Re-imagining
Indigenous Cultures: The Pacific Islands
NATIONAL
ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES
SUMMER
INSTITUTE - 2003
East-West
Center
and
University of Hawai‘i Center for Pacific
Islands Studies
Director:
Geoffrey M. White (East-West Center & University of Hawai‘i)
Associate Director: Letitia
Hickson (University of Hawai‘i)
Dates:
June
30 – August 1, 2003
Location:
East-West Center, Honolulu, Hawai‘i
Thank you for your interest in
our NEH Summer Institute on Re-imagining Indigenous Cultures: The Pacific
Islands. As you may know, summer institutes funded through the National
Endowment for the Humanities are designed to enhance individual scholarship and
broaden undergraduate teaching. They do this by offering college and university
teachers an opportunity to pursue their interests in a collegial and
resource-rich environment.
The Institute is concerned
broadly with the representation of indigenous cultures and identities,
particularly in relation to colonial and post-colonial histories up to the
present. It is offered for scholars who may be unfamiliar with the Pacific
Islands region as well as for those who already teach or conduct research in the
area. The program's focus on the representation of indigenous cultures is
relevant for a variety of disciplinary interests, including anthropology, art,
history, literature, politics, religion, women's studies, and ethnic studies.
The 2003 Institute is the sixth
NEH summer program hosted by the East-West Center and the University of Hawai'i
Center for Pacific Islands Studies in the last twelve years. The Institute aims
to foster comparative cultural study within the Pacific and between the Pacific
and other regions. The geo-cultural reach of the Institute will be expanded by
participants' own interests and backgrounds, extending group discussion in a
variety of directions.
With the decolonization of
territories once encompassed by Western empires, the cultural and political
situation of indigenous peoples has gained global attention. Yet concepts of the
"indigenous" have done as much to obscure and marginalize as to
enlighten and legitimize. Earlier ideas about "primitive",
"tribal," or "traditional" cultures continue to circulate
and exert influence in the present. While many native communities share strong
attachments to land and ancestral practices, the power and diversity of their
voices are often elided in popular and academic representations. The proposed
Institute will raise questions about the meanings and politics of indigenous
identities, seen through the historical experience of the Pacific Islands, home
to some of the world's newest nations.
The Institute's Pacific focus
provides a framework for critically examining the representation of indigenous
identities in relation to a diverse array of local and national cultures as well
as global images. Often imagined as small, fixed and isolated, Pacific cultures
past and present are frequently represented without reference to colonial
histories or the cultural productions of Pacific Islanders moving through
metropolitan communities of the Pacific rim.
The Pacific Islands area is
well known for its rich cultural and environmental diversity. Increasingly, it
is also known for its history of interactions between indigenous peoples and
Westerners. These "borderzones" are the subject of a growing body of
Pacific literature, film and artistic work, as well as research in anthropology,
history, literature, politics and other disciplines interested in struggles over
culture and identity in colonial history and today's globalizing economies.
Prior to the workshop, we will
encourage participants to read three relevant texts. These are chosen to provide
background knowledge about the region as well as an introduction to the politics
of indigenous identities in the Pacific. The texts are:
(1) Hau'ofa, Epeli (1993).
Our Sea of Islands. In E. Waddell, V. Naidu & E. Hau'ofa, eds. A New
Oceania: Rediscovering Our Sea of Islands. Suva: USP. Pp. 2-16.
(2) Finney, Ben (1994). The
Other One-Third of the Globe. Journal of World History 5 (2):273-297.
(3) Clifford, James (2001).
Indigenous Articulations. The Contemporary Pacific 13(2):468-490.
In addition to these texts, on
arrival participants will receive a binder of Institute readings selected by the
presenting faculty. These readings will draw on a wide range of writings, and
are intended to provide a set of textual resources useful for both discussion
and individual research.
Re-imagining Indigenous
Cultures: The Pacific Islands is designed to meet the needs of faculty from the
humanities and social sciences who are interested to deepen or expand the role
of comparative cultural studies in their teaching. Institute lectures will
address a variety of topics pertaining to Pacific and indigenous identities and
explore their relevance for teaching curricula generally. Talks and discussion
will examine means for introducing Pacific Island topics to American
undergraduates, and explore pedagogical strategies appropriate to the task.
The Institute will also
consider the need to create and strengthen curricula with relevance for Pacific
Islander students in American colleges and universities. Discussion of Pacific
Islanders in the United States, including Hawaiian, Samoan, Tongan and
Micronesian communities, will consider current approaches to emerging diasporic
communities and underscore the relevance of the Institute for ethnic studies as
well as for international area studies.
To create a cooperative
environment for discussion, participants will be divided into small working
groups based on discipline and personal interests.
Prior to each Friday session, participants will meet in small groups to
discuss how the ideas raised during the week can be usefully adapted in current
courses and raise points for discussion. Ideas from these working groups will
then be addressed in an open discussion moderated by one of the participants.
In addition, some presenters during each week will return for the Friday
morning meetings, providing an opportunity for further questions and discussion
with participants, thereby encouraging an active interweaving of themes emerging
during the week.
Over the duration of the
Institute, each participant will pursue individual scholarship and develop a
course syllabus or module that incorporates ideas about the Pacific Islands and
about indigenous cultures into their own college curriculum.
Participants may work on their projects individually or in teams. On the
final day of the Institute, participants will present their project results to
their Institute colleagues.
Schedule of Activities (Click
on link for full weekly program)
Week
1, June 30 - July 3: Voyages of (Re)Discovery
Weekly
Reading List
We will begin the program with
a presentation addressing the Institute's concern with re-imagining indigenous
identities, invoking recent work in Pacific studies, art, literature and film.
This will be followed by a broad overview of the geographic and cultural mapping
of Oceania presented by Robert Kiste, past Director of the university's Pacific
Islands Studies program, and Sitiveni Halapua, noted Tongan academic and
Director of the East-West Center's Pacific Islands Development Program.
Jonathan Kamakawiwo'ole Osorio,
historian and author of the recently published Dismembering Lahui (2002), will
lead a lunchtime session introducing Hawaiian issues, past and present, for
Institute discussion. We will then take up the central position of history, and
history-making, in the decolonizing Pacific with David Hanlon, noted Pacific
historian, author (Remaking Micronesia: Discourses over Development in a Pacific
Territory, 1944-1982), and current director of the UH Center for Pacific Islands
Studies.
On the final day of this short
week, Ben Finney, anthropologist, author and co-originator of the Polynesian
Voyaging Society, together with Lilikala Kame'eleihiwa, professor of Hawaiian
studies and author of Native Lands, Foreign Desires, will discuss Polynesian
voyaging as a catalytic element in today's cultural renaissance in Hawai'i and
throughout the region. The film Wayfinders documenting the saga of sailing
revival will supplement these discussions. The first week's emphasis on Hawaiian
history and culture will underscore the relevance of Pacific study for U.S.
ethnic and cultural studies.
Week
2, July 7 - 11: Narratives of Nation: The Art and Politics of Pacific Identities
Weekly
Reading List
The political evolution of new
Pacific states is marked by the emergence of ideologies of culture that valorize
local traditions as a national resource. At the same time, many of the "hot
spots" of political turmoil are associated with contestations of cultural
and national identities (Fiji and its post-coups constitution; a separatist
movement on the island of Bougainville; the Kanaky independence movement in
French New Caledonia, and the Hawaiian sovereignty movement, to mention a few).
This week's readings and discussion raise the question, 'To what extent are the
discourses of tradition in the Pacific similar to (indigenous) movements in
other parts of the world?' The nearness of the experience of decolonization-ongoing
in much of the Pacific-adds a note of relevance and urgency to this discussion.
This week begins with a
presentation by Vicente Diaz, Micronesian historian and filmmaker, who will
reflect on the difficulties of imagining the indigenous in narratives of
modernization. Using Guam and Micronesian experience as a base, he will bring
recent film and writing projects to bear on the politics of representing native
Pacific people and projects today.
Geoff White will push the
discussion of narratives of nation and modernity to the South by discussing the
predicament of postcolonial states in Melanesia (especially Solomon Islands)
with a reflection on the ways narratives of nation are produced in moments of
crisis.
This week will conclude with
two presentations by Margaret Jolly, leading Pacific scholar, anthropologist and
feminist writer (Women of the place : kastom, colonialism, and gender in
Vanuatu), examining the tensions between conceptions of "rooted" and
migrating identities in the Pacific, with attention to interrelations of gender
and nation in the (post)colonial Pacific. Her discussion will draw attention to
the central role of the arts in today's ongoing re-imaginings of Pacific
identities.
Week
3, July 14-18: Pacific Voices / Island Literatures
Weekly
Reading List
The process of decolonization
in the Pacific, especially in New Zealand and Hawai'i, has fostered a veritable
renaissance of cultural expression in literature, film, video, and the visual
arts. This week will give an introduction to the history of these developments
and explore central themes that continue to occupy Pacific authors and artists.
Fiction writing and filmmaking have emerged in the last two decades as important
vehicles for indigenous cultural production worldwide. In the Pacific, creative
work by Pacific writers and filmmakers is reshaping prevailing images of the
Pacific.
This week will begin with an
overview of the evolution of Pacific fiction writing to the present by Vilsoni
Hereniko, professor of Pacific Islands Studies, playwright, and one of the
leading figures in Pacific literature and cultural criticism. He will take up
issues related to the politics and poetics of indigenous literature and of
literary criticism in plural societies such as New Zealand. In an evening
session he will explore relations between Pacific literature and film,
illustrated with a showing of Once Were Warriors, a film produced from a novel
of the same name by controversial Maori author Alan Duff.
Houston Wood, professor of
English at Hawai'i Pacific University and author of the book, Displacing
Natives: The Rhetorical Production of Hawai'i, will discuss the expanding corpus
of creative and critical writing that points toward a new Pacific 'cultural
studies'. He will examine convergences between academic and creative work, as
well as across the disciplines concerned with social, cultural, and historical
analysis in the Pacific.
Caroline Sinavaiana, professor
of English and poet, will discuss the work of women writers in the Pacific,
including recent work such as the Commonwealth Prize novel by Sia Figiel, Where
We Once Belonged that presents a distinctive portrayal of Samoan social life
from the vantage point of young girls living in villages traversed by
transnational culture flows.
Finally, this week exploring
Pacific literature will culminate in a session with the most prolific and read
Island novelist, Albert Wendt. Professor of English at University of Auckland,
Wendt will enter into dialogue with Institute participants about issues raised
in previous discussion, and in his own fiction and cultural criticism. Using his
own experience as a novelist and critical theorist, working over the course of
three decades, Wendt will address the predicament of authors whose work crosses
boundaries of inside/out, local/global, and so forth-crossings that are
especially acute for Pacific Islands writers who remain rooted in genealogical
and ancestral ties to home communities.
Week
4, July 21-25: Imag(in)ing Oceania: Pacific Film and Video
Weekly
Reading List
Like fiction writing, film and
video are important vehicles for indigenous (re)constructions of culture and
identity worldwide. In the Pacific, creative work emerging from Pacific
filmmakers and videographers is reframing images of the Pacific. The use of film
and video by authors and communities who remain closely tied to oral traditions
raises important questions about orality, literacy and the effects of new media
on practices of cultural (self) representation .
As in the week previous, this
week will begin with presentations by UH faculty and writers Vilsoni Hereniko
and Caroline Sinavaiana-Gabbard, who will explore the aesthetics of recent work
by indigenous filmmakers and artists. These sessions will reflect on the
epistemologies that have made video the fastest growing medium of cultural
production in the Pacific. In an evening session Hereniko will show portions of
his own current feature film project, The Land Has Eyes, and discuss his
experience filming on location in Rotuma, Fiji. The work of the American-funded
Pacific Islanders in Communication, and its relation Native American filmmaking,
will provide a means for extending the Institute's discussion of indigenous
identities to communities in other regions of the U.S.
Maori filmmaker Barry Barclay,
known for a number of well-known feature films in New Zealand, including Ngati
and Te Rua, will discuss indigenous filmmaking based on his extensive experience
producing documentary and feature films in New Zealand. His approach to film
draws upon a deep respect for place and the histories of local communities (a
trait he also sees in some varieties of Western art). In discussing the
evolution of his own work, he will provide a historical perspective on the
development of Pacific Island filmmaking at its most active center-New Zealand (Aotearoa)-dating
from his work on a pathbreaking television series in the 1970s, to his present
experimentation with film evident in his award-winning Feathers of Peace.
Barclay will give an evening presentation on the provocative question,
"Can There Be a Fourth Cinema?"
Teresia Teaiwa, author,
cultural critic, and Lecturer in Pacific Studies at Victoria University in
Wellington, will conclude this week with a session exploring the range of media,
from film to visual arts to performance art, being produced by Pacific
Islanders. She will reflect on the means through which Island artists and
scholars disrupt conventional images of islanders as exotic, erotic, or marginal
minorities. She will also engage participants in a discussion of teaching about
the Pacific, where one of her objectives has been to "unlearn some of the
negative things we've been taught about what it means to be from the Pacific;
rediscovering some of the wonderful riches in our Pacific heritage; but most of
all, bringing forth our own versions and visions . . ."
Week
5, July 28 - August 1: New Pacific: Traveling Cultures
Weekly
Reading List
This final week of the
institute takes up questions of (trans)forming cultural representation in
contexts of globalization and the increased mobility characteristic of the
Pacific region today. Topics of migration, diaspora communities, tourism,
electronic media and transnational culture will all be discussed. Geoff White
will lead a session on the diversity of tourist economies, from Hawai'i's
mega-industry to small-scale cultural tourism in Melanesia, addressing their
consequences for island cultures in and beyond the region. We will view and
discuss the film Cannibal Tours, for its depiction of tourist "meeting
grounds" in the north coast region of Papua New Guinea.
Themes of mobility will be
examined further in the context of island diasporic communities that connect
urban centers with rural communities throughout the Pacific. Dr. Kehaulani
Kauanui, professor of anthropology and American Studies at Wesleyan University,
will discuss the history and current cultural politics of attempts to legally
define Hawaiian identity in the United States through consideration of
developing awareness of Pacific Islander diaspora communities and recent debates
about today's movement for Hawaiian sovereignty.
A lunchtime talk from Alan
Howard, emeritus professor of anthropology, will examine the ongoing development
of online "electronic communities" based on his experience developing
a web site now used by people of Rotuma (Fiji) who now reside throughout the
world in cities of New Zealand, North America and Europe.
The Institute will conclude its
syllabus of readings and lectures with a talk from Epeli Hau'ofa,
anthropologist, author, humorist, and founding Director of the Center for
Oceanic Culture and Arts at the University of the South Pacific. From his
vantage point as cultural critic and fiction writer Hau'ofa has articulated many
of the images and themes that now work to recreate images of the Pacific and of
Pacific Islanders. He will present a talk and lead discussion of his influential
essay, "Our Sea of Islands" where he challenges prevailing conceptions
of the Pacific as composed of small, isolated and dependent communities.
The final two days of the
program will be devoted to the presentation of participant projects and
discussion of future means of cooperation.
Facilities and Arrangements
The Institute will be held at
the East-West Center and the University of Hawai'i in Honolulu. The East-West
Center is an educational institution established by the U.S. Congress in 1960 to
support cooperative study and research in the Asia Pacific region. The
University of Hawai'i is a major state university with more than 23,000 students
and 2,200 faculty at its main campus, many of whom specialize in Asian and
Pacific studies. Participants will have the status of visiting scholars with
full access to the facilities of both campuses.
The seminar is cosponsored by
the University of Hawai'i's Center for Pacific Islands Studies which throughout
the year offers an active program of seminars, conferences and publications
focusing on the Pacific Islands region. Seminar participants will be encouraged
to interact with East-West Center and University faculty and students, and to
take advantage of both institutions' research resources.
The Pacific Collection of the
University's Hamilton Library is the foremost collection of Pacific Island
materials in the world. It contains 55,000 volumes relating to the island
region; receives 1,200 journals and periodicals annually; subscribes to 33
Pacific Island newspapers; and contains extensive microfilm holdings of both
published and unpublished materials. During
summer months the Pacific Collection is open Monday to Friday 9:00 a.m. to 4:45
p.m., and the hours of Hamilton Library are Monday to Friday 8:00 a.m. to 9
p.m., and Sunday 12 noon - 6:00 p.m. The East-West Center also maintains a
specialized collection of books, documents, and journal titles from Asia, the
Pacific and the United States. The Center's collection is open Monday to Friday
8:30 to 4:30 p.m.
Participants are encouraged to
bring their own laptop computers. Limited computer support is available at the
East-West Center and University. However past experience indicates that heavy
summer demand often makes access inconvenient for anything except email.
Computer accounts for email access can be arranged through the East-West Center
or University computer systems. A laser printer will also be available for
moderate printing needs. Desktop machines at the Center and University support
Microsoft Word and WordPerfect.
Darlene Spadavecchia
(808-944-7731; fax: 808-944-7670) and other Center staff will assist with
arrangements for housing. Participants may reside in one of two East-West Center
residence halls situated adjacent to the university campus. Available East-West
Center housing includes studios with private baths at $27 per day and $41 per
day (with kitchen), or dormitory-style accommodations for $19 per day. These
residence halls are located in close proximity to the University library and the
Center for Pacific Islands Studies.
We will also assist
participants seeking off-campus housing and childcare if necessary. Housing in
Honolulu is relatively expensive, with one-bedroom apartments going for about
$1,000/month. Child-care is available in free summer activities programs run by
the State at most elementary schools, as well as from private preschools in the
range of $400/month. Applications should be made as early as possible following
acceptance to the seminar. Although plane fares fluctuate widely, we estimate
Honolulu roundtrip fares as follows: Washington D.C. $900, Chicago $750, Los
Angeles $450. The $3250 seminar stipend will be dispersed in two payments, with
the first check available upon arrival in Honolulu.
Dining facilities are available
on campus. In addition, a wide range of affordable dining options may be found
in the city of Honolulu. The Waikiki area, with its dense proportion of
restaurants and recreational attractions, is only a short taxi or bus ride from
the campus. Honolulu's bus system reaches any part of the city or island for a
fare of $1 or $25 for a monthly bus pass.
If you decide to apply for
admission to the Institute, please use the guidelines and cover sheet provided
by NEH, and available online. Applications must be postmarked by March 1, 2003.
Perhaps the most important part
of the application is the essay that must be submitted as part of the complete
application. This essay should include any personal and academic information
that is relevant; reasons for applying to the particular project; your interest,
both intellectual and personal, in the topic; qualifications to do the work of
the project and make a contribution to it; what you hope to accomplish by
participation, including any individual research and writing projects; and the
relation of the study to your teaching.
Those selected for the
Institute will be notified by telephone by April 1. If we can provide additional
information, please feel free to phone, fax, or email Geoff
White [phone: (808) 944-7343,
fax: (808) 944-7670].
We look forward to hearing from you.
