Re-membering Panalā'au: Masculinities, Nation, and Empire in Hawai'i and the Pacific (original) (raw)
Related papers
Reimagining National Identity through Reenactment in the Pacific and Australia
Wasafiri, 2017
In lieu of an abstract: Every nation has a view of itself that is maintained by a common narrative and habits of identification. This contributes to a sense of belonging and is expressed through accounts of ‘national’ identity. Australian historian Greg Dening believes that ‘[a]ll people’s identities turn on stories of their origins and achievements … Social memory is, in Aristotle’s theatrical term, catharsis, getting the plot, seeing the meaning of things’ (309). The ‘plot’ of a national narrative is constructed through dialogues of ethnicity, geography, language, class and shared social memory; dialogues that are often constructed to eliminate difference among their constituent elements – their citizens – and form a narrative that is deeply aligned with political and racial power. In societies where elements of the population have been either erased from, or assimilated into, the national narrative of a wider colonial society – such as the Aborigines in Australia or the Native Hawaiians in the USA – this narrative is often disputed. This article will look at two maritime reenactments, on board the replica HMB Endeavour from Australia (2002) and Hōkūleʻa (1992, 1996), an ocean-going canoe from Hawaiʻi, to discover how historical reenactments participate in contemporary chapters of these national narratives.
Moving Masculinities: Memories and Bodies Across Oceania
The Contemporary Pacific, 2007
Waikäne (reproduced in full on page vii). This painting distills many of the integrating themes of this issue, and especially the ideas of fl uid, moving masculinities across the time and place of Oceania. It represents the close connections between pasts, presents, and futures in Oceania, imaging male ancestors whose powers course through living men, in a river of time as the male waters, Wai'ololi, sinuously curve toward the waters of women, in relations of difference, complementary connection, and regeneration. Käne's 'ö'ö or digging stick is here remembered as a phallic spear of connection bursting open the spring waters of Waikäne, linking blood and semen, stone and water, earth and sky. This is a powerful expression of Hawaiian masculinity, connecting embodied memories with gendered places and the sexualized fl ow of time. But, as with many essays in this special issue, its male potency emerges in relation-and sometimes in resistance-to the hegemonic forces of colonialism and contending imperial models of masculinity. Like Ty P Käwika Tengan's essay, the content and context of Carl Pao's broader corpus of painting and sculpture meditates on Hawaiian masculinities as framed by United States imperialism and militarism. The trio of indigenous Hawaiian and Mäori male authors in this collection-Tengan, Walker, and Hokowhitu-all insist on the crucial importance of colonialism in the construction of indigenous masculinities in both past and present. Through his study of a group of young Hawaiian men, the Hui Panalä'au, recruited as colonists for the United States in the Equatorial Islands between 1935 and 1942, Tengan refl ects on the dialogue between the masculine scripts of US patriotism and indigenous sovereignty. Like many Hawaiians, Tengan's own family history is inti
Gathering Stories of Belonging: Honouring the Moʻolelo and Ancestors that Refuse to Forget Us
Australian Feminist Studies , 2021
For too long Indigenous queers have been forced to quiet our pleasure and intimacy to be digestible to our communities. As more Indigenous queer scholars have begun to interrogate and move in conversation between Native studies and queer and feminist theory, Indigenous queers and feminists are carefully articulating a necessary shift in approach and perspective when unpacking the erasures and displacemennt of intimacy and desire under the tyranny of cis-heteropatriarchy, settler colonialism, and occupation. In the case of Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) theories of intimacy can only emerge from the specific lessons our ʻāina (land, that which feeds) has taught us about how to practice an aloha (love, pleasure, and intimacy) that is just, generative, and deeply satisfying. Therefore, this article takes aloha and ʻāina seriously. And together as author and reader we explore the way kaona (Hawaiian literary techniques) demonstrate a deeply profound relationship between our ʻāina and the ways our kūpuna practice intimacy, pleasure, and consent with each other. These moʻolelo call us all to remember that if ʻāina and our relationship to her is our greatest model of intimacy then reestablishing an intimate connection to her and to each other are our most promising pathways towards decolonisation.
The study of collective or social memory by historians has shown that events and facts are often reconfigured and can be influenced by group rituals and politics, the media and the time over which the memory has accumulated. What an individual remembers can be determined by her or his group relationships (Hamilton and Darian-Smith 1994). In his classic study On Collective Memory, Maurice Halbwachs distinguishes between ‘history’ and ‘collective memory’, the latter being the active past which through our narratives form our identities (Halbwachs 1992). Australian South Sea Islander (ASSI) narratives have these ‘collective memory’ qualities. This chapter examines how the narratives of ASSI identity has developed. ASSI by-and-large interpret their history through a narrative of kidnapping and slavery which is at odds with Pacific historians who for the last fifty years have stressed Islander agency and voluntary participation in labour migration, albeit with an early phase of illegal and often violent recruitment. This chapter examines Islander origins, the difference of opinion with academic historians, differences in the use of words, identity as both Australian and Pacific peoples, and contemporary political agendas.
Missionization (Christianization) and Colonization have left a mark on women in the Asia-Pacific Region where in many ways, aspects of liberal democracy and globalization have greatly devalued roles of women and their associated contributions to society leading to active and indirect forms of resistances disguised as conformity. This research paper provides in depth ethnographic field research through several case studies on how matrilineal societies and their women, such as those in the Marshall Islands where group consensus affords indirect exchanges of resistances (disguised as actual conformity), have adapted to invented traditions in an effort to safely navigate their free space when existing as themselves in a high risk society. It showcases the various forms of feminism in several specific contexts revealing how feminism has ultimately been in existence in the Marshall Islands through shadow governance of the behind the scenes master architect type as well as through skillful demonstrations of the visible leadership ones at the face of male criticism and patriarchal dominance. These stories reveal a human story of perseverance unnoticed by Western prevailing ideals of dominance, technology, science, and downright ignorance to those whom we often view as backwards for not possessing the same raw resources of materialism. It reveals how invented traditions have ultimately demean the way we view " Other " cultures rooted in their ways of knowing and being that were in existence prior to colonization and Christianization efforts. This paper offers an alternative lens to view people the way they view themselves rather than the way our formal structures tend to view them based off of foreign observations of the unknown peeking into the souls of the unconquered.
Postcolonial Justice in Australia: Reassessing the 'Fair Go' - Gigi Adair & Anja Schwarz, eds
Abstract: The Pacific region has proved a stimulating space for repatriation in recent years. Claims from Aboriginal people, supported by Australian museums and other national actors, have been increasingly successful in arranging the return of human remains to their respective communities of origin. Requests sent to European institutions have influenced how they deal with human remains from the colonial era: remains are now more likely to be considered not as objects, but as ancestors who matter to local communities. These successful claims in Australia and New Zealand have inspired other Pacific nations to demand the repatriation of remains from Europe. In conjunction with these returns, handover ceremonies have provided opportunities for Indigenous voices to shape their own remembrance of colonial oppression. Burial practices have emerged that both provide the dead with resting places and crystallize their presence in the postcolonial present. Comparing the Australian experience with that of its neighbouring countries, this paper examines how repatriations to the Pacific have given birth to syncretic memory practices that engage with the legacies of colonialism.
"Everything is different now." Memory and settler identity in Aotearoa New Zealand
Proceedings of the Annual Conference of The Australian Sociological Association, 2013
Shared representations of history are crucial for a sense of coherent social identities, societal cohesion, and political legitimation in nation states. In settler societies such as Aotearoa New Zealand, collective settler memory has often served to justify colonialism. Previous research has particularly highlighted the role forgetting has played, first in taking possession of the new country, and later in preserving the privileged position of settler descendants in a postcolonial society. In this paper, I focus on practices of remembering as one aspect of settler memory that has been neglected so far. Findings from a study with thirty-eight New Zealanders of European descent (Pākehā) suggest that memories of transformations in settlerindigenous relations play an integral role in negotiating contemporary settler identities. I will demonstrate this function of remembering through a careful examination of one exemplary narrative which allows me to trace the narrative performance of memory and to pinpoint key themes. Through practices of remembering Pākehā acknowledge the need for a break with the colonial past. However, genuine efforts to develop new post-colonial settler subjectivities are compromised by discursive redefinitions of decolonisation as the recognition and "mainstreaming‟ of indigenous culture. This culturalisation serves to obscure on-going coloniality and protect white settler privilege whilst allowing Pākehā to claim a reformed, postcolonial identity.