This panel addresses the many ways in which the past is recalled, invoked and employed in the contemporary Pacific. The panel title deliberately evokes the twin processes of uncovering or coming to terms with the past, and of using the past in pursuit of present concerns, which range from atonement to reconciliation, struggles over land and political power, and the search for justice. Blackbirding, punitive expeditions, land transactions, the arrival of missionaries and, occasionally, their murder, are amongst the historical acts now being resurrected, reworked and reinterpreted. As part of this process, digital recourse to archival resources is rendering the past ever more present in Pacific lives, provoking questions about the encounter of different modes of historical consciousness or historicity, and the politics of differential access. How are Europe and the Pacific mutually implicated in these negotiations over history, and what role do researchers play in what is frequently a contested engagement with the past?
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