As Hawaiians continue to recover their language and culture, the voices of kupuna (elders) are heard once again in urban and rural settings, both in Hawai'i and elsewhere. How do kupuna create knowledge and "tell" history? What do they tell us about being Hawaiian? Adopted by a Midwestern couple in the 1950s as an infant, Leilani Holmes spent much of her early life in settings that offered no clues about her Hawaiian past--images of which continued to haunt her even as she completed a master's thesis on Hawaiian music and identity in southern California. Ancestry of Experience documents Holmes' quest to reclaim and understand her own origin story. Holmes writes in two different and at times incongruent voices--one describing the search for her genealogy, the other critiquing Western epistemologies she encounters along the way. In the course of her journey, she finds that Hawaiian oral tradition links identity to the land ('aina) through ancestry, while traditional, scholarly theories of knowing (particularly political economy and the discourse of the invention of tradition) textually obliterate land and ancestry. In interviews with kupuna, Holmes learns of the connectedness of spirituality and 'aina; through her study and practice of hula kahiko comes an understanding of ancient hula as a conversation between 'aina and the dancer's body that has the power to activate historical memory. Holmes' experience has special relevance for indigenous adoptees and indigenous scholars: Both are distanced from the knowledge agendas and strategies of their communities and are tasked to speak in languages ill-suited to the telling of their own stories and those of their ancestors. In addition to those with an interest in Hawaiian knowledge and culture, Ancestry of Experience will appeal to readers of memoirs of identity, academic and personal accounts of racial identity formation, and works of indigenous epistemologies. A website (www.ancestryofexperience.com) will include supplementary material.

This book is a political history of the island of Malaita in the British Solomon Islands Protectorate from 1927, when the last violent resistance to colonial rule was crushed, to 1953 and the inauguration of the island's first representative political body, the Malaita Council. At the book's heart is a political movement known as Maasina Rule, which dominated political affairs in the southeastern Solomons for many years after World War II. The movement's ideology, kastom, was grounded in the determination that only Malaitans themselves could properly chart their future through application of Malaitan sensibilities and methods, free from British interference. Kastom promoted a radical transformation of Malaitan lives by sweeping social engineering projects and alternative governing and legal structures. When the government tried to suppress Maasina Rule through force, its followers brought colonial administration on the island to a halt for several years through a labor strike and massive civil resistance actions that overflowed government prison camps. David Akin draws on extensive archival and field research to present a practice-based analysis of colonial officers' interactions with Malaitans in the years leading up to and during Maasina Rule. A primary focus is the place of knowledge in the colonial administration. Many scholars have explored how various regimes deployed "colonial knowledge" of subject populations in Asia and Africa to reorder and rule them. The British imported to the Solomons models for "native administration" based on such an approach, particularly schemes of indirect rule developed in Africa. The concept of "custom" was basic to these schemes and to European understandings of Melanesians, and it was made the lynchpin of government policies that granted limited political roles to local ideas and practices. Officers knew very little about Malaitan cultures, however, and Malaitans seized the opportunity to transform custom into kastom, as the foundation for a new society. The book's overarching topic is the dangerous road that colonial ignorance paved for policy makers, from young cadets in the field to high officials in distant Fiji and London. Today kastom remains a powerful concept on Malaita, but continued confusion regarding its origins, history, and meanings hampers understandings of contemporary Malaitan politics and of Malaitan people's ongoing, problematic relations with the state.

Since its publication in 1993, From a Native Daughter, a provocative, well-reasoned attack against the rampant abuse of Native Hawaiian rights, institutional racism, and gender discrimination, has generated heated debates in Hawai'i and throughout the world. This 1999 revised work published by University of Hawai'i Press includes material that builds on issues and concerns raised in the first edition: Native Hawaiian student organizing at the University of Hawai'i; the master plan of the Native Hawaiian self-governing organization Ka Lahui Hawai'i and its platform on the four political arenas of sovereignty; the 1989 Hawai'i declaration of the Hawai'i ecumenical coalition on tourism; and a typology on racism and imperialism. Brief introductions to each of the previously published essays brings them up to date and situates them in the current Native Hawaiian rights discussion.

Much has been written about Papua New Guinea over the last century and too often in ways that legitimated or served colonial interests through highly pejorative and racist descriptions of Papua New Guineans. Paying special attention to early travel literature, works of fiction, and colonial reports, laws, and legislation, Regis Tove Stella reveals the complex and persistent network of discursive strategies deployed to subjugate the land and its people.

In a time of dynamism and contradiction in Pacific cultural production, a time of 'turning things over' and 'writing from the inside out,' this far-reaching volume provides a comprehensive set of essays and interviews on the emergent literatures of the New Pacific. With its dynamic combination of important position papers, polemics, and decolonizing critiques by noted authors and of analysis by new and established post-colonial scholars, this volume exposes 'the maze and mix of literatures and cultural identities breaking down and building up across the Pacific Ocean.' This pioneering work will be the definitive resource for anyone researching or teaching Pacific literature and will be invaluable for bringing Pacific culture to readers outside the region.

Jean-Marie Tjibaou is arguably the most important post-World War II Oceanic leader. His intellectual abilities, acute understanding of both Melanesian and European civilizations, stature as a statesman, commitment to nonviolence, and vision for Melanesia's potential contributions to the global community have all contributed to the creation of a remarkable and enduring legacy. Until now, no substantial English-language study has existed of Tjibaou, who was assassinated in 1989. This intellectual biography of the Kanak (New Caledonia) leader takes an essentially chronological approach to his life--from his beginnings in the mountains of northern New Caledonia and his studies at the Sorbonne to his leadership of the independence movement in the Territory. The work focuses on the spiritual, cultural, and intellectual sources of Tjibaou's ideas and actions as well as on those who were a source of inspiration to him. Particular attention is given to Tjibaou's sense of service, the convergences and divergences he identified as existing between Melanesian and Western civilizations, and the impact of metropolitan French politics on the situation in the Territory. In addition, the book explores the fracture between the Grande Terre and the Loyalty Islands, one with deep historical roots that help explain why Tjibaou's assassin, Djubelly Wéa, was not a "crazy fanatic" but the uh_product of a distinctive reality--with a very different cultural and political reading of New Caledonia's destiny.

A Stanford University Press classic.

The Other Side is the first major ethnographic and historical study of the Sia Raga people of north Pentecost Island, a region that was home to the late Father Walter Lini, Vanuatu's first prime minister. Exploring Raga social, spatial, and historical consciousness, this richly poetic account provides important theoretical contributions to ongoing debates in Pacific anthropology about the relation between structure and history, and place and time. It reveals important insights into the convergence of indigenous and exogenous cosmologies and hegemonies historically, and shows how these are implicated in contemporary social, ritual, and material cultural expressions. These analyses engage with broader concerns relating to colonial and postcolonial identities, political economy, and globalization in island Melanesia. The Other Side combines original and substantial ethnography with sophisticated theoretical reflection that will appeal broadly across the field of anthropology. It will also be of considerable value to scholars of Pacific and Melanesian history, politics, and society. The clear writing and entertaining narrative combine to create a work that is accessible to a wide audience. The volume's critical and reflective analysis of anthropological research makes it a valuable teaching aid in courses that focus on ethnographic methods and writing. Students in Pacific anthropology will find it especially useful.37

Polynesian Panthers records the Pacific rights and social activist movement in New Zealand, told by those who were there. Forming in 1971, the Polynesian Panthers sought to raise consciousness and took action in response to the racism and discrimination Pacific peoples faced in New Zealand in the 1970s and 1980s. The Panthers organised prison visit programmes and sporting and debating teams for inmates; provided a halfway-house service for young men released from prison; ran homework centres; and offered 'people's loans', legal aid and food banks that catered for 600 families at their height. Drawing on interviews, memoirs, poetry, newspaper articles and critical analysis, Polynesian Panthers is a thought-provoking account of this period in New Zealand.

Brilliantly elucidating and weaving together the forces of indigenous sovereignty, colonialism, and personal health, Potent Mana offers a uniquely holistic and intimate portrait of the long-term effects of colonialism on an indigenous people., the kānaka maoli (Native Hawaiians). An ethnographic exploration based on fifteen months of research, the book moves the conversation on the dangerous effects of colonialism forward by exploring the theories and practices of Native Hawaiians engaged in decolonization. Decades of substance abuse, mental illness, depression, language loss, and the concomitant dispossession from sacred lands have accompanied colonialism. Consequently, healing, both mental and physical, are essential to decolonization and indigenous sovereignty in twenty-first century Hawai'i. Native Hawaiian-run treatment centers and clinics more than political rallies are centers for healing and decolonization on O'ahu today. The effects of colonialism and the measures taken to counter and move beyond it, as Wende Marshall convincingly argues, do not take place solely on a supralocal level but shatteringly involve the physical and emotional well-being of real individuals. Becoming decolonized is about overcoming the shame of colonialism, and requires a process of remembering the traditions of ancestors and reinterpreting and rewriting histories that have only been told from a colonial point of view. Decolonization is an indigenous perspective, and an understanding that health was impossible without political power and cultural integrity.

We Are the Ocean is a collection of essays, fiction, and poetry by Epeli Hau'ofa, whose writing over the past three decades has consistently challenged prevailing notions about Oceania and prescriptions for its development. He highlights major problems confronted by the region and suggests alternative perspectives and ways in which its people might reorganize to relate effectively to the changing world. Hau'ofa's essays criss-cross Oceania, creating a navigator's star chart of discussion and debate. Spurning the arcana of the intellectual establishments where he was schooled, Hau'ofa has crafted a distinctive--often lyrical, at times angry--voice that speaks directly to the people of the region and the general reader. He conveys his thoughts from diverse standpoints: university-based analyst, essayist, satirist and humorist, and practical catalyst for creativity. According to Hau'ofa, only through creative originality in all fields of endeavor can the people of Oceania hope to strengthen their capacity to engage the forces of globalization. "Our Sea of Islands," "The Ocean in Us," "Pasts to Remember," and "Our Place Within," all of which are included in this collection, outline some of Hau'ofa's ideas for the emergence of a stronger and freer Oceania. Throughout he expresses his concern with the environment and suggests that the most important role that the "people of the sea" can assume is as custodians of the Pacific, the vast area of the world's largest body of water.