Special Issue: Re-membering Oceanic Masculinities
Guest-edited by Margaret Jolly

About the Artist: Carl F K Pao, ix
The Pacific Islands, x

ARTICLES

Moving Masculinities: Memories and Bodies Across Oceania
Margaret Jolly, 1

Past studies of Oceanic masculinities have tended to see masculinity in the singular, through the lens of unchanging cultural traditions, wherein types of men were iconic of cultural differences. This special issue considers masculinities in the plural, both within and between cultures, exploring the relations between hegemonic and subordinate masculinities and how masculinities are configured in the context of colonial histories, militarism, and globalization. It connects a historical and relational approach to masculinities to embodied experience and individual and collective memories across the diversity of Oceania.
Keywords: masculinities, Oceania, histories, bodies, sexualities, militarism, colonialism

Re-membering Panalā‘au: Masculinities, Nation, and Empire in Hawai‘i and the Pacific
Ty P Kāwika Tengan, 27

Between 1935 and 1942, over one hundred thirty young, mostly Native Hawaiian men (later known as the Hui Panalā‘au) “colonized” five small islands in the Equatorial Pacific as employees of the US Departments of Commerce and Interior. Students and alumni from the Kamehameha Schools served exclusively in the first year, and their experiences largely structured the ways that the project was represented at the time and would be remembered later in a 2002 Bishop Museum exhibit. In this essay, I examine the ways that the bodies and memories of the Kamehameha colonists became fertile grounds for re-membering masculinities, a type of gendered memory work that facilitates the formation of group subjectivities through the coordination of personal memories, historical narratives, and bodily experiences and representations. The colonists embodied a Hawaiian-American masculinity that allowed a wide range of interlocutors and audiences to make (sometimes divergent) claims to racialized citizenship and gendered belonging. Their experiences spoke to the predicament of Hawaiian men working in and against US colonialism, and thus they enabled a collective re-membering of Hawaiian masculinities that helped counter notions of Hawaiian men’s laziness, marginality, and absence, both in the political economy of the territory and the present-day movements for self-determination and decolonization.
Keywords: masculinities, colonialism, militarism, nationalism, memory, embodiment, Hawai‘i

“The Martial Islands”: Making Marshallese Masculinities between American and Japanese Militarism
Greg Dvorak, 55

For over a century, the Marshall Islands have been entangled between the United States and Japan in their conquest of the Central Pacific; yet because of this, these islands have also been a place where multiple masculinities have converged, competed, and transformed each other. This is especially true around the site of Kwajalein Atoll, where terrain understood in Marshallese terms as female or maternal has been reshaped and masculinized through the semiotics of colonialism and militarization. This article focuses specifically on three local representations of masculinity: the knowledgeable but strategic Marshallese “Etao,” symbolized by a creative and resourceful male trickster spirit; the heroic but paternalistic American “Patriot,” as enacted via the perpetual battlefield of military and weapons-testing missions; and the adventurous but self-sacrificing “Dankichi,” deployed in Japan during the 1930s and echoed nowadays in the long-distance tuna-fishing industry. Cross-reading Judith Butler and R W Connell, this is an exploration of the “theater” of these masculinities in relationship to one another, and the story of how different superpowers strive for domination by emasculating a third colonial site and its subjects.
Keywords: masculinities, Marshall Islands, Kwajalein Atoll, gender, America, Japan, Pacific War

Hui Nalu, Beachboys, and the Surfing Boarder-lands of Hawai‘i
Isaiah Helekunihi Walker, 89

In this article I argue that the Hawaiian conceptual, cultural, and physical space called po‘ina nalu (surf zone) was a borderland (or boarder-land) where colonial hegemony was less effectual and Hawaiian resistance continuous. Through the history of Hawaiian surfing clubs, specifically the Hui Nalu and the Waikīkī beachboys, Hawaiian male surfers both subverted colonial discourses—discourses that represented most Hawaiian men as passive, unmanly, and nearly invisible—and confronted political haole (white) elites who overthrew Hawai‘i’s Native government in the late 1800s. My ultimate conclusion is that the ocean surf was a place where Hawaiian men negotiated masculine identities and successfully resisted colonialism.
Keywords: Hawai‘i, history, masculinity, surfi ng, borderlands, resistance

The Death of Koro Paka: “Traditional” Māori Patriarchy
Brendan Hokowhitu, 115

This article is underpinned by the simple question of what knowledge is produced about Māori men and why. In particular, it deconstructs the invention, authentication, and re-authentication of “traditional” Māori patriarchy. It begins by examining how Māori patriarchy was invented and authenticated through the hybridization of Māori and British masculine cultures, especially through the early colonial education of a select few Māori boys, who were subjects of a British public schooling technique. The article draws from this historical analysis to demonstrate how Māori patriarchy continues to be authenticated in today’s popular culture. Here, the contemporary re-authentication of Māori patriarchy is drawn attention to through a deconstruction of the film Whale Rider. This film analysis argues that Whale Rider deploys a dangerous conflation of representation and reality, which ultimately re-authenticates the invented tradition of Māori patriarchy. The article is less concerned with denouncing particular tropes of Māori men as “false” and more with how such “truths” have come to be privileged; it also seeks to uncloak the processes that produce Māori masculine subjectivities.
Keywords: Māori, masculinity, patriarchy, film, Whale Rider, sport, rugby

Globalizing Drag in the Cook Islands: Friction, Repulsion, and Abjection
Kalissa Alexeyeff, 143

Male to female cross-dressing and performing have a long indigenous history in the Cook Islands. In recent years, Western-style drag shows have also been included in the Cook Islands cross-dressing repertoire. This article takes the highly cosmopolitan vehicle of the drag show and uses it to track the relationship between local and global models of gender and sexuality. It examines ways in which the iconography of domesticity and motherhood has been used to signify an uneasy relationship between local and global ideas of sexuality and gender.
Keywords: globalization, gender, sexuality, performance, Cook Islands

Contending Masculinities and the Limits of Tolerance: Sexual Minorities in Fiji
Nicole George, 163

Despite the fact that Fiji is one of only a handful of states to have given constitutional recognition to the rights of sexual minorities in its most recent constitution enacted in 1998, controversy over the issue of individual sexual orientation, and powerful condemnation of those who choose to publicly demonstrate a homosexual or transgender identity, has flourished in the public domain. The focus on male homosexuality has been predominant in this debate, with many influential political actors framing discourses of masculinity in ways that affirm Christian ideals of morality while also reinforcing the Christian Church’s normative political authority. However, as this article demonstrates, public discourses of masculinity have also been articulated in a highly selective manner. This becomes clear when public debate that construes homosexuality in Fiji as a threat to the integrity of the country’s key social institutions is contrasted with some church and political leaders’ far more lenient responses to the forms of violent and lawless masculine behavior that predominated during the 2000 coup. While these developments have increased the political and social vulnerability of Fiji’s homosexuals, young gay men have also employed strategies that contest mainstream discriminatory attitudes. In this article, I describe how the terrain of sexual minority politics is configured in ways that authorize certain varieties of masculine behavior and subordinate others, and consider the strategies deployed by local gay males to contest homophobic sentiments articulated in the public domain.
Keywords: masculinities, homosexuality, nationalism, Christianity, Fiji

POLITICAL REVIEWS

Micronesia in Review: Issues and Events, 1 July 2006 to 30 June 2007
John R Haglelgam, Kelly G Marsh, Samuel F McPhetres, Donald R Shuster, 192

Polynesia in Review: Issues and Events, 1 July 2006 to 30 June 2007
Frédéric Angleviel, Lorenz Gonschor, Jon Tikivanotau, M Jonassen, Margaret Mutu, Bikenibeu Paeniu, Unasa L F Va‘a, 216

BOOK AND MEDIA REVIEWS

Imagining the Other: The Representation of the Papua New Guinea Subject, by Regis Tove Stella
Reviewed by Eugene Ogan, 258

Yali’s Question: Sugar, Culture, and History, by Frederick Errington and Deborah Gewertz
Reviewed by James Leach, 260

British Documents on the End of Empire. Series B, Volume 10: Fiji, edited by Brij V Lal
Reviewed by Robert Norton, 262

The Nose Flute Breathes Again, with Calvin Rore [compact disc]
Reviewed by Brian Diettrich, 265

The Canoe is the People: Indigenous Navigation in the Pacific [cd-rom]
Reviewed by Joseph Genz, 266

Traditional Medicine of the Marshall Islands: The Women, the Plants, the Treatments, by Irene J Taafaki, Maria Kabua Fowler, and Randolph R Thaman
Reviewed by Nancy J Pollock, 268

Dobu: Ethics of Exchange on a Massim Island, Papua New Guinea, by Susanne Kuehling
Reviewed by Will Rollason, 270

Redefining the Pacific? Regionalism Past, Present and Future, edited by Jenny Bryant-Tokalau and Ian Frazer
Reviewed by Nic Maclellan, 272

Strangers in the South Seas: The Idea of the Pacific in Western Thought; An Anthology, edited by Richard Lansdown
Reviewed by Rainer F Buschmann, 275

Island Affinities: Contemporary Art of Oceania [exhibition]
Reviewed by Adria L Imada, 277

Coaxing the Spirits to Dance: Art and Society in the Papuan Gulf of New Guinea [exhibition]
Reviewed by Haidy Geismar, 280

Power and Taboo: Sacred Objects from the Eastern Pacific. Pasifika Styles. Pacific Encounters: Art and Divinity in Polynesia [exhibitions]
Reviewed by Rosanna Raymond, 283

CONTRIBUTORS, 287

About the Artist: Ralph Regenvanu, p. ix
Images

URIPIV ORAL TRADITION

The Story of the Eel, p. 357
told by Elder Mark of Emil Potun

The Pacific Islands, p. 364

ARTICLES

A Fishy Romance: Chiefly Power and the Geopolitics of Desire, p. 365
Heather E Young Leslie

What can fish stories tell us about how people live with the complexities of rapid environmental transformations and the local effects of national, globalized, and neoliberal desires for resources? To answer this, I take the Tā‘atu fish harvesting ritual and accompanying oral narrative to be an “ecography” that addresses human intimacies and changes on a small atoll in Tonga. This type of analysis draws on traditional ecological, political, and sociological knowledge, as well as geography, history, and cultural symbols, to give a deeper understanding of place and the contemporary experience of people intimate with the local environment as source of food and livelihood. When examined in the light of today’s drastically depleted stocks of Pacific pelagic fishes such as skipjack tuna, the ecography of the Tā‘atu provides a benchmark for a shift in a human–fish relationship that provided Polynesians with practical and poetic sustenance for hundreds if not thousands of years. At the same time, the myth of the Tā‘atu highlights the historic political importance of desire, beauty, and their confluence with bounty, in the production of generations of chiefly privilege and cultural practice. Imbricated with the shifts in human–fish and beauty–bounty relations are lessons for the contemporary chiefly–commoner relationship in Tonga, the last nation to claim status as an uninterrupted Polynesian kingdom, as well as laments for the loss of independence an important food resource offered. Today, as in the past, the Tā‘atu is a fishy tale about the geopolitics of various desires.
Keywords: beauty, chiefs, ecography, environment, fishing, narrative, Tonga

The Trouble with RAMSI: Reexamining the Roots of Conflict in Solomon Islands , p. 409
Shahar Hameiri

While the debate that has followed the intervention by the Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands (RAMSI) has centered on the suitability of the failed state label to Solomon Islands, I argue that this debate is misdirected because the concept of state failure itself is accepted uncritically. Examining what is meant by state failure is crucial, because (a) it has assumed an almost commonsensical mantle, which obscures its particular political and ideological underpinnings; and (b) it has considerable conceptual limitations that render it a problematic framework for explaining the roots and possible trajectories of the conflict in Solomon Islands. State failure is essentially a descriptive category with limited explanatory capacity, grounded in a depoliticized and a historical theorization of institutions, state, and society. At its core is an unhelpful preoccupation with state capacity as measured against a hypothetical legal-rational good-governance model. Conflicts are understood in this framework as the result of poor governance or recalcitrant social forces. RAMSI, consequently, has sought to strengthen the institutional capacity of Solomon Islands as the key to conflict resolution as well as a preventative long-term peace-building initiative. In contrast, I argue that unless we develop a clearer understanding of the causes and dynamics of conflict, RAMSI’s state-building approach is likely to exacerbate rather than alleviate tensions in Solomon Islands. This approach involves a shift in emphasis away from the current fixation on institutional capacity audits associated with the failed state concept, toward a more constructive theorization of the historically contingent relationship between changing patterns of economic development and social conflict.
Keywords: Solomon Islands, failed state, RAMSI, state capacity, conflict, governance, patronage

URIPIV ORAL TRADITION

The Last Leserrkab on Uripiv, p. 443
told by Elder Mark of Emil Potun

DIALOGUE

Making a Case for Tongan as an Endangered Language, p. 446
Yuko Otsuka

This paper examines the sociolinguistic situation in Tonga and discusses its relevance to language maintenance in Polynesia. The environment surrounding Tongan is not visibly ominous: it is an official language of an independent state and is spoken by a sizable population in a predominantly monolingual community. Tongan represents an instance of language shift as a result of globalization, wherein a speech community voluntarily gives up its indigenous language(s) for another, more socioeconomically beneficial language, in this case, English. The paper proposes that language endangerment should be understood in terms of a unit larger than the nation-state. This is particularly relevant in the Polynesian context, in which international borders are obscured by transnational migrants. The paper also discusses some positive roles the diasporic communities may potentially play in language maintenance.
Keywords: Tongan, Polynesian, endangered languages, globalization, diaspora, language shift, language maintenance

Viewing Diasporas from the Pacific: What Pacific Ethnographies Offer Pacific Diaspora Studies,
p. 474
Ilana Gershon

This article explores what long-standing analytical traditions in Pacific ethnographies can offer Pacific diaspora studies. In particular, I advocate researchers’ reconceptualizing their unit of analysis when interrogating the relationships between families and diasporas, and argue that family networks fashion diasporas’ longevity and tangibility. Emphasizing families’ social organization encourages Pacific diaspora studies to focus on how and when cultural differences have effects.
Keywords: diaspora, migrants, networks, knowledge circulation, exchange, families

URIPIV ORAL TRADITION

The Journey of the Dead, p. 505
told by Chief Sukon of Emil Potnambe

RESOURCES

Imagining Oceania: Indigenous and Foreign Representations of a Sea of Islands, p. 508
Margaret Jolly

This paper considers the relation of indigenous and foreign in how “the Pacific” and the “Pacific Rim” have been and are imagined. First, I ponder the power of cartography through the lens of two maps derived from the eighteenth century and speculate as to how such maps differed from indigenous genealogies of places and peoples. Second, I explore the origins and the lasting significance of the partitioning of the Pacific into the spatiotemporal regions of Polynesia, Melanesia, and Micronesia, and consider some indigenous uses of these foreign constructs. Third, I reflect on how academic and policy representations of the Pacific “region” and “rim” have been shaped by geopolitical concerns and developmentalism starting in the 1970s, from the viewpoint of Australia (and in a more fleeting way, the United States). Fourth, through a brief exegesis of the influential writings of Epeli Hau‘ofa, I consider his alternative vision of Oceania as a “sea of islands.” Finally, I confront the specter of new ethnological typifications derived from a reading of “roots” and “routes” as dichotomy rather than dialectic, and stress the need for refocusing on the relations and creative exchanges between Islanders living in and between region and rim.
Keywords: Oceania, cartography, culture areas, Pacific region, Pacific Rim

URIPIV ORAL TRADITION

The Two Children Left Behind, p. 547
told by Frank Kenneth of Emil Lowi

POLITICAL REVIEWS

The Region in Review: International Issues and Events, 2005-2006, p. 552
Karen von Strokirch

Melanesia in Review: Issues and Events, 2006, p. 578
David Chappell, Alumita L Durutalo, Anita Jowitt, Louisa Kabutaulaka, Tarcisius Tara Kabutaulaka

URIPIV ORAL TRADITION

The Lebon Brothers, p. 615
told by John Regenvanu of Emil Bweterial and Emil Periv

BOOK AND MEDIA REVIEWS

The Making of Global and Local Modernities in Melanesia: Humiliation, Transformation and the Nature of Culture Change, edited by Joel Robbins and Holly Wardlow, p. 618
Reviewed by Bruce Knauft

Pacific Futures, edited by Michael Powles, p. 620
Reviewed by Anthony van Fossen

Political Parties in the Pacific Islands, edited by Roland Rich with Luke Hambly and Micheal G Morgan, p. 622
Reviewed by Stephen Levine

Globalization and the Re-Shaping of Christianity in the Pacific Islands, edited by Manfred Ernst, p. 624
Reviewed by John Barker

Conservation Is Our Government Now: The Politics of Ecology in Papua New Guinea, by Paige West, p. 626
Reviewed by Alec Golub

Rationales of Ownership: Transactions and Claims to Ownership in Contemporary Papua New Guinea, edited by Lawrence Kalinoe and James Leach, p. 628
Reviewed by Malia Talakai

Social Discord and Bodily Disorder: Healing among the Yupno of Papua New Guinea, by Verna Keck, p. 630
Reviewed by Judith C Barker

Les Javanais du Caillou, Des affres de l’exil aux aléas de l’intégration: Sociologie historique de la communauté indonésienne de Nouvelle Calédonie / The Javanese of the Rock: From the Hazards of Exile to the Hazards of Integration, by Jean Luc Maurer, in collaboration with Marcel Magi and with a contribution by Marie-Jo Siban, p. 632
Reviewed by Jean-Louis Rallu

Shifting Images of Identity in the Pacific, edited by Toon van Meijl and Jelle Miedema, p. 635
Reviewed by Eric Silverman

The People of the Sea: Environment, Identity, and History in Oceania, by Paul D’Arcy, p. 638
Reviewed by John Edward Terrell

Borrowing: A Pacific Perspective, edited by Jan Tent and Paul Geraghty, p. 640
Reviewed by Uri Tadmor

American Pacificism: Oceania in the US Imagination, by Paul Lyons, p. 644
Reviewed by Elizabeth DeLoughrey

No Turning Back: A Memoir, by E T W Fulton, edited by Elizabeth Fulton Thurston, p. 646
Reviewed by Rob Hilliard

One and a Half Pacific Islands / Teuana ao Teiterana n aba n Te Betebeke: Stories the Banaban People Tell of Themselves / I-Banaba Aika a Karakin oin Rongorongola, edited by Jennifer Shennan and Makin Corrie Tekenimatang, p. 648
Reviewed by Mary E Lawson Burke

The Songmaker’s Chair, a play by Albert Wendt, p. 651
Reviewed by Robert Sullivan

Samoan Wedding and No. 2 [feature films], p. 653
Reviewed by Marata Tamaira

Pacific Encounters: Art and Divinity in Polynesia, 1760 –1860 [exhibition], p. 657
Reviewed by Patricia Te Arapo Wallace

CONTRIBUTORS, p. 663

21. Songs from the Second Float: A Musical Ethnography of Takū Atoll, Papua New Guinea, by Richard Moyle (2007)

20. Imagining the Other: The Representation of the Papua New Guinean Subject, by Regis Tove Stella (2006)

19. Colonial Dis-ease: U.S. Navy and Health Policies and the Chamorros of Guam, 1898-1941, by Anne Perez Hattori (2004)

18. An Honorable Accord: The Covenant between the Northern Mariana Islands and the United States, by Howard P Willens and Deanne C Siemer (2001)

17. Law and Order in a Weak State: Crime and Politics in Papua New Guinea, by Sinclair Dinnen (2000)

16. The People Trade: Pacific Island Laborers and New Caledonia, 1865-1930, by Dorothy Shineberg (1998)

15. My Gun, My Brother: The World of the Papua New Guinea Colonial Police, 1920-1960, by August I K Kituai (1998)

14. Guardians of Marovo Lagoon: Practice, Place, and Politics in Maritime Melanesia, by Edvard Hviding (1996)

13. Strangers in Their Own Land: A Century of Colonial Rule in the Caroline and Marshall Islands, by Francix X Hezel, SJ (cloth 1995 out of print; paper 2003)

12. Woven Gods: Female Clowns and Power in Rotuma, by Vilsoni Hereniko (1995)

11. Broken Waves: A History of the Fiji Islands in the Twentieth Century, by Brij V. Lal (1992)

10. Not the Way It Really Was: Constructing the Tolai Past, by Klaus Neumann (1992)

9. Bellona Island Beliefs and Rituals, by Torben Monberg (1991), out of print

8. The Pacific Theater: Island Representations of World War II, edited by Geoffrey M White and Lamont Lindstrom (1989). Copublished with Melbourne University Press.

7. Tungaru Traditions: Writings on the Atoll Culture of the Gilbert Islands, by Arthur F Grimble, edited by H E Maude (1989). Copublished with Melbourne University Press.

6. Missionary Lives: Papua, 1874-1914, by Diane Langmore (1989), out of print

5. Upon a Stone Altar: A History of the Island of Pohnpei to 1890, by David Hanlon (1988)

4. Nan’yo: The Rise and Fall of the Japanese in Micronesia, 1885-1945, by Mark R Peattie (1988)

3. Wealth of the Solomons: A History of a Pacific Archipelago, 1800-1978, by Judith A Bennett (1987)

2. Where the Waves Fall: A New South Sea Islands History from First Settlement to Colonial Rule, by K R Howe (1984), UH Press edition out of print. Copublished with Allen & Unwin, Sydney.

1. The First Taint of Civilization: A History of the Caroline and Marshall Islands in Pre-Colonial Days, 1521-1885, by Francis X Hezel, SJ (1983)

About the Artist: Shigeyuki Kihara, vii

The Pacific Islands, viii

ARTICLES

Nemesis, Speaking, and Tauhi Vaha‘a: Interdisciplinarity and the Truth of “Mental Illness” in Vava‘u, Tonga
Michael Poltorak, 1

the people of Vava‘u, Tonga, manage to deal with most incidences of “mental illness” without resorting to institutionalization or overt stigmatization. The terms used to describe unusual behavior, though pejorative in the eyes of psychiatrist Dr Mapa Puloka, are contestable and negotiable. Through the creative use of a multiplicity of explanations, people have influence over the potential stigma to suffering relatives. People’s sensitivity to attributions of “mental illness” is born of Vavauan use of language to tauhi vaha‘a (evoke and intensify relatedness). This socially constitutive use of language contrasts with the referential language in much of the social science and medical literature that informs mental health policy. Revealing its origin in the experience of vā (relatedness) is key to creating an interdisciplinary space to discuss the late presentation of Tongans to mental health services in Tonga and New Zealand. This paper answers the widely recognized need for more qualitative, epistemologically sensitive, and interdisciplinary work on Tongan experience of mental illness through focusing on the particular case of an eccentric in Vava‘u known as ‘Ahiohio. As this man shares remarkable similarities with Manu (Epeli Hau‘ofa’s subversive mouthpiece of anti-absolutism), the responses to and theories of ‘Ahiohio’s behavior enable discussion on the contrast and effects of Vavauan and, more broadly, medical and positivist ideas of truth.
Keywords: mental illness, Tonga, indigenous psychiatry, language ideologies, Pacific epistemologies, relatedness, modernity

Fashion as Fetish: The Agency of Modern Clothing and Traditional Body Decoration among North Mekeo of Papua New Guinea
Mark S Mosko, 39

Anthropologists and others have recently argued that Papua New Guineans’ contemporary patterns of consumption including Western clothing fashions have become critical components of commodification, modernization, globalization, and the creation of individualistic personal identities in alignment with the nationstate. This paper suggests, however, that among North Mekeo the contemporary adoption of Western clothing styles also embodies additional meanings continuous with preexisting indigenous practices having to do with ceremonial body decoration, courting, and love magic. Personal adornment with items of manufactured youth apparel (T-shirts, jeans, name-brand sneakers, knitted caps, etc) is nowadays regarded by villagers as ritually “hot,” or capable of changing people’s minds similarly to the decorations and love charms previously employed in the colorful ceremonial dress and dancing performed at the conclusion of mortuary feasts. The view of personhood, agency, and gift exchange supposedly distinctive to “traditional” Melanesian cultures (ie, the so-called “New Melanesian Ethnography”) is employed in a novel way to analyze the historical transformation of bakai ceremonial dress and display into the clothing styles and fashion of villagers today. North Mekeo ritual agency in both traditional and contemporary fashions is shown to consist in the exchange dynamics of “dividual” or “partible persons” involving bodily zones of inside, outside, outside-inverted, and insideeverted, analogous to Alfred Gell’s basic technical schema for Polynesian tattooing and armature (1993). This paper thus brings together for a wide circle of Pacific scholars some of the more innovative theoretical developments in Melanesian and Polynesian anthropology of recent decades, highlighting particularly their suitability for the analysis of historical change and transformation.
Keywords: personhood, agency, clothing, fashion, ritual, commodification, change

The Fiji Times and the Good Citizen: Constructing Modernity and Nationhood in Fiji
John Connell, 85

Constructing national identity has proved difficult in the Pacific, especially in Fiji where there are significant ethnic divisions. The “People” column in the Fiji Times has provided a populist focus on “good citizens” who have become successful, often in commerce. Such people have demonstrated values and directions such as hard work, training, education, initiative, and cooperation outside the nuclear family. Religious values have assisted, but “tradition” plays no role. Good citizens have achieved social mobility and often transgressed gender, geographical, and ethnic constraints. They constitute part of a new, modern, moral economy and social space that provides the basis for a modern nation where history and ethnicity have limited place.
Keywords: Fiji, media, citizenship, modernity, morality, nationality

Pacific Islands Trade, Labor, and Security in an Era of Globalization
Stewart Firth, 111

Globalization is having its most transformative effects in the Pacific in three areas of economic and political life: trade, labor, and security. The global move from protection to free trade has reached the Pacific and will have its greatest initial impact on Fiji’s sugar and garment industries, both of which face major restructuring and possibly extinction. Within ten years, the Pacific Plan might also create economic integration within the entire Pacific Islands Forum area, though the free movement of labor from the Islands into Australia and New Zealand seems unlikely. Thanks in large part to the war in Iraq, Fiji has now joined Sämoa and Tonga as a remittance economy, but Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, and Vanuatu have little access to remittance income. Globalization in Solomon Islands has taken the form of unregulated investment in tropical logging, which has contributed to corrupting the political system. The consequence is regional intervention led by Australia, which is also attempting to shore up Papua New Guinea, where the government’s priorities are influenced by its heavy dependence on foreign investors in resource projects. Globalization will probably widen inequalities throughout the Pacific, and some countries will benefit more than others. Cultural, historical, and demographic circumstances at the receiving end of globalization in the Island states of the Pacific play determining roles in whether the process has positive or negative consequences.
Keywords: globalization, trade, labor, security, sugar, garments, logging

DIALOGUE

Diasporic Deracination and “Off-Island” Hawaiians
J Kēhaulani Kauanui, 138

Survivor Vanuatu: Myths of Matriarchy Revisited
Lamont Lindstrom, 162

POLITICAL REVIEWS

Micronesia in Review (Federated States, Guam, Northern Marianas, Palau): Issues and Events, 1 July 2005 to 30 June 2006
John R Haglelgam, Kelly G Marsh, Samuel F McPhetres, Donald R Shuster, 178

Polynesia in Review (Cook Islands, French Polynesia, Hawaiian Issues, Māori Issues, Rapa Nui, Sāmoa, Tokelau, Tonga, Tuvalu, Wallis and Futuna): Issues and Events, 1 July 2005 to 30 June 2006
Frédéric Angleviel, Lorenz Gonschor, Jon Tikivanotau M Jonassen, Kelihiano Kalolo, Tracie Ku‘uipo Cummings Losch, Margaret Mutu, Tauaasa Taafaki, Unasa L F Va‘a, Heather E Young Leslie, 207

BOOK AND MEDIA REVIEWS

Five Takes on Climate and Cultural Change in Tuvalu
The Disappearing of Tuvalu: Trouble in Paradise; Paradise Drowned: Tuvalu, The Disappearing Nation; Tuvalu: That Sinking Feeling; Before the Flood; and Time and Tide [videos]
Feature Review by Anne Chambers and Keith S Chambers, 294

The Land Has Eyes: Pear ta ma ‘on maf [feature film]
Reviewed by Selina Tusitala Marsh, 306

Pacific Regional Order, by Dave Peebles; Pacific Islands Regional Integration and Governance, edited by Satish Chand
Reviewed by Roderic Alley, 308

Bougainville: Before the Conflict, edited by Anthony J Regan and Helga M Griffin
Reviewed by Donald Denoon, 313

Ce souffle venu des ancêtres … L’oeuvre politique de Jean-Marie Tjibaou (1936–1989), by Hamid Mokaddem
Reviewed by Eric Waddell, 315

The Sweet Potato in Oceania: A Reappraisal, edited by Chris Ballard, Paula Brown, R Michael Bourke, and Tracey Harwood
Reviewed by William C Clarke, 318

Island at the End of the World: The Turbulent History of Easter Island, by Steven Roger Fischer
Reviewed by Paul Rainbird, 322

“First Contacts” in Polynesia: The Samoan Case (1722–1848); Western Misunderstandings about Sexuality and Divinity, by Serge Tcherkézoff
Reviewed by Paul Shankman, 323

Island of Angels: The Growth of the Church on Kosrae / Kapkapak lun Church fin acn Kosrae, 1852–2002, by Elden M Buck
Reviewed by James Peoples, 325

Vision and Reality in Pacific Religion: Essays in Honour of Niel Gunson, edited by Phyllis Herda, Michael Reilly, and David Hilliard
Reviewed by Robert Tonkinson, 327

Decolonising the Mind: The Impact of the University on Culture and Identity in Papua New Guinea, 1971–1974, by Ulli Beier
Reviewed by Steven Edmund Winduo, 330

Savannah Flames: Papua New Guinean Journal of Literature, Language and Culture, Volume 5, edited by Steven Edmund Winduo
Reviewed by Reina Whaitiri, 332

Expressive Genres and Historical Change: Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and Taiwan, edited by Pamela J Stewart and Andrew Strathern
Reviewed by Ruth Finnegan, 334

Hiapo: Past and Present in Niuean Barkcloth, by John Pule and Nicholas Thomas
Reviewed by Lissant Bolton, 337

Tattoo: Bodies, Art, and Exchange in the Pacific and the West, edited by Nicholas Thomas, Anna Cole, and Bronwen Douglas
Reviewed by April K Henderson, 339

Life in the Pacific of the 1700s: The Cook/Forster Collection of the George August University of Göttingen [exhibit]
Reviewed by Ivy Hali‘imaile Andrade, Maile T Drake, and Karen K Kosasa, 341

Jolika Collection of New Guinea Art, de Young Museum [exhibit]
Reviewed by Margaret Mackenzie, 345

SPECIAL ISSUE: Melanesian Mining Modernities: Past, Present, and Future
Guest Editors: Paige West and Martha Macintyre

About the Artist: Larry Santana, p. ix
Images

The Pacific Islands, p. x

ARTICLES

Grass Roots and Deep Holes: Community Responses to Mining in Melanesia, p. 215
Colin Filer and Martha Macintyre

This introduction contextualizes the discussion of community responses to mining in Melanesia by looking first at the policies of minerals extraction and the shift of academic interest from economic development to the social effects of mining. As this collection concentrates on Papua New Guinea, an analysis of the sector and its problems in that country is briefly contrasted with the situation in other Pacific Island nations, canvassing the idea that the economic “resource curse” might have a social dimension. The varying interpretations of local impact and anthropological studies have challenged notions of unified interest or consensus at the local level, revealing ambivalence and contradictions. An overview of the contributions made in this special issue to current debates about stakeholder interests and economic sustainability is presented, showing that understandings of mining and its social consequences at each stage of the process are always inflected by the cultural conceptions of change, wealth, and resources that obtain in a community.
Keywords: mining, Melanesia, Papua New Guinea, minerals policy, social change

Hinterland History: The Ok Tedi Mine and Its Cultural Consequences in Telefolmin, p. 233
Dan Jorgensen

Much of the literature on mining in Papua New Guinea is concerned with the politics of landowner compensation. In the case of the Ok Tedi mine, attention has focused largely on claims for downstream ecological damage and the ensuing settlement on behalf of people living along the Lower Ok Tedi. Like all major mines, however, Ok Tedi has produced a series of large-scale ripple effects throughout the surrounding region, both downstream and upstream. In this article I explore two decades of mine-related transformations among Telefolmin, one of several groups of Min people who are a major source of labor for the Ok Tedi mine. I argue that Ok Tedi provides Telefolmin with the ability to realize a particular form of modernity. For Telefolmin, however, this modernity is rendered insecure by their hinterland status and the prospect of mine closure, sharpening fears that the Telefol experience of modernity may be a fleeting one.
Keywords: mining, Ok Tedi, Papua New Guinea, regional history, Telefolmin, mine closure

Who Is the “Original Affluent Society”? Ipili “Predatory Expansion” and the Porgera Gold Mine, Papua New Guinea, p. 265
Alex Golub

The idea of the “ecologically noble savage” once linked environmental activists and indigenous people. Today the concept is increasingly seen as problematic. In the Porgera district of Enga Province, Papua New Guinea, Ipili people confront massive social change brought about by the presence of a large gold mine. This paper explores how Ipili people find some aspects of global consumer culture to offer utopian possibilities for change, while others present dystopic inversions of their own culture. In doing so, it compares Western attempts to understand Ipili as noble or ignoble savages with Ipili attempts to make sense of the material culture and mores of outsiders. It concludes that both Ipili and westerners have unsettling insights into each other’s culture.
Keywords: Porgera, Enga, Papua New Guinea, mining, affluent society, consumerism, utopia

Environmental Conservation and Mining: Between Experience and Expectation in the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea, p. 295
Paige West

Since the 1970s the residents of Maimafu village, a rural settlement in the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea, have been affected by both an environmental conservation project and a series of gold mining explorations on their lands. The paper examines this history of conservation and mining and shows how residents of Maimafu have struggled to interpret the promises made by ecologists and miners. Using stories about a mining study tour some residents took to the Porgera mine, the paper also discusses how people come to imagine what their future might look like if mining begins taking place on their lands.
Keywords: Papua New Guinea, Porgera, Maimafu, mining, conservation, development, expectations

Local Laborers in Papua New Guinea Mining: Attracted or Compelled to Work?, p. 315
Benedict Y Imbun

This paper examines Papua New Guinean participation in mining from the perspective of furnishing labor. It throws light not just on current employment arrangements but also on the historical emergence of the local miner and wider canvas of age-old attitudes and traditions influencing workers’ perspectives on work. Analysis of a variety of data collected through interviews, document analysis, and direct observations of a number of events in Porgera and other mines indicate that Papua New Guinean mine workers are in a transitional phase of becoming full-fledged workers. Many of the current challenges stem from the recent introduction of capitalism into the previously predominantly subsistence sector. However, there is sufficient evidence to suggest that local mine workers are becoming more attached to paid work and this attitude is embraced by an increasing number of educated and skilled workers. This trend is set to continue as more mines become operational and as the country in general develops economically.
Keywords: Papua New Guinea, labor, mining, mine workers, industrial relations

Cannibalistic Imaginaries: Mining the Natural and Social Body in Papua New Guinea, p. 335
Jamon Halvaksz

The history of Wau township in Morobe Province, Papua New Guinea, is intimately linked with the development of gold mining throughout the region. The site of a series of gold rushes in the 1920s, Wau emerged as an early administrative outpost, a town complete with all the trappings of frontier Australian communities. In recent years, Wau has declined, and the Biangai communities reflect on this decline in ways that manipulate both the early colonial discourses and their own. Central to these discussions are images of cannibalism, as the consumption of both living flesh and ancestral landscapes. In this paper I examine the gold rush, how early prospectors conceptualized the colonial project, and what Wau’s subsequent decline has meant to the Biangai who now pursue new mining opportunities. I trace these events and perspectives through historical and present-day discourses. Throughout, a fascination with mountains, gold, and “cannibals” is prominent, with Wau emerging out of struggles to conquer these elements of the landscape. Cannibalism remains a pervasive theme in contemporary Biangai discourses as they now try to recreate an era of successful gold mining and community life in and around Wau by overcoming many of the same elements. However, the moral terrain between consuming flesh, consuming land, and consuming gold are differently deployed in order to explain success and failure, and to imagine the nation.
Keywords: gold mining, cannibalism, cosmology, colonialism, first contact, Papua New Guinea, Biangai

The Ecology and Economy of Indigenous Resistance: Divergent Perspectives on Mining in New Caledonia, p. 361
Saleem H Ali and Andrew Singh Grewal

Mineral development in remote parts of the world has become a major focus of environmental and social resistance movements. Despite the economic benefits that may accrue for local people, the impact of such projects is increasingly being questioned, particularly by indigenous communities. However, there are ways by which amicable and effective resolutions to development disagreements can be achieved despite cultural differences between the developer and the community. Using qualitative research methods, this article presents a comparative analysis of two mining projects on the Pacific island of New Caledonia where the indigenous Kanak community has shown differentiation in their response to the two projects. Our analysis shows that the project encountering less resistance has more effectively embraced principles of transparency, flexibility, and indigenous ownership. Our analysis suggests that mineral developers operating on indigenous lands should consider the power of process in reaching agreements rather than erroneously assuming that litigation or buyouts are inevitable. Such an approach is likely to reach more sustainable solutions to development in remote indigenous communities.
Keywords: New Caledonia, nickel mining, smelting, decolonization, Kanak, inco, Falconbridge

POLITICAL REVIEWS

Melanesia in Review: Issues and Events, 2005, p. 395
David Chappell, Alumita L Durutalo, Alphonse Gelu, Anita Jowitt, Tarcisius Tara Kabutaulaka

BOOK AND MEDIA REVIEWS

The Manipulation of Custom: From Uprising to Intervention in the Solomon Islands, by Jon Fraenkel, and Happy Isles in Crisis: The Historical Causes for a Failing State in Solomon Islands, 1988–2004, by Clive Moore, p. 442
Reviewed by Rhys Richards

The Unseen City: Anthropological Perspectives on Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, by Michael Goddard, p. 444
Reviewed by Keith Barber

Sovereignty under Siege? Globalization and New Zealand, edited by Robert Patman and Chris Rudd, p. 447
Reviewed by Roderic Alley

Mining and Indigenous Lifeworlds in Australia and Papua New Guinea, edited by Alan Rumsey and James Weiner, p. 449
Reviewed by Alex Golub

Colonial Dis-Ease: US Navy Health Policies and the Chamorros of Guam, 1898–1941, by Anne Perez Hattori, p. 451
Reviewed by Laurel A Monnig

Life in the Republic of the Marshall Islands / Mour ilo Republic eo an Majol, written by Marshall Islanders and edited by Anono Lieom Loeak, Veronica C Kiluwe,and Linda Crowl, p. 453
Reviewed by Hilda Heine and Julianne Walsh Kroeker

Historiographie de la Nouvelle-Calédonie, by Frédéric Angleviel, p. 456
Reviewed by David Chappell

The Aborigines of Taiwan: The Puyuma; From Head-hunting to the Modern World, by Josiane Cauquelin, p. 459
Reviewed by Serge Dunis

Postcolonial Pacific Writing: Representations of the Body, by Michelle Keown, p. 461
Reviewed by Paul Lyons

Tu: A Novel, by Patricia Grace, p. 464
Reviewed by Elizabeth DeLoughrey

Voice Carried My Family, by Robert Sullivan, p. 466
Reviewed by Selina Tusitala Marsh

Sing-song, by Anne Kennedy, p. 469
Reviewed by Cynthia Franklin

Theatre and Political Process: Staging Identities in Tokelau and New Zealand, by Ingjerd Ho‘m, p. 471
Reviewed by Markus Wessendorf

Pacific Jewelry and Adornment, by Roger Neich and Fuli Pereira, p. 473
Reviewed by Donald H Rubinstein

American Memorial Park Visitor Center and WWII Exhibit Hall, National Park Service, p. 476
Reviewed by Tammy Duchesne

Adorning the World: Art of the Marquesas Islands [exhibit], p. 480
Reviewed by Haidy Geismar

CONTRIBUTORS, p. 485

About the Artist: Albert Wendt, p. vii
Images

The Pacific Islands, p. viii

ARTICLES

“Got Race?” The Production of Haole and the Distortion of Indigeneity in the Rice Decision, p. 1
Judy Rohrer

This paper is part of a larger project that explores haole (white people, foreigners) as a colonial form of whiteness in Hawai‘i—as a dynamic social assemblage. Haole was forged and reforged in over two centuries of colonization, and it must be understood through that history. I use the recent Supreme Court decision in Harold F Rice v Benjamin J Cayetano, 528 US 495 (2000), as an entry point into the interrogation of haole. Framed by the dominant discourse, the case appeared to be about Native Hawaiians (asking questions about who they are and what rights they have), and not about haole (assuming there are no questions as to who they are and what rights they have).
The Rice case illustrates how Western law renders indigenous claims inarticulable by racializing native peoples, while simultaneously normalizing white subjectivity by insisting on a color-blind ideology. The inherent contradiction in these two positions—race matters /race does not matter—is played out in the frictions surrounding the Rice decision and is evidence of the cracks in the hegemony of Western law that complicate any easy binary of colonizer–colonized. Through an analysis of Rice, I explore how the Western legal framework is set up to accept the teleological narrative of the development, to problematize native identity, and to naturalize white subjectivity. I then broaden the lens to explore the ways Rice points to an epistemological disconnect between Western notions of the production of knowledge and indigenous articulations of the same.
Keywords: indigeneity, whiteness, colonization, Hawai‘i, law, critical race theory

Three Competing Research Perspectives for Oceania, p. 33
Houston Wood

Three research perspectives are currently competing in Oceania. A disciplinebased perspective still dominates, though ever fewer people believe that disciplines produce superior forms of knowledge. An alternative, interpretation-based perspective is becoming more prominent, but this approach relies on confusing and contradictory claims about how interpretations connect to concrete activities. A practice-based approach seems better able to promote diversity and place-based autonomies in Oceania. Research that focuses on practices avoids the universalizing claims of discipline-based research. By treating cultures as dynamic repertoires of practices, a practice-based approach integrates interpretive and noninterpretive activities within a single research frame. Examples from many researchers, including Epeli Hau‘ofa and Ty Kawika Tengan, illustrate the benefits of a practice-based approach.
Keywords: disciplines, Oceania, Pacific studies, practices, research

DIALOGUE

Interview with Albert Wendt: Art, Writing, and the Creative Process, p. 59
Vilsoni Hereniko

On Analogies: Rethinking the Pacific in a Global Context, p. 71
Teresia K Teaiwa

Saipan: From Then to Now, p. 89
P F Kluge

POLITICAL REVIEWS

Micronesia in Review: Issues and Events, 1 July 2004 to 30 June 2005, p. 104
Kelly G Marsh, Samuel F McPhetres, Donald R Shuster

Polynesia in Review: Issues and Events, 1 July 2004 to 30 June 2005, p. 128
Frédéric Angleviel, Lorenz Gonschor, Jon Tikivanotau M Jonassen, Tracie Ku‘uipo Cummings Losch

BOOK AND MEDIA REVIEWS

Aloha Betrayed: Native Hawaiian Resistance to American Colonialism, p. 154
Review Forum by Lyn Carter, Sally Engle Merry, and Jonathan Friedman, with a Response by Noenoe K Silva

Creative Land: Place and Procreation on the Rai Coast of Papua New Guinea, by James Leach, p. 171
Reviewed by Joel Robbins

Remembering Papua New Guinea: An Eccentric Ethnography, by William C Clarke, p. 176
Reviewed by Dan Jorgensen

News Zero: The New York Times and the Bomb, by Beverly Ann Deepe Keever, p. 178
Reviewed by Robert C Kiste

The Secret Guam Study: How President Ford’s 1975 Approval of Commonwealth Was Blocked by Federal Officials, by Howard P Willens with Dirk A Ballendorf, p. 182
Reviewed by Robert C Kiste

L’art des échanges: Penser le lien sociale chez les Sulka (Papouasie Nouvelle-Guinée), by Monique Jeudy-Ballini, p. 185
Reviewed by Marta Rohatynskyj

Approches autour de culture et nature dans le Pacifique Sud, edited by Hamid Mokaddem, p. 188
Reviewed by Elise Huffer

L’oeil du Père Rouel: Autour d’une série de photographies d’Alphonse Rouel en Nouvelle-Calédonie (1913–1969), by Hamid Mokaddem, p. 191
Reviewed by Emmanuelle Crane

Insularités: Hommage à Henri Lavondès, edited by Alain Babadzan, p. 193
Reviewed by Serge Dunis

Atlas of the Pacific Islands, by Max Quanchi, p. 196
Reviewed by James O Juvik and Sonia P Juvik

The Captain Cook Encyclopaedia, written and edited by John Robson, p. 197
Reviewed by Brian Richardson

Na Kkai Taku: Taku’s Musical Fables, collected by Richard M Moyle, p. 200
Reviewed by Denis Crowdy

Stolen Worlds: Fujindian Fragments, edited by Kavita Ivy Nandan, p. 202
Reviewed by Leslie Butt

Waa in Storms, by Teweiariki Teaero, p. 204
Reviewed by Katerina Martina Teaiwa

Mauna Kea: Temple Under Siege (documentary film), p. 207
Reviewed by Georganne Nordstrom

CONTRIBUTORS, p. 211

The Pacific Islands, p. vii

About the Artist: Ric R. Castro, p. ix
Images

ARTICLES

Australian Foreign Policy and the RAMSI Intervention in Solomon Islands, p. 283
Tarcisius Tara Kabutaulaka

The Australian government’s decision to lead a Pacific Islands Forum regional intervention into Solomon Islands marked a dramatic change in Australian policy toward the Solomons in particular and the Pacific Islands region in general. It demonstrated Australia’s willingness to play a more assertive role in the domestic affairs of Pacific countries. The decision also reflected fundamental changes in the global security environment following the 11 September 2001 attacks on the United States and the perception that international terrorism has made it difficult to separate external and internal security. Canberra was influenced by the idea that terrorists could use “failed states” to pose security problems for Australia (and other western countries). While Australia’s concerns about its own security as well as the influence of Anglo-American security policies have led the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands to concentrate on rebuilding the Solomon Islands state, this paper argues that the post-conflict nation building process must include other institutions besides the state—such as churches, community leaders, nongovernmental organizations, women’s groups—that already have an influence on society. This is particularly important for Solomon Islands, a country where there have always been multiple centers of power, with the state not always the most important. Further, post-conflict nation building must also involve the mending and rebuilding of relationships between peoples while ensuring that foreign assistance does not create a culture of dependency.
Keywords: conflict, peace, intervention, development, security, terrorism, leadership

Beyond Governance in Samoa: Understanding Samoan Political Thought, p. 311
Elise Huffer and Asofou So‘o

In the Samoan polity today, the indigenous institution of the matai (chiefs) continues to play a pivotal role in governance. In determining leadership, the fa‘asamoa (Samoan way) and the fa‘amatai (way of the chiefs) are the most influential factors. Yet this has not prevented Samoa from experiencing governance problems found in other countries of the region, although perhaps on a lesser scale: misunderstanding, frustration, alienation, migration, discrimination, malpractice, patronage, and violence. Reasons for this may be (1) a lack of correspondence between fa‘asamoa and liberal democracy; (2) a lack of general understanding and critical assessment of the principles of liberal democracy in Samoa; (3) a combination of misuse, abuse, or misunderstanding of fa‘asamoa; and (4) a lack of publicity and critical assessment of the principles of fa‘asamoa. This paper examines aspects of these four characteristics of the Samoan polity and looks at ways of reassessing governance. It draws on literature that deals with some of the main features of Samoan political thought, as well as on discussions with Samoan scholars and thinkers. This introduction to a different approach to Samoan governance also briefly reviews some of the political forces and tensions at play in Samoa to show how they impact current political conceptualization.
Keywords: Samoa, democracy, fa‘amatai, fa‘asamoa, political thought, philosophy, governance

DIALOGUE I: Reflections on Nuclear Testing in the South Pacific, edited by David Chappell

In Quest of Dialogue on a “Hot” Subject, p. 336
David Chappell

The Nuclear Issue in the South Pacific: Labor Parties, Trade Union Movements, and Pacific Island Churches in International Relations, p. 339
Jean-Marc Regnault

A Comment on “The Nuclear Issue in the South Pacific”, p. 359
Stewart Firth

The Nuclear Age in the Pacific Islands, p. 363
Nic Maclellan

Response to Regnault, p. 373
Bruno Barrillot and John Taroanui Doom

French Nuclear Testing in the South Pacific, or When France Makes Light of Its Duty to Remember p. 378
Gabriel Tetiarahi

Reply, p. 382
Jean-Marc Regnault

DIALOGUE 2

Of Blood and of the Heart: An Interview with Georgia Ka‘apuni McMillen, p. 387
Cara Cilano

“Hawaiian at Heart” and Other Fictions, p. 404
Lisa Kahaleole Hall

POLITICAL REVIEWS

The Region in Review: International Issues and Events, 2004, p. 416
Karin von Strokirch

Melanesia in Review: Issues and Events, 2004, p. 435
David Chappell, Anita Jowitt, and Jaap Timmer

BOOK AND MEDIA REVIEWS

Becoming Sinners: Christianity and Moral Torment in a Papua New Guinea Society, by Joel Robbin, p. 466
Reviewed by Mary N MacDonald

Maori Times, Maori Places: Prophetic Histories, by Karen Sinclair, p. 468
Reviewed by Toon van Meijl

Cargo, Cult, and Culture Critique, edited by Holger Jebens, p. 470
Reviewed by Michael French Smith

Landscape, Memory and History: Anthropological Perspectives, edited by Pamela J Stewart and Andrew Strathern, p. 473
Reviewed by Jamon Halvaksz

Bittersweet: The Indo-Fijian Experience, edited by Brij V Lal, p. 475
Reviewed by Max Quanchi

Pacific Places, Pacific Histories: Essays in Honor of Robert C Kiste, edited by Brij V Lal, p. 478
Reviewed by Anne Hattori

New Guinea: Crossing Boundaries and History, by Clive Moore, p. 480
Reviewed by Larry M Lake

Worlds Apart: A History of the Pacific Islands, by I C Campbell, p. 482
Reviewed by John Cole

The Archaeology of Micronesia, by Paul Rainbird, p. 485
Reviewed by Ross Cordy

Wartime Japanese Anthropology in Asia and the Pacific, edited by Akitoshi Shimizu and Jan van Bremen, p. 487
Reviewed by Dirk Anthony Ballendorf

Namoluk Beyond the Reef: The Transformation of a Micronesian Community, by Mac Marshall, p. 489
Reviewed by Unasa L F Va‘a

Under Heaven’s Brow: Pre-Christian Religious Tradition in Chuuk, by Ward H Goodenough, p. 491
Reviewed by Ted Lowe

Conceiving Cultures: Reproducing People and Places on Nuakata, Papua New Guinea, by Shelley Mallett, p. 494
Reviewed by Leslie Butt

Exchanging the Past: A Rainforest World of Before and After, by Bruce M Knauft, p. 497
Reviewed by Thomas Ernst

Identity and Development: Tongan Culture, Agriculture, and the Perenniality of the Gift, by Paul van der Grijp, p. 499
Reviewed by Mike Evans

Anuta: Polynesian Lifeways for the 21t Century, by Richard Feinberg, p. 501
Reviewed by Torben Monberg

Re-Thinking Vanuatu Education Together, edited by Kabini Sanga, John Niroa, Kalmele Matai, and Linda Crowl, p. 502
Reviewed by Karen Ann Watson-Gegeo

Pacific Art: Persistence, Change and Meaning, edited by Anita Herle, Nick Stanley, Karen Stevenson, and Robert L Welsch, p. 505
Reviewed by Jacob Love

The Time at Darwin’s Reef: Poetic Explorations in Anthropology and History, by Ivan Brady, p. 507
Reviewed by Klaus Neumann

Kau La‘au and Ma‘ama‘a: Traditional Hawaiian Ulua Fishing (DVD), p. 510
Reviewed by Mark A Calamia

Oltobed a Malt (Nurture, regenerate, celebrate). The Ninth Festival of Pacific Arts in Koror, Palau, 22–31 July 2004, p. 512
Reviewed by Jane Freeman Moulin

CONTRIBUTORS, p. 517

Errata

About the Artist: Meleanna Aluli Meyer, p. vii
Images

The Pacific Islands, p. viii

ARTICLES

Precarious Positions: Native Hawaiians and US Federal Recognition, p. 1
J Kehaulani Kauanui

This essay examines the politics of the controversial proposal for US federal recognition for Native Hawaiians. It explores a range of historical and legal issues that shed light on the multiple claims that constitute the complex terrain of Hawaiian sovereignty politics. The article provides a historical overview of the events that impact the current situation and then discusses a particular set of contemporary conditions that serve as key elements in catalyzing widespread support for federal recognition—namely, the implications of the recent US Supreme Court ruling in Rice v Cayetano and subsequent legal challenges to Native Hawaiian programs and funding by the US government. It also highlights difficulties with the promise of federal recognition as a solution to “the Hawaiian problem” by looking at lessons from Indian Country, Native Alaska, and the Pacific—especially the US unincorporated territories. Finally, the essay explores the independence movement as an alternative to domestic dependent nationhood.
Keywords: Native Hawaiians, sovereignty, United States, federal recognition, indigenous politics, land, self-governance

He Lei Ho‘oheno no na Kau a Kau: Language, Performance, and Form in Hawaiian Poetry, p. 29
Ku‘ualoha Ho‘omanawanui

Hawaiian poetry developed in the nurturing embrace of oral tradition for nearly two thousand years before American missionaries introduced writing in the 1820s. Once literacy was established, Native Hawaiians enthusiastically set out to use the new technology to record their oral traditions in writing. During this period they also experimented with and developed new forms of mele, such as hula ku‘i. After the Hawaiian language was banned and the government overthrown in the late nineteenth century, there was a period where Hawaiian poetry was carried forward into the twentieth century by entertainers—singers, dancers, and musicians—who kept the performance aspect of Hawaiian poetry alive. The art of Hawaiian poetry was transformed in the latter half of the twentieth century, when haku mele (poets) began to write primarily in English and Hawai‘i Creole English while still maintaining Hawaiian themes and utilizing traditional metaphors. Since then, contemporary Hawaiian poetry in these languages has thrived alongside Hawaiian-language compositions, which are still perpetuated, mostly through the practice of hula. Today, Hawaiian poetry can be best described by using the metaphor of a haku lei, where different strands of language and influence are woven together to create something beautiful and unique, an enduring and perpetual symbol of Hawaiian cultural tradition—a lei ho‘oheno no nä kau a kau, a lei to be cherished for all seasons.
Keywords: Hawaiian poetry, form, performance, Hawaiian literature

Tauhi va: Nurturing Tongan Sociospatial Ties in Maui and Beyond, p. 83
Tevita O Ka‘ili

Although studies have shown that Tongan migrants maintain strong linkages with Tongans in Tonga as well as with their kin in New Zealand, Australia, and the United States, the Tongan concept of va, social space, has not been used to understand Tongan transnational relations. For Tongans, vä is organized through one’s genealogy and kinship ties. The concept of space is central to our understanding of transnationality because global practices involve the movement and flows of people and things within space and across spatial boundaries while people maintain sociospatial connections with one another. Tongans generally view reciprocal exchanges, whether within Tonga or transnational, as tauhi va: taking care of sociospatial ties with kin and kin-like members. In this article, I explore the concept of va and the practice of tauhi va primarily through my research among Tongans in Maui, Hawai‘i, as well as my experience with Tongans in Seattle, Washington. I argue that va and tauhi va provide us with new spatial concepts for framing our understanding of Tongan transnationality.
Keywords: Social space, va, transnationalism, tauhi va, Tongan Americans, genealogy, fonua

DIALOGUE

Governance, Corruption, and Ethics in the South Pacific, p. 118
Elise Huffer

A Conversation with Mililani Trask, p. 142
Noe NoeWong-Wilson

POLITICAL REVIEWS

Micronesia in Review: Issues and Events, 1 July 2003 to 30 June 2004, p. 160
Kelly G Marsh, Samuel F McPhetres, Donald R Shuster

Polynesia in Review: Issues and Events, 1 July 2003 to 30 June 2004, p. 185
Frédéric Angleviel, David Chappell, Tracie Ku‘uipo Cummings Losch, Jon Tikivanotau M Jonassen, Margaret Mutu

BOOK AND MEDIA REVIEWS

The Trial of the Cannibal Dog: Captain Cook in the South Seas, by Anne Salmond Cook: The Extraordinary Voyages of Captain James Cook, by Nicholas Thomas, p. 224
Reviewed by Tom Ryan

Sailing in the Wake of the Ancestors: Reviving Polynesian Voyaging, by Ben Finney, p. 232
Reviewed by Richard Feinberg

No Sword to Bury: Japanese Americans in Hawai‘i during World II, by Franklin Odo, p. 235
Reviewed by Jonathan Y Okamura

Kahana: How the Land Was Lost, by Robert H Stauffer, p. 237
Reviewed by David Keanu Sai

Secrecy and Cultural Reality: Utopian Ideologies of the New Guinea Men’s House, by Gilbert Herdt, p. 240
Reviewed by Andrew Lattas

Raiding the Land of the Foreigners: The Limits of the Nation on an Indonesian Frontier, by Danilyn Rutherford, p. 243
Reviewed by Chris Ballard

Under the Gun: The Small Arms Challenge in the Pacific, by David Capie, p. 245
Reviewed by Edwina Thompson

Akono‘anga Maori: Cook Islands Culture, edited by Ron Crocombe and Marjorie Tua‘inekore Crocombe, p. 248
Reviewed by Jukka Siikala

Pacific Island Tourism, edited by David Harrison, p. 250
Reviewed by Wardlow Friesen

Marshall Islands Legends and Stories, collected and edited by Daniel A Kelin II, p. 252
Reviewed by Laurence Marshall Carucci

Samoan Art & Artists: O Measina a Samoa, by Sean Mallon, p. 255
Reviewed by Carol E Mayer

Conversations: Occasional Writing from the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies 2:1, June 2001, edited by Brij V Lal, p. 258
Reviewed by Paul Lyons

Kwamra: A Season of Harvest, by Russell Soaba Captain Cook in the Underworld, by Robert Sullivan, p. 260
Reviewed by Briar Wood

Gender, Song, and Sensibility: Folktales and Folksongs in the Highlands of New Guinea, by Pamela J Stewart and Andrew Strathern, p. 264
Reviewed by Don Brenneis

Panpipes across the Ocean: A Production of Popular Tunes from the South Pacific Islands (compact disc), p. 266
Reviewed by Don Niles

Kuo Hina ‘E Hiapo: The Mulberry is White and Ready for Harvest (video), p. 268
Reviewed by Ping-Ann Addo

The Songmaker’s Chair, by Albert Wendt (play), p. 270
Reviewed by Melani Anae

Paradise Now? Contemporary Art from the Pacific (art exhibit), p. 273
Reviewed by Fred Myers

CONTRIBUTORS

About the Artist: Ake Lianga
Images

The Pacific Islands

ARTICLES

Traveling Stories, Colonial Intimacies, and Women’s Histories in Vanuatu, p. 233
Margaret Rodman

The story of the 1937 death of an eighteen-month-old girl named Wilhemina (Mina) Whitford in the care of her ni-Vanuatu nursemaid, Evelyn, frames this article. The Whitford’s version of this story was heard in the course of fieldwork with descendants of settler families. They tie Mina’s accidental death to an affair Evelyn was having with a male settler. What about Evelyn? How could she be located and her version of events recorded? More generally, how can the unwritten histories of women’s experiences be recovered in a Pacific island context? How can indigenous women write their own histories of gender in the contexts of colonial experience? The article offers, first, a theoretically informed descriptive approach, which finds answers in the gendered and racialized content of contemporary descriptions of past experiences, such as the story of the child’s death. A second way of finding Evelyn involves methodological detective work using the network of ni-Vanuatu women fieldworkers trained through the Vanuatu Cultural Centre. A 2001 workshop provided a forum for fieldworkers and women who had worked as housegirls in the colonial (pre-1980) period to discuss work, violence, gender, race, and history. During the workshop, a fieldworker brought Evelyn’s story to light. Conclusions point to new ways of integrating indigenous and expatriate women’s voices in historical and anthropological research in the contemporary Pacific.
Keywords: Gender, subject locations, race, narrative, indigenous methodologies, settlers, Vanuatu

Tackling Maori Masculinity: A Colonial Genealogy of Savagery and Sport, p. 259
Brendan Hokowhitu

The primary aim of this paper is to deconstruct one of the dominant discourses surrounding Maori men—a discourse that was constructed to limit, homogenize, and reproduce an acceptable and imagined Maori masculinity, and one that has also gained hegemonic consent from many tane. I use a genealogical approach to outline the historical underpinnings of the image of the Maori man as naturally physical, and the mechanisms, including the confiscation of land and a racist state education system, that served to propound and perpetuate this construction. The contemporary portrayal of the natural Maori sportsman has evolved from these historical roots in what has become a largely subconscious but no less insidious pattern of subjugation through positively framed sporting images.
Keywords: Maori, masculinity, sport

Toward a Viable Independence? The Koniambo Project and the Political Economy of Mining in New Caledonia, p. 287
Leah S. Horowitz

In New Caledonia, pro-independence leaders perceive economic autonomy as a prerequisite for political independence. The Koniambo Project, a joint venture between a Canadian multinational and a local mining company, is seen by many Kanak as an opportunity to loosen economic ties to metropolitan France. Indeed, unlike cases in which large-scale resource extraction has disadvantaged local groups and intensified demands for political rights, the Koniambo Project resulted from pro-independence activism. This atypical situation can be explained by the French government’s strategy in New Caledonia. Violent uprisings in the mid- 1980s ended with accords that promised economic development. Radical activists believed this would pave the way for independence while their opponents hoped to obviate such aspirations. Similarly, the Koniambo Project is viewed either as an opportunity for greater Kanak autonomy or as yet another in a series of actions that have used economic gains to deter pro-independence efforts.
Keywords: New Caledonia, Kanak, mining, independence movement, Koniambo Project, Falconbridge, France

Christianity, Calamity, and Culture: The Involvement o Christian Churches in the 1998 Aitape Tsunami Disaster Relief, p. 321
Philip M Fountain, Sara L Kindon, Warwick E Murray

This paper considers the links between religion and disaster relief through a detailed case study of the activities of Christian churches following the Aitape tsunami of 1998 in northwest Papua New Guinea. Based on primary fieldwork data, we argue that Christian religion was central to the way in which the Combined Churches Organization conducted its relief work and to why it sought to undertake it in the first place. A comparison of the perspectives of this organization and of other religious and governmental organizations as to the causes of this disaster and what remedies they should undertake suggests that greater attention should be paid—both by aid and development researchers and practitioners—to aspects of religious belief and the way they inform theory and practice. Much remains to explore concerning the ways religion informs the theory and practice of aid and development, particularly in the Pacific. Through the detailed case study offered here, this paper adds to the fledgling debate engaging with the links between religion and development and calls for the initiation of an agenda toward that end.
Keywords: Christianity, aid and development, disaster relief, Melanesia, Aitape tsunami

DIALOGUE

This Magnificent Accident: An Interview with Witi Ihimaera, p. 358
Margaret Meklin and Andrew Meklin

POLITICAL REVIEWS

The Region in Review: International Issues and Events, 2003, p. 370
Karin von Strokirch

Melanesia in Review: Issues and Events, 2003, p. 383
David Chappell, Anita Jowitt, Tarcisius Tara Kabutaulaka, Jaap Timmer

BOOK AND MEDIA REVIEWS

Whale Rider (feature film), p. 422
Reviewed by Esther Figueroa

Te Tangata Whai Rawa o Weniti, The Maori Merchant of Venice (feature film), p. 425
Reviewed by Valerie Wayne

Kainga Tahi Kainga Rua: New Work on Banaba, by Brett Graham (art installation), p. 429
Reviewed by Peter Brunt

ARTPIX 3: Aotearoa / New Zealand (cd-rom), p. 434
Reviewed by Karen Stevenson

Night Is a Sharkskin Drum, by Haunani-Kay Trask, p. 436
Reviewed by Robert Sullivan

When the Shark Bites, by Rodney Morales, p. 438
Reviewed by Susan Y Najita

Handle With Care: Ownership and Control of Ethnographic Materials, edited by Sjoerd R Jaarsma, p. 440
Reviewed by James Leach

The Network Inside Out, by Annelise Riles, p. 443
Reviewed by Teresia K Teaiwa

Bravo for the Marshallese: Regaining Control in a Post-Nuclear, Post-Colonial World, by Holly M Barker, p. 445
Reviewed by Laurence Marshall Carucci

The Marshall Islands: Living Atolls Amidst the Living Sea, by the National Biodiversity Team of the Republic of the Marshall Islands, p. 449
Reviewed by Julianne Walsh Kroeker

People and Things: Social Mediations in Oceania, edited by Monique Jeudy-Ballini and Bernard Juillerat, p. 452
Reviewed by Rena Lederman

Tongans Overseas: Between Two Shores, by Helen Morton Lee and Saili Matagi: Samoan Migrants in Australia, by Leulu Felise Va‘a, p. 455
Reviewed by Cluny Macpherson

La Saga du kava, du Vanuatu à la Nouvelle-Calédonie, by Annabel R Chanteraud, p. 459
Reviewed by Dorothée Dussy

Edward W Gifford and Richard Shutler Jr’s Archaeological Expedition to New Caledonia in 1952, by Christophe Sand and Patrick V Kirch, p. 461
Reviewed by Glenn Summerhayes

Pacific Lives, Pacific Places: Bursting Boundaries in Pacific History, edited by Brij V Lal and Peter Hempenstall, p. 462
Reviewed by Paul D’Arcy

Exploration & Exchange: A South Seas Anthology, 1680–1900, edited by Jonathan Lamb, Vanessa Smith, and Nicholas Thomas and Preserving the Self in the South Seas, 1680–1840, by Jonathan Lamb, p. 465
Reviewed by Michael P J Reilly

CONTRIBUTORS, p. 471