It has been argued that European and indigenous ways of perceiving and imagining Oceania amounted to such different ways of seeing that they often proceeded in tandem—not only surviving the initial phases of colonial encounter but remaining persistently distinct over the longer term. Yet, since the 1970s, nationalist and localist evocations of tradition have been countered by attempts to re-engage with the deep past of Oceania. These three papers present different ways of glimpsing Oceania, while discussing the use of the region’s deep and more recent past. The first discusses the discreet reworking of abstract bark-cloth imagery to convey an ideal exemplar - the mind of an ancestral navigator – during the period when colonial spatial controls meant that Fijians were ceasing to be a maritime people (Chloe Colchester); the second traces the scattered archive of pottery sherds collected from the Bismarck archipelago by a Catholic missionary - which prompted the rediscovery of the Lapita peoples (Hilary Howes); and the third discusses the use of photography in early 20thcentury pictorial encyclopaedia to convey the view of Oceania as a de-politicised geographic region during the colonial period (Max Quanchi).
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