European Society for Oceanists 2015 Conference

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Session Detail (parallel)

Reclaiming indigenous spaces

Coordinator(s)

Diane Johnson, Sophie Judy Nock

Session presentation

Across Oceania there is strong evidence to suggest that, in the spirit of Smith’s (1999) decolonising methodologies, indigenous peoples are working rigorously to reclaim indigenous spaces. These spaces are located within research and development in a variety of fields including, but not limited to education, music, culture, geography, science, and language. In addition to this, they are claiming a share of space within less traditional fields such as media, film and television and a variety of social networking environments, using, for example, learning platforms to support and promote indigenous perspectives, issues and aspirations. Some recent examples from Aotearoa/New Zealand include the development of indigenous models for (a) education and training; (b) the revitalization of indigenous languages; (c) the establishment and maintenance of physical health and spiritual wellbeing; (d) the management and development of indigenous resources; (e) the reform of legal processes and the rehabilitation of offenders; (f) the conservation and display of indigenous cultural artefacts; (g) the maintenance and development of indigenous verbal arts; (h) the transformation of urban linguistic landscapes; (i) the translation of sacred and sensitive texts; and (j) the classification of species.

For this panel, we invite papers from presenters on topics related to the theme of reclamation of indigenous spaces within Oceania.

Paper submissions are closed

Accepted papers

The emerging sense of national identity in Aotearoa/ New Zealand and the tensions surrounding it

Diane Johnson (University of Waikato)

In 1840, the Treaty of Waitangi (which exists in a number of different versions) was signed in the place we now refer to as New Zealand or Aotearoa. The signatories were a number of chiefs of the indigenous tribes and, on behalf of the British Crown, Governor Hobson. After the signing, Governor Hobson said: He iwi kotahi tatau (We are one people). This would have made little sense to most of the signatories, who identified themselves in terms of their differing whānau (immediate family), hapū (extended family) and iwi (tribe) affiliations. Soon, colonizers, mainly from Britain, but also from other parts of Europe, outnumbered the indigenous inhabitants, whose language, culture and land were under constant attack. By the 1970s, the indigenous people were fighting back, reclaiming some small portions of their original lands through complex legal processes and attempting, in a whole variety of ways, to reclaim their cultural heritage. Meanwhile globalisation was having an increasing impact, with new waves of migration succeeding one another. In such a context, the forging of any sense of unified national identity sometimes seems doomed to failure. Nevertheless, there are signs that New Zealanders, while continuing to identify themselves in terms of the various strands of their differing ancestral maps, are also beginning to develop a new sense of cohesive national identity. In this paper, drawing from a range sources, I explore the nature of this emerging sense of national identity, the complexities associated with it, and the tensions and disputes that surround it.

The Soul, the Image and the Audience: Re-examining the ‘how’, ‘why’ and ‘for whom’ in Pacific and Samoan filmmaking.

Dionne Fonoti (National University of Samoa)

The model for Western filmmaking is Aristotle’s three-act structure, and adherence to this structure is required to compete commercially in the mainstream global film industry. The three-act structure guides the viewer through a strict story progression, with an inciting beginning act, a developing middle act and conclusive final act. In this paper I will argue that the three-act structure minimizes the storytelling experience to the superficial and mundane. For cinematically under-represented and marginalized cultures, specifically Pacific Islander and Samoan, this generates characterizations that are reduced to racist stereotypes and tired one-dimensional tropes. Pacific storytelling is steeped in, and informed by, complex histories and cultures that are ignored by mainstream film, in large part due to the inherently formulaic three-act structure. As the constant ‘other’, we remain shrouded in the ambiguity of mythic and false Bali Hai. We are stripped of our identities, histories, cultures, languages, civilizations and educations. We are reduced to caricatures conceived in ignorance, hate and, for the most part, fear.

This paper will focus on melding three main ideas: the limitations of Western narrative structure in Samoan storytelling and film, the futility of debates around authenticity and the importance, and primacy, of filmmaking that privileges an informed audience.

He Mahi Māreikura: Towards establishing culturally appropriate display and conservation facilities for indigenous heritage and knowledge

Hemi Whaanga (University of Waikato)

The history, collection and accommodation of indigenous heritage and knowledge by public museums, archives and libraries has been part of the ebb and flow of relationships between colonial settlers and indigenous peoples (Butts, 2003). Their cultural, spiritual and intellectual significance have been largely ignored and under-valued by these western institutions. However, since the 1970s, indigenous peoples have sought to negotiate new relationships with these institutions under the umbrella of self-determination, cultural rights, ownership and custodial practices claiming the right to control their own cultural heritage, knowledge and the remains of their ancestors (Clarke, 1998). More recently, with the convergence of archival and digital material in recent years, ethical issues regarding access, display, cultural rights and ownership, custodial practices and consultation, poses a critical challenge for individuals and organizations interested in developing and displaying indigenous knowledge in a digital context. In this presentation, I discuss the ethics, processes and procedures associated with the digitization of the manuscripts, works and collected taonga (treasures, in this case tangible ones) of one of Māoridom’s prominent scholars—the late Dr. Pei Te Hurinui Jones—and describe how it was transformed from a physical space into a digital one.

From ethnology to kaitiaki Māori and back again: The emergence of an indigenous curatorial practice in New Zealand museums

Conal McCarthy (Victoria University of Wellington)

Writing about Hawai’i, Jonathan Freidman argues that ‘Oceanian knowing,’ as opposed to ‘Knowing Oceania,’ depends on a ‘conjunctive knowledge’ which is ‘embedded in ‘the immediacy of social relations, and not with context-free texts’ (Friedman 1998, Sahlins 2005). By avoiding the invention of tradition, the celebration of hybridity, and the theoretical endgame of cultural studies, is it possible for researchers to explore native and tribal cultural development in their own terms as ‘Pacific answers to western hegemony’? (Wassmann 1998). What can Pacific/museum/postcolonial studies, and museums of ethnography in Europe, learn from the experience of postsettler nations where distinctive forms of indigenous museology are emerging which are reshaping the conventions of curatorial practice? In attempting to address these questions, this paper draws on research conducted for a book on Māori and museums in New Zealand (McCarthy 2011), which involved interviews with many Māori curators, museum professionals, academics and community leaders. This paper argues that a Māori curatorial practice is developing within cultural institutions such as museums, galleries, libraries and archives that intersects with western ideas of collecting and display but also draws on customary concepts such as kaitiakitanga (guardianship), mana taonga (community authority over treasures), and mātauranga Māori (Māori knowledge). These concepts offer different views of material culture, ways of being and knowing, and space and time. In addition, I show that this contemporary phenomenon is part of a long history of Māori engagement with anthropology, ethnology and the western culture of display, which is intensely political and performative, but also cosmopolitan, seeing value in ‘the things and thoughts of Europe’ (Belich 2001).

Rethinking Ethnographic Museums through Hawai’i and Cosm(o)ceania: Curatorial Conversations, Material Languages, and Indigenous Skills

Drawing on collaborative research at Bishop Museum, Hawai’i, this paper reveals that contemporary Indigenous curatorial practices are aimed at, and informed by, the (re)development of Indigenous skills and the (re)formation of Oceanic networks. These Indigenous skills are culturally embedded, politically enacted and economically valuable, and become meaningful through the personal investment of meaning. Cultural differences thus appear as variations in skill (Ingoldt, 2000), which continuously evolve through changing materials and appearances but remain remarkably intact conceptually. Thinking through variations in skill, then, facilitates an ethnographically grounded conflation of abstract dichotomies such as art versus craft, tradition versus modernity, and individual versus culture, which paralyze Western thought. Throughout these processes of (re)developing Indigenous skills, objects and curatorial practices operate as ‘ships’ (Gilroy, 1993) or mobile interpretive vessels that embody and navigate the material and discursive relations across Oceania. Indigeneity, then, is not a spatial and temporal retreat to an isolated place and nostalgic past, but appears as an articulation and performance that (re)transforms the (post)colonial ‘double vision’ (Thomas & Losche, 1999) into a cosmovision or Cosm(o)ceania on Indigenous terms. The historically grounded ethnographic insights presented have significant implications for ethnographic museums in Europe, which continue to subject Hawaiian visual and material culture to the categorical violence of imposing alien categories such as ‘art’ and ‘artefact’. Furthermore, the paper argues for an analytical shift from the usual museological focus on exhibitionary productions and representations towards approaching curatorship as ongoing conversations which require various common languages and the translational power of traveling skills.

How successful is instructed language learning in the teaching of te reo Māori?

Sophie Judy Nock (University of Waikato)

As part of a research project examining the teaching and learning of te reo Māori, I report here on the analysis of a sample of Māori language lessons taught in English-medium secondary schools in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Given that, in the absence of a high level of inter-generational transmission, the ultimate fate of the language rests, to some extent at least, with the success of instructed language learning. This presentation will help to address this issue and will focus on critical aspects of the lessons observed, including illustrative extracts from them, and on the implications of the overall approach adopted in relation to students' proficiency development. What is most evident about all of these lessons is (a) their teacher-centredness, (b) the absence of clearly articulated linguistic objectives and generally also of clear linguistic outcomes, and (c) the fact that, notwithstanding the recommendations in the curriculum document, none of them, with the possible partial exception of some aspects of one lesson, could be said to be communicatively oriented, (d) these lessons relied heavily on repetition, translation and memorization and focused primarily on individual, decontextualized clauses and sentences. In view of all of this, and particularly in view of the exhaustion that is likely to be associated with teacher-centred lessons in which there is a struggle to communicate with students, it is not surprising to find that many teachers of te reo Māori feel that they are achieving much less than they could.

Reclaiming and maintaining "indigenous space" at the chalkface. He Toka Tu Moana.

Joni Gordon (Te Kura Kaupapa Maori o Hoani Waititi Marae)

Authentic self-determination for indigenous learners in schools in Aotearoa/New Zealand means creating legitimate and meaningful ‘space’ for indigenous epistemologies. As educators there is the capacity to liberate or subjugate on a moment by moment basis within the classroom. All educational contexts in Aotearoa/New Zealand are measured and regulated against the values considered appropriate by the dominant culture in some way or another. This paper explores the tensions and opportunities for transformation and self-determination through Kaupapa Māori frameworks, critical pedagogy and other liberatory discourses. The whakatauki (proverb) He Toka Tū Moana, talks about a rock standing strong in turbulent and chaotic waters. This metaphor articulates the struggle and the resistance necessary to reclaim and maintain indigenous space at the chalkface.