridging mental health related research and practice within the indigenous communities of the South Pacific. Much of the content reflects both differences from and relationships with the dominant Western theories and practices so often unsuccessfully applied with these groups. The contributors represent both experienced researchers and practitioners and address topics such as research examining traditional and emerging Pasifika identities; contemporary research and practice in working with Pasifika youth and adolescents; culturally-appropriate approaches for working with Pasifika adults; and practices in supervision that have been developed by Maori and Pasifika practitioners. Chapters include practice scenarios, research reports, analyses of topical issues, and discussions about the appropriateness of applying Western theory in other cultural contexts. As Pasifika cultures are still primarily oral cultures, the works of several leading Maori and Pasifika poets that give voice to the changing identities and contemporary challenges within Pacific communities are also included.
Penina Uliuli by
This diverse collection of essays examines important issues related to mental health among Pacific Islanders through the topics of identity, spirituality, the unconscious, mental trauma, and healing. Contributors: Emeline Afeaki-Mafile'o, Margaret Nelson Agee, Siautu Alefaio, A. Aukahi Austin, Tina Berking, Philip Culbertson, Caroline Salumalo Fatialofa, Yvette Guttenbeil-Po'uhila, Joseph Keawe'aimoku Kaholokula, David Lui, Karen Lupe, Maika Lutui, Cabrini 'Ofa Makasiale, Tavita T. Maliko, Peta Pila Palalagi, Suiamai Simi, Seilosa Skipps-Patterson, Karanina Siaosi Sumeo, To'oa Jemaima Tiatia, Sione Tu'itahi, Fia T. Turner-Tupou.
Potent Mana by
Brilliant study of the effects of colonialism on the physical, mental, and spiritual health of Native Hawaiians, and their efforts to decolonize through healing and remembering.
Selected health conditions among Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander adults
Although the Asian or Pacific Islander federal race category was split into two in 1997 (1), few reliable health statistics are available for the Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander (NHPI) population. In 2014, the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) fielded a first-of-its-kind federal survey focused exclusively on NHPI population health. This report uses data from that survey, in combination with 2014 data from the annual National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), to highlight differences in the prevalence of selected health conditions between the NHPI population and the Asian population with whom they have historically been combined.
Unwrapping Tongan Barkcloth by
Tongan barkcloth, made from the inner bark of the paper mulberry tree, still features lavishly in Polynesian ceremonies all over the world. Yet despite the attention paid to this textile by anthropologists and art historians alike, little is known about its history. Providing a unique insight into Polynesian material culture, this book explores barkcloth's rich cultural history, and argues that its manufacture, decoration and use are vehicles of creativity and female agency. Based on twelve years of extensive ethnographic and archival research, the book uncovers stories of ceremony, gender, the senses, religion and nationhood, from the 17th century up to the present-day. Placing the materiality of textiles at the heart of Tongan culture, Veys reveals not only how barkcloth was and continues to be made, but also how it defines what it means to be Tongan. Extending the study to explore the place of barkcloth in the European imagination, she examines international museum collections of Tongan barkcloth, from the UK and Italy to Switzerland and the USA, addressing the bias of the European 'gaze' and challenging traditional gendered understandings of the cloth. A nuanced narrative of past and present barkcloth manufacture, designs and use, Unwrapping Tongan Barkcloth demonstrates the importance of the textile to both historical and contemporary Polynesian culture.
Breaking the Shell: Voyaging from Nuclear Refugees to People of the Sea in the Marshall Islands by
On the atoll of Rongelap in the northern seas of the Marshall Islands, apprentice navigators once learned to find their way across the ocean by remotely sensing how islands transform the patterning of swell and currents. Renowned for their instructional stick charts that model and map the interplay of islands and waves, these students of wave piloting techniques embarked on trial voyages to ruprup jo¸kur, a Marshallese expression roughly translated as "breaking the shell" of the turtle, which would confer their status as navigators. These traditional practices, already in decline with imposing colonial occupations, came to an abrupt halt with the Cold War-era nuclear weapons testing program conducted by the United States. The residents and their descendants are still trying to recover from the myriad environmental, biological, social, and psychological impacts of the nuclear tests. Breaking the Shell presents the journey of Captain Korent Joel, who, having been forced into exile from the near-apocalyptic thermonuclear Bravo test of 1954, has reconnected to his ancestral maritime heritage and forged an unprecedented path toward becoming a navigator. Paralleling the Hawaiian renaissance that centered on Nainoa Thompson learning from Satawalese navigator Mau Piailug, the beginnings of the Marshallese voyaging revitalization--a collaborative, community-based project spanning the fields of anthropology, history, and oceanography--involved blending scientific knowledge systems, resolving ambivalence in nearly forgotten navigational techniques, and deftly negotiating cultural protocols of knowledge use and transmission. Through Captain Korent's own voyaging trial, he and a group of surviving mariners from Rongelap are, against one of the darkest hours in human history, "breaking the shell" of their prime identity as nuclear refugees to begin recovering their most intimate of connections to the sea. Ultimately these efforts would inaugurate the return of the traditional outrigger voyaging canoe for the greater Marshallese nation, an achievement that may work toward easing ethnic tensions abroad and ensure cultural survival in their battle against the looming climate change-induced rising ocean. Drawing attention to cultural rediscovery, revitalization, and resilience in Oceania, the Marshallese are once again celebrating their existence as a people born to the rhythms of the sea.
Cultures of Commemoration: The Politics of War, Memory, and History in the Mariana Islands by
Few scholars have explored the Pacific War's impact on Pacific Islanders. Cultures of Commemoration fills this crucial gap in the historiography by advancing scholarly understanding
of Pacific Islander relations with and knowledge of American and Japanese colonialisms
in the twentieth century. Drawing from an extensive archival base of government, military,
and popular records, Chamorro scholar Keith L. Camacho traces the formation of divergent
colonial and indigenous histories in the Mariana Islands, an archipelago located in the western
Pacific and home to the Chamorro people.
An Honorable Accord: The Convenant between the Northern Mariana Islands and the United States by
In 1975, after three centuries of colonial rule, the people of the Northern Marianas exercised their right of self-determination to become U.S. citizens in a self-governing commonwealth under U.S. sovereignty. An Honorable Accord is the remarkable account of their tenacious efforts to shape a political future separate from other Micronesian peoples, of the negotiations that produced the Covenant defining the commonwealth relationship, and its eventual approval by the Northern Marianas people and the U.S. Congress.
The Kanak Awakening: The Rise of Nationalism in New Caledonia by
In 1853, France annexed the Melanesian islands of New Caledonia to establish a convict colony and strategic port of call. Unlike other European settler-dominated countries in the Pacific, the territory's indigenous people remained more numerous than immigrants for over a century. Despite military conquest, land dispossession, and epidemics, its thirty language groups survived on tribal reserves and nurtured customary traditions and identities. In addition, colonial segregation into the racial category of canaques helped them to find new unity. When neighboring anglophone colonies began to decolonize in the 1960s, France retained tight control of New Caledonia for its nickel reserves, reversing earlier policies that had granted greater autonomy for the islands. Anticolonial protest movements culminated in the 1980s Kanak revolt, after which two negotiated peace accords resulted in autonomy in a progressive form and officially recognized Kanak identity for the first time. But the near-parity of settlers and Kanak continues to make nation-building a challenging task, despite a 1998 agreement among Kanak and settlers to seek a "common destiny." This study examines the rise in New Caledonia of rival identity formations that became increasingly polarized in the 1970s and examines in particular the emergence of activist discourses in favor of Kanak cultural nationalism and land reform, multiracial progressive sovereignty, or a combination of both aspirations. Most studies of modern New Caledonia focus on the violent 1980s uprising, which left deep scars on local memories and identities. Yet the genesis of that rebellion began with a handful of university students who painted graffiti on public buildings in 1969, and such activists discussed many of the same issues that face the country's leadership today. After examining the historical, cultural, and intellectual background of that movement, this work draws on new research in public and private archives and interviews with participants to trace the rise of a nationalist movement that ultimately restored self-government and legalized indigenous aspirations for sovereignty in a local citizenship with its own symbols. Kanak now govern two out of three provinces and have an important voice in the Congress of New Caledonia, but they are a slight demographic minority. Their quest for nationhood must achieve consensus with the immigrant communities, much as the founders of the independence movement in the 1970s recommended.
Maori and Social Issues by
Maori and Social Issues canvases a range of social issues that are significant for a better understanding of the experiences and social environment of Maori and highlight the need to ensure research-based solutions to the challenges presently faced.
Mau: Samoa's Struggle for Freedom by
"On 29 August 1914 New Zealand troops landed in German Samoa and established a colonial rule that was to last almost 50 years. The new administrators were an odd assortment of benevolent misfits. Their unchecked power led to widespread racism and the distortion of justice, beauracratic bungling caused the spread of the 1918 influenza epedemic which killed 22% of the population, and on 29 December 1929 there was "Black Saturday when the police opened fire on an unarmed peaceful demonstartion, killing 9 people and wounding a further 50. This book is the story of the couageous and non violent freedom movement known as "Mau". Thoroughly researched and provocative, Mau: Samoa's Struggle for Freedom is an integral chapter in the history of Samoa, NZ and the Pacific." --Publisher's description.
The People of the Sea: Environment, Identity, and History in Oceania by
Oceania is characterized by thousands of islands and archipelagoes amidst the vast expanse of the Pacific. Although it is one of the few truly oceanic habitats occupied permanently by humankind, surprisingly little research has been done on the maritime dimension of Pacific history. The People of the Sea attempts to fill this gap by combining neglected historical and scientific material to provide the first synthetic study of ocean-people interaction in the region from 1770 to 1870. It emphasizes Pacific Islanders' varied and evolving relationships with the sea during a crucial transitional era following sustained European contact. Countering the dominant paradigms of recent Pacific Islands' historiography, which tend to limit understanding of the sea's importance, this volume emphasizes the flux in the maritime environment and how it instilled an expectation and openness toward outside influences ...
The People Trade: Pacific Island Laborers and New Caledonia, 1865-1930 by
The story of the people from the New Hebrides (Vanuatu) and the Solomon Islands who left their homes to work in the French colony of New Caledonia has long remained a missing piece of Pacific Islands history. Now Dorothy Shineberg has brought these laboreres to life by painstakingly assembling fragments from a wide variety of scattered records and documents. She tells the story of their recruitment, then sketches the workers' lives in New Caledonia, describing the contractual arrangements, the kinds of work they did, their living conditions, how they spent their free time, the large numbers who sickened and died, and the choice at the end of the contract to remain in the colony as free workers or to return home. Throughout the book she throws light on the controversy about the recruiting of the Islanders: were they kidnapped? Or did they choose to leave home? If so, what motivated them? Evidently the Islanders' cheap labor contributed to the development of the French colony, but how did the episode affect them and their homeland? The People Trade offers readers a revealing new picture of a long neglected side of the Pacific Islands labor trade.
Polynesian Panthers: Pacific Protest and Affirmative Action in Aotearoa New Zealand, 1971-1981 by
Polynesian Panthers records the Pacific rights and social activist movement in New Zealand, told by those who were there. Forming in 1971, the Polynesian Panthers sought to raise consciousness and took action in response to the racism and discrimination Pacific peoples faced in New Zealand in the 1970s and 1980s. The Panthers organised prison visit programmes and sporting and debating teams for inmates; provided a halfway-house service for young men released from prison; ran homework centres; and offered 'people's loans', legal aid and food banks that catered for 600 families at their height. Drawing on interviews, memoirs, poetry, newspaper articles and critical analysis, Polynesian Panthers is a thought-provoking account of this period in New Zealand.
Remaking Pacific Pasts: History, Memory, and Identity in Contemporary Theater from Oceania by
Since the late 1960s, drama by Pacific Island playwrights has flourished throughout Oceania. Although many Pacific Island cultures have a broad range of highly developed indigenous performance forms--including oral narrative, clowning, ritual, dance, and song--scripted drama is a relatively recent phenomenon. Emerging during a period of region-wide decolonization and indigenous self-determination movements, most of these plays reassert Pacific cultural perspectives and performance techniques in ways that employ, adapt, and challenge the conventions and representations of Western theater. Drawing together discussions in theater and performance studies, historiography, Pacific studies, and postcolonial studies, Remaking Pacific Pasts offers the first full-length comparative study of this dynamic and expanding body of work. It introduces readers to the field with an overview of significant works produced throughout the region over the past fifty years, including plays in English and in French, as well as in local vernaculars and lingua francas.
Repositioning the Missionary: Rewriting the Histories of Colonialism, Native Catholicism, and Indigeneity in Guam by
In the vein of an emergent Native Pacific brand of cultural studies, Repositioning the Missionary critically examines the cultural and political stakes of the historic and present-day movement to canonize Blessed Diego Luis de San Vitores (1627-1672), the Spanish Jesuit missionary who was martyred by Mata'pang of Guam while establishing the Catholic mission among the Chamorros in the Mariana Islands. The work juxtaposes official, popular, and critical perspectives of the movement to complicate prevailing ideas about colonialism, historiography, and indigenous culture and identity in the Pacific. The book is divided into three sections. The first, "From Above, Working the Native," focuses exclusively on the narratological reconsolidation of official Roman Catholic Church viewpoints as staked in the historic (seventeenth century) and contemporary (twentieth century) movements to canonize San Vitores, including the symbolic costs of these viewpoints for Native Chamorro cultural and political possibilities not in line with Church views. Section two, "From Below: Working the Saint," shifts attention and perspective to local, competing forms of Chamorro piety. In their effort to canonize San Vitores, Natives also rework the saint to negotiate new cultural and social canons for themselves and in ways that produce new meanings for their island. "From Behind: Transgressive Histories" shifts from official and lay Roman and Chamorro Catholic viewpoints to the author's own critical project of rendering alternative portrayals of San Vitores and Mata'pang. Theoretically innovative and provocative, humorous, and inspired, Repositioning the Missionary melds poststructuralist, feminist, Native studies, and cultural studies analytic and political frameworks with an intensely personal voice to model a new critical interdisciplinary approach to the study of indigenous culture and history.
Samoa ne'i galo : talatu'u ma tala o le vavau a Samoa = Samoa, lest we forget : a compilation of oral traditions and legends of Samoa by
Produced by the Ministry for Youth, Sports and Cultural Affairs. Vol. 5 "co-ordinated by the Ministry of Education Sports and Culture."
"First edition"--V. 3, p. 5.
Vol. 1: Samoan text by Liumaunu Vaelua Faatonu. English translation by Su'a Julia Wallwork. Vol. 5: Samoan text by Tofa Seuamuli Liumaunu Fa;atonu Vaelu, Mose Fulu and Fetalaiga ia Mata'afa Elia Autagavaia.
Vol. 3-5 have subtitle: Talatu'u ma tala o le vavau a Samoa.
Vol. 3-4 printed by Malua Printing Press, Apia, Western Samoa. Vol. 5 printed by Rudy's Quick Print, Savalalo, Apia.
Strangers in Their Own Land: A Century of Colonial Rule in the Caroline and Marshall Islands by
"Hezel has written an authoritative and engaging narrative of [a] succession of colonial regimes, drawing upon a broad range of published and archival sources as well as his own considerable knowledge of the region. This is a 'conventional' history, and a very good one, focused mostly on political and economic developments. Hezel demonstrates a fine understanding of the complicated relations between administrators, missionaries, traders, chiefs and commoners, in a wide range of social and historical settings." --Pacific Affairs "The tale [of Strangers in Their Own Land] is one of interplay between four sequential colonial regimes (Spain Germany, Japan, and the United States) and the diverse island cultures they governed. It is also a tale of relationships among islands whose inhabitants did not always see eye-to-eye and among individuals who fought private and public battles in those islands. Hezel conveys both the unity of purpose exerted by a colonial government and the subversion of that purpose by administrators, teachers, islands, and visitors.... [The] history is thoroughly supported by archival materials, first-person testimonies, and secondary sources. Hezel acknowledges the power of the visual when he ends his book by describing the distinctive flags that now replace Spanish, German, Japanese, and American symbols of rule. the scene epitomizes a theme of the book: global political and economic forces, whether colonial or post-colonial, cannot erode the distinctiveness each island claims."--American Historical Review
Voyages: From Tongan Villages to American Suburbs by
In Voyages, Cathy A. Small offers a view of the changes in migration, globalization, and ethnographic fieldwork over three decades. The second edition adds fresh descriptions and narratives in three new chapters based on two more visits to Tonga and California in 2010. The author (whose role after thirty years of fieldwork is both ethnographer and family member) reintroduces the reader to four sisters in the same family--two who migrated to the United States and two who remained in Tonga--and reveals what has unfolded in their lives in the fifteen years since the first edition was written. The second edition concludes with new reflections on how immigration and globalization have affected family, economy, tradition, political life, identity, and the practice of anthropology.
Corporeal Archipelagos: Writing the Body in Francophone Oceanian Women's Literature by
Corporeal Archipelagos: Writing the Body in Francophone Oceanian Women's Literature offers an examination of contemporary literature from the French-speaking Oceanian region through a focus on four of its most prolific women writers and the ways in which these writers negotiate identity construction through one of the most powerful identity markers in the region: the body. The question of the body - how one is to make meaning through corporeality, how one represents the body, and what role the body plays in identity construction - is not only a question with which feminists and postcolonial theorists have been grappling for nearly a half-century. The body is of integral significance to autochthonous Oceanian societies, whose views of corporeality are not built upon a dualistic mind-body binary that has influenced Western thought since the era of Descartes, but rather on a cosmological, epistemological axis that comprehends the body as intertwined with symbolic, social, and ideological understandings of identity. Beginning with an analysis of the ways in which the Oceanian body has been portrayed and consumed as an exotic object of fascination throughout three centuries of European literature, the book examines the myriad methods by which women writers break away from exotic myths and reappropriate the body as a powerful tool that enables them to confront the question of self-definition in French-speaking Oceania. The authors examined in this book employ culturally, racially, and sexually specific bodies in the creation of an original, confrontational literature that transgresses historically and culturally imposed boundaries, audaciously inserting their voices, the voices of Oceania, into the postcolonial francophone literary scene.
Decolonizing Cultures in the Pacific: Reading History and Trauma in Contemporary Fiction by
In Decolonizing Cultures in the Pacific, Susan Y. Najita proposes that the traumatic history of contact and colonization has become a crucial means by which indigenous peoples of Oceania are reclaiming their cultures, languages, ways of knowing, and political independence. In particular, she examines how contemporary writers from Hawai'i, Samoa, and Aotearoa/New Zealand remember, re-tell, and deploy this violent history in their work. As Pacific peoples negotiate their paths towards sovereignty and chart their postcolonial futures, these writers play an invaluable role in invoking and commenting upon the various uses of the histories of colonial resistance, allowing themselves and their readers to imagine new futures by exorcising the past. Decolonizing Cultures in the Pacific is a valuable addition to the fields of Pacific and Postcolonial Studies and also contributes to struggles for cultural decolonization in Oceania: contemporary writers' critical engagement with colonialism and indigenous culture, Najita argues, provides a powerful tool for navigating a decolonized future.
Effigies: An Anthology of New Indigenous Writing Pacific Rim, 2009 by
It is a rare pleasure to unleash beauty upon the ever-tragic world, an exception to the plagued misfortune of greed, despair, and injury. Though elements of colonization do present certain challenges and malady to a natural world inhabited for tens of thousands of years by peoples steeped in ideologies, practical and philosophic systems, they do not overcome the lingual sensibilities and prowess of the poets representing the areas of the planet present in this text. Instead the poets overcome the intrusion.From baleen row, razor clam edge, rabid willow ptarmigan plume, to white buds of plumeria, gardenia, lei, shaded grave of dried lauhala and graying niu, fertile Pacific essence swells these poems into hummock ice knolls, into layers and layers of white sea laps rolling, into mindfulness, consideration, climate care--belonging.From ulu, to cane knife, where aurora's green vein bleeds blue and tangles into indigo or green-robed mauna combs t? stalks, palms, kukui, and pines. From Barrow to Waihe'e, tethered and hammered through wild among dark branches and snared by voices, these poems harbor whale and seal oil burning to bring sustenance to a reader's search for light and with them carry us into a seafaring world of rich embrace. Spectacular, immediate, these beaches and beeches along the shores provide a tactile relationship made immense in their stream-crafted images.
Finding Meaning: Kaona and Contemporary Hawaiian Literature by
Winner of the Native American Literature Symposium's Beatrice Medicine Award for Published Monograph In this first extensive study of contemporary Hawaiian literature, Brandy Nalani McDougall examines a vibrant selection of fiction, poetry, and drama by emerging and established Hawaiian authors, including Haunani-Kay Trask, John Dominis Holt, Imaikalani Kalahele, and Victoria Nalani Kneubuhl. At the center of the analysis is a hallmark of Hawaiian aesthetics--kaona, the intellectual practice of hiding and finding meaning that encompasses the allegorical, the symbolic, the allusive, and the figurative. With a poet's attention to detail, McDougall interprets examples of kaona, guiding readers through olelo no'eau (proverbs), mo'olelo (literature and histories), and mooku'auhau (genealogies) alongside their contemporary literary descendants, unveiling complex layers of Hawaiian identity, culture, history, politics, and ecology. Throughout, McDougall asserts that "kaona connectivity" not only carries bright possibilities for connecting the present to the past, but it may also ignite a decolonial future. Ultimately, Finding Meaning affirms the tremendous power of Indigenous stories and genealogies to give activism and decolonization movements lasting meaning.
Huihui: Navigating Art and Literature in the Pacific by
This groundbreaking anthology is the first to navigate the interconnections between the rhetorics and aesthetics of the Pacific. Like the bright and multifaceted constellation for which it is named, Huihui: Rhetorics and Aesthetics in the Pacific showcases a variety of genres and cross-genre forms--critical essays, poetry, short fiction, speeches, photography, and personal reflections--that explore a wide range of subjects, from Disney's Aulani Resort to the Bishop Museum, from tiki souvenirs to the Dusky Maiden stereotype, from military recruitment to colonial silencing, from healing lands to healing words and music, from decolonization to sovereignty. These works go beyond conceiving of Pacific rhetorics and aesthetics as being always and only in response to a colonizing West and/or East. Instead, the authors emphasize the importance of situating their work within indigenous intellectual, political, and cultural traditions and innovations of the Pacific. Taken together, this anthology threads ancestral and contemporary discursive strategies, questions colonial and oppressive representations, and seeks to articulate an empowering decolonized future for all of Oceania. Representing several island and continental nations, the contributing authors include Albert Wendt, Haunani-Kay Trask, Mililani Trask, Chantal Spitz, Jonathan Kay Kamakawiwo'ole Osorio, Flora Devatine, Kalena Silva, Steven Winduo, Alice Te Punga Somerville, Selina Tusitala Marsh, ku'ualoha ho'omanawanui, Craig Santos Perez, Gregory Clark, Chelle Pahinui, Dan Taulapapa McMullin, Michael Puleloa, Lisa King, and Steven Gin. Collectively, their words guide us over ocean routes like the great wa'a, va'a, waka, proa, and sakman once navigated by the ancestors of Oceania, now navigated again by their descendants.
Indigenous Literatures from Micronesia by
For the first time, poetry, short stories, critical and creative essays, chants, and excerpts of plays by Indigenous Micronesian authors have been brought together to form a resounding--and distinctly Micronesian--voice. With over two thousand islands spread across almost three million square miles of the Pacific Ocean, Micronesia and its peoples have too often been rendered invisible and insignificant both in and out of academia. This long-awaited anthology of contemporary indigenous literature will reshape Micronesia's historical and literary landscape. Presenting over seventy authors and one hundred pieces, Indigenous Literatures from Micronesia features nine of the thirteen basic language groups, including Palauan, Chamorro, Chuukese, I-Kiribati, Kosraean, Marshallese, Nauruan, Pohnpeian, and Yapese. The volume editors, from Micronesia themselves, have selected representative works from throughout the region--from Palau in the west, to Kiribati in the east, to the global diaspora. They have reached back for historically groundbreaking work and scouted the present for some of the most cited and provocative of published pieces and for the most promising new authors. Richly diverse, the stories of Micronesia's resilient peoples are as vast as the sea and as deep as the Mariana Trench. Challenging centuries-old reductive representations, writers passionately explore seven complex themes: "Origins" explores creation, foundational, and ancestral stories; "Resistance" responds to colonialism and militarism; "Remembering" captures diverse memories and experiences; "Identities" articulates the nuances of culture; "Voyages" maps migration and diaspora; "Family" delves into interpersonal and community relationships; and "New Micronesia" gathers experimental, liminal, and cutting-edge voices. This anthology reflects a worldview unique to the islands of Micronesia, yet it also connects to broader issues facing Pacific Islanders and indigenous peoples throughout the world. It is essential reading for anyone interested in Pacific, indigenous, diasporic, postcolonial, and environmental studies and literatures.
Nafanua: Works from Writers and Artists who attended the 10th Festival of Pacific Arts in American Samoa 2008 by
An anthology of literary work by writers, including Sia Figiel, Larry Thomas, Cresantia Frances Koya, Victor Rodger,Teweiariki Teaero, and Dianna Fuemana, who attended the 10th Festival of Pacific Arts in American Samoa. Edited by Dan Taulapapa McMullin. Features excerpts from plays, poetry, and short stories.
Nuanua: Pacific writing in English since 1980 by
This important anthology of contemporary Pacific writing in English is a successor to Lali, first published in 1980 and widely read and admired. Nuanua, like Lali, edited by distinguished Samoan writer Albert Wendt, shows the growing strength and confidence of Pacific writing in fiction and poetry since 1980. It includes work from new and well-established writers from nine Pacific communities: Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Vanuatu, Niue, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Tonga, and Samoa. The legacy of colonialism and the problems of development and political change are among the themes explored.
Pacific Islands Writing: The Postcolonial Literatures of Aotearoa/New Zealand and Oceania by
The Oxford Studies in Postcolonial Literatures series offers stimulating and accessible introductions to definitive topics and key genres and regions within the rapidly diversifying field of postcolonial literary studies in English. The first book of its kind, Pacific Islands Writing offers a broad-ranging introduction to the postcolonial literatures of the Pacific region. Drawing upon metaphors of oceanic voyaging, Michelle Keown takes the reader on a discursive journey through a variety of literary and cultural contexts inthe Pacific, exploring the Indigenous literatures of Polynesia, Melanesia, and Micronesia, and also investigating a range of European or Western writing about the Pacific, from the adventure fictions of Herman Melville, R. L. Stevenson, and Jack London to the Pakeha European) settler literatures ofAotearoa/New Zealand. The book explores the relevance of 'international' postcolonial theoretical paradigms to a reading of Pacific literatures, but it also offers a region-specific analysis of key authors and texts, drawing upon Indigenous Pacific literary theories, and sketching in some of the keysocio-historical trajectories that have inflected Pacific writing. Well-established Indigenous Pacific authors such as Albert Wendt, Witi Ihimaera, Alan Duff, and Patricia Grace are considered alongside emerging writers such as Sia Figiel, Caroline Sinavaiana-Gabbard, and Dan Taulapapa McMullin. Thebook focuses primarily upon Pacific literature in English - the language used by the majority of Pacific writers - but also breaks new ground in examining the growing corpus of francophone and hispanophone writing in French Polynesia, New Caledonia, and Easter Island/Rapa Nui.
We Are the Ocean: Selected Works by
We Are the Ocean is a collection of essays, fiction, and poetry by Epeli Hau'ofa, whose writing over the past three decades has consistently challenged prevailing notions about Oceania and prescriptions for its development. He highlights major problems confronted by the region and suggests alternative perspectives and ways in which its people might reorganize to relate effectively to the changing world. Hau'ofa's essays criss-cross Oceania, creating a navigator's star chart of discussion and debate. Spurning the arcana of the intellectual establishments where he was schooled, Hau'ofa has crafted a distinctive--often lyrical, at times angry--voice that speaks directly to the people of the region and the general reader. He conveys his thoughts from diverse standpoints: university-based analyst, essayist, satirist and humorist, and practical catalyst for creativity. According to Hau'ofa, only through creative originality in all fields of endeavor can the people of Oceania hope to strengthen their capacity to engage the forces of globalization. "Our Sea of Islands," "The Ocean in Us," "Pasts to Remember," and "Our Place Within," all of which are included in this collection, outline some of Hau'ofa's ideas for the emergence of a stronger and freer Oceania. Throughout he expresses his concern with the environment and suggests that the most important role that the "people of the sea" can assume is as custodians of the Pacific, the vast area of the world's largest body of water.
Navigating CHamoru Poetry by
Navigating CHamoru Poetry focuses on Indigenous CHamoru (Chamorro) poetry from the Pacific Island of Guåhan (Guam). Poet and scholar Craig Santos Perez brings critical attention to a diverse and intergenerational collection of CHamoru poetry and scholarship. Throughout this book, Perez develops an Indigenous literary methodology called "wayreading" to navigate the complex relationship between CHamoru poetry, cultural identity, decolonial politics, diasporic migrations, and native aesthetics. Perez argues that contemporary CHamoru poetry articulates new and innovative forms of indigeneity rooted in CHamoru customary arts and values, while also routed through the profound and traumatic histories of missionization, colonialism, militarism, and ecological imperialism. This book shows that CHamoru poetry has been an inspiring and empowering act of protest, resistance, and testimony in the decolonization, demilitarization, and environmental justice movements of Guåhan. Perez roots his intersectional cultural and literary analyses within the fields of CHamoru studies, Pacific Islands studies, Native American studies, and decolonial studies, using his research to assert that new CHamoru literature has been--and continues to be--a crucial vessel for expressing the continuities and resilience of CHamoru identities. This book is a vital contribution that introduces local, national, and international readers and scholars to contemporary CHamoru poetry and poetics.
New Oceania: Modernisms and Modernities in the Pacific by
For so long figured in European discourses as the antithesis of modernity, the Pacific Islands have remained all but absent from the modernist studies' critical map. Yet, as the chapters of New Oceania: Modernisms and Modernities in the Pacific collectively show, Pacific artists and writers have been as creatively engaged in the construction and representation of modernity as any of their global counterparts. In the second half of the twentieth century, driving a still ongoing process of decolonisation, Pacific Islanders forged an extraordinary cultural and artistic movement. Integrating Indigenous aesthetics, forms, and techniques with a range of other influences -- realist novels, avant-garde poetry, anti-colonial discourse, biblical verse, Indian mythology, American television, Bollywood film -- Pacific artists developed new creative registers to express the complexity of the region's transnational modernities. New Oceaniapresents the first sustained account of the modernist dimensions of this period, while presenting timely reflections on the ideological and methodological limitations of the global modernism rubric. Breaking new critical ground, it brings together scholars from a range of backgrounds to demonstrate the relevance of modernism for Pacific scholars, and the relevance of Pacific literature for modernist scholars.
The Properties of Perpetual Light by
The Properties of Perpetual Light is an homage to the work of the activist-writer, which author Julian Aguon describes as "the work of bearing witness, wrestling with the questions of one's day, telling children the truth." With prose and poetry both bracing and quiet, Aguon weaves together stories from his childhood in the villages of Guam with searing political commentary. Throughout the book, Aguon grapples with one heart-breaking loss after another by immersing himself in the beauty of his island, the magic of Micronesia, and the wisdom of his favorite books and elders.
Ancestry of Experience: A Journey into Hawaiian Ways of Knowing by
As Hawaiians continue to recover their language and culture, the voices of kupuna (elders) are heard once again in urban and rural settings, both in Hawai'i and elsewhere. How do kupuna create knowledge and "tell" history? What do they tell us about being Hawaiian? Adopted by a Midwestern couple in the 1950s as an infant, Leilani Holmes spent much of her early life in settings that offered no clues about her Hawaiian past--images of which continued to haunt her even as she completed a master's thesis on Hawaiian music and identity in southern California. Ancestry of Experience documents Holmes' quest to reclaim and understand her own origin story. Holmes writes in two different and at times incongruent voices--one describing the search for her genealogy, the other critiquing Western epistemologies she encounters along the way. In the course of her journey, she finds that Hawaiian oral tradition links identity to the land ('aina) through ancestry, while traditional, scholarly theories of knowing (particularly political economy and the discourse of the invention of tradition) textually obliterate land and ancestry. In interviews with kupuna, Holmes learns of the connectedness of spirituality and 'aina; through her study and practice of hula kahiko comes an understanding of ancient hula as a conversation between 'aina and the dancer's body that has the power to activate historical memory. Holmes' experience has special relevance for indigenous adoptees and indigenous scholars: Both are distanced from the knowledge agendas and strategies of their communities and are tasked to speak in languages ill-suited to the telling of their own stories and those of their ancestors. In addition to those with an interest in Hawaiian knowledge and culture, Ancestry of Experience will appeal to readers of memoirs of identity, academic and personal accounts of racial identity formation, and works of indigenous epistemologies. A website (www.ancestryofexperience.com) will include supplementary material.
Colonialism, Maasina Rule, and the Origins of Malaitan Kastom by
This book is a political history of the island of Malaita in the British Solomon Islands Protectorate from 1927, when the last violent resistance to colonial rule was crushed, to 1953 and the inauguration of the island's first representative political body, the Malaita Council. At the book's heart is a political movement known as Maasina Rule, which dominated political affairs in the southeastern Solomons for many years after World War II. The movement's ideology, kastom, was grounded in the determination that only Malaitans themselves could properly chart their future through application of Malaitan sensibilities and methods, free from British interference. Kastom promoted a radical transformation of Malaitan lives by sweeping social engineering projects and alternative governing and legal structures. When the government tried to suppress Maasina Rule through force, its followers brought colonial administration on the island to a halt for several years through a labor strike and massive civil resistance actions that overflowed government prison camps. David Akin draws on extensive archival and field research to present a practice-based analysis of colonial officers' interactions with Malaitans in the years leading up to and during Maasina Rule. A primary focus is the place of knowledge in the colonial administration. Many scholars have explored how various regimes deployed "colonial knowledge" of subject populations in Asia and Africa to reorder and rule them. The British imported to the Solomons models for "native administration" based on such an approach, particularly schemes of indirect rule developed in Africa. The concept of "custom" was basic to these schemes and to European understandings of Melanesians, and it was made the lynchpin of government policies that granted limited political roles to local ideas and practices. Officers knew very little about Malaitan cultures, however, and Malaitans seized the opportunity to transform custom into kastom, as the foundation for a new society. The book's overarching topic is the dangerous road that colonial ignorance paved for policy makers, from young cadets in the field to high officials in distant Fiji and London. Today kastom remains a powerful concept on Malaita, but continued confusion regarding its origins, history, and meanings hampers understandings of contemporary Malaitan politics and of Malaitan people's ongoing, problematic relations with the state.
Daughters of the Island: Contemporary Chamorro Women Organizers on Guam by
The book focuses on the women who have made a positive impact on Guam society as organizers. The people of Guam, increasingly conscious of their indigenous identity as Chamorros, have produced a generation who are defending their right to self-determination. Organizing toward these ends are Chamorro women. The historical Catholic Church in this small island nation struggles to protect a cultural identity and a way of life which must change, but at what cost? These Chamorro women provide leadership, defend their language, battle for their land, and fight to control social institutions in the public sector so as to insure the continuity of a way of life which is under seige.
From a Native Daughter: Colonialism and Sovereignty in Hawai'i by
Since its publication in 1993, From a Native Daughter, a provocative, well-reasoned attack against the rampant abuse of Native Hawaiian rights, institutional racism, and gender discrimination, has generated heated debates in Hawai'i and throughout the world. This 1999 revised work includes material that builds on issues and concerns raised in the first edition: Native Hawaiian student organizing at the University of Hawai'i; the master plan of the Native Hawaiian self-governing organization Ka Lahui Hawai'i and its platform on the four political arenas of sovereignty; the 1989 Hawai'i declaration of the Hawai'i ecumenical coalition on tourism; and a typology on racism and imperialism. Brief introductions to each of the previously published essays brings them up to date and situates them in the current Native Hawaiian rights discussion.
He Alo a He Alo by 
Imagining the Other: The Representation of the Papua New Guinean Subject by
Much has been written about Papua New Guinea over the last century and too often in ways that legitimated or served colonial interests through highly pejorative and racist descriptions of Papua New Guineans. Paying special attention to early travel literature, works of fiction, and colonial reports, laws, and legislation, Regis Tove Stella reveals the complex and persistent network of discursive strategies deployed to subjugate the land and its people.
Inside Out: Literature, Cultural Politics, and Identity in the New Pacific by
In a time of dynamism and contradiction in Pacific cultural production, a time of 'turning things over' and 'writing from the inside out, ' this far-reaching volume provides a comprehensive set of essays and interviews on the emergent literatures of the New Pacific. With its dynamic combination of important position papers, polemics, and decolonizing critiques by noted authors and of analysis by new and established post-colonial scholars, this volume exposes 'the maze and mix of literatures and cultural identities breaking down and building up across the Pacific Ocean.' This pioneering work will be the definitive resource for anyone researching or teaching Pacific literature and will be invaluable for bringing Pacific culture to readers outside the region
Jean-Marie Tjibaou, Kanak Witness to the World: An Intellectual Biography by
Jean-Marie Tjibaou is arguably the most important post-World War II Oceanic leader. His intellectual abilities, acute understanding of both Melanesian and European civilizations, stature as a statesman, commitment to nonviolence, and vision for Melanesia's potential contributions to the global community have all contributed to the creation of a remarkable and enduring legacy. Until now, no substantial English-language study has existed of Tjibaou, who was assassinated in 1989. This intellectual biography of the Kanak (New Caledonia) leader takes an essentially chronological approach to his life--from his beginnings in the mountains of northern New Caledonia and his studies at the Sorbonne to his leadership of the independence movement in the Territory. The work focuses on the spiritual, cultural, and intellectual sources of Tjibaou's ideas and actions as well as on those who were a source of inspiration to him. Particular attention is given to Tjibaou's sense of service, the convergences and divergences he identified as existing between Melanesian and Western civilizations, and the impact of metropolitan French politics on the situation in the Territory. In addition, the book explores the fracture between the Grande Terre and the Loyalty Islands, one with deep historical roots that help explain why Tjibaou's assassin, Djubelly Wéa, was not a "crazy fanatic" but the uh_product of a distinctive reality--with a very different cultural and political reading of New Caledonia's destiny.
Law and Order in a Weak State: Crime and Politics in Papua New Guinea by
Twenty-five years after independence, Papua New Guinea is beset by social, economic, and political problems: poverty and inequality, a young and expanding population, a stagnant economy, corruption, and rising crime. The state has not only failed to contain these problems but has become progressively implicated in their persistence. Escalating levels of violence and lawlessness are seen by many as the most serious challenge facing the young country. This book examines these problems of order in light of Papua New Guinea's remarkable social diversity and the impact of rapid and pervasive processes of change. Three original and strategic case studies involving urban gangs, mining security, and election violence form the core of the work. Each case study looks at particular forms of conflict, and the responses these engender, across different socioeconomic contexts and geographic locations. Empirical data are analyzed through a common framework that employs material, cultural and institutional perspectives, allowing readers to view the three cases through different theoretical prisms, identify linkages between them, and, in the process, build a larger picture of the post-colonial social order. Law and Order in a Weak State charts not only the problems of crime and lawlessness in Papua New Guinea but also the possibilities for constructive, pragmatic solutions. It will be of great interest to scholars, aid and policy officials, and others concerned with understanding the social complexities and challenges of contemporary Papua New Guinea.
Maori and Social Issues by
Maori and Social Issues canvases a range of social issues that are significant for a better understanding of the experiences and social environment of Maori and highlight the need to ensure research-based solutions to the challenges presently faced.
Migration, Social Change, and Health: A Samoan Community in Urban California by 
The Other Side: Ways of Being and Place in Vanuatu by
The Other Side is the first major ethnographic and historical study of the Sia Raga people of north Pentecost Island, a region that was home to the late Father Walter Lini, Vanuatu's first prime minister. Exploring Raga social, spatial, and historical consciousness, this richly poetic account provides important theoretical contributions to ongoing debates in Pacific anthropology about the relation between structure and history, and place and time. It reveals important insights into the convergence of indigenous and exogenous cosmologies and hegemonies historically, and shows how these are implicated in contemporary social, ritual, and material cultural expressions. These analyses engage with broader concerns relating to colonial and postcolonial identities, political economy, and globalization in island Melanesia. The Other Side combines original and substantial ethnography with sophisticated theoretical reflection that will appeal broadly across the field of anthropology. It will also be of considerable value to scholars of Pacific and Melanesian history, politics, and society. The clear writing and entertaining narrative combine to create a work that is accessible to a wide audience. The volume's critical and reflective analysis of anthropological research makes it a valuable teaching aid in courses that focus on ethnographic methods and writing. Students in Pacific anthropology will find it especially useful.37
Polynesian Panthers: Pacific Protest and Affirmative Action in Aotearoa New Zealand 1971-1981 by
Polynesian Panthers records the Pacific rights and social activist movement in New Zealand, told by those who were there. Forming in 1971, the Polynesian Panthers sought to raise consciousness and took action in response to the racism and discrimination Pacific peoples faced in New Zealand in the 1970s and 1980s. The Panthers organised prison visit programmes and sporting and debating teams for inmates; provided a halfway-house service for young men released from prison; ran homework centres; and offered 'people's loans', legal aid and food banks that catered for 600 families at their height. Drawing on interviews, memoirs, poetry, newspaper articles and critical analysis, Polynesian Panthers is a thought-provoking account of this period in New Zealand.
Potent Mana: Lessons in Power and Healing by
Brilliant study of the effects of colonialism on the physical, mental, and spiritual health of Native Hawaiians, and their efforts to decolonize through healing and remembering.
Talanoa Rhythms: Voices from Oceania by
"Dancing to the Rhythms of Talanoa, Talanoa, once begun, never ceases! It travels, moves, and shifts; it dives, drifts, and turns. But it never stops. This shifting nature of Talanoa is both liberating and challenging. It is liberating in the sense that no one can stop us from participating in talanoa; it is challenging in the sense that once words depart from our mouth, we can no longer control their meaning and interpretation. As such, it warns us to be considerate and respectful, yet gives us the liberty to assign different 'tunes' and 'beats' to the 'lyrics' of our talanoa, and dance likewise. That is what makes talanoa exciting! Talanoa, apart from its shifting nature, is also persuasive and seductive. We participate in talanoa not just to speak and make noise, but also to listen and pay attention. Talanoa, however, is more than exchanging words and abstract ideas. It is also about doffing deep into our roots, charting in advance our route saw, and sharing our hearts, our beings, our life-stories, our disappointments, our hopes, and our visions. In doing so, talanoa is inviting and accommodating. As talanoa participants had been mostly islanders living in Australia and New Zealand, talanoa gives us a new sense of belonging, a new 'home' in the great moana, Oceania, our 'sea of islands'. It creates an alternative and open space where the sons and daughters of Oceania have the opportunities to imagine and re-imagine their lives, define and redefine their identities, negotiate and re-negotiate their native cultures in diaspora, think and re-think about their futures, and many more"--Publisher's description.
We Are the Ocean: Selected Works by
We Are the Ocean is a collection of essays, fiction, and poetry by Epeli Hau'ofa, whose writing over the past three decades has consistently challenged prevailing notions about Oceania and prescriptions for its development. He highlights major problems confronted by the region and suggests alternative perspectives and ways in which its people might reorganize to relate effectively to the changing world. Hau'ofa's essays criss-cross Oceania, creating a navigator's star chart of discussion and debate. Spurning the arcana of the intellectual establishments where he was schooled, Hau'ofa has crafted a distinctive--often lyrical, at times angry--voice that speaks directly to the people of the region and the general reader. He conveys his thoughts from diverse standpoints: university-based analyst, essayist, satirist and humorist, and practical catalyst for creativity. According to Hau'ofa, only through creative originality in all fields of endeavor can the people of Oceania hope to strengthen their capacity to engage the forces of globalization. "Our Sea of Islands," "The Ocean in Us," "Pasts to Remember," and "Our Place Within," all of which are included in this collection, outline some of Hau'ofa's ideas for the emergence of a stronger and freer Oceania. Throughout he expresses his concern with the environment and suggests that the most important role that the "people of the sea" can assume is as custodians of the Pacific, the vast area of the world's largest body of water.
A Transpacific Poetics by
Poetry. Pacific Studies. A TRANSPACIFIC POETICS is a collection of poetry, essays, and poetics committed to transcultural experimental witness in both hemispheres of the Pacific and Oceania. The works in ATPP re-map identity and locale in their modes of argumentation, resituated genres, and textual innovations. "A TRANSPACIFIC POETICS beautifully inscribes what the Barbadian poet Kamau Brathwaite would call 'tidalectics' by following multiple voice waves across the region and by capturing their registers in an astounding range of genres. A collection of poetry and prose that includes entries such as memory cards, lists and palimpsests, counting journals, scripts, the necropastoral, and critical essays, readers will follow the rhythms of translation and the transcultural, where wavescrashwavescrashwavescrash." --Elizabeth Deloughrey
From Unincorporated Territory [Saina] by
With the Saina as his figurative vessel--a ship built in modern times as an exact replica of the swift outriggers designed and sailed by the Chamorro people until banned by their oppressors--Craig Santos Perez deftly navigates the complexities in his bracing exploration of the personal, historical, cultural, and natural elements of his native Guam and its people. As the title--from unincorporated territory [saina]--suggests, by understanding where we are from, we can best determine where we are going. Perez collages primary texts and oral histories of the colonial domination and abuse brought by the Spanish, the Japanese, the United States, and the capitalist entertainment/travel industry, with intimate stories of his childhood experiences on Guam, his family's immigration to the US, and the evocatively fragmentary myths of his ancestors. Resonant too in Perez's title, and throughout this work, is this poet's evocation of the unincorporated and unfathomed elements of our natures, as he seeks the means to access an expansiveness that remains inexpressible in any language. Perez is not afraid to press language beyond the territories of 'the known' as he investigates both the anguish and the possibilities that horizon as one attempts to communicate the spoken and unspoken languages of one's native people, while fully appreciating the suffering inherent in every word he will use that is pronounced in, and thus pronounces, the language of their oppressors.
From Unincorporated Territory [lukao] by
from unincorporated territory [lukao] is the fourth book in native Chamorro poet Craig Santos Perez's ongoing series about his homeland, the Western Pacific Island of Guåhan (Guam), and his current home, Hawai i. He utilizes eco-poetic, decolonial, diasporic, indigenous, documentary, epic, and avant-garde modes to weave stories of creation, birth, migration, food sovereignty, and parenting. This work not only protests the devastating impacts of colonialism, militarism, and environmental injustice across the Pacific, it also expresses a vision of a sustainable and hopeful future.
From Unincorporated Territory [Guma'] by
Winner of the American Book Award (2015) Craig Santos Perez, a native Chamoru from the Pacific Island of Guåhan (Guam), has lived for two decades away from his homeland. This new collection maps the emotional and geographic cartographies of his various migrations, departures, and arrivals. Through a variety of poetic forms, the poet highlights the importance of origins and customs amidst new American cultures and terrains. Furthermore, this book draws attention to, and protests, the violent currents of colonialism and militarism currently threatening Guåhan, a "strategic" US territory since 1898. The poet memorializes what his people have lost and insists that we must protect and defend what we have left of home. This collection will engage those interested in Pacific literature, multicultural, indigenous poetry, mixed-genre, multilingual experiments, ecopoetics, and those who want to explore intersections between poetry, politics, history, and culture.
From Unincorporated Territory [Hacha] by
Poetry. Asian American Studies. In the preface to his first book, a lyrical epic on the violent convergences of colonialisms on Guam (Japanese and American), history, family, and language (Chamorro and English), Perez writes: "On some maps, Guam doesn't exist; I point to an empty space in the Pacific and say, 'I'm from here.' On some maps, Guam is a small, unnamed island; I say, 'I'm from this unnamed place.' On some maps, Guam is named 'Guam, U.S.A.' I say, 'I'm from a territory of the United States.' On some maps, Guam is named, simply, 'Guam'; I say, 'I am from Guam.'" Written in the spirit of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's Dictee and Barbara Jane Reyes's POETA EN SAN FRANCISCO, Perez's book promises to add significantly to a growing canon of Pacific poetries.
Iep Jaltok: Poems from a Marshallese Daughter by
As the seas rise, the fight intensifies to save the Pacific Ocean's Marshall Islands from being devoured by the waters around them. At the same time, activists are raising their poetic voices against decades of colonialism, environmental destruction, and social injustice. Marshallese poet and activist Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner's writing highlights the traumas of colonialism, racism, forced migration, the legacy of American nuclear testing, and the impending threats of climate change. Bearing witness at the front lines of various activist movements inspires her work and has propelled her poetry onto international stages, where she has performed in front of audiences ranging from elementary school students to more than a hundred world leaders at the United Nations Climate Summit. The poet connects us to Marshallese daily life and tradition, likening her poetry to a basket and its essential materials. Her cultural roots and her family provides the thick fiber, the structure of the basket. Her diasporic upbringing is the material which wraps around the fiber, an essential layer to the structure of her experiences. And her passion for justice and change, the passion which brings her to the front lines of activist movements--is the stitching that binds these two experiences together. Iep Jaltok will make history as the first published book of poetry written by a Marshallese author, and it ushers in an important new voice for justice.
Whetu Moana: Contemporary Polynesian Poems in English by
'Whetu Moana' is the first anthology of contemporary indigenous Polynesian poetry to be written in English and edited by Polynesians. The three editors, Robert Sullivan and Reina Whaitiri (who are Maori) and Albert Wendt (who is Samoan) are all known for both their own creative writing and their academic study of Pacific and Polynesian literatures. The collection includes many well-known poets including Hone Tuwhare, Alistair Campbell and Haunani Kay Trask, together with lesser known, young poets. The collection reveals an active, varied and creative scene which confronts both a complex colonial past and a contemporary global present.
Matamai 2: Intersecting Knowledge Across the Diaspora: a Collection of Poems, Short Stories & Art by
A Collection of Poems, Short Stories, and Art by Students of Pacific Islander Studies, a class offered at the City College of San Francisco, San Francisco State University, and The 2nd VASA National Conference & Assembly
Deep River Talk by
Tuwhare, cofounder of the Maori Artist and Writers Society, is well known in his native New Zealand. In this interesting, eclectic selection from eight of his books (plus some new poems), he writes exuberantly of his native land. His skills include a colloquial bend to his language, a bawdy sense of humor, and a deep feeling for people and nature "because the sun has fled/uncupping the stone nipples/of the land." He writes in many poetic forms, from haiku to chants to elegies, and has obviously studied the masters; one senses in his poetry the clever humor of e.e. cummings, Williams's praise of dailiness, the iambic pentameter of the Bible, and, in some poems, the concision of Japanese poetry. In one poem, Tuwhare asks, "Where have all the/Maori gone, for Chrissake?" We are grateful that the poetry of at least one of them has finally crossed the Pacific to our shores. Recommended for large and international poetry collections.
Doris Lynch, Monroe Cty. P.L., Bloomington, Ind.
Night Is a Sharkskin Drum by
Night Is a Sharkskin Drum is a lyrical evocation of Hawaii by a Native poet whose ancestral land has been scarred by tourism, the American military, and urbanization. Grounded in the ancient grandeur and beauty of Hawaii, this collection is a haunted and haunting love song for a beloved homeland under assault.
Westlake: Poems by Wayne Kaumualii Westlake by
In an all-too-brief life and literary career, Wayne Kaumualii Westlake (1947-1984) produced a substantial body of poetry. He broke new ground as a poet, translated Taoist classical literature and Japanese haiku, interwove perspectives from his Hawaiian heritage into his writing and art, and published his work locally, regionally, and internationally. Westlake was born on Maui and raised on the island of O'ahu, where he attended Punahou School, and later the University of Oregon. He earned his B.A. in Chinese studies at the University of Hawai'i. At the time of his tragic death in 1984, Westlake was at the height of his poetic career. Unfortunately, the only collection of his poems available at the time was a 32-page, limited edition chapbook independently published by a small press. The present volume, long overdue, includes nearly two hundred of Westlake's poems--most unavailable to the public or never before published.
Light in the Crevice Never Seen by
Reviews "It is stunning to read that this is the first publication of a book of poems by a Native Hawaiian. For mainlanders unaware of the racial issues in that apparent island paradise, Trask's work is an eye-opener. In heavily cadenced, musical language, Trask explores the social realities affecting Native Hawaiians today, from youthful suicide to loss of language, from verbal racism to physical violence. But there is also in her work a deep connection to the islands' beautiful, ocean-ringed land and to the sustaining strengths of family and of love. Fierce words from a woman known for her dedication to her people."-Booklist "Light In The Crevice Never Seenis the first volume of poetry ever published by an indigenous Hawaiian in the mainland US. For a debut collection, it is extraordinarily angry. An activist and an academic, Trask resents what she sees as the subjugation of Hawaii by the Japanese and the Americans, and she is deeply chagrined at the development of tourism, which she believes to have accelerated the decay of native island culture and language. While her view of Hawaiian history and politics will be of interest to outsiders unfamiliar with the islands and while Eleanor Wilners concise introduction helps put many of these issues into sharp focus for the reader few who are not already sympathizers will be moved by Trasks shrill, two-dimensional verse, which amounts to a kind of Polynesian agitprop."-Kirkus
Home(Is)lands: New Art & Writing from Guahan & Hawai'i by
Despite the vast distance between Hawaii and Guahan (Guam), these islands and their peoples have experienced similar cultural, historical, ecological, and political struggles. Writers and artists from both places have been engaged in unwriting colonial representations and envisioning decolonial futures. This anthology acts as a cross-current between our home(is)lands, weaving our voices across the New Oceania.
Puna Wai Korero: An Anthology of Maori Poetry in English by
From the chanted songs and oratory of traditional culture, to engagement with the English language in the nineteenth century, and on into the cultural revival of the late twentieth century, Maori have always been deeply engaged with poetic forms. In this book, two leading Maori poets collect the major Maori poetic voices in English together in a pioneering anthology. This will be the first collection of poetry in English written and edited entirely by Maori . The anthology collects work from the many iwi and hapu of Aotearoa as well as Maori living in Australia and around the world. Poets featured include Rore Hapipi, Marewa Glover, Rangi Faith, Keri Hulme, Robert Sullivan, Hinewirangi Kohe, Trixie Menzies, Kellyana Morey, Brian Potiki, Roma Potiki, Apirana Taylor, Michael O'Leary, Hinemoana Baker, Bub Bridger and others.
Postcolonial Pacific Writing: Representations of the Body by
This major new interdisciplinary study focuses on the representation of the body in the work of eight of Polynesia's most significant contemporary writers. Drawing on anthropology, psychoanalysis, philosophy, history and medicine, Postcolonial Pacific Writing develops an innovative postcolonial framework specific to the literatures and cultures of this region.
Mauri Ola: Contemporary Polynesian Poems in English by
Mauri Ola: Contemporary Polynesian Poems in English, edited by Albert Wendt, Reina Whaitiri, and Robert Sullivan, is a follow-up volume to the highly acclaimed Whetu Moana, the first anthropology of Polynesian poems in English edited by Polynesians. The new book includes poetry written over the last twenty-five years by more than eighty writers from Aotearoa, Hawai'i, Tonga, Samoa, the Cook Islands, Niue, Tokelau, Tahiti, and Rotuma. This anthology includes selections from poets including Tusiata Avia, Alistair Te Ariki Campbell, Rangi Faith, Sia Figiel, Imaikalani Kalahele, Brandy Nalani McDougall, Karlo Mila, J. C. Sturm, Robert Sullivan, Apirana Taylor, Konai Helu Thaman, Haunani-Kay Trask, Hone Tuwhare, Albert Wendt, and Wayne Kaumualii Westlake.
Whispers and Vanities: Samoan Indigenous Knowledge and Religion by
This collection of essays and selected poetry responds to an address on Samoan religious culture given by Samoa's Head of State, His Highness Tui Atua Tupua Tamasese Ta'isi Tupuola Tufuga Efi, to the 2009 Parliament of the World's Religions. The address challenges some fundamental aspects of and assumptions in modern Samoan indigenous religious culture.
Potent Mana: Lessons in Power and Healing by
Brilliantly elucidating and weaving together the forces of indigenous sovereignty, colonialism, and personal health, Potent Mana offers a uniquely holistic and intimate portrait of the long-term effects of colonialism on an indigenous people., the kānaka maoli (Native Hawaiians). An ethnographic exploration based on fifteen months of research, the book moves the conversation on the dangerous effects of colonialism forward by exploring the theories and practices of Native Hawaiians engaged in decolonization. Decades of substance abuse, mental illness, depression, language loss, and the concomitant dispossession from sacred lands have accompanied colonialism. Consequently, healing, both mental and physical, are essential to decolonization and indigenous sovereignty in twenty-first century Hawai'i. Native Hawaiian-run treatment centers and clinics more than political rallies are centers for healing and decolonization on O'ahu today. The effects of colonialism and the measures taken to counter and move beyond it, as Wende Marshall convincingly argues, do not take place solely on a supralocal level but shatteringly involve the physical and emotional well-being of real individuals. Becoming decolonized is about overcoming the shame of colonialism, and requires a process of remembering the traditions of ancestors and reinterpreting and rewriting histories that have only been told from a colonial point of view. Decolonization is an indigenous perspective, and an understanding that health was impossible without political power and cultural integrity.
Palaita, David Ga’oupu. 2015. The Space That Is Sacred (VASA/Ocean) : Pacific Islanders in Higher Education. Berkeley, CA, 2015, http://digitalassets.lib.berkeley.edu/etd/ucb/text/Palaita_berkeley_0028E_15014.pdf.
Abstract: "Vāsā (Ocean)--The Space that is Sacred: Pacific Islanders in Higher Education" investigates how Pacific Islander students across three college campuses--City College of San Francisco, University of Washington, Seattle, and the University of California, Berkeley--change their schools though the use of their indigenous cultures (ocean). Creating a voice for an often invisible community in higher education, students "talk-story" about the challenges and triumphs of their journey in higher education while questioning the politics of knowledge production, identity constructions, indigenous cultural practices, community formations, and inclusion in their schools. The project illustrates how these Pacific Islander movements are critiques of diversity in post-secondary educational institutions but also explores students' engagement with contemporary colonization as a way of understanding their personal lives, their families and communities, and their worlds.
