TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page No.
Acknowledgements…………………………………………………….….…. 2
Pacific Roots Symposium: Heritages & Identities……………………….…... 3
PRS Abstracts………………………………………………………………… 6
Pacific History Association………………………………………………….. 14
Information Common to PRS & PHA Functions……………………………. 15
Fieldtrip to Fiji’s Earliest Settlement at Bourewa, Sigatoka………………… 18
PHA Mid-week Fieldtrip to Molituva, Kuku, Tailevu………………………. 19
18th PHA conference USP Campus, Suva: Timetable……………………...... 20
PHA Conference Abstracts/Plenary Speakers……………………………….. 27
Panels and Abstracts……………………………………………….………… 29
Regional History Teacher’s Workshop……………………………………… 58
Programme for PHA Postgraduate Research Forum………………………… 61
Postgraduate Forum Abstracts……………………………………………….. 64
Guide to Suva………………………………………………………………… 69
Acknowledgements
This booklet contains two programs, the Pacific Roots Symposium and the Pacific History
Association Conference. Many of our members are participating in both events and it
seemed sensible to combine the printing of the two programs together. Running in tandem
with these two events, are two other events, the History Teachers’ Workshop and a PostGraduate Forum. All of these activities have been put together by a group of hard working
people representing different communities. It is only right that we should acknowledge them
from the outset.
Time did not permit a Table of Content and the booklet is arranged in chronological order.
The Joint Pacific Roots Symposium and Pacific History Association Organizing Committee
congratulates the Panel Convenors of the two events for recruiting presenters and coordinating their respective panels. The Committee also records its thanks to the Suva-based
French Embassy for sponsoring the Pacific Roots Symposium and the Joint Conference
Secretariat. Special thanks particularly to Pascal Dayez-Burgeon for funding and thereby
rescuing the History Teachers’ Workshop from deferment.
We also acknowledge USP’s Office of VC and Registrar for facilities and resources. The
Head of the School of Social Sciences, Acting Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Law, Principal
of Pacific Theological College provided support. To our Secretarial team, Roshni Pratap,
Lavenia Hennings, Taraivosa Baikeirewa, Joseph Samani, Sheryl Ho, Maria Talouli, Dorothy
Browne and Pisila Khan, Detleft Blumel, Peni Sigabalavu, Matelita Ragogo, Tui Clery,
Isabelle Dina and long-distance webmaster, Agnes Hannan at James Cook University and
roving teachers’ ambassador, the inimitable Max Quanchi. Without their expertise, patience
and good humour we would not be here today. Thanks Vika Koro for facilitating the Fiji
Museum activity, and Tui Clery for resuscitating the Post-graduate students Forum.
We also acknowledged the people of Korova for the welcoming ceremony, and the villages of
Vusama and Kuku for their hospitality. Thanks to the Bookshop Manager for printing the
program.
Thanks also to our student volunteers; we hope you meet some of the ghosts mentioned in
your course readings!
Finally, to the members of PRS-PHA Planning Committee (and their families), who in good
spirits, met month after month over two years to breathe life into these events, Vinaka,
Dhanyabaad, Fai’aksea, Merci, Arigato, Fa’afetai, Malo.
Marama Gaston Tauira and Morgan Tuimaleali’ifano
Co-Chairs of PRS-PHA Organizing Committee
19th November 2008
2
Pacific Roots Symposium: Heritages and Identities
Challenging the Melanesia/ Micronesia/Polynesia stereotypes
1 to 5 December 2008
Introduction
The common division of the Pacific Islands into Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia has
long been regarded as self-evident. Yet in the last 20 years, research in archaeology,
linguistics and genetics has revealed the incoherence of this division. This research calls into
question whether this division is sufficiently meaningful in terms of culture and heritage to be
retained.
For the first time, this conference will bring together leaders in various scientific fields as they
are applied in the Pacific. These include archaeology, physical anthropology, cultural
anthropology, genetics and linguistics. The results of the conference will provide the basis for
a new approach to the teaching of cultural heritage issues to Pacific students.
What should we teach to students about the unity and diversity of the Pacific peoples and
cultures? What should we teach concerning the early times of peopling, the more recent past,
the contemporary situation, the positive usage of those labels from a political point of view
‘Melanesian way’, ‘Melanesian Spearhead Group’, ‘Federated States of Micronesia’, etc. ,
but what to say also about the usage of those labels within the fields of archaeology,
linguistics, history, anthropology?
The syntheses from this symposium should help to reformulate or at least render more precise
teaching about Pacific unity, diversity and common heritage.
Serge Tcherkézoff
Convenor
PRS PROGRAM
Time
Speaker
Topic
MONDAY
9.15 -10.00
10.00-10.30
Serge Tcherkezoff
10.30-11.00
1100-1140
1140-1220
Tea break
Glen Summerhayes
Frédérique Valentin
1220-1400
2.00-–2. 40
2.40–3.20
LUNCH
Christophe Sand
David Burley
3.20-3.50
Tea-Break
Official speeches
Introduction: Why this symposium? The French
‘invention’ of the regional labels and its
consequences
The First settlement of Near Oceania
Peoples and migrations in Island South-East
Asia and the Pacific
The Lapita expansion across the western Pacific
Post-Lapita developments in the Fiji-West
Polynesia region
3
3.50–4.30
Anne Di Piazza
In absentia
Eric Conte
In absentia
Patrick Kirch
Symposium
delegates
Pacific navigation: human expansion across a sea
world
830-910
Stuart Bedford
910-950
Geoffrey Clark
In absentia
William Ayres
Late prehistoric intensifications processes in
Island Melanesia
The second millennium AD in the Fiji-West
Polynesian triangle
4.30–5.10
6.00 - ?
East Polynesian diversifications
Cocktail At USP Fale
TUESDAY
950-1030
1030-1100
110-1140
1140-12.20
1220-1400
2.00-2.40
Tea-Break
Lisa Matisoo-Smith
P. Murail
In absentia
LUNCH
Andrew Pawley
2.40- 3.20
3.20-3.50
3.50-4.30
4.30-5.10
Evening
Darrell Tryon
Tea-Break
John Lynch
Paul Geraghty
Delegates
Chiefdoms and networks in the late prehistory of
Micronesia
Genetic studies on the prehistory of the Pacific
“Polynesians” in anthropological perspective
The emergence of the Oceanic group and its
major branches
The Languages of Melanesia. An Overview
The Southern Oceanic Linkage
The origins of Proto Polynesian
New Zealand High Commission
WEDNESDAY
830-910
910-950
Ross Clark
William Wilson,
950-1020
1020-1100
Tea-Break
Chris Ballard
110-1140
Ian Campbell
1140-12.20
Paul D'Arcy,
1220-1400
2.00-2.40
LUNCH
Bronwen Douglas
What is a Polynesian language?
“Tongic” Consonantal Elements in Proto
Eastern Polynesian
Constructing Hierarchies for Oceania:
Comparison and Dualism in Racialist Logics
Braudel in Oceania and the Structure of
Cultural Difference
Leaky Boundaries: Exploring the Reality and
Consequences of the Micronesia-Malaysia
Conceptual Divide
Terra Australis to Oceania: Racial Geography in
the 'Fifth Part of the World'.
4
2.40- 3.20
Helen Gardner
3.20-3.50
3.50-4.30
Tea-Break
Teresia Teaiwa
4.30-5.10
Tarcisius
Kabutaulaka
Delegates
Evening
Missionaries and the Melanesia/Polynesia
Divide: the 1870s and 1880s.
“Nesian Mystik”: Theorizing Contemporary
Pacific Cultural History beyond the Mela, Micro
and Poly
[unknown]
Symposium Dinner, USP Dining Hall.
THURSDAY
830-910
910-950
Morgan
Tuimaleali’ifano
Simonne Pauwels
950-1030
Lau Asofou So’o
1030-1100
110-1140
Tea-Break
Karen Nero,
1140-12.20
Mike Goldsmith
1220-1400
2.00-2.40
2.40- 3.20
LUNCH
Grant McCall
Katerina Teaiwa
3.20-3.50
3.50-4.30
Tea-Break
Elise Huffer
4.30-5.10
6.00pm
Margaret Jolly
Delegates
FRIDAY
The case of 'Micronesia' in the debates about
Pacific regions and stereotypes
Between Polynesia and Micronesia: Marginality
as a problem in assigning Pacific roots
Rapanui: "Polynesian" as a contrastive identity
Choreographing Regionalism? connections and
disconnections at the Festival of Pacific Arts
The policy making in the « Culture » programs
in SPC and the regional labelling
Ceremonial cloth from Vanuatu to Polynesia
Cocktail at the Australian High Commission Bus
leave Tanoa Hotel at 6.00 pm
General discussion and Syntheses
Panel Convenors
All
6.00
From Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia to
Pan-Pacific: Samoans and Tongans in Fiji
What about the Lauan-Tongan connection
yesterday and today?
Local identities vs regional identities. Claiming
to be “Samoan” vs being “Polynesian” or
“Melanesian”.
Delegates
Each to present a first draft of the main points of
what could become a chapter of the text book,
archaeology, linguistics, history, anthropology,
respectively
Open discussions between members of each
panel and between members of various panels
Cocktail at French Embassy. Bus from Tanoa
Hotel at 6 pm
5
Abstracts
Archaeology Section
Glen Summerhayes University of Otago
The First settlement of Near Oceania
Human occupation began in New Guinea and the islands of the Bismarck Archipelago by at
least 40,000 years ago. This paper will outline the impact of the colonising peoples on their
landscape and the subsequent changes that took place over the following millennia. In
modelling the human presence in what has been called a world without ethnographic parallel,
I will review the archaeological record and assess what it can tell us. This paper will also
highlight Near Oceania’s importance in answering global questions on the spread of our
species, and the search for modernity in the archaeological record of the late Pleistocene.
Frédérique Valentin Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris
Peoples and migrations in Island South-East Asia and the Pacific
This paper will outline the new data that have been gathered during the last decades through
osteological and genetic studies about the complex pattern of human diversity and migration
in the vast region stretching from Island South-East Asia to Western Polynesia during the
second and the first millennium BC.
Christophe Sand Department of Archaeology of New Caledonia,
Noumea
The Lapita expansion across the western Pacific
Over the past 20 years, our understanding of the expansion of Austronesian peoples
producing Lapita pottery across the Western Pacific has been greatly expanded by a series of
new results obtained from archaeological excavations in Near Oceania as well as Remote
Oceania. This paper will try to highlight the main new data at hand, and what they can tell us
about the process of the Lapita spread across over 4500 km of Ocean, over 3000 years ago.
David Burley Simon Fraser University, Vancouver
Post-Lapita developments in the Fiji-West Polynesia region
A number of research programs on the first two millennia of human settlement in the FijiTonga-Samoa triangle, defined as the “Polynesian Homeland”, have allowed to identify a
number of specific cultural processes at the end of the Lapita period in this eastern region, as
well as possible new movement of people after the first Oceanic expansion circa 3000 years
ago. These archaeological data will be discussed in a regional focus, in an attempt to
disentangle the trajectories leading to a cultural differentiation between Fiji and Western
Polynesia at the eave of the settlement of the Eastern Pacific.
Anne Di Piazza CREDO, Marseille
Pacific navigation: human expansion across a sea world
Understanding sailing conditions is a basic requirement for understanding the two periods of
settlement of the distant islands of Oceania, initially from the Bismarck Islands off New
Guinea as far as Samoa and later from Samoa throughout East Polynesia. The question of a
“navigational threshold” between the two worlds is the focus of this paper, by discussing
substantial differences in ease of voyaging up to and beyond Samoa. The markedly different
measure obtained by computer simulation between these two worlds gives support for the
hypothesised pause between the discovery and settlement of islands West and East of Samoa.
6
Eric Conte University of French Polynesia, Tahiti and Patrick Kirch
University of California, Berkeley
East Polynesian diversifications
This paper attempts to summarize current knowledge and likely scenarios for the initial
peopling of Eastern Polynesia, based on recent research. A second theme is to examine the
complex processes which, over the long term, resulted in the diverse Polynesian societies
which were encountered by the first European explorers beginning around the 16th century.
Stuart Bedford Australian National University, Canberra
Late prehistoric intensifications processes in Island Melanesia
The focus on the Lapita period has for a long time led to poor understanding of the late
prehistory of the Melanesian region. The shift in archaeologists’ interest towards this last part
of the pre-contact history of the Western Pacific has been rewarded in all the archipelagos by
the identification of complex processes of landscape intensification and political complexity,
often associated with monumental architecture. The new data allows to identify in the region
a series of dynamics that challenge the long-held view of simple, poorly structured “big-man”
societies in the Melanesian crescent before first European contact.
Geoffrey Clark Australian National University, Canberra
The second millennium AD in the Fiji-West Polynesian triangle
Since the first encounters with European sailors, the Fiji-West Polynesian triangle has been
identified as a core cultural region of the Pacific, in between Melanesia and Polynesia. The
regional chiefdom identified in Tonga and the presence of monumental architecture in most of
the Islands, has led very early on to an archaeological focus on the most significant remains,
associated to oral traditions. A recent new focus on the traditional period through
archaeological studies has allowed to get a better understanding of the complexity of the
cultural and political processes at play over the last thousand years in the central Pacific.
William Ayres University of Oregon
Chiefdoms and networks in the late prehistory of Micronesia
The vast region of Micronesia has been the focus of numerous archaeological studies,
showing a long history of first settlement from West to East. Over the succeeding millennia,
the main archipelagos have developed complex cultural and political systems, structured
around interisland networks. In some cases, massive landscape transformations and the
development of monumental architecture have enhanced political prestige in the process of
centralized chiefdom building, leaving a unique set of archaeological sites.
Lisa Matisoo-Smith University of Auckland
Genetic studies on the prehistory of the Pacific
The advent of genetic studies on archaeological remains during the last three decades, has
allowed to study the prehistory of the Pacific through a new set of tools and markers. This
paper will present a series of results from this field, ranking from the genetic trails of humantransported animals across the Pacific, to a number of new data on human genetics in
Oceania.
7
P. Murail University of Bordeaux
“Polynesians” in anthropological perspective
The question of the origins of the “Polynesians” has been at the centre of anthropological
studies since the end of the 18th century. A combination of research tools allow today to
study this question in a broader perspective. This paper will attempt to present a synthesis on
this topic.
Linguistics Section
Andrew Pawley Australian National University
The emergence of the Oceanic group and its major branches
The outlines of the vast Austronesian family were known in Europe by the early 18th century,
when striking resemblances were perceived in wordlists brought back by early voyagers from
different parts of the Indo-Pacific region. Only in the 1920s, however, was it clearly
established that most of the Austronesian languages of the southwest and central Pacific –
Melanesia, Polynesia, and Micronesia – fall into a single, large branch of Austronesian known
as Oceanic. This paper will consider the cultural and geographic circumstances that led to the
emergence of an Oceanic branch and to its subsequent divergence into a number of
subgroups. The last part of the paper will outline the methods and evidence by which the
various major subgroups of Oceanic have been identified
Darrell Tryon
Australian National University
The Languages of Melanesia. An Overview
John Lynch University of the South Pacific
The Southern Oceanic Linkage
This paper will discuss the historical relationships of the Oceanic languages of Southern
Vanuatu, New Caledonia and the Loyalty Is., excluding the several Polynesian languages
spoken in this region. The eight surviving non-Polynesian languages of Erronganga, Tanna,
and Anejom form a well-defined subgroup, distinct from those of Central and North Vanuatu.
The languages of New Caledonia and the Loyalties also form a subgroup. There is a small
body of shared innovations that indicate that the South Vanuatu and New Caledonia/Loyalties
groups shared a period of common development and can be placed together in a larger
‘Southern Oceanic’ subgroup. This evidence is consistent with the hypothesis that the initial
colonization of New Caledonia by Lapita people was from Southern Vanuatu
Paul Geraghty
University of the South Pacific
The origins of Proto Polynesian
It has long been agreed among linguists that the Polynesian languages form a very distinct
subgroup as do most of the languages of geographical Micronesia . This paper presents
evidence - phonological, morphological and lexical - for this Polynesian subgroup, in the
form of innovations from the parent language, Proto Central Pacific, and also points out some
‘fuzzy areas’ which indicate that Proto Central Pacific was spoken throughout Fiji and
Western Polynesia and was dialectally differentiated before Proto Polynesian came into being,
itself probably the product of a number of these dialects.
8
Ross Clark
University of Auckland
What is a Polynesian language?
This paper is a broad survey of Polynesian languages, emphasizing how language defines
both “Polynesian” and “Outlier”, and what language can tell us about their origins.
William Wilson
University of Hawai'i at Hilo
“Tongic” Consonantal Elements in Proto Eastern Polynesian
The Tongic influence in Western Polynesian and Eastern Fiji is widely recognized. Might
Tongic influence have extended to extensive lexical borrowings in Eastern Polynesia as well?
This paper investigates possible evidence for such Tongic influence in Eastern Polynesia, and
rejects direct Tongic influence as a significant factor in the history of Eastern Polynesian.
History Session
Chris Ballard, ANU
Constructing Hierarchies for Oceania: Comparison and Dualism in Racialist
Logics.
As with histories of alchemy, studies of the “science” of race are confronted with the
challenge of writing about the development of a project that is inevitably doomed to fail. In
the place of any discernible “progress” in raciology’s understanding of human difference,
there is instead a continuous and curiously amnesiac process of return to basic or base
principles, such as the ranking of different groups, accompanied by an elaboration of
technologies and vocabularies of calibration. What Louis Dumont described as the persistent
“tendency to hierarchize” is profoundly true of racialist endeavours, which render difference
in a “ferocious and morbid” form. This exploratory paper draws on three case studies from
Oceania – the rigid divide between Papuans and Malays identified but variably valued by
John Crawfurd and Alfred Russel Wallace, Alfred Cort Haddon’s spurious separation of
“Papuan” and “Pygmy” communities in west New Guinea, and the hardy Melanesia/Polynesia
binarism – as a means of addressing the roles of comparison and dualism in racialist logics
more generally.
Ian Campbell, USP
Braudel’s Oceania and the Structure of Cultural Difference.
Fernand Braudel’s famous and fertile distinction between the different cycles in the historical
process is a useful device for answering the primary question posed to this symposium as to
the pertinence of the Melanesia-Polynesia-Micronesia cultural classification. The existence of
common underlying structures of material culture, economy and values is neither in
contradiction of nor incompatible with the overlapping intermediate structures of religion,
social organisation, and mythology. Nor are either incompatible with the more particular,
fine-grained phenomena which make up the processes of political and everyday economic
activity. The validity of the traditional tripartite cultural taxonomy therefore is not a question
of absolutes, but is relative to the Braudellian cycle or level at which analysis is being
conducted. For historians, concerned mainly with the fine-grained ephemera of human
society, further distinctions become necessary, but the Melanesia-Micronesia-Polynesia
categories have both validity and utility for historical analysis.
9
Paul D’Arcy, ANU
Leaky Boundaries: Exploring the Reality and Consequences of the MicronesiaMalaysia Conceptual Divide.
Malaysia remains largely invisible and forgotten in Pacific Studies despite being placed
alongside Melanesia, Polynesia and Micronesia in early European classifications of the
indigenous peoples of the region. Although some work has been done to explore links
between Melanesia and Malaysia in recent years, little has been done to investigate possible
links between Oceania and Southeast Asia further north where significantly larger sea gaps
separate Micronesia from Malaysia. Sea gaps did make links between Micronesia and
Malaysia less frequent than between Melanesia and Malaysia, but Malaysian influences are
apparent in the historical record of Micronesia and these became closer before this
classification was devised because of early Spanish colonization of the Philippines and
Micronesia. Colonial history, divergent colonial languages, and the timing of this
classification created a divide that intellectually ostracized a dynamic and continuing
relationship from scholastic discourse and helped set the two areas on divergent paths that left
the Philippines uncomfortably marginalized within Muslim Island Southeast Asia, and
Micronesia relatively marginalized within the modern Pacific Island world. Closer ties have
recently begun to be forged between the Philippines and western Micronesia, reflecting both
perceived histories and contemporary needs.
Bronwen Douglas, ANU
Terra Australis to Oceania: Racial Geography in the ‘Fifth Part of the World’.
This paper is concerned with the racial geography in the ‘fifth part of the world’ mainly in the
heyday of European racial thinking with the marriage of geography and raciology in the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries, ending in the postcolonial present. There is an ironic
convergence of parallel narratives in postcolonial nomenclatures and political strategies. The
core of the paper investigates the naming of places by Europeans and its ultimate
entanglement with their contested, nebulous racial classifications of people as Malay, Papuan,
Oceanic Negro, Aborigine, Melanesian, Polynesian, and Micronesian. Congealed by
colonialism, racial categories and hierarchies haunted the political borders that were
negotiated by colonial states, inherited by postcolonial ones, and further reinscribed in the
partitioning of academic research. I locate the formulation of geographical and
anthropological knowledge at the interface of metropolitan discourses and often fraught
regional experience.
This necessitates unpacking the relationships between the profoundly ethnocentric but
universalized deductions of savants, cartographers, and humanitarians in the metropoles, and
the uneasily cosmopolitan empirical logic of navigators, travelling naturalists, resident
missionaries, and settlers who visited or lived in particular places, encountered their
inhabitants, and been exposed to indigenous cartographies and naming systems.
Helen Gardner, Deakin University
Missionaries and the Melanesia/Polynesia Divide: the 1870s and 1880s.
Missionaries from the eastern mission stations moved into the western Pacific in the 1870s.
They did so as the imperial powers jostled for colonies in the region and the new discipline of
anthropology was being established. Missionaries subsequently became both conduits and
interpreters of evidence relating to distinctions between the peoples of the east and those of
the west – such information had both political and anthropological implications. Fearful of the
ontological connotations of a division based on physical differences, missionaries used
cultural, linguistic and technological evidence to claim that any distinctions were mutable and
cultural and did not extend to intelligence, morality, or the capacity for development. They
did so using cutting edge anthropological theories and the new medium of photography.
10
Teresia Teaiwa, Victoria University of Wellington
“Nesian Mystik”: Theorizing Contemporary Pacific Cultural History beyond the
Mela, Micro and Poly.
“Nesian Mystik” is the name of a group of musical recording artists and entertainers in New
Zealand made up of young men from a variety of backgrounds, mostly Polynesian. The title
captures the growing popularity of the phrase “nesian” not only in New Zealand, but in the
wider Pacific Islands diaspora including as far away as the UK. In New Zealand, young
Pacific Islanders and Maori in mainstreams schools come together in “Poly” clubs to
celebrate and strengthen their cultural fluencies, especially through learning and performing
pan-Polynesian repertoires of song and dance. In the last decade, however, the suffix “nesian”
has begun to circulate prominently. Although it has by no means replaced “Poly” or
“Polynesian” in New Zealand discourse, and its longevity is yet to be determined, the term
“nesian” serves as a signifier of an emerging ethos or choice of identifications for Pacific
people that can transcend the racializing hierarchies inherited from the colonial era. “Nesian”
seems on the other hand to have been produced and articulated in more youthful, urban, and
less academic settings. This paper will draw on a survey of popular media to trace the
emergence of a way of thinking about identity in the contemporary Pacific that moves beyond
the mela, micro and poly constraints of the past.
Morgan Tuimaleali’ifano, USP
From Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia to Pan-Pacific: Samoans and
Tongans in Fiji.
The distinction drawn between Polynesia and Melanesia by 18th-century Westerners was not
easily appreciated by Islanders. Islander evaluations of difference had been assumed,
established, and buried in local traditions to such an extent that the Western categories made
little sense. Oral traditions across the region are silent on the notion of a contrast between
Polynesian homogeneity and Melanesian heterogeneity, which is an idea and a debate
engendered entirely through Western ideas about anthropology, race and encounter. This
paper argues that it was largely through encounters with Westerners that a notion of cultural
or ethnic ‘others’ was introduced to Island discourses. As these encounters propelled Islanders
into a Western domain of thought and writing, they were often compelled to respond as
‘others’. Islanders wove themselves into Western conceptions and in turn appropriated
Western notions as part of their local repertoire. Through a re-tracing of the family history of
Lema’i and its movements from Samoa to Fiji, I explore how ‘otherness’ was conceived,
negotiated and etched in the minds of Samoans and Tongans in Fiji.
Anthropology Section
Simonne Pauwels, CNRS-Credo,
What about the Lauan-Tongan connection yesterday and today?
The first travellers, missioners and Hocart alike were puzzled by the appearance and manners
of the Lauans and wondered if they were Polynesians or Fijians, that’s to say Melanesians.
Most of them understood it was the result of a long intercourse. Today the question is
definitely obsolete but the Lauan-Tongan connection is still vivid and the rituals and artefacts
are clearly distinguished as Tongan or Fijian.
Lau Asofou So’o, NUS, Samoa
Local identities vs regional identities. Claiming to be “Samoan” vs being
“Polynesian” or “Melanesian”.
Abstract pending.
11
Karen Nero, University of Canterbury, Christchurch
The case of ‘Micronesia’ in the debates about Pacific regions and stereotypes
Generally marginalized even in Pacific Studies due to its small population size and long
colonial isolation from the rest of the Pacific, Micronesia presents an excellent case from
which to consider the meanings and impacts of externally derived sub-regional divisions. At
best Micronesia might be considered as a geographical region, yet it includes islands of Near
Oceania as well as more recently settled Far Oceania islands. In the 20th Century the term
Micronesia was increasingly used to refer to those islands administered by Japan and then the
US excluding Nauru and Kiribati , further often contracted today to refer only to the islands
of the Federated States of Micronesia.
The continued utility of the term is embedded in the historical and current realities of
Micronesian lives. Oral histories, linguistic, botanical and archaeological evidence confirm
early inter-island linkages that are maintained today. Other historic links to other Pacific
island polities are masked by sub-regional divisions. Today most of the Pacific nations of this
region belong to regional Pacific bodies, yet consistently “Micronesians” query why
academics should discontinue this finally useful distinction as sub-regional caucuses are often
the most effective vehicles for political action.
Mike Goldsmith, Waikato Univ, Hamilton
Between Polynesia And Micronesia:Marginality As A Problem In Assigning
Pacific Roots
The central Pacific society of Tuvalu within that conventional classificatory scheme invites a
reconsideration of the classic tripartite culture areas division. Tuvalu is routinely and
plausibly allocated to Polynesia on linguistic and cultural grounds. Indeed, cultural
distinctions between Polynesia and Micronesia have had an ongoing political salience for
Tuvalu. Nevertheless, many of the assumed distinctions and allegiances resulting from its
allocation to Polynesia are open to question.
First, on ecological grounds, Tuvalu has arguably more in common with similar low-lying
archipelagoes of atolls and reef islands, such as Micronesian Kiribati and the Marshall Islands
than it does with ‘high island’ Polynesian societies. Second, this commonality is implicated in
the rise of a new political identity among small low-lying island states, deriving from a sense
that they are the societies most immediately and overwhelmingly threatened by climate
change and sea-level rise. Such political linkages have historically been difficult to
accommodate within the standard culture area division. In general, atoll societies have posed
obstacles to the main comparative classifications in the Pacific.
In short, Tuvalu is a classic case of a society that fits uneasily into many of the comparative
studies of Pacific culture areas – but it does so for reasons that are by no means unique. As
such, it acts as a useful reminder of the artificiality of such constructs.
Grant McCall, UNSW, Sydney
Rapanui: “Polynesian” as a contrastive identity
The people of Rapanui Easter Island have been under the control of Chile since1888, when
the place was annexed by that South American country. At that time the contrastive identity
was French as opposed to local. With the advent of Chile, the contrast between insider
Rapanui and outsider now Chilean , the term being tangata hiva for an unspecified outsider, a
person from somewhere else, with a small number identified as to nation state: tire [chilean],
harani [french], kapone [japanese], tenito [chinese, but also anyone with a prominent
epicanthic fold, including their own people] and paratane [English, the operators of the sheep
ranch from 1904 to 1953]. With greater freedom to travel, Rapanui began to contrast
12
“Polynesians”, themselves and others they met with tire South Americans in terms of
behaviour and attitudes. Today, Polynesian remains a strong contrastive identity for Rapanui,
although they refer always to Maori by that name and don’t include them as Polynesians. The
influence of the South Pacific Festival of Arts, which the Rapanui attended first in 1972, is
noted and historical detail for the above is presented.
Katerina Teaiwa, Australian National University
Choreographing Regionalism? Reflections on connections and disconnections at
the 10th Festival of Pacific Arts
In this presentation I will reflect on observations made by myself and two of my students at
the 10th Festival of Pacific Arts in Pago Pago. The gathering was a wonderful showcase of
Pacific music, dance, visual arts, theatre, poetry, culinary and healing traditions. However, it
was obvious that there were disconnections between the east and west Pacific with Kiribati,
for example, occupying a little-understood gap in the middle. Relations between
Micronesians, Melanesians and Polynesians played out in some predictable, but sometimes
unexpected ways, calling into question the so-called boundaries and applications of such
cultural categories in the context of regionalism.
Elise Huffer. Secretariat of the Pacific Community
The policy making in the “Culture” programs in SPC and the regional labelling
The culture sector in the region continues, in large part, to structure itself around the
Melanesia, Polynesia and Micronesia labels. What are the reasons for this? Can it be claimed
that these labels today do have cultural resonance? If so, who and what do they represent? If
not, why do they remain so strong?
Margaret Jolly. Australian National University
Ceremonial cloth from Vanuatu to Polynesia :
Taking several examples, the paper will show the unity of practices and representations of
ceremonial usages of cloth whether in “Melanesia” or “Polynesia”.
13
Pacific History Association
8-12 DECEMBER 2008
18th BIENNIAL CONFERENCE - SUVA FIJI
"Who are we and what are we doing here?"
Welcome and Introduction
The conference organising committee of the Pacific Roots Symposium and Pacific History
Association welcomes you to Suva – the hub of the Pacific, location of the best archives, best
museum, best heritage unit and most dynamic undergraduate Pacific History programme in
the region. It is over twenty years since a PHA conference was last held here (1985), and by
the end of the week we are confident that you will agree that it should happen more often!
The conference theme, "Who are we and what are we doing here?" invites you to reflect
on the fundamental questions of history.
‘Who are we?’ Only history can tell us. Our multiple identities are shaped by our histories,
and the papers all of us are offering have something to do with explaining who we are as
individuals, and collectively what our social identity is.
What are we doing here? Not ‘why are we in Suva?’ but what do we do as historians? Can
we justify ourselves in an age of market-driven education, utilitarianism and materialism? Do
we have faith in what we are doing, and think that it is for the good of other people besides
ourselves? Do we really believe that people need to know the things that we have found out
and will be talking about? We are offering a history teachers’ workshop in tandem with this
conference as part of our answer to that question. We think that history is important, as both a
‘quality of life’ and ‘bread-and-butter’ activity. We think it needs to be better taught, more
widely known, and better appreciated for the traditional reasons. A Post-graduate Student
Forum attempts to nurture and promote the academic traditions of research, teaching and
writing by providing space for young academics to share and to tap the expertise and wisdom
gathered in Suva.
We think that only through history do we really understand who we are, and what we are
doing here, and also where we are going.
It is the hope of the organising committee that this conference will help to remind us all of
these things, invigorate us and encourage us to continue. We wish you an enjoyable stay with
us. Welcome!
14
Information Common to PRS and PHA Functions
1. Conference Venues and Location
Pacific Roots Symposium venue is N111, located in the Ground Floor of the Faculty of
Science and Technology (FST) Building. Breakout sessions will be in Senate Room (IS030),
Faculty of Business and Economics Building, across the road from N111.
The Biennial Pacific History Association Conference venues are U8, N111, Senate Room
(IS030), FBE Seminar Room (Rm IS033) and FST Seminar Room.
All plenary sessions for both events will be held in N111. All parallel sessions will be in
N111, U8, Senate Room, FBE Seminar Room and FST Seminar Room. During PHA, student
guides are on stand-by. Do not hesitate to ask. They will be happy to assist.
2. Field Trip Excursions
There will be two excursions to cater for the two conferences.
The first excursions will take place during the weekend between the two events. The first is
on Saturday 6th December and Second on Sunday 7th December.
It is expected that persons attending the Pacific Roots Symposium will go on Saturday and
persons attending the Pacific History Conference will go Sunday.
As long as there is room, any one can go on either day. For PHA participants, please pay
during registration.
PRS Departees
For Pacific Roots Symposium attendees departing in the weekend, please check that
Fieldtrip times do not clash with your expected departure times.
PHA Arrival
For Pacific History Association attendees arriving via Nadi during the weekend, and who
wish to join the fieldtrip from Nadi, please email the Conference Secretariat for information
on how to join from Nadi.
A fieldtrip program is included for information in this booklet.
3. Registration Desk:
Registration is not required for the Pacific Roots Symposium (PRS). Luncheon for delegates
will be provided and the public can be purchased from Dining Hall and eateries at Sports
City.
Registration is required for the PHA and the Registration desk is open for a limited period
from 8.30 to 9.00 each morning for the duration of the conference. For those who had
registered on line or paid before arrival, the provision of any evidential documentation would
assist in facilitating the process. If you require assistance please see the staff at the
Information Desk.
4. Email Access
Registrants will have access to the use of two computers. There are also internet cafes located
in Sports City opposite the campus.Contact, Peni <sigabalavu_p@usp.ac.fj>
5. Technical Assistance
Technician will be on stand-by to assist with downloading power-point presentation onto
conference venues. If you have any question about the venues and technical support, please
15
do not hesitate to drop by the Registration Desk. Contact: Mr Rohit Charan of Media
rohit.charan@usp.ac.fj
6. Morning and Afternoon Teas
These will be served from one of the Fales or Open thatched roof houses visible from the road
into the campus about 50 metres from N111. The 30 minutes time limit will be applied.
Conference Functions
Registered participants and invited guests have been invited to attend a number of functions
associated with the two events.
1. Welcome
Welcome for both conferences will take place in N111.
The Opening of the PRS will start at 9.00am. The Opening of the PHA will start at 8.30am.
2. Conference Function for the Pacific Roots Symposium
During the Week, various functions will be held to welcome delegates.
On Monday evening, 6.00pm. 1st December, USP will host a cocktail for PRS delegates at the
Fale. Tuesday evenings is free. Wednesday will be the Symposium Dinner. Venue USP
Dining Hall. Thursday evening, 4th December, the Australian High Commissioner will host
the delegates. Bus leave Tanoa Hotel at 6.00pm. Friday evening, the delegates will be hosted
by the French Embassy at the Ambassador’s residence. Bus depart Tanoa 6.00pm.
3. Conference Function for PHA Biennial Conference
Registration will open at 6.00pm. Sunday evening, 7th December 2008, at the Oceania Centre
for Arts and Culture (OCAC), opposite the Molikilagi Bure. The OCAC Dance Theatre will
perform at 6.30pm. On Monday evening, 6.00pm, 8th December, the USP will host a cocktail
for the Conference participants at the Fale. Tuesday is free. Wednesday, Fiji Museum
function (see program below). On Thursday, the Australian High Commissioner will host a
cocktail at his residence to welcome the Conference participants. It will start at 6.30am.
4. History Teachers’ Workshop
The 2006 PHA Biennial General Meeting decided to organize a history teachers’ workshop
during the 2008 PHA. A workshop will be running during the week in tandem with the
Conference. A separate program is included in the program and draw on expertise from
Conference participants. Contact: Christine Weir, Max Quanchi and Susie Sela. A report is
expected for the PHA BGM.
5. Post-graduate Student Forum
A Forum for post-graduate student forum has also been organized bringing participants from
the region. Presentations will be made by Postgraduate scholars from across the Pacific region
to discuss a broad range of topics, across disciplines and fields of research. Contact: Morgan
Tuimaleali’ifano, Max Quanchi and Tui Clery. A report is also expected for the BGM.
6. PHA Monday Lunch and Book launch
PHA Registered participants will lunch free on the first day only in the Dining Hall, during
which a book by conference participants will be launched. The Dining hall provide lunches
($7 to $12) throughout the conference. There are many cafes and restaurants in Sports City
16
opposite the campus. See the Guide to Suva for many more in the city. Many are inexpensive
and cater for vegetarian and non-vegetarian.
7. Mid-week Molituva field trip for PHA participants.
A mid-week fieldtrip is planned for Wednesday, 10th December to an ancient village site at
Molituva, Kuku, Tailevu. The bus will leave USP Bus Bay (on the main road opposite Cost U
Less) at 9.00am and return at 2.00pm. in time to rest before the Fiji Museum event at 6.00pm.
Cost of trip is $40 (unwaged $20) to be paid at Registration Desk. Guide, Mr Semi Buwawa.
8. Fiji Museum Function
On Wednesday, the Fiji Museum and PHA will host a Public Talk by Fergus Clunie, a former
Curator at 6.00pm at the Museum followed by Buffet Dinner. Entrance on Cakobau Road
opposite Albert Park. Numbers are limited, but if you would like to attend but have not
registered, please see the Registration Desk before Tuesday 9.00am. Cost is $20. Contact,
Sepeti Matararaba and Vika Koro, Sagale Buadromo.
9. PHA Conference Dinner
On Friday, 12th December, at USP Dining Hall , 6.30pm. It will begin with an address by the
PHA President, Kambati Uriam. Numbers are limited but if you would like to attend, but have
not registered, please book at registration desk Thursday 9.00am. Cost $30.
10.
Book Launches
Please join us celebrate the launch of a book by Conference participants. Judy Bennett will
introduce Foreign Bodies: Oceania and the science of race 1750-1940', edited by Bronwen
Douglas and Chris Ballard, Canberra: ANU E Press 2008, ISBN 9781921313998. Monday,
8th Dec. during lunch in the Dining Hall.
11.
Books, CDs and Conference Memorabilia on Sale
Other launches are planned during the week. Conference Bags and PTC and USP
memorabilia will also be on sale. A CD produced by Ecumenical Centre for Research,
Education and Advocacy (ECREA) will be launched at Morning Tea on Tuesday, 9th Dec.
Another is planned by Division of Language and Literature at afternoon Tea on Tuesday.
12.
Exhibitions and Other Cultural Events
A number of exhibits and cultural events are taking place in tandem with Conferences.
Early European Maps and USP Students’ Archaeological Posters will be exhibited at the
Foyer of the USP Library as part of the Pacific Roots Symposium. Contact: Serge
Tcherzekoff and Denise Rosenblatt. As part of the PHA conference, an exhibit of Brett
Hilder’s Pacific Art Collection will also be featured in the same location. Contact: Max
Quanchi and Denise Rosenblatt.
13.
Conference Local Guides
USP students, from different communities, have volunteered to assist with the smooth
running of Conference. Please do not hesitate to engage them as they are very informative
about local events.
17
Field Trip to Fiji’s Earliest Settlement at Bourewa, Sigatoka
There will be two excursions for the two events on the weekend in-between (6-7 Dec.).
The First is on Saturday 6th December and Second on Sunday 7th December.
It is expected that persons attending the Pacific Roots Symposium will go on Saturday and
persons attending the Pacific History Conference will go Sunday.
As long as there is room, any one can go on either day. If twice, you pay twice.
Departure
Pacific Roots Symposium attendees should check that Fieldtrip times do not clash with
expected departure times in the weekend.
Arrival
Pacific History Association attendees arriving via Nadi during the weekend and wish to join
should email Conference Secretariat for information on how to join from Nadi.
Program
Depart USP Bus Stop (opp. McDonalds) at 7.15am and Tanoa Plaza Hotel at 7.30 am.
Travel Route along Queen’s Highway through Navua and Sigatoka, arrive at 10.15 am.
Guided tour of Bourewa site by University of the South Pacific researchers
View selected artifacts
Wander the area and relax on the adjacent beach
Traditional welcome (na isevusevu vakaturaga) at 12.15 pm in Vusama Village (2 km from
Bourewa) where the traditional landowners reside.
Kava drinking (optional but recommended) with people of Vusama until 1.30 pm.
Lunch in Vusama Village at 1.30 pm.
Depart Vusama for Suva at 2.30 pm.
Arrive Suva at 4.45 pm.
Cost
F$40 per person all inclusive.
PRS attendants can pay before Satuday 6th Dec. but PHA members can book before 30th
November for Sunday 7th Dec. and pay at registration.
What to bring
Hat, sunscreen, camera, drinking water and an ear for different languages.
Catering
For transport and catering purposes, please indicate attendance by responding to La
Hennings hennings_l@usp.ac.fj or Tui Clery tuinicc222@yahoo.co.uk before 30th November.
______________________________________________________________________
18
PHA Mid-Week Fieldtrip to Molituva, Kuku, Tailevu,
Wednesday, 10th December.
Program
.
9.00am. Leave USP Bus Bay, opposite Cost U Less.
10.00am Arrive at Kuku
10.00 to 10.30-Welcoming I Sevusevu. Kava is optional.
11.00 to 12.00pm Guided Tour of the ancient site. Cameras permitted after customary
permission
12.00 to 12.30pm Light Refreshment.
12.30 Departure I tatau. Kava is optional.
1.00pm Depart.
2.00pm Arrive USP
Cost: $40 Unwaged $20
Needs:
Matanivanua: A Committee Member or Student Volunteer: Mr Taniela Rokotakala
Two Kava Roots.
Missionary clothing, light walking shoes, Sun Screen and lots of water. Keep an eye on the
weather.
15 Nov. 2008.
19
18th PHA CONFERENCE, USP campus, Suva; Timetable
CONFERENCE EXHIBITS & OTHER EVENTS
Date
Name of Event
Location
PRS week Early European Maps and USP
USP Library Foyer
1-6th Dec. Students’ Archaeological
Posters
th
th
7 -12
Exhibit of Brett Hilder’s Pacific USP Library Foyer
Dec.
Art Collection
6.15pm
Navigation Talk by Fergus
Fiji Museum,
Wed. 10th Clunie
Cakobau Rd. Suva
Dec.
Dinner
Sunday, 7th Dec.
7.30am
PHA FIELDTRIP TO BOUREWA Pick Up
participants from USP Bus Stop (opp. Cost U Less),
Peninsula and Tanoa.
5.00pm
Fieldtrip participants Return
from Bourewa.
5-8pm
Registration and Cultural
OCAC (opp.
Performance
Molikilagi Bure
Contact Person
Serge Tcherzekoff,
Patrick Nunn, Denise
Rosenblatt
Max Quanchi &
Libby Fong
Sepeti Matararaba,
Vika Koro and Sagale
Buadromo
Allan Alo’s team
Monday 8th Dec
8-9.00
Registration, Senate Room (IS030)
8.30-9.00 Welcome: Marama Tauira, PTC, Co-convenor Organising Committee
Prayer and Song: Pacifika
8.40-8.45 Speaker: Kambati Uriam, President, Pacific History Association.
Remembering members who have passed on.
8.45-8.55:Welcome of the Vanua: Korova Community (Paul Geraghty) N111.
9-10.00
Plenary 1
Patrick Nunn: A Shock to the System N111
Chair: Marama Tauira
10-10.30 Break
Comments/Notes
10.30S1 The Golden Shrub:
S2 Anthropology,
12.30
Kava, Aporosa, Maciu &
Race and Encounter
Sekove FST PG Seminar
in Oceania N111
Rm
1. Fergus Clunie (40 mins),
1 Chris Ballard, Text, Image, and the
Yaqona, and the Returning
Encounter: Miklouho-Maclay's 1879 New
Dead
Hebrides Sketches,
2 Spencer Leineweber, Rituals of Place and
2. Nancy Pollock,
Contemporary kava use in
Race:
historical perspective
Sacred Chiefs and American Missionaries in
Hawai'i, 1815-1836.
3. S. Sotheeswaran,
3 Bronwen Douglas, Race and Encounters in
20
Toxicological evaluations of
kava drink
12.302.00
2-3.30
2.30-3
3.30-4.00
4-6.00
Oceania:
Science, Agency, and the Vacillations of a 19thCentury Naturalist
4. Hilary Howes, These Papuans Throw all our
Beautiful Theories out the Window':
Disentangling Indigenous Agency in NineteenthCentury German Accounts of New Guinea
4. J. D. Baker, Potions, pills,
and products: Developments
in kava marketing and
consumption in Hawaii and
the Mainland US
Lunch: PHA Luncheon in the Dining Hall and Book Launch of Foreign
Bodies by Judy Bennett
S1 The Golden Shrub:
S2 Anthropology cont.
Kava, Aporosa, Maciu &
Sekove cont.
5, Serge Tcherkézoff, The French Invention of
5. Ratu Sela Rayawa,
Yaqona: Wine of the land
Polynésie, Océanie, and Mélanésie, 1756-1833.
6. Paul Geraghty, When I
6 Helen Gardner, Lorimer Fison: Anthropology
was a lad… observations on
and Conversion
the prevalence of social
yaqona drinking in Fiji’s
history
7. Maciu Tomlinson, Kava in 7 Ian Campbell, Notes on Radcliffe-Brown and
Fiji from the Perspective of a the Application of Anthropology
Foreign Anthropologist:
Ideologies of Stasis, Practices
of Change, and Vice Versa
Break
S1 The Golden Shrub:
S2 Anthropology
…cont..
Kava, Aporosa, Maciu &
Sekove con.
8. Meredith Filihia, Kava:
8. Alan Davidson, Tasiu Charles (Charles Fox)
Indigenous Tongan Political
and Identifying with Melanesians:
Concepts
a Missionary Anthropologist or a Missionary
with an Interest in Anthropology?
9 Sekove B. Degei, Yaqona
and Methodism in Fiji
9. 5. Karen Fox, Wāhine in the House: Māori
Women as Members of Parliament in New
Zealand.
10 Lynda Newland, The
Socio-Economic Impact of
10. Marja Van Tilburg, Gendering CrossKava Consumption
cultural Encounters: Gender as a Category of
Analysis in George Forster's Representation of
Oceania
11 S. G. Aporosa, Yaqona
and Education: A Clash of
Cultures
12. Aporosa et al. Kava
Session, Open Forum and
Summing Up
5-6.00
Wrap Up
Option 2. Meeting of Cultural Heritage and Management Venue (Fale)
21
6.30-8
Cocktails, USP Host. Dining Hall
Tuesday 9th Dec.
8-9.00
Breakfast Meeting of ICOMOS, PARBICA, PIMA, FALE 1
8.30-9
Registration U8 or N111
9-10.00
Plenary 2
Stephanie Lawson, The Pacific Way : A
Critical Assessment, N111
Chair: Meretui Ratunabuabua
10-10.30 Break
Launch of DVD by ECREA ‘Fiji History –
Toward Empowerment’ by Dr Sandra Tarte.
Fales.
10.30S3 Pacific Islanders at War
S4 Institutions of
Oral History in
1.00
Louise Matai’a-Milo N111
Confinement, Jackie
Fijian: FST Rm.
Leckie U8
TBC.
10.301. Jackie Leckie, Confined Minds in the Pacific:
1. Louise Marie Matai’a11.00
Milo, Pacific Islanders in the
Agency and the Asylum in Fiji
28th (Maori) Battalion
11.002. Anthony Yeates, Tom
2. Kerri Inglis, Mea ma’i a pa’ahao paha
11.30
Kabu’s Journey: One Papua’s (patients or prisoners)? The
Experience of the Pacific War medical/criminal/lizing of leprosy in Hawai’I,
1865-1969
11.303. Safua Akeli, The politics of leprosy control in
3. Melani Anae, Tofa mai
12.00
Samoa during the New Zealand Administration
Feleni: the pathos of war
1914-1922
and parting
12.004. Adam Marre, Colonial
4. Adrian Muckle, The “special infraction”:
12.30
impositions or remembering
New Caledonia’s indigenat regulation, 1887‘our heroes’? commemorating 1946
WWI service in Niue.
12.305. Teresia Teaiwa, Sotia
5. Christine Weir, Necessity or Ideology:
1.00
Yalewa, Fiji's women soldiers boarding school in colonial Fiji
1914-2008:What I've found
and What I'm still looking for
12.30PMB Luncheon Meeting Rm. IS033
Lunch
2.00
2.00S5 Pacific Sports: Robert
S6 Cultural Heritage and Management, Anita
3.30
Dewey & Mohit Prasad N111 Smith & Meretui Ratunabuabua U8
1. Mohit Prasad, Magiti
1. Anita Smith, Why historic heritage matters in
Soccer’ - An Absence
the Pacific Islands
Forgotten: Pre-1938 Soccer
among Fijians as Carnivale.
2. Robert Dewey, The Union
2. Meretui Ratunabuabua, The Heritage Jig
itself may no longer be
Saw Puzzle in the Pacific
viable’: Manu Samoa in the
Era of Professional Rugby.
3. Filipe Tuisawau, Opening 3. Karen Nero, 21st Century Partnerships:
Accessing Knowledge from Heritage Collections
Remarks
3.30Break
4.00
4.00Pacific Sports Panel: R
S7 Decolonization in the Pacific: Chris Waters
22
6.00-
5.-6.00
6.00
Dewey, N111
1. Sitiveni Rabuka/Tuki
Cokanauto (tbc)
& Jon Ritchie U8
1. Chris Waters, the ‘seeds of trouble exist’:
The Australian state and the Decolonisation of
the South West Pacific in the 1960s & 1970s
2. Barrie Sweetman/Graham 2. Jon Ritchie, Expressions of Papua New
Guinean National Identity in 1973 – and Now?
Eden (tbc)
3. Sam Kari, Australia’s role from 1960-1975
3. Vilikesa Mocelutu/Dan
influenced PNG’s Post-Independence
Lobendahn (tbc)
governance and management.
MATCH FOOTAGE:
4. Michelle Stevenson, The Mataungan
1964 – Fiji v. Wales highlights Association
1973 – Tonga v Australia –
2007 Rugby World Cup – Fiji
v Wales and Fiji v Sth Africa
Photos/Documents for
Display on Wales
1938 – 2008 – 70th
Anniversary of 1st NZ Maori
Tour to Fiji –
1964 – Fiji Tour of Wales
1973 – Tonga over Australia
MEETS ICSPI (A. So’o & K. Nero) 12.30 to 2.00. Senate Rm
Free Evening
Wednesday 10th Dec: FREE FOR EXCURSIONS.
8.30-9.30
9.00-2.00 Village Excursion to Molituva, Kuku, Tailevu. See
Program.
6.00-7.00
7-8.30
Related Activities
9.00am
History Teachers’
Workshop. PRIDE
Conference Room.
10.00 – 4.00
Post-graduate Student
Forum. Senate Room
Public Talk, Fergus Clunie, The Navigator
Museum, Cakobau Rd., Suva,
Chair: Sepeti Matararaba
Buffet Dinner. Host PHA and Museum: Vika Koro & Sagale Buadromo
Thursday 11th Dec.
8.30-9
REGISTRATION
9-10.00
Plenary Speaker Jie-Hyun Lim
Competing Historiographies: Trans-nationalism and Nationalism in East Asian
Historiographies N111
Chair: Pascal Dayez-Burgeon
10-10.30 Break
23
10.3012.30
S8 Photography, Film &
Imaging in Oceania, Max
Quanchi U8
S9 Representation,
Hugh Laracy N111
1. Nicole Peduzzi Charles
Kerry’s historical postcards
of the Pacific
1. Nicholas
Goetzfridt, A History
of Guam’s
Historiography: The
Influences of
“Isolation” and
“Discovery”
2. Rhys Richards,
2. Tobias Sperlich Models
and photographs in colonial
Samoa
3.Lissa Mitchell, Select view;
the exotic in photographs of
New Zealand landscape and
flora
4. Max Quanchi and
Hannah Perkins Picturing
the Pacific; The
Queenslander 1890-1930
12.30-2
2-3.30
Lunch
S8 Photography cont. U8
5 Rebecca Conway, Camilla
Wedgwood’s fieldwork
photos; Nauru and Manam
Island, PNG
6 Deborah Waite Shield
Imaging in colonial and postcolonial photography,
Western Solomon Islands
Tahiti as a centre of
trans-Pacific foreign
trade before 1862; new
perspectives from
shipping lists.
3. Julian Treadaway
and Ken Tufunga,
Three Marists on
Tikopia
4. Hugh Laracy, Who
was Hector
McQuarrie?
S11 Depopulations
Explained &
Repopulations, Judy
Bennett N111
1. Judy Bennett,
Depopulation and
repopulation-shifting
discourses and
interested parties in the
Solomon Islands.
2. Christophe Sand,
Kanak demography in
historical perspective:
a reassessment of the
S10 Libraries,
Archives and
Museums in Oceania,
Resource for Pacific
History: Recognition
and Access, Ewan
Maidment & Libby
Fong [20 mins each.]
MBA Seminar Rm.
[IS033]
1. Libby Cass (IFAP)
Information for All in
the Pacific –reality
and hopes
2. Paul Stuehrenberg
Kenneth Scott
Latourette Initiative
for the Documentation
of World Christianity
3. Robert Appel
Moving the SPC
archives to the
Territorial Archives in
New Caledonia
4. Karina Taylor, An
overview of the Pacific
Research Archives at
the ANU
5. Meredith Batten
Pacific Collecting at
the National Library
of Australia
6 Diane Woods
Digitisation Projects
at the Turnbull
Library
S10 Libraries,
Archives and
Museums in Oceania
cont. [Papers 20 mins
each] Rm IS033
7 Karyn Gladwish The
Pacific Law Libraries
Twinning Project
8 Eleanor Kleiber &
Dorene Naidu The
CROP library
digitization
9 Libby Fong USP’s
Library Digital Efforts
24
topic through
archaeological data
7 Jean-Louis Boglio and
Max Quanchi Captain Brett
Hilder’s sketches – an artists
view of the Pacific shipping
world
3.30-4
4-6.00
Break
S8 Photography cont. U8
8 Clive Moore Tulagi;
imaging the British empire in
the Pacific
9 Joyce Evans
Missionaries, Cannibals and
Kanaks; photographs of
Northcote Deck and Norman
Deck missionaries to the
Solomon Islands from early
20th C
10 Antje Lubcke Oh, if I
could make you see the things
I see; The Photograph
albums of NZ Presbyterian
missionaries to the New
Hebrides 1869-1939.
6.30-8.30
10 Monica
Rothlisberger, Report
on Divine Word
University Library
holdings, programs
and developments
11 Ewan Maidment
A history of Australian
involvement in archive
administration in Fiji
S12 Religious History, Marama & Kambati,
N111.
1. Polly Camber,
Understanding myth forests & beliefs in the
Solomon Islands.
2. Kevin Salisbury
Early Christianity in PukaPuka & Bible
translation in vernacular.
3. Lynda Newland, The Kaunitoni migration
and its significance in Methodist Church of Fiji
and Rotuma
4 Tessa Mackenzie,
The significance of Interfaith Search in Fiji
Reception: Aus. High Com, Princess Rd. Tamavua, Suva (members armed
with preferred drink!)
Friday 12th Dec
8-9.00
Breakfast Meetings Any Other Groups.
8.30-10
PHA Biennial General Meeting Senate Room
10-10.30 Break
10.30Plenary 4
11.30
Ron Crocombe, Stretching Pacific History, forwards, backwards, sideways and
inwards. N111
Chair: Kambati Uriam
11.30Tour of the new
S8 Image and Photographs
S13 Our sea of
1.00
cont U8
Connections, Kealani repository of the
Cook and Alice Te
National Archives
Punga N111
of Fiji. Seta Tale
11 John Sullivan Criss1. Kealani Cook, Natives, Nations and
crossing the Pacific; picturing
Empire: Re-evaluating the Empire of the
25
1-2.00
2-3.30
3.30-4.00
4-5.30
6.00-9.30
the early years of air travel in
Calabash.
Oceania
12 Ian Conrich Revisiting
2. Kamana Beamer, Na Wai Ka Mana? O
Royalty: The Queen, Childhood Iwi Agency and European Imperialism in the
and the 1950s; NZ on film.
Hawaiian Kingdom
13 Max Shekleton Being
3. Alice Te Punga, ‘Holding back ocean
British in French New
barriers:’ Maori, the state and the deep blue
Caledonia; a brief history and
sea.
visual record
Lunch
S14 Pacific Minority Communities, Grant
S8 Image and Photography
McCall, Agnes Hannan N111
cont. U8
14 Karina Taylor, Pacific
1. Grant McCall, Banabans in Rabi.
photographic collections in the
Pacific Research Archives,
Australian National University
15 Lorenzo Brutti Visual
2. Agnes Hannan, Community Formation in
crystallizations and social
the Rotuman Diaspora in Australia
transfers in the use of images in
a French Anthropological
Museum
16 Ismet Kurtovitch Building
3. John Spurway, The power of myth: the
an historical phototheque of
true nature of Ma’afu’s post cession rule in
New Caledonia; what is it used
Lau.
for?
Break
S15 Pacific Updates, Brij Lal
S16 Performance & Recreating, Allan Alo
and Sam Alasia N111
U8
1. Sam Alasia, Solomon Isl,
Masaya Shishikura, Hapa Haole Hula:
Dancing Song Lyrics through Hawaiian Body
2. Brij Lal, Fiji & Rotuma
Damiano Logaivau, Calvin Rore, Allan
3. Ian Campbell, Tonga
Alo, Recreating the Past for the Present:
4. H. Van Trease, Vanuatu,
Wrap Up Conference Performance
5. B. Douglas, & A Muckle, N
Caledonia
6. Asofou So’o Samoa,
7. Alice Te Punga NZ
8. C Moore, Australia
Conference Dinner and Closing at USP Dining Hall
(PHA Members bring beverage of choice!)
26
Pacific History Association Conference
Abstracts
PHA PLENARY SPEAKERS
A Shock to the System: Climatic Disruption to Pacific Island
Societies around AD 1300
Patrick D. Nunn
Professor of Oceanic Geoscience
The University of the South Pacific
There is considerable palaeoclimatic evidence for a period of rapid cooling and sea-level fall
in the Pacific Basin between AD 1250 and AD 1350, something that is known as the AD
1300 Event. Shortly after this event, typically around AD 1400, there is archaeological and
historical evidence for widespread and profound changes in most Pacific Island societies from
Easter Island to Solomon Islands. It is proposed that climate-driven environmental change,
particularly sea-level fall, created an enduring and severe food crisis for coastal peoples
throughout the Pacific Islands region. This led to conflict, settlement re-location (notably
from coasts to defendable sites inland), and effective societal collapse. These changes
persisted in most Pacific Island societies for 300 years or more.
The effects of the AD 1300 Event on Pacific Island societies
 demonstrate the potential for extraneous change to disrupt long-standing trajectories of
societal development,
 illustrate the responses of pre-modern societies to profound and enduring change, and
 provide an independently verifiable explanation for the near-simultaneous societal
changes experienced around AD 1400 in this region.
The Pacific Way: A Critical Reassessment
Stephanie Lawson
Professor of Asia-Pacific Studies
University of Birmingham/Macquarie University
s.lawson@bham.ac.uk; stephanie.lawson@mq.edu.au
The ‘Pacific Way’ was first articulated by Fiji’s first Prime Minister, Ratu Sir Kamisese
Mara, during an address to the UN General Assembly shortly after Fiji’s independence in
1970. At that time, Mara simply used it to characterize the smooth transition to independence
of Fiji and three other Pacific island states that had gone through the decolonization process.
The term was soon used to denote a collective political identity for the small island states of
the Pacific region in the postcolonial period and, together with the ‘Melanesian Way’,
developed the characteristics of an anti-colonial discourse – something that had been
noticeably lacking in Mara’s original formulation. During much the same period, Edward
Said’s critical study, Orientalism, began to make its mark. A key aspect of his analysis was
the nexus between power and knowledge and the way in which this supported colonial
27
hegemony. This provided in turn an important stimulus for the development of postcolonial
theory which goes well beyond its literal sense of ‘after colonialism’. Rather, it is strongly
anticolonial and supports an anti-hegemonic discourse critical not just of colonial history but
manifestations of neo-colonialism in the contemporary period. The purpose of this paper is to
examine the origins of ‘Pacific Way’, its subsequent development as a postcolonial discourse,
and the various agendas it has come to serve. It takes a critical approach to the way in which
aspects of postcolonial theory have developed, for although it is generally presented as a
counter-hegemonic discourse, in some manifestations it provides implicit support for other
kinds of hegemony. This is because it has so far evinced very little concern with the
hegemonic practices of local elites operating within former colonial states or regions. At the
same time, it continues to invest in the over-arching West/non-West bifurcation of world
politics mirrored in constructs such as the Pacific Way. This produces quite simplistic images
of contemporary world and regional politics – images that mask a much more complex set of
social, political and economic relations.
The Navigator
Fergus Clunie
Curator
Rouse Hill Estate Museum
New South Wales
Competing Historiographies: Transnationalism and Nationalism in
East Asian Historiographies
Jie-Hyun Lim
Professor of History
Director of the Research Institute of Comparative History and Culture
Hanyang University
Seoul, 133-791
Korea
jiehyun@hanyang.ac.kr
Pacific History Backward, Forward and Sideways
Ron Crocombe
Emeritus Professor
The University of the South Pacific
ronc@oyster.net.ck
28
Panels and Abstracts
Kava: “The Golden Shrub”.
S.G. “Apo” Aporosa and Dr. Grant McCall.
A review of the literature on kava (Piper methysticum Forst. f.); yaqona (Fiji), namaloku
(Northern Vanuatu), nekava (Southern Vanuatu), kava (Tonga),’awa (Hawaii), 'ava (Samoa),
sakau (Pohnpei), hina (Wallis and Futuna), tigwa (PNG), suggests a shift over the past 10
years away from the anthropological aspects of the soporific intoxicant to pharmaceutical
based research. Journal and book publications, especially since the beginning of the new
millennia, have predominantly focus on kava and liver toxicity, the European and Australian
kava bans, and kava as a nutraceutical with therapeutic benefits as a hypnotic and anxiolytic.
But what of the human aspects within the contemporary global or local community? How has
the European ban and limited availability of kava based medications impacted the user who,
for a number of years, have relied upon these preparations in order to alleviate anxiety or
assist with sleep? Or how has the European ban affected exports and additionally impacted
the local subsistence kava farmer who relies on the sale of his crop to meet family and
community commitments? What of the Aboriginal communities who have had kava
prohibition forced upon them by the Australia’s Northern Territory Authorities? TrevenaVernon (2001) and O'Reilly et al., (2005) argue that this enforced ban has encouraged alcohol
and marijuana use and substantially increased domestic violence and social disruption.
Additionally, how has the consumption and ‘culture of kava’ within both indigenous and expatriot communities changed over the last 20 years? Has kava consumption increased, and is
this impacting socio-cultural and socio-economic structures such as productivity, health,
education or national development processes? Papers consider kava; yaqona, namaloku,
nekava, kava,’awa, 'ava, sakau, hina, tigwa, in relation to the Conference theme, “Who are
we and what are we doing here?”, which, for the purpose of this panel, has been interpreted
as, “who are we (either the indigenous or non-indigenous kava consumer, grower, researcher
or commentator) and what are we doing here (as in the contemporary culture)?
“Yaqona and the returning dead” (KEYNOTE)
Fergus Clunie (former Director Fiji Museum), Curator, Rouse Hill House & Farm,
Historic Houses Trust of New South Wales, Australia.
Drawing upon the little known but remarkably wide array of vessels used in the offering of
yaqona to – and the physical consumption of the drink by – kalou or ancestral spirits in preChristian Fiji, this paper ventures beyond the more familiar confines of the West Polynesian
cum Fijian kava ring to explore the central role the drug played in the supplication and
propitiation of visiting gods by their living kinsmen. In the process the synonymous offering
to and consumption of enemy flesh by kalou is examined, and the lethal implications that this
may have held for the enemy soul discussed. The mechanisms whereby a kalou took
possession of the body of his priest and used the entranced priest’s mouth to imbibe such
offerings via a sucking tube or the tines of a dedicated fork are described, together with the
concomitant development of flatter and ever-shallower yaqona dishes from more deeply
bowled forms. Relationships between these spiritually charged and distinctly, though not
necessarily peculiarly, Fijian phenomena and the kava ring on the one hand, and to kava
practices in Melanesia on the other, are considered in passing.
“Contemporary kava use in historical perspective”
Dr. Nancy J. Pollock,
29
Depts. Victoria University
New Zealand.
The European kava ban has juxtaposed kava as a beverage for ritual and recreational
use with kava as a pill taken as a herbal remedy (Pollock 2002, Pill or Potion; Pollock
in press, Kava for Health). Trade in kava products to meet these needs has taken four
paths: traditional exchanges and gifts within and among Pacific island users, gifts and
sales to relatives resident outside the Pacific islands; exports through trading
companies to European pharmaceutical manufacturers, and sales on internet and
sampling at tourist venues (Pollock, Sustainability of the kava trade, in press). We
will examine these four pathways for trade and exchange in relation to Wallis and
Futuna where easy access to alcohol competes with kava, but ceremonial usage in
support of their traditional leaders (kings/rois) is still strong.
“Toxicological evaluations of kava drink”
Prof. S. Sotheeswaran,
The University of the South Pacific, Fiji.
Since the collapse of the European kava market in early 2000, there has been a flurry of
activity, initiated by many researchers and the International Kava Executive Council, to
revive the kava market. Two Kava conferences were held in Fiji in November 2002 (Regional
Conference) and November/December 2004 (International Conference) to study the available
scientific evidence on the toxicity of kava and also to carefully examine the ninety three case
reports on kava toxicity reported mainly from Europe. A team of three experts were appointed
by the World Health Organisation (WHO) to assess the risk of hepatotoxicity of kava
products and to see if the ban on kava products imposed by many countries was justified or
not. A summary of the report submitted by the team and published by the WHO in Geneva in
2007 will be presented at the Conference. Toxicological studies conducted at the National
Botanical Research Institute in Lucknow, India, in 2007, has clearly demonstrated that the
kava drink as prepared in the Pacific Islands, did not cause any toxic clinical symptoms in
mice when administered orally.
“Potions, Pills, and Products: Developments in Kava Marketing and
Consumption in Hawaii and the Mainland US”
Dr. Jonathan D. Baker,
University of Hawaii at Manoa.
This talk will address the evolution of kava marketing and consumption in the US subsequent
to the European and Australian bans. Though kava’s popularity outside the Pacific plummeted
due to negative publicity generated by the bans, it continued to be marketed for use as a quasitraditional beverage in kava bars and on the Internet. As time has passed, and no new
evidence of liver toxicity has emerged, the development of new kava products and venues for
consumption is cautiously expanding. Rather than seeing a resurgence of nutraceutical
product development, this revival of kava marketing is focusing on kava beverages. ‘Awa
drinking in Hawaii continues in the context of an ongoing revival and rearticulation of
Hawaiian culture. By contrast, kava consumption in the mainland US is frequently associated
with imagery of kava as an exotic drug and analogue of alcohol. In Hawaii, researchers are
trying to develop shelf-stable kava beverages. Businesspeople are creating drinks that appeal
to Western/non-indigenous tastes, while still containing enough kavalactones to cause a
physiological effect. Several questions arise from these observations: How do understandings
of kava differ among different consumers? How is use shifting in Hawaii and the Mainland
US? What are the potential legal ramifications of marketing a psychoactive substance, should
30
kava’s popularity increase? The implications of these observations, as they pertain to the
changing face of kava consumption in the US, will be considered.
“Yaqona: Wine of the land”
Ratu Sela Rayawa,
Fiji Museum.
Most tourists visiting Fiji make a point of tasting yaqona (kava), the traditional beverage
consumed by kaiViti for hundreds of years. For the tourist, their experience is most often
encountered in a comfortable chair, where the brown liquid is served in a small coconut bowl,
from a brew that has been quickly prepared behind the bar. This encounter, in reality, is the
antithesis of the preparation, accessories, and deep cultural underpinnings that accompany the
traditional use of the substance. In my presentation, I will explain the mechanics of yaqona
consumption and answer questions such as, how was yaqona prepared and mixed in the days
prior to the cloth bag? What is the reason for the cowrie shells and the rope that hangs from
the kava bowl? Why do people clap after they drink? How is the drinking order chosen?
Why do people sit cross-legged on the floor? What is the purpose of the speech that some
people give when they bring yaqona to a drinking session? It is anticipated that by answering
these questions, the symbols and practices employed by kai Viti for centuries as part of
yaqona consumption will give meaning to both outsiders and a growing number of insiders;
Fijians who, due to cultural change and urbanisation, have missed the privileged to learn
details that in the past, were part of everyday learning.
“When I was a lad… observations on the prevalence of social yaqona drinking in
Fiji’s history”
Dr. Paul Geraghty
University of the South Pacific, Fiji.
It is commonly said that yaqona drinking has got out of hand these days, and that
traditionally it was only drunk by chiefs, occasionally, and in moderation. Such a
view is often propounded by elderly Fijians and to be found in Fiji Times editorials,
and even in academic writings. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate from
historical records that, on the contrary, yaqona has long been a popular social drink
among all Fijian men, its use limited only by its availability.
“Kava in Fiji from the Perspective of a Foreign Anthropologist: Ideologies of Stasis,
Practices of Change, and Vice Versa”
Dr. Matt Tomlinson
Monash University, Australia.
A great deal of literature, both academic and popular, has been written about Piper
methysticum (kava), known as yaqona in Fijian. Many observers have commented on
supposedly new popular drinking habits, although recent research calls this certainty into
question. This paper begins from the position that kava drinking in Fiji has long been a
common activity for people in many different social locations, and poses the question of how
ideologies and practices of kava drinking are related. I argue that ideologies and practices of
consumption are related chiastically ('X-shaped'), each 'crossing' the other along the axes of
stasis/change and past/present, with each side inverting the other. Moreover, this relationship
of chiasmus is the basis of ritual acts of communion, in which relationships are condensed
within individual bodies (i.e., one incorporates a spiritual figure within oneself) as the
individual bodies are arranged within a social order (i.e., administrators and communicants).
Ultimately, I argue, what seems to be the most stable aspect of yaqona drinking through
history is its chaistic structure as communion with chiefly authority and spiritual figures. I
31
acknowledge that this interpretation will sound problematic to those consumers who insist on
a complete separation between traditional and Christian ritual.
“The Golden Shrub: Indigenous Tongan Political Concepts”
Dr. Meredith Filihia
La Trobe University, Australia
Perhaps nowhere in Polynesia is kava so closely related to politics as in Tonga. The ritual
drinking of kava is the medium by which titleholders are publicly installed into their office,
but there are a number of concepts that influence politics and political activity. In the light of
the riots that swept through the Tongan capital in November 2006, this paper looks at ideas
such as mafai (authority), pule (control), mana (a complex notion with spiritual implications)
and tapu (being set apart). It tries to reach an understanding as to what Tongans may have
taken these notions to mean in the early post-European contact period, and then looks at how
they can still be perceived at work in Tongan politics today.
“Yaqona and Methodism in Fiji
Sekove B. Degei
Ministry of Fijian Affairs.
The over consumption of yaqona (kava) by members and officials in the Fijian Methodist
Church is a hotly debated issue. Although research acknowledges that the over consumption
of yaqona negatively effects the body and disrupts everyday living (Brunton,1988:20, Riley
& Mathews, 1988:26), yaqona still holds significant cultural value in Fiji. To the Fijians,
yaqona is a link to the past (Sahlins, 2004:161-3), a tradition so inextricably woven into the
fabric of culture, that life and social processes would be unimaginable without it (Kay,
2006:1, Toren, 1990:90,99). Although the use of kava is common among other people groups
in the South Pacific (Cowling: 1988:43, Brunton: 1988: 16-17, Langi: 1992:41), for the
Fijian, yaqona is clearly linked to concepts of identity. In my presentation, I will discuss
Fijian Methodism and Fijian–ness, a structure and identity that is interwoven with the use and
consumption of yaqona.
“The Socio-Economic Impact of Fijian Kava Consumption”
Dr. Lynda Newland
University of the South Pacific, Suva
Many commentators in Fiji have expressed concern about the adverse impact of excessive
kava consumption on health and social issues, particularly in relation to the Fijian community.
Here, I present some of the findings of the first national study to focus on the extent and
socio-economic implications of excessive kava drinking across Fiji. While the broader study
analyses the findings of both Fijian and Indo-Fijian communities, in this paper I focus on the
current kava-drinking habits and problems in Fijian villages. The paper gives a broad
understanding of consumption patterns and shows some notable differences between kavabuying and kava-growing regions.
“Yaqona and Education in Fiji: A Clash of Cultures?”
S.G. “Apo” Aporosa
Massey University, New Zealand,
In the Fiji Islands, education has been promoted as one of several pathways to its
ongoing development.
However, low academic achievement appears to be
undermining this strategic focus, with some questioning whether culture and values
32
are contributing factors in scholastic failure. Over a fifteen month period in 2005 and
2006, my research isolated and investigated the ‘culture of yaqona’ (the etiquette
associated with the use and consumption of kava) and its relationship with education
delivery and under-achievement at a rural Fijian secondary school. The research
found that yaqona plays a fundamental cultural role in all aspects of Fijian life
including many educational environments. Additionally, the over-consumption of
yaqona by 1/3rd of rural teaching staff, both during and after school hours, is having a
negative impact upon education delivery and student academic achievement.
However, a number of complicating factors prevent and strongly mitigate against the
removal of this traditional beverage from the teaching environment. This presentation
will summarise the research findings, which will detail the ‘culture of yaqona’ in Fiji
and how it impacts the school campus.
33
ANTHROPOLOGY, RACE, AND ENCOUNTER IN OCEANIA
Bronwen Douglas, ANU, Helen Gardner, Deakin University, Chris Ballard, ANU
This session brings the history of anthropology and/or the history of the idea of race together
with the ethnohistory of particular encounters with indigenous people in Oceania – the Pacific
Islands, Papua New Guinea, Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia, and the Malay Archipelago.
The common thread is attention to the interplay between discourse and experience: on the one
hand, contemporary theories in the science of man or conventional ideas about human
difference; on the other hand, the application on the ground of anthropological ideas or the
significance of indigenous presence in representations of actual encounters. A particular
concern is with practices of writing: either as an historical theme (e.g., the transition from
field experience to inscription in narratives, ethnographies, or anthropological theory); or as
personal reflection (e.g., on issues encountered in writing about the nexus of discourse and
experience and strategies adopted to deal with them).
Text, Image, and the Encounter:
Miklouho-Maclay's 1879 New Hebrides Sketches
Chris Ballard and Elena Govor
The Australian National University
cballard@coombs.anu.edu.au
Nikolai Miklouho-Maclay (1846-1888) is widely regarded as the earliest ethnographer of
Melanesia, reflecting the intensity and duration of his engagements with communities
throughout the region between 1871 and 1886. His published diaries illuminate Melanesian
lives to an extent unmatched by previous European accounts. For one extended voyage,
however, these diaries are no longer extant: this is the ten-month trip that he took during 1879
and 1880 from Sydney to the Bismarck Archipelago via the New Hebrides and Solomon
Islands on board a trading schooner, the Sadie F. Caller. Other sources allow us to reconstruct
elements of this missing voyage and a complete digital record of the relevant album of
Miklouho-Maclay's sketches from the New Hebrides (now held in St Petersburg) provides us
with rare insight into details of his encounters with individual communities on the handful of
islands at which his vessel stopped. His insistence on identifying the subjects of his sketches
by name and on filling the margins of his album with notes about their lives and material
cultures, (in an often bewildering mixture of Russian, German, English, and local Melanesian
languages), has enabled descendants of those communities to recognise ancestors, identify
specific locations, and reproduce artefacts from a precise moment in the early colonial history
of what is now Vanuatu. This paper explores a series of recent interactions and exchanges
with filwokas (fieldworkers) of the Vanuatu Cultural Centre in seeking to interpret both
images and texts and to understand their potential significance for contemporary Vanuatu
communities.
Rituals of Place and Race:
Sacred Chiefs and American Missionaries in Hawai'i, 1815-1836
Spencer Leineweber
PhD student
The Australian National University
spencer.leineweber@gmail.com
The directive from the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions was to
'promote civilization among the Polynesians by a well-cultivated garden, a neat house, decent
furniture, and becoming clothing'. In Hawai'i, the new idea of 'civilization' would be manifest
in spatial arrangements in architecture and the landscape that impacted on centuries old rituals
34
of place. This conflict was felt most strongly by Nahi'ena'ena (1815-1836), the last female
ali'i, 'chief', to be a direct descendant of the gods. Her descent was assured by the
concentration of the Pi'ilani bloodline by pi'o, 'brother-sister mating', of her grandmother and
six earlier generations. Cultural interpretations made in the context of her time by both
missionaries and western voyagers fostered the notion that this mating produced a racial
distinction for the Hawaiian chiefly class. After the American missionaries arrived in 1820,
they focused their 'civilizing' imperative on Nahi'ena'ena and members of her family to
challenge the belief that the chiefs were descended from the gods. This conflict came into
sharp focus when Nahi'ena'ena travelled to Lahaina for her mother's final days. Keopuolani
wished to die at the ancestral home of the Pi'ilani line, Moku'ula, yet she brought with her
from Honolulu four Christian missionaries including her spiritual advisor, Taua, a Tahitian
convert. Moku'ula was a sanctuary from the outside world for the Maui chiefs and also a site
clearly exemplifying Hawaiian values. This paper will discuss the way that architecture was
used to reinforce the connection to the gods and exalted status and how, despite serious
assault, that connection was maintained.
Race and Encounters in Oceania:
Science, Agency, and the Vacillations of a 19th-Century Naturalist
Bronwen Douglas
The Australian National University
bronwen.douglas@anu.edu.au
This paper will investigate the complicated nexus of globalizing racial discourse, dislocating
personal field experience, and indigenous agency with respect to the racial description and
classification of indigenous people in early nineteenth-century Oceania. Formal racial
thinking was an historical product of the asymmetric, often uneasy relationship between fluid
metropolitan theorizing about human differences – itself rooted in praxis – and the empirical
material produced by Europeans in response to specific encounters with non-Europeans. Such
encounters provided the representations and the exotic objects on which the emergent science
of race depended to support its deductions. I argue, however, that travellers' words and
drawings were not simply arbitrary expressions of prevailing discourses and literary or artistic
conventions. They were also personal productions generated in the tensions and ambiguities
of encounters and significantly shaped by immediate perceptions of indigenous demeanour
and lifestyle. These propositions are illustrated primarily with reference to the Oceanic
experience of Jean-René Constant Quoy (1790-1869), a naval doctor and naturalist on the
French voyages of Freycinet in 1817-20 and Dumont d'Urville in 1826-29. Quoy's racial
representations oscillated in relation to discourse (public or private, literary or scientific) and
genre of text (shipboard journal, scientific treatise, or later reminiscence); but they also did so
in response to the reception given to the voyagers in particular places and Quoy's varied
experience of the behaviour, lifestyle, and physical appearance of the inhabitants.
Haphazardly described and evaluated in his journals, indigenous presence at once illustrated
and subverted Quoy's racial generalizations and his efforts to produce a formal regional racial
classification.
'These Papuans Throw all our Beautiful Theories out the Window':
Disentangling Indigenous Agency in Nineteenth-Century German Accounts of New
Guinea
Hilary Howes
PhD student
The Australian National University
hilary.howes@anu.edu.au
35
German naturalists who visited New Guinea in the second half of the nineteenth century were
often surprised and disconcerted by indigenous actions, appearances, and behaviour which did
not correspond to their expectations. Their responses to such dissonances between expectation
and experience and their attempts to rationalize and explain them are recorded in their travel
accounts and anthropological writings. Such texts therefore contain traces of indigenous
agency with the potential to illuminate connections between German-Papuan crosscultural encounters and developments in European sciences of race. However, disentangling
these traces is difficult, particularly since we generally have access to accounts from only one
participant in each encounter and comparison between various individuals' accounts is
therefore precluded. In this paper, I consider specific encounter events in the works of two
nineteenth-century German naturalists, Adolf Bernhard Meyer (1840-1911) and Otto Finsch
(1839-1917). I discuss various strategies for accessing traces of indigenous agency in their
writings, including comparisons between works for different audiences and between pre- and
post-encounter texts.
The French Invention of Polynésie, Océanie, and Mélanésie, 1756-1833
Serge Tcherkézoff
CREDO/EHESS
serge@pacific-credo.net
All the principal names given to the Pacific region and its subdivisions, besides the word
'Pacific' itself, happen to be French inventions. A study of their emergence in the writings and
maps of French savants and cartographers of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries
– including Vaugondy, Lapie, Poirson, Brué, Malte-Brun, Bory de Saint-Vincent, Dumont
d'Urville, and Rienzi – reveals the extent to which these geographical divisions were linked to
ideas of racial classification. A precise chronology for this cartographic history also overturns
the received notion of an origin dating to the work of Dumont d'Urville in the 1830s and
demonstrates instead that Polynésie dates back to 1756, Océanie to 1816, and Mélanésie (or at
least Mélaniens) to 1827.
Lorimer Fison: Anthropology and Conversion
Helen Gardner
Deakin University
helen.gardner@deakin.edu.au
Methodist missionary Lorimer Fison was posted to Fiji in the early 1860s as debates raged in
the new journals of anthropology on the distinctions between human populations and the best
means of measuring and defining human differences. Clearly influenced by metropolitan
theories, Fison debated with his colleagues the depth of the sincerity of Fijian conversion and
predicted the eventual demise of the Fijian and the triumph of the British. His pessimism was
challenged by the kinship schedule he received from American anthropologist Lewis Henry
Morgan. This paper explores Lorimer Fison's 'conversion' to kinship studies set within
contemporary debates over physical and mental differences between human populations.
Notes on Radcliffe-Brown and the Application of Anthropology
Ian Campbell
University of the South Pacific
campbell_i@usp.ac.fj
A.R. Radcliffe-Brown was one of the leaders in formulating anthropological theory and
method in the early twentieth century. His significance is underestimated if measured by his
published output which, though not insubstantial, was not voluminous. His influence is more
36
evident in the work of anthropologists whom he trained and/or influenced. The development
of anthropology as an academic discipline was facilitated by anthropologists' claims that their
data was useful and the potential clients were colonial administrations. It was for just such
purpose that anthropology was established in the Anglophone states of the southern
hemisphere: South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand. Radcliffe-Brown held the foundation
chairs of anthropology successively at the University of Cape Town and the University of
Sydney. From the beginning, Radcliffe-Brown was interested in developing theory for social
anthropology but his departmental revenues came mainly from meeting the demands of
governments for anthropologically informed administrators. Far from considering pure
research to be compromised by pragmatic needs, Radcliffe Brown placed the latter at the
service of the former.
Tasiu Charles (Charles Fox) and Identifying with Melanesians:
a Missionary Anthropologist or a Missionary with an Interest in Anthropology?
Allan Davidson
The University of Auckland
ak.davidson@auckland.ac.nz
Charles Fox worked for the Melanesian Mission and the Church of Melanesia from 1902 to
1973. For a period, c.1908 to c.1924, largely under the tutelage of W.H.R. Rivers, Fox took
an active interest in anthropology. This culminated in his book, The Threshold of the Pacific:
An Account of Social Organization, Magic and Religion of the People of San Cristoval in the
Solomon Islands (1924). Fox described his time as Tasiu Charles, or Brother Charles, a
member of the Melanesian Brotherhood 1933-1943, as his 'happiest years'. How far does this
description reflect Fox's commitment to and success in identifying and living with
Melanesians? This paper will explore the diverse missionary dimensions of Fox's life and
work alongside his interest in anthropology.
Wāhine in the House:
Māori Women as Members of Parliament in New Zealand
Karen Fox
PhD student
The Australian National University
karen.fox@anu.edu.au
Dedicated seats for Māori people have existed within the New Zealand House of
Representatives since first being established as a temporary measure in 1867. The continued
existence of these seats has been challenged many times and their future remains debated. In
1949, Iriaka Rātana became the first Māori woman elected to Parliament, holding one of these
seats for the next twenty years. She was followed by Whetu Tirikatene-Sullivan, who was
elected in 1967, and who became the first Māori woman to hold a Cabinet post. Until 1993,
Rātana and Tirikatene-Sullivan were the only two Māori women to have ever been elected to
Parliament in New Zealand. In this paper, I explore the encounters of these women and those
who followed them with the Pākehā-dominated, male-dominated New Zealand political
system. How were these encounters, which encompassed gender as well as race, narrated in
the print media in New Zealand? How were ideas of human difference reflected, refracted, or
challenged through the experiences involved in such encounters? How did the women
themselves manage the encounter and how did they view their position as Members of
Parliament (MPs)? The existence of dedicated Māori seats in the House has played a part in
the imagining of a myth of New Zealand superiority in race relations relative to other settler
societies. Yet an exploration of the encounters between Māori women MPs and the Pākehādominated parliamentary system suggests that these encounters were not only moments of
meeting but also moments of confrontation.
37
Gendering Cross-cultural Encounters:
Gender as a Category of Analysis in George Forster's Representation of Oceania
Marja van Tilburg
University of Groningen
m.w.a.van.tilburg@rug.nl
From the outset, Europeans have interpreted Oceania with reference to gender. Jolly has
demonstrated that the situation of women is crucial in both Cook's and Forster's evaluations of
western Pacific societies. According to Thomas, this tendency has even resulted in the
creation of the constructs of 'Melanesia' and 'Polynesia'. So far most research has focused on
women instead of the ways in which differences between the sexes are constructed. In
addition, it has usually been assumed that explorers' remarks regarding women serve as a
standard of civilization. This paper addresses how George Forster made use of gender to
interpret Pacific cultures. The results of a post-structuralist analysis suggest that Forster's
representations of Tahiti and Tanna respectively draw on very different intellectual traditions.
His assessment of Tahiti is based on actual encounters with indigenous people. Moreover, he
tends to interpret his observations with reference to Enlightenment debates regarding
sexuality, gender, and class. His view of Tanna is not so much informed by actual experience
as by early-modern notions of savage society. Analysing George Forster's use of gender will
further historical and anthropological insights into the construction of the 'varieties' of
'Melanesia' and 'Polynesia'.
38
PACIFIC ISLANDERS AT WAR – Tuesday 9th December
Convenor: Louise Matai’a-Milo
Pacific Islanders in the 28th (Maori) Battalion
Louise Marie T Mataia-Milo, National University of Samoa
l.mataia@nus.edu.ws
The participation of Pacific Island men in the 28 (Maori) Battalion’s wartime experience
forms an important part of the New Zealand and Pacific Island heritage. However this has
been an area neglected from written history for various reasons. Pacific Island soldiers in the
28th (Maori) Battalion is a part of history which is obscure in New Zealand military history
literature. This paper explores the participation of Pacific Islanders in the 28th (Maori)
Battalion during World War II. It examines the theoretical perspectives and definitions of
soldiering from the Pacific. The presentation also looks at the personal histories of these
Pacific Island individuals as soldiers in a non-homogeneous battalion and the impact of their
contribution on their adopted country. By delving in into the oral histories with some of these
Pacific individuals we find their own perspectives and reasons for participating in such a
celebrated unit during their ‘frontline excursion’ far away from the familiarity of the home
front. These elements about the lives of individual soldiers are often omitted in the official
regimental histories. This paper, attempts to rectify both the absence of the personal wartime
experiences and Pacific Islanders participation in WWII.
Tom Kabu’s Journey: One Papuan’s Experience of the Pacific War
Anthony Yeates
The University of Queensland
a.yeates@library.uq.edu.au
Although the Pacific War had little direct impact on coastal villages in the Gulf of Papua, it
had a powerful indirect impact on local people. The Australian military recruited many people
from the Gulf as carriers and combat forces and these recruits brought with them a greater
knowledge of the wider world when they returned to their villages after the war. Exposed to a
greater variety of foreign influences—notably American and Australian service personnel less
concerned with ‘white prestige’ than white colonialist in pre-war Papua—many returnees
sought a development path free from white control. This presentation considers the story of
Tom Kabu, a man transformed by his experiences as an unofficial member of the Royal
Australian Navy, who returned to the Gulf of Papua in 1946 determined to reinvent village
life through a cooperative business enterprise; the Purari Sago Trading Company. A former
police constable, Kabu experienced many of the uglier aspects of colonialism before (and
immediately after) the war and consequently rejected the interference of white government
officers and missionaries. This presentation considers Kabu’s journey and explores how his
experiences during the Pacific War shaped his vision for a revitalised Papua.
Tofa mai Feleni: the pathos of war and parting
Dr Melani Anae, m.anae@auckland.ac.nz
University of Auckland
The song Tofa mai Feleni (originally written as tutu pai mai feleni or Admiral Kimberley’s
Farewell after the naval disaster of 1889) is probably one of Samoa’s most famous songs and
ranks with ‘Aloha Oe’, ‘Isa Lei’, and ‘Po Atarau’ in its haunting evocation of the pathos of
parting. Moreover, it boasts a plethora of ‘composers’ and varies in length from two verses to
nine. This paper presents preliminary findings of an examination of the original thematic
translation compositions of this song as a representation of the va between east/west;
papalagi/Samoan; Samoan/other; citizen/soldier and its popularity as a ‘soldier song’ for
Samoan/Pacific soldiers in the Maori Batallion, the Fijian Army and I daresay now Samoan
forces in Iraq. I contend that there are strong thematic resonances with the Mau song
39
composed early 1900s. Finally I hope to share my preliminary thoughts on how Tofa mai
feleni represents a microcosm of Samoan male experiences of war across time and space.
Colonial impositions or remembering ‘our heroes’? Commemorating WWI service in
Niue.
Adam Marre
Queensland University of Technology
a.marre@qut.edu.au
In The Colonizer and the Colonized (1967), Albert Memmi claimed “…it is the colonist’s
nation’s flag which flies over the monuments in a colonized country”. How then, do we
interpret the memorials scattered throughout the Pacific Island nation of Niue, dedicated to
their First World War servicemen? Memorials built both during the colonial and postcolonial era? How do we interpret the commemoration of war service in Niue during yearly
ANZAC Day services? The crux of Memmi’s argument is correct, if Niue had not been
colonised, it would be highly unlikely that Niueans would have served in the First World War
and no memorials would have been constructed. However, to dismiss the memorials as mere
colonial impositions devalues the apparent pride and respect Niue Islanders have for their
descendants who served in the First World War. Through the commemoration and
memorialisation of their First World War veterans, Niueans have appropriated and adapted
the coloniser’s ceremonies to fit within their own cultural ambits. For this reason, research
into how colonised societies have remembered and commemorated their involvement in the
wars of the twentieth century can contribute significantly to the burgeoning field of memory
studies.
Sotia Yalewa, Fiji's women soldiers 1914-2008: What I've found and What I'm
still looking for.
Teresia Teaiwa, Victoria University of Wellington
Teresia.Teaiwa@vuw.ac.nz
This paper emerges from a current research project collecting oral histories of Fijian women
in the Republic of Fiji Military Forces (RFMF) and the British Army. The oral history project
focuses mainly on two pioneer cohorts of Fiji women soldiers: those who joined the British
Army in 1961 while Fiji was still a colony and those who were the first women admitted into
the independent and republican nation of Fiji's post-coup RFMF in 1988. The oral histories
are discussed in the context of the little-known history of Fiji's women soldiers: from local
white women who participated in home-front patriotic efforts during the First World War to
the contemporary era when Fiji women are serving in Fiji military and British Army
operations in the Sinai, Afghanistan and Iraq. The paper presents both discoveries and
obstacles encountered during the archival and oral histories research process. This ongoing
project is supported by the Royal Society of New Zealand's Marsden Fund and Victoria
University of Wellington's Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences' Research and Study
Leave Committee.
40
INSTITUTIONS OF CONFINEMENT
Convenor: Jacqueline Leckie
Confined Minds in the Pacific: Agency and the Asylum in Fiji
Jacqueline Leckie
Department of Anthropology, Gender and Sociology,
University of Otago
The establishment of a ‘lunatic asylum’ in 1884 came relatively early to Fiji, compared to
many other colonies. This presentation locates this within the global context of colonial
institutions that confined ‘dangerous’ minds and bodies. It also examines the special
circumstances of Fiji in relation to the somewhat haphazard emergence of colonial psychiatry.
But was institutionalisation total confinement? How did those Pacific peoples classified as
insane or of unsound mind express agency within the asylum? To what extent was this agency
entwined with families and community outside the institution? This raises issues over how we
consider resistance within sites of confinement, such as a psychiatric hospital. It also raises
contentious issues over readings of resistance in the historical record.
The former ‘lunatic asylum’ later became St Giles Hospital and today still operates as one
of the Pacific Islands few psychiatric institutions with the provision to confine ‘minds’.
This sits somewhat uncomfortably with contemporary agendas of community care. The
legacy of the past poses several questions about the care but also confinement of severely
mentally disordered people in the Pacific. What place do institutions of confinement have in
the treatment of unwell bodies and minds in the contemporary Pacific?
Mea ma‘i ā pa‘ahao paha (patients or prisoners)?:
the medical/criminal/izing of leprosy in Hawai‘i, 1865-1969
Kerri A. Inglis
University of Hawai‘i at Hilo
In 1865 the Board of Health of the Kingdom of Hawai‘i passed “An Act to Prevent the Spread
of Leprosy” by which those found to have the disease were exiled to the ‘natural prison’ of a
small peninsula on the northern shores of the island of Moloka‘i. Beginning with the
Kingdom of Hawai‘i, this research paper examines the various ways persons with leprosy
were criminalized, objectified, and represented in their treatment(s) within the political,
medical, and public realms of society. Criminalized in the arrest and silencing that came with
their banishment from Hawaiian society, objectified by medical experiments and notions of
“progress”, and represented as persons without the capacity to care for themselves, their
experiences provide an instructive case study. By analyzing the laws, medical opinions, and
most importantly, patient accounts of their experiences, the relationship between the
medicalization and criminalization of those with this particular disease will be explored. The
voices and experiences of persons with leprosy in Hawai‘i (90 percent of whom were Native
Hawaiian) will be privileged throughout this research and presentation.
The Politics of Leprosy Control in Samoa during the New Zealand Administration from
1914 to 1922
Safua Akeli
Te Papa, Wellington
Attention had been drawn to leprosy in Samoa following establishment of a Municipal
Council in 1890 and the death of Father Damien. The German government eventually
established a leprosy station in the village of Falefa to isolate leprosy sufferers in 1912.
This paper examines the leprosy control policies implemented in Samoa during New Zealand
administration from 1914 to 1922, after New Zealand military forces occupied Samoa in
41
August 1914. It also shows how its policies were heavily influenced by changes in New
Zealand public health, primarily the enactment of the 1920 Health Act following the tragedy
of the 1918 Influenza epidemic. The paper discusses how, over the period of eight years, the
New Zealand administration managed the issue of leprosy using the strategy of “out of sight,
out of mind”. Internal and external negotiations enabled New Zealand doctors, politicians and
administrators to re-locate leprosy sufferers from the Samoan mainland of Upolu to the island
of Nu’utele in 1918 and later organised their removal in 1922 to the Makogai leprosy colony
in Fiji. Finally it reveals that although Missionary involvement in leprosy care continued,
responsibility for sufferers of leprosy remained with the New Zealand administration as they
sought to cleanse Samoa of both the disease and the remains of German Imperial rule.
The “special infractions”: New Caledonia’s indigénat regulations, 1887-1946
Adrian Muckle
History Programme
Victoria University of Wellington
The indigénat provided French administrators with measures to streamline the government
and summary repression of Kanak between 1887 and 1946. Locally, the system remains
notorious for restricting freedom of movement and enforcing the head tax and forms of forced
labor. Yet, notwithstanding its invidious reputation, and despite all that is known about the
broader circumstances of its adoption (in New Caledonia and elsewhere in the French
Empire) understanding of the régime’s central feature—the special infractions—remains
caricatural at best. In addressing this deficiency, this paper outlines a history of the special
infractions in New Caledonia and considers some of the difficulties involved in recovering the
history of their daily use from archival non-existence or oblivion. It brings into focus the
presence of Kanak before the colonial justice system, the extent to which the civil and judicial
systems overlapped, and tests the notion that the real “monster” of colonial rule was the police
court (le tribunal de simple police).
Necessity or Ideology: the boarding school in colonial Fiji
Christine Weir
The University of the South Pacific, Fiji
Education in Fiji has always had to contend with the remoteness of much of the country, and
the practical need to concentrate educational resources in more central locations. But besides
pragmatic necessity, in the colonial era ideological considerations also favoured boarding
schools, with notions of ‘protection’ from ‘unregenerate’ village influences, and appeals to
the development of ésprit de corps also present in the arguments of school administrators.
This paper examines some of these ideas, expounded by missions and colonial authorities
alike.
42
PACIFIC SPORTS (Rugby and Soccer)
Conveners: Robert Dewey and Mohit Prasad
‘Magiti Soccer’ - An Absence Forgotten: Pre-1938 Soccer among Fijians as Carnivale
Dr. Mohit Prasad
University of the South Pacific
prasad_m@usp.ac.fj
Sport in Fiji was divided as part of the colonial legacy of cultural and social apartheid, apart
from the political. This paper examines history and forms of football for ethnic Fijians prior
to the formation of the Fiji Indian Football Association in 1938. Football in this period among
ethnic Fijians was regarded as part of carnivale, incorporating traditional festivities and the
‘magiti’ or feasting. In effect a ‘feast of soccer’ almost literally, therefore the coinage of the
term ‘magiti soccer’ for this paper. This legacy is linked to the multiracial nature of the sport
in primary and secondary schools that persisted despite the racial divide affected at the
national level from 1938-1961. This lost period of Fijian football and its absence is
substituted by remembering the earlier presence of ‘magiti soccer’, as celebration, but also for
interrogation of missed performative and productive cross-cultural instances of this popular
culture form. The technology of remembered absence is used to engage with this ‘pre-history’
as colonial aberration, a fetish of identity and representation linked to popular perceptions of
football as an Indo-Fijian sport.
‘The Union itself may no longer be viable’: Manu Samoa in the Era of Professional
Rugby
Dr. Robert Dewey, Jr., Assistant Professor
DePauw University
Greencastle, Indiana 46135 USA
rdewey@depauw.edu
When Rugby Union’s traditional powers belatedly embraced professionalism after the 1995
Rugby World Cup (RWC), little thought was given to the consequences for countries like Fiji,
Tonga and Samoa. Indeed by RWC 2003, International Rugby Board claims about the sport’s
‘global’ status were at odds with trends in the Pacific where the sustainability of the game was
in question. At the time a Samoa Rugby press release highlighting the union’s financial plight
suggested, ‘the union may no longer be viable after this year’s World Cup’. This paper, based
largely upon interviews conducted in Apia and Auckland with current and former
administrators of the Samoa Rugby Union, argues that while professionalism provided unique
opportunities for individuals, it aggravated historic disparities in the game’s international
structure as evident in the issues surrounding player migration, availability and eligibility.
More importantly, the paper highlights the notable yet frequently overlooked ways in which
the Samoa Rugby Union aggressively responded to the new professional era. These included
assertions of Samoan values and uniqueness as distinct from professionalism, the Samoan
Prime Minister’s advocacy of rugby issues at Pacific Forum meetings, and the creation of
Manu Samoa Rugby Limited, a joint venture between the Samoa Rugby Union and the
Auckland-based Fay Richwhite investment banking firm.
43
CULTURAL HERITAGE MANAGEMENT –
Conveners: Anita Smith and Meretui Ratunabuabua
Why historic heritage matters in the Pacific Islands
Anita Smith
Charles La Trobe Research Fellow
LaTrobe University
In 2006 a pilot unit in the history program at the University of the South Pacific introduced
students to concepts and strategies in the management of cultural heritage places. These
international approaches were given relevance to the Pacific Island context through the use of
a training program developed by UNESCO specifically for Pacific Island heritage managers
as the core teaching tool. The assessment task required each student to develop a management
plan for a place or site which they consider worthy of conservation. The resulting plans
demonstrated not only the connection students feel with places and the need for their
conservation but a strong understanding of the importance of historic places in embodying
past and current social concerns and as symbols of community and national identity. The
teaching outcomes highlighted the effectiveness of and need for teaching in cultural heritage
conservation in the region.
The Heritage Jig Saw Puzzle in the Pacific
Adi Meretui Ratunabuabua
Department of Cultural and Heritage, Fiji
The paper looks at the need to bridge the existing gaps between Regional Pacific Heritage
Policy and National policies to be able to support the preservation of our heritage for future
generations. The paper discusses the urgency to address the long standing gaps in this area
and to ensure that there is continued support for training and capacity building at
Governmental, Institutional levels and for communities and custodians at site levels in the
preservation of cultural and national heritage in the Pacific.
21st Century Partnerships: Accessing Knowledge from Heritage Collections
Karen L. Nero
Macmillan Brown Centre for Pacific Studies,
University of Canterbury
New Zealand
New electronic technologies have the potential to unleash the power and knowledge of
physical objects and images from Pacific home communities that are held in overseas
institutions. Through the return of objects or images, visits to overseas institutions or through
accessing electronic data bases and 3-dimensional images, descendants and caretakers of
home communities may now visit some of these pieces and elicit discussions of past/present
practices and ceremonies. Home communities may selectively retain and pass on this
knowledge and practices to coming generations. In conjunction with overseas partners home
community educational institutions may develop new educational resources. Museums and
home communities may thus reach deeper historic insights both of their heritages and
histories, and of the meanings and contemporary values of the objects and their relationships.
Recent and proposed projects are assessed including recent changes in management and
training possibilities, and the types of partnerships that are being forged.
44
DECOLONISATION IN THE PACIFIC
Convenors: Chris Waters and John Ritchie
‘The seeds of trouble exist’: The Australian state and the Decolonisation of the South
West Pacific in the 1960s and 1970s.
Dr Christopher Waters
Deakin University, Australia
Historians of Australian defence and foreign policy during the 1960s and 1970s have
concentrated on Vietnam within the context of the broader cold war and the decolonisation of
the European empires in Southeast Asia. Outside of Pacific history there has not been the
same attention to the Australian state’s attitude and policy towards the decolonisation of its
Pacific neighbours. With Australian government records becoming available under the thirty
year rule it is timely to explore this topic from the perspective of the Australian state. The
paper explores the interpretations of senior Australian civil servants and military officers
towards the South West Pacific during these years. It draws upon the strategic assessments of
the region prepared by the Defence Committee for cabinet ministers. For these Australian
officials the South West Pacific was a ‘politically backward and relatively quite area’ but,
looking forward, their view was that the ‘seeds of trouble’ did exist. This paper will consider
what broad conclusions can be drawn from these papers about Canberra’s view of the region
during the era of decolonisation.
Expressions of Papua New Guinean National Identity in 1973 – and Now?
Dr Jonathan Ritchie
Deakin University, Australia
My paper explores some of the ways in which Papua New Guineans expressed and
understood the concept of their national identity at a time of great upheaval in the country’s
history, the years immediately preceding independence in 1975. It uses as its main source the
records of the largest exercise in popular consultation in the nation’s history, when thousands
of Papua New Guineans became constitution-makers through their participation in the work
of the Constitutional Planning Committee.
Moving on from that time, when the promise and fears of the new nation were as yet
unfulfilled, the paper will then go on to set out what can be seen as a timely and indeed
necessary counterpoint to the consultation preceding independence, that will involve another
investigation with the benefit of hindsight. What did people understand about the program of
nation-building on which they were embarked? How different would their opinions be today,
more than three decades after they were first sought? What lessons could be drawn for other
societies that attempt to move from colonialism to establish and constitute themselves as
independent nation states?
This project will form one element of the work to be undertaken through the Alfred Deakin
Institute as it develops its expertise and experience in the discipline of Pacific Studies and is
essentially a work-in-planning only at this stage.
Australia’s role from 1960-1975 influenced PNG’s Post-Independence governance and
management
Dr. Sam Sirox Kari
University of Goroka, Papua New Guinea
The most disturbing and challenging years of Australia’s rule in the Territory of Papua and
New Guinea were in the early 1960s. This paper identifies events that shaped opinion, raised
fears of post-independence trouble, or caused the drafting of the nation’s future. It argues that
Australia’s policy changed a level of uncertainty in Port Moresby that was then expressed as
‘band-aid’ previous in the National Goals and Directive Principles. Australia, though its two
Houses of Parliament and its Department of External Affairs had nominal control of events,
45
but this paper argues that although some national directives filtered down to Port Moresby,
Australia did not prepare PNG for Post-Independence governance and management.
The Mataungan Association
Michelle Stevenson
Deakin University, Australia
This paper will examine the impact of the Mataungan Association on the creation of Tolai
identity and custom in the lead-up to independence in Papua New Guinea. This will begin
with a brief overview of various constructions of Tolai identity and custom since European
settlement and then a study of the internal struggle that occurred within Tolai society as a
result of the emergence of the Mataungan Association. This analysis will include an
examination of the key figures of both sides of this struggle as well as their reactions to key
issues that emerged in this debate over the future direction of Tolai society. The paper will
conclude with an analysis of the effects of Mataungan on the creation of Tolai identity and
custom during the 1970s.
46
Photography, Film and Imaging in Oceania
Convenors: Max Quanchi
Travelling Miniatures: Charles Kerry's Historical Postcards of the Pacific
Nicole Peduzzi
Sainsbury Research Unit for the Arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas,
University of East Anglia, UK
In this presentation I show how, thanks to museum and archival based research, it is possible
to reconstruct relevant aspects of the context in which postcards as space for cross-cultural
interaction between people and ideas are embedded. Treating postcards as multilayered
objects and focusing on their materiality, I investigate shifts in meaning and value that occur
during their existence. The postcards I will focus on had been produced in the first decade of
the 20th century by the Sydney photographer Charles Kerry. I am interested to see how Kerry
contributed to construct and disseminate the image of Pacific peoples. Moreover, I analyse
which role his postcards played in shaping the identity of the people who posed in front of his
camera, and how they in turn influenced the creation of the image.
Models and photographs as miniatures in colonial Samoa
Tobias Sperlich
Department of Anthropology
University of Regina, Saskatchewan
Tobias.Sperlich@uregina.ca
This paper presents photographs and models of Samoan life and material culture which were
taken and collected by Otto Tetens, a German scientist stationed in Apia in the early 1900s.
These objects form part of a larger collection now at the Überseemuseum (Bremen, Germany)
comprising well over 400 objects and over 300 photographs. These types of objects were
collected in large part because were understood to be objective data that could be used by
future scholars in the laboratory conditions of the museum. In fact, as E. Edwards argues,
there existed an “interchangeability of models and photographs within a rhetoric of
substitution” (Edwards, E., 2001. Raw histories: Photographs, anthropology and museums.
Oxford. P. 55f.) and that while “photographs restored past actions, […] models and replicas
restored past objects” (p. 163f.). Unfortunately, this close relationship between models and
photographs is not regularly reflected in the way these objects are curated and studied today.
Yet, studying photographs and models in conjunction allows for a fuller understanding of the
processes that led to the creation of both types of objects in the colonial context and illustrates
how they were understood by colonials and colonised during this period. One important
aspect of models and photographs is that their production is at root a Western practice. In
spite of this, Samoans were directly involved in the creation (and, to a lesser extent,
consumption) of photographs (as the subjects of the scenes depicted) and models (as the
carvers who manufactured them for Western buyers). And while it was Westerners who
overtly controlled the production of both models and photographs, this paper emphasises that
the agency Samoans exerted over the composition and execution of these objects should not
be underestimated. Models and photographs, therefore, stand at the intersection of Samoan
and Western cultural practices, and offer a unique and highly insightful perspective on the
inter-cultural negotiations and (mis-)understandings that characterized early 20th century
colonial Samoa. The analysis presented in this paper sheds light onto the culture of German
colonialism and indigenous responses to it and shows how the photographs and models
collected by Tetens are not merely objective representations of a past Samoan reality, but in
fact refract a multitude of understandings and conceptions of Samoa from a German colonial
perspective and of German colonialism from a Samoan perspective.
47
Picturing the Pacific in The Queenslander 1890-1930
Max Quanchi and Hannah Perkins
m.quanchi@qut.edu.au
th
Early in the 20 century, Queenslanders knew the Pacific, could recognise Fijian, Papuan and
Tahitian canoes, dancers and coconut plantations – an understanding of place (and region)
based on the repeated publication of photographs in the weekend illustrated newspaper The
Queenslander. What sort of “Pacific” were readers presented with; was it a romanticised
place, an imagery driven by sub-imperial ambitions, mission, trading or commercial interests,
or was there a genuine fascination with others – newly revealed by the proliferation of
photographic illustrated publications? The Torres Strait and New Guinea were popular topics,
but week-by-week readers were confronted with views from across the region. This paper
suggests several motivations for those editors who sought out thousands of photographs for
their weekend illustrated editions.
Camilla Wedgwood’s fieldwork photos from Nauru and Manam Island, PNG
Rebecca Conway
Macleay Museum
r.conway@usyd.edu.au
This paper examines two sets of images taken by the anthropologist Camilla Wedgwood
(1901 – 1955) during fieldwork in the Pacific in the 1930s. Trained under A. C. Haddon at
Cambridge, Wedgwood spent five years teaching in the emerging discipline of anthropology
(University of Sydney, London School of Economics) before she had the opportunity to
conduct any fieldwork of her own. In 1932 she spent a year amongst the people of Manam, a
small volcanic island off the northwest coast of the Mandated Territory of New Guinea. There
she principally examined the lives of women and children, but also looked at the effects of
colonialism on the population generally. Three years later, she spent 4 months on the island of
Nauru at the request of the administrative government. Here, she was specifically charged to
investigate the impact of the island’s phosphate industry on the local population. As in all
early ethnographic fieldwork, photography played an important role, allowing Wedgwood to
capture images of the societies in which she worked and aspects of people’s ceremonial and
daily life. These were used as a document of her work, as reference to her writings, and later
as illustrations in publications and lectures. The two periods of fieldwork were quite different,
and indeed Camilla Wedgwood contrasts them herself in her published work. In this paper I
will examine whether the style, content, and ethnographers descriptions of the photographs
vary in relation to research agenda and later use of images, in the historical context of her
work.
Shield Imaging in Colonial and Post-Colonial Photography, Western Solomon Islands
Deborah Waite
University of Hawaii
waite@hawaii.edu
Photography was a major vehicle for colonial propaganda in the Solomon Islands of the
nineteenth century. Missionaries (Brown – Methodist Mission), governmental officials (C.M.
Woodford), travelers (Somerville), anthropologists (Hogbin, Parqvicini), and the occasional
studio photographers (Dufty brothers, Fiji) transmitted their scopic records of islanders for a
variety of western (primarily British) audiences. This paper focuses on photographs featuring
shields including: islanders bearing shields as in battle, displaying them as signs of a historic
past to be replaced by Christianity, drawing images of shields in their school notebooks in
missionary-run schools (where through drawing they recorded the very past that they would
be encouraged to renounce), and islanders simply holding the shields from which they never
parted company. The shield was, metaphorically speaking a multi-dimensional social body
48
whose photographic presence could convey an equally broad assortment of messages
depending upon the photographer and intended audience. It became a pre-eminent social
marker for aspects of the colonial past (especially change) as well as the post-colonial
present. After independence in 1978, photographers in the nation now known as the Solomon
Islands continued to feature shields, as emblems of their own choosing, to symbolize aspects
of their own collective history. It could be argued, however, that the manner in which shields
were portrayed in post-colonial photographs did not go entirely unshaped by the colonial
photographic past. The way in which shields were portrayed photographically as sustained,
yet versatile presences throughout changing social contexts constitutes the principal message
of this paper. The main immediate source of this information: my book entitled Shields and
Shield-Imaging, Western Solomon Islands currently in preparation
Captain Brett Hilder's sketches - an artist's view of the Pacific shipping world
Jean-Louis Boglio and Max Quanchi
Boglio.maritimebooks@com.au
Captain Brett Hilder served on merchant and naval ships in the Pacific from 1938 to the
1960s and sketched vignettes of Pacific Island life, and Pacific Islander portraits, in the major
ports as well as little known bays and anchorages. His art, comprising hundreds of black and
white and colour sketches and oils were used in his own books Navigator in the South Seas
and The voyage of Torres (1980). The Pacific, already well known visually through early
voyaging art, illustrated books and turn of the century black and white photography, was
replicated by Hilder in his own art, but also reflects the keen grasp of Oceanic cultures and
personalities that characterised Hilder's experience as a ship's officer across the Pacific. This
paper will present examples of Hilder's portfolio that position his art in the context of crosscultural encounters, the "shipping world" and events that unfolded as he travelled the region.
Tulagi: Imaging the British Empire in the Pacific
Clive Moore
University of Queensland
c.moore@uq.edu.au
Tulagi was the capital of the British Solomon Islands Protectorate from 1897 until 1942,
when it was evacuated and heavily bombed. The town has not survived in our memory of
Pacific ports. Although Tulagi was photographed by residents, and presumably by hundreds
of visitors, the views were seldom made into postcards or published in books and magazines.
After the war it was replaced by Honiara, on Guadalcanal. Like Samurai in British New
Guinea, it was a small administrative island that fell into decline once its main function
disappeared. After the war it continued to provide dry dock facilities and briefly flourish
again as the base for a fish cannery. Almost no physical evidence of its centrality to the
British Solomons remains. However, for forty-five years it was an important British base in
the Pacific, visited by regular shipping services. This paper uses the visual history of Tulagi to
examine the history of British Solomon Islands, and to question whether surviving
photographic evidence is sufficient to create an accurate history, or whether it can only be
used along with documentary sources and knowledge of the site today.
Missionaries, Cannibals and Kanakas - Photographs of Northcote Deck and Norman
Deck missionaries to the Solomon's from the early 20th Century.
Joyce Evans
University of Melbourne,
jevans1@bigpond.net.au
49
Florence Young an early evangelical missionary with the Kanakas in Queensland set up a
mission in the Solomon's and inspired her young nephews to join her. Northcote, a Doctor and
Norman, a Dentist where both keen photographers. In the collection of work that Norman
Deck donated to the National Gallery of Australia is seen the beauty of the Islands and his
sense of their romance and mysticism. In his fifty- four years of living in Melita he had a
great love for the people. The taped records of his adventures tell a story of privation danger
and hardship. On the other hand Northcote recorded what he saw with the eye of a
documentary photographer. Both experienced the results of cannibalism, which was still
practiced up until the mid 1920's, Norman stayed most of his life in the Islands. This paper
shall deal with the way in which the aesthetic of the photographer influences the pictorial
story and its relationship to the written story.
“Oh, if I could make you see the things I see…”: The photographic albums of the New
Zealand Presbyterian mission to the New Hebrides 1869-1939.
Antje Lubcke
University of Otago
antje_lubcke@yahoo.co.nz
It was through the photographic medium that Alice Henderson’s call (above quote) for better
understanding in New Zealand of the work being done in the foreign mission field was heard.
Parishes, Sunday Schools and periodicals embraced photography from the very beginning of
the Church’s overseas work, and in missionaries’ biographies and the general histories of the
foreign mission glossy photographs are reproduced as authenticating seals and visual accents
to the written accounts. In these texts little attention is given to the photographs themselves,
let alone the role of photography in the overseas mission field. This paper will focus on the
photographic albums of the New Zealand Presbyterian mission to the New Hebrides in an
attempt to better understand what missionaries wanted audiences to see - albums, of course,
always being compiled with a certain viewer or viewers in mind, and with the compiler and
photographer often not the same person. The creation of a photographic record was the result
of both personal and professional interests, and as such, these collections of photographs
reveal that no clear distinction can be made between personal and public narratives. The
mission family album, often co-opted to the needs of show-and-tell by missionaries on
furlough in New Zealand and now residing in a public-access archive, becomes a more
complex artefact on closer inspection.
Criss-crossing the Pacific; picturing the early years of air travel in Oceania
John Sullivan
Alexander Turnbull Library
John.sullivan@natlib.govt.nz
With the end of the war in the Pacific in August 1945, Oceania found itself with a network of
airfields and associated aviation infrastructure undreamt of six years earlier. The way was
clear for airlines, both established and newly-formed, to establish themselves in the region, as
a destination in its own right and as a staging point for travel further afield. Photography was
a major tool employed by airlines to encourage tourism, to emphasize the safety and
reliability of their operations, and to present Oceania as a desirable destination. Leo White
(1906-1967) made an extensive series of photographs throughout the region in the late 1940s
and early 1950s, on behalf of TEAL, Qantas, BOAC, BCPA, Pan American World Airways
and other carriers. These photographs now from part of the White’s Aviation Collection,
housed in the Alexander Turnbull Library. This paper examines how these photographs
contributed to the establishment of air travel in the Pacific, how they portrayed the peoples of
Oceania, and how they influenced the image of Oceania presented to the outside world.
50
Revisiting Royalty: The Queen, Childhood, and 1950s New Zealand on Film
Ian Conrich
University of London.
The December 1953 to January 1954 visit to New Zealand by Queen Elizabeth II and Prince
Philip is an event that is amongst the most memorable within the country's post-war history.
This was the first time a reigning monarch had visited the country and it followed quickly on
from the Queen's June 1953 coronation. In the 1950s, New Zealand enjoyed one of the
highest standards of living in the world and the country's relationship with Britain was strong.
As a nine year old from Manawatu, remembered years later: "there was magic in the air all
over the country and people went crazy over the Queen". New Zealand has a tendency for
revisiting the cultural past of its young modern history, and the Queen's visit has been the
subject of two quite contrasting films: the experimental queer short Little Queen (1983), and
the NZ-US family feature Her Majesty (2002). Both address issues of childhood and
community, using the royal visit as an opportunity to explore on screen cultural identity,
belonging, and nostalgia. This paper will address these subjects in the context of 1950s New
Zealand, employing archive material of the Queen's visit.
Being British in French New Caledonia - a brief history and visual record
Max Shekleton,
Noumea
max.shekleton@cvoyages.nc
New Caledonia has an extensive history of British connections entwined with major
developments as the French colony developed. Some of these links are depicted visually,
others in the names of suburbs and streets, bays and reefs. This paper will survey the colonial
period and identify a wide range of British links through to the present, using biography and
visual material to highlight the diversity and the unusual "British" character of New
Caledonian History.
Pacific photographic collections in the Pacific Research Archives, Australian National
University
Karina Taylor
ANU
Karina.Taylor@ anu.edu.au
This talk will provide an overview of the Pacific photographic collections in the Pacific
Research Archives, including Burns Philp, the Colonial Sugar Refining Company Limited
(CSR) and smaller personal collections including Nancy Hitchcock, Lillian Hardman, the
Edwards family and Fred Doutch. I shall also explore the methods by which we provide
access to photographic collections.
Visual crystallizations and social transfers in the use of images in a French
Anthropological Museum
Lorenzo Brutti
CREDO, Marseilles, and National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS)
lorenzo.brutti@pacific-credo.fr
When a scientific based discipline like anthropology meets an aesthetic based discipline like
museography, the consequent exogamic marriage is fertile with ambiguous results. Since its
origins, moving images are intended as the visual documentation of the Other. Filming
fictional or authentic frames, recreating situations in a studio or pursuing observations in the
51
field, the productions of the first anthropologists were shown in movie theatres and a few
decades after photography they started to be used in the anthropological museum as a visual
complement of the museography, an iconic support of physical pieces behind the glasses. On
these historical bases, it seems already that from its very beginning, images associated in
museography must deal with that omnipresent dichotomy: aesthetics versus science, creation
versus reproduction; invention versus discovery.
Building an historical photothèque of New Caledonia; what is it used for?
Ismet Kurtovitch
Archives of New Caledonia
ismet@mls.nc
The Archives of New Caledonia is constructing a visual archive relating to New Caledonia’s
past. As well as preserving and conserving the photographic legacy, the Archive is also
available for public scrutiny, school use and scholars both within New Caledonia and beyond.
This access in the public domain raises policy questions regarding the Archive’s acquisition
and cataloguing budget, the proper role of a National repository and the relative value of
visual material against document-based archival material, both private and government. This
paper addresses these issues in the context of an expanding official institutional role,
increasing public access, and increasing interest in photographic material including albums,
prints, published material and digital records.
52
53
REPRESENTATIONS PANEL
Convenor: Hugh Laracy
A History of Guam’s Historiography: The Influences of “Isolation” and “Discovery”
Nicholas J. Goetzfridt
Drawing from a recently completed book manuscript entitled Guahan: A Bibliographic
History, Goetzfridt offers a snapshot survey of the influential, early trends of the
historiography of Guam founded upon the assumed primacy of European arrivals and actions
during the island’s Spanish and American naval colonial administrations. Early historical
texts expanded their influence in support of this European, linear driven march of history even
after the Guam Congress had walked out in protest of naval authority at least a decade and a
half earlier in 1949. Indigenous Chamorro lives and perspectives lived a peripheral position
in their own histories until greater attention was paid to the centrality of these lives in the
context of their values and actions and as the fundamental source for historical interpretation
through the works of several indigenous scholars during at least the past twenty years.
New Perspectives on Tahiti as a centre of trans-Pacific foreign trade before 1862
Rhys Morgan Richards
New perspectives emerges from primary information on shipping in Tahiti as a centre of
trans-Pacific foreign trade before 1862. Ship lists can be as tedious as a telephone book, but
they can permit quantitative aspects that can open our eyes to new perspectives and new ways
of looking at the early contact period.
Three Marists on Tikopia: correction of a footnote of history
Julian Treadaway and Ken Tufunga
In December 1852 a group of Marist priests landed on Tikopia. They found the Tikopians
very friendly and three of them were allowed to stay, with the support of the four island
chiefs. The ship which brought them then left for China. Another ship was sent to check on
the Marists but did not return to Sydney and was presumed lost at sea. In 1853 a third ship
was sent. When the crew landed on Tikopia there was no sign of the Marists and they were
told that they had already left. No further attempt was made to send any more Marists to
Tikopia, and as far as the Marists were concerned this was the end of their contact with the
island. This story raises a number of questions about the relation between Tikopians and
outsiders, and a number of speculations about the possible change in the history of the island
if the Marists had not been killed.
'Who was Hector MacQuarrie?’
Hugh Laracy
Hector MacQuarrie (1889-1973) was a traveler, writer and colonial official. He is best known
for an enigmatic memoir entitled 'Vouza and the Solomon Islands', which he published in
1946. This paper offers an assessment of that book, and an account of its genesis, and sets it
within the broader context of MacQuarrie's life. He was born in New Zealand but in the
course of his career, following service in World War I, he also had significant associations
with Tahiti, Australia, Fiji, Solomons, England and Tonga, all of which are reflected in his
literary output.
54
DEPOPULATIONS EXPLAINED AND REPOPULATIONS
Convenor: Judy Bennett
Depopulation and repopulation-shifting discourses and interested parties in the Solomon
Islands.
Judy Bennett
In the late nineteenth century outside observers began to comment on the high rate of
depopulation in island Melanesia. The alleged causes of this are examined, including the
“psychological factor” of W.H.R. Rivers who had worked in the Solomons in 1908. This
‘cause’ greatly influenced Colonial Office thinking which grappled with the need to make the
Solomons viable economically. The planters needed labour to develop their plantations. Their
solution was to repopulate the islands with Asian labour. For political reasons, the Colonial
Office rejected this and considered possible remedies to depopulation could be found in
anthropology, to relieve the psychological factor and medical research, to counter introduced
diseases. The latter approach triumphed in practice but the ‘psychological factor’ lingered on
administrative thinking well into the 1930s, even as the population began to stabilize and then
recover.
Kanak demography in historical perspective: a reassessment of the topic through
archaeological data
Christophe Sand
Department of Archaeology of New Caledonia
Compared to Polynesia, the different archipelagos of the Melanesian arch have been defined
since first contact with Europeans as islands with fairly low population densities. This has
been explained in various ways, using Malaria, endemic Warfare and other reasons to account
for low population numbers (ex: Mac Arthur). Over the last 20 years, archaeological studies
have started to challenge this long-held view. This is especially the case in New Caledonia,
whose indigenous Kanak population has been described by historians as having been formed
of a mere 40 000- 50 000 people at most at first contact, before a depopulation of about 40%.
Surveys of the archaeological landscape of Grande Terre, the main Island of the archipelago,
has shown in contrast the presence of dense cluster of remains, comprised especially of
organized villages and complex extended horticultural structures (wet and dry). The study of
these sites has prompted a reassessment of Kanak population density at the end of the 18 th
century, leading to a critique of the demographic and ethnographic data forming the
“orthodox scenario” about Kanak demography. This paper will attempt to present a more
balanced perspective on the topic, in order to better understand the profound consequences of
the massive population collapse postulated by our archaeological data.
55
RELIGIOUS HISTORY
Convenor: Marama Tauira and Kambati Uriam
Poly Camber
PhD candidate, Otago University, Dunedin, New Zealand;
Understanding myth forests as regard to traditional beliefs in the Solomon Islands.
Kevin Salisbury
PhD candidate, Auckland University, New Zealand,
Early Christianity in PukaPuka, Cook Islands and the importance of the local language in the
translation work of the Bible in Pukapuka vernacular.
Lynda Newland
Senior Lecturer
Division of Sociology
The University of the South Pacific
The Kaunitoni migration and its significance in the understanding of Fijians in the Methodist
Church of Fiji and Rotuma.
Tessa McKenzie
Editor of the Pacific Journal of Theology of the South Pacific Association of Theological
Schools (SPATS).
Interfaith Search in Fiji and the significance of different religious faith in understanding each
other towards worshipping God and to strengthen their relationships as brothers and sisters in
a plural-religious-ethnic community.
56
PERFORMANCE AND RECREATION
Convenor Allan Alo
With Calvin Rore (Solomon Islands) and Damiano Logaivau (Fiji).
Oceania Centre for Arts and Culture, USP
In search of who we are and what we are doing here, we aim to interrogate Pacific social
issues concerning youth through the use of the Performing arts. Speakers will demonstrate the
use of traditional motifs and how they embrace, facilitate and contextualize approaches to
redressing and recreating the present through the Performing arts Music – chant, Dance –
movement.
Hapa Haole Hula: Dancing Song Lyrics through Hawaiian Body
Masaya Shishikura
The Australian National University
This paper explores hula and its practitioners, who continue to embrace hapa haole music,
part foreign (which is often the U.S.) and part Hawaiian music. Under American influence,
hapa haole music appeared as a genre of Hawaiian music in the early twentieth century. In
the following decades, it retained international popularity providing exotic and romantic
images about Hawai i. Due to its intimate tie with American popular culture, hapa haole
music has been largely marginalized since the 1970s, when an indigenous cultural movement
of Hawaiian Renaissance began. Although the Renaissance ideology is still influential today,
some hula practitioners propose and celebrate hapa haole music as part of Hawaiian cultural
tradition. In most forms of hula, dancers embody the lyrics of Hawaiian songs through their
movements. By incorporating lyrical expressions into hula movements, and evaluating
Hawaiian aesthetics and sensibilities with their bodies choreographed to dance Hawaiian art,
these hula practitioners assure Hawaiian quality and authenticity of hapa haole music. In this
sense, hula can be considered as a site of memory; it comprehends the history, landscape,
custom, experience and knowledge of Hawai i. This paper features two kumu hula, masterteachers of hula, Noenoelani Zuttermeister Lewis and Vicky Holt Takamine, and investigates
how these hula practitioners embrace hapa haole music, applying theories concerning body,
dance and movement.
57
Regional History Teachers’ Workshop
Introduction
At the December 2006 Pacific History Association conference in Dunedin, New Zealand, the
teaching of Pacific Island history in Pacific Island schools was discussed and it was agreed
that a program of professional development for History teachers was needed. A meeting of
concerned scholars agreed that a day should be set aside at the next Pacific History
Association (PHA) conference in Suva, Fiji in 2008, to allow interested parties to discuss the
future of teaching of Pacific History in schools, including History Teacher Associations,
History curriculum developers and practicing historians in regional Pacific universities. After
further discussions, this idea has grown to encompass a full workshop for History teachers
and curriculum developers from around the region.
The Workshop is not entirely a new idea and builds on previous initiatives conducted in the
region. From 1995 to 2002, a regional organization was funded by the Sasakawa Peace
Foundation of Japan to promote the teaching of History, and particularly Pacific Island
History, generally in the region. Coordinated by Dr Max Quanchi (QUT), eighteen workshops
were held, newsletters, posters and sets of wall charts distributed and eleven books,
guidebooks and bibliographies published. The participating History Teacher associations
from the region were unable to secure funding beyond 2002.
This week’s workshop is an attempt to revive and reinvigorate this earlier initiative
Our Aim
We are attempting this week to achieve a number of outcomes.
1. We have asked teachers and CDU personnel from around the region to bring papers
on topics relating to twentieth century economic and social history – such as urban
growth, history of a mine, mill, factory, industry, tourism study, regional agreements
and their effect. This is an area we have identified as needed for senior secondary
curricula around the region, but on which teachers struggle to finc adequate resources
for their teaching. Each teacher will present their findings on the first two days.
Workshop Coordinators will then lead workshops on how these papers and other
resources can be used in school lessons, preparatory to publication as a resource for
regional teachers and schools. The publication should be available later next year –
we have funding from the French Embassy to cover this.
2. We aim to stimulate discussion on the need for curriculum reform of school History
syllabuses in regional countries, and consider the direction such reform might take.
3. We acknowledge that history teachers in the region often feel isolated from their
professional academic colleagues, and find it difficult to keep up with the debates in
the history community. Participants in the teachers’ workshop will therefore attend
plenary and other sessions of the main PHA conference, and should have
opportunities to talk with their academic colleagues.
4. We aim to build relationships between teachers and teachers’ associations within the
region. We are particularly pleased to welcome as observers some senior BAGCED
students at USP, at the beginning of their professional careers.
Christine Weir, Organiser, Regional History Teachers’ Workshop
58
PROGRAM FOR HISTORY TEACHERS’ WORKSHOP : 8 – 12 DECEMBER
8-9 am
Sunday 7 December
7 am departure
9-10 am
N111
Break
10-10.30
10.3012.30
Monday 8 December
Welcome and Opening
N111
Plenary 1 - Patrick Nunn, A
Shock to the System
Field Trip to
Bourewa (all day)
Workshop Opening Session 1.
Introductions - Max Quanchi,
QUT
2. Teachers’ presentations 1
10 min each
Tuesday 9 December
Plenary 2- Stephanie Lawson,
The Pacific Way: a critical
assessment
N111
Break and DVD launch
1. Teachers’ presentations 3
10 min each
2. Libby Cass PRIDE – Finding
Resources
PRIDE Conf Rm
PRIDE Conf Rm
Lunch and book launch
Dining Hall
Teachers’ presentations 2
10 min each
12.30-2
pm
2-3.30
Lunch
Discussion, led by Max
Quanchi
- How can we present our
material?
Do we need more
research?
PRIDE Conf Rm
PRIDE Conf Rm
Break
3.30-4
4- 5.30
5- 8 pm Registration
and Cultural
Performance
OCAC
6.30 - 8
Discussion, led by Susie Sela,
USP
– the curriculum and the
aims of education, and
how well do they
interlink?
Break
Public Session on Pacific
Rugby (see main program)
N111
PRIDE Conf Rm
Cocktails, USP Host
Dining Hall
OR Work on own papers
Free evening
59
Wednesday 10 December
9-10
10-10.30
10.3012.30
Break – with Postgrads
Voices of Experience
1.Max Quanchi – Great
Events: what to teach
2. Judy Bennett, U Otago –
Melanesian Development
12.30-2
pm
2-3.30
PRIDE Conf Rm
Lunch
Thursday 11 December
Plenary 3 - Jie-Hyun Lim
Competing
Historiographies: Transnationalism and
Nationalism in East Asian
Historiographies
N111
Break
Friday 12 December
PHA BGM
Attend S8 Photography,
Film & Imaging in
Oceania, U8
OR
S9 Representation, N111
OR
work on own papers
Plenary 4 – Ron
Crocombe, Stretching
Pacific History,
forwards, backwards,
sideways and inwards.
Break
N111
Lunch
Lunch
3.30-4
Break
4-5.30
Workshopping the papers
1
Attend S8 Photography U8 Final editing session
OR
S11 Depopulations
Explained &
Repopulations, N111
OR
work on own papers
Break
Break - Present
findings to PHA
Conference
Workshopping the papers
Pacific Updates
2
PRIDE Conf Rm
PRIDE Conf Rm
6-7 Public Talk, Fergus
Clunie, The Navigator
Suva Museum
6.30-8.30 Reception:
Australian High
Commission, Princess Rd.
Tamavua, Suva
Voices of Experience
3. Alfred Liligeto, USP Technology in teaching
N111
6 -9.30 Conference
Dinner and Closing at
USP Dining Hall
7-8.30 Buffet Dinner at
Museum
60
Programme for Pacific History Association
Postgraduate Research Forum
Date: Wednesday 10th December 2008
Venue: Senate Room, USP
Time: 10.30am – 4.45pm
(The Postgraduate Forum will begin with morning tea at the Fale’s USP 10am – all
welcome!)
10.30–10.40am: Welcome by Dr Morgan Tuimaleali’ifano, PHA Conference
Convenor, Dr Max Quanchi, Queensland University of Technology and Ms Tui Clery,
Postgraduate Forum Coordinator.
10.40–11.00am: Beginning to get to know each other, and to talk, and smile! :0)
Time
11.00-11.05am
11.05-11.15am
11.15-11.20am
Name of Presenter
Tepola Sogotubu
Development Studies Programme
The University of the South Pacific
tsogotubu@yahoo.com
Research Title
“Participation of Rural Women in Conflict
Resolution in Fiji – The Case of Namada
and Vatukarasa”
Group conversations/veitalanoa
“Sea Cucumber Processing for Better
Value”
Ravinesh Ram
Msc Marine Science
The University of the South Pacific
ravineshram@gmail.com
11.20-11.30am
11.30-11.35am
Group conversation/veitalanoa
“Student Retention Rates in Rural
Sanjeena Chandra
Secondary Schools in Fiji: a mixed
School of Education
methods approach”
The University of the South Pacific
s95008108@student.usp.ac.fj
11.35-11.45am
11.45-11.50am
Group conversations/veitalanoa
“Abused Men: The Hidden Side of
Domestic Violence in Fiji”
11.50-12.00pm
Akisi Ravono
Psychology/Sociology
The University of the South Pacific
a_ravono@yahoo.com
Group conversations/veitalanoa
61
“Cultural Literacy – Considering the
Perspectives of Primary School Teachers,
Students and Parents in Kiribati”
12.00-12.05pm
Tereeao Teingiia Ratite
School of Education
The University of the South Pacific
s83805600@student.usp.ac.fj
12.05-12.15pm
12.15-12.30pm
12.30-1.30pm
1.30-1.40pm
1.40-1.45pm
Group conversations/veitalanoa
Reflections on our conversations
Dr Morgan Tuimaleali’ifano
LUNCH! :0)
Identities game
Tui Clery
Vaasiliega Rupeni Tamanikaiyaroi, “Evaluating the performance of
indigenous Fijian farmers in the Fiji Sugar
Governance Programme, MA
Industry”
The University of the South Pacific
tamanikaiyaroi_v@samoa.usp.ac.fj
1.45-2.00pm
2.00-2.05pm
Group conversations/veitalanoa
“Languages in Contact”
Patricia Rainey
Linguistics MA
The University of the South Pacific
patriciar@connect.com.fj
2.05-2.15pm
2.15-2.20pm
Group conversations/veitalanoa
“History and Migration in Langalanga
David Faradatolo
Lagoon, Malaita: The making of a cash
MA Development Studies
economy in the 11th century”
The University of the South Pacific
dfaradatolo@yahoo.com.au
2.20-2.30pm
2.30-2.35pm
Group conversations/veitalanoa
“Representing Difference: Prominent
Karen Fox
Maori and Aboriginal Women and the
PhD History
Print Media, 1950-2000”
Australian National University
karen.fox@anu.edu.au
2.35-2.45pm
2.45-2.50pm
Group conversations/veitalanoa
“The effect of church and state upon Fijian
Kirstie Close
Melbourne University, School of village hierarchies, 1900-1950”
Historical Studies.
PhD Candidate Deakin University,
Australia.
kirstie.louise.close@gmail.com
2.50-3.00pm
3.00-3.05pm
Group conversations/veitalanoa
“Remembering the ‘other’ Anzacs:
Commemorating indigenous war service in
Adam Marre,
62
PhD Candidate
Queensland University of Technology
a.marre@qut.edu.au
Oceania”
3.05-3.15pm
3.15-3.20pm
Group conversations/veitalanoa
“But I'm not a real Gilbertese woman:
Samantha Rose
portraits
from the 1960s women's
PhD Candidate
movement in Kiribati”
Queensland University of Technology
s.rose@qut.edu.au
3.20-3.30pm
3.30-4.00pm
4.00-4.05pm
Group conversations/veitalanoa
TEA TIME! :0) at the Fale’s
“Disentangling Indigenous Agency in
Hilary Howes
Nineteenth Century German Accounts of
Pacific and Asian History
New Guinea”
Australian National University
hilaryhowes@gmail.com
4.05-4.15pm
4.15-4.20pm
Group conversations/veitalanoa
“Negotiating with the power of space in
nineteenth century Hawaii”
4.20-4.30pm
4.30-4.45pm
Spencer Leineweber
PhD History
Australian National University
spencer.leineweber@anu.edu.au
Group conversations/veitalanoa
Dr Morgan Tuimaleali’ifano and Closing comments,
appreciation!
Tui Clery
compliments
63
and
Postgraduate Forum
Abstracts
Participation of Rural Women in Conflict Resolution in Fiji – The Case of Namada and
Vatukarasa
Tepola Sogotubu
Development Studies Programme
The University of the South Pacific
tsogotubu@yahoo.com
People have different perspectives on life and its problems. We each have our own values,
which guide our thinking and our behavior and motivate us to take actions and to reject
others. There are many ways of resolving conflict. One of these is the participation of women
in the process of conflict resolution. In the Pacific, the development process has taken one of
its greatest impacts and that is the ethnic conflicts and coups that have occurred in our
paradise. Women participate in conflict resolution as mediators between parties, supporters of
peace, and are also consolidators of conflict resolution to occur. The participation of women
in conflict resolution is both traditional and spiritual. Because of this participation, rural
dwellers are able to enjoy a more comforting and peaceful life, which leads to improved
livelihoods and a sense of direction towards a better development of ones livelihood.
Sea Cucumber Processing for Better Value
Ravinesh Ram
Msc Marine Science
The University of the South Pacific
ravineshram@gmail.com
An investigation of harvesting and processing methods on the quality and the value of bechede-mer in the Fiji Islands. Lack of beche-de-mer processing skills amongst indigenous people
has affected the product value. Increased harvesting of under size cucumber raises concerns
for future stocks and resource management strategies are essential.
Student Retention Rates in Rural Secondary Schools in Fiji: a mixed methods approach
Sanjeena Chandra
School of Education
The University of the South Pacific
s95008108@student.usp.ac.fj
This paper examines possible causes for student dropout in rural Fiji. The paper focuses on
the secondary school level. The thesis is divided into three themes: causes of student
dropouts; effects; and possible strategies to retain students in rural secondary schools. The
research was conducted in a rural secondary school in Fiji (Nadi) using a mixed methods
approach. The paper will limit itself to the qualitative data analysis of the research.
Technology has paved the way for many researchers by providing alternative methods to
analyze data, enabling more objective, reliable, valid and efficient results. Similarly, I
adopted SPSS Text Analysis for Survey 2.1 to analyze qualitative data (in-depth interviews).
While thematic and content analysis provides emerging themes form the responses,
diagrammatic representations also show the interrelations of the responses between the
themes.
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Abused Men: The Hidden Side of Domestic Violence in Fiji
Akisi Kasami Ravono
Psychology/Sociology
The University of the South Pacific
a_ravono@yahoo.com
This exploratory study examined the prevalence of domestic violence against males in a
Fijian context and involved 216 married participants (males = 108, females = 108). The study
investigated the different types of spousal violence men experience, the main circumstances
that contribute to female violence and how men typically cope with their situation. Results
show that men also suffer from physical, financial, sexual, verbal and psychological types of
abuse. Women being angry were identified to be the main causes of men’s experiences of
violence whereby social obligations have been identified as a contributing factor. Most men
react emotionally and would seek the assistance of a priest into their experiences. This study
also found that most men experienced spousal abuse at home, where children normally act as
witnesses into their experiences. This is contrary to the Fijian cultural values where men are
viewed as heads of households and are supposed to be treated with respect. Finally, results of
this study indicated that according to participants, the pressuring demands of living as a
perfect couple has become a threat to their lives because they cannot get out of an abusive
relationship. For these reasons, domestic violence continues and becomes a vicious cycle.
Cultural Literacy – Considering the Perspectives of Primary School Teachers, Students
and Parents in Kiribati
Tereeao Teingiia Ratite
School of Education
The University of the South Pacific, Fiji
s83805600@student.usp.ac.fj
My research explores the perspectives of I-Kiribati students, teachers and parents on the
relationship between cultural literacy and academic performance. The study provides a
comparative analysis of urban and rural communities, in order to elicit reliable data that is
reflective of the I-Kiribati society as a whole. In this short presentation, I will provide an
overview of the research focusing on a rationale of the topic and research questions. In
summation, a brief summary of some of the problems encountered during the research,
especially data analysis.
Evaluating the performance of indigenous Fijian farmers in the Fiji Sugar Industry
Vaasiliega Rupeni Tamanikaiyaroi,
PhD Governance Programme
The University of the South Pacific
tamanikaiyaroi_v@samoa.usp.ac.fj
This presentation discusses the result of a farmer performance evaluation conducted in
February 2007 when I was a Research Officer for the Fiji Sugar Corporation. It examines the
impact of the government Farming Assistance Scheme (FAS) grant of about $1850 - $5000
per farm, on the productivity (t/yr) of 20 FAS farms owned by 15 indigenous Fijian farmers in
Legalega sector, Nadi, western Viti Levu. Research results indicate that conventional methods
of evaluating farmer performance based on economic principles may not be appropriate for
the indigenous Fijian farmer. More than 50% of the farmers seem to operating under a
cultural set of thinking based on a concept of reality which is different from the expected
norm of farming behaviour. An alternative approach is needed as conventional methods to
improve Fijian farmer performance have failed. This presentation explores the indigenous
cultural thinking of Fijian farmers as a central influential factor to farming practices. It ties in
with the broader aspects of good governance and leadership envisaged for agricultural
development in Fiji and other Pacific island countries. This approach incorporates notions of
contemporary principles of agricultural sustainability which are more appropriate to most
indigenous farmers than the concept of economic profitability.
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Languages in Contact
Patricia Rainey
Linguistics MA
The University of the South Pacific
patriciar@connect.com.fj
Each year up to 46 women from different parts of the Pacific come together near Suva to
undertake a seven month live-in course in community development. Each Pacific Island
country is invited to nominate two women for the course so linguistic diversity is a particular
feature of the group. I propose to observe and measure any changes in the linguistic
behaviour and language attitudes of the group over the seven month period and will seek
linguistic evidence for the development of a community of practice.
History and Migration in Langalanga Lagoon, Malaita: The making of a cash economy
in the 11th century
David Faradatolo
MA Development Studies
The University of the South Pacific
dfaradatolo@yahoo.com.au
The islands in the Langalanga Lagoon have no arable land to support a subsistence economy.
People of Kwara’ae and Kwaio origin already occupy the coastal lands so the arriving
immigrants had no option but to build artificial islands for their dwelling places. Why do
people risk their lives on artificial islands that are susceptible to cyclones and where the
necessities of life are hard to get? Answering this question will form the basis for why people
settle the Lagoon in the first place. The Langalanga Lagoon was settled by people from
different parts of Malaita and the neighbouring islands of Isabel, Gela, Guadalcanal, Makira
and Ulawa. People of different places congregated in Langalanga to participate in the
production of shell money and the lucrative cash economy fueled by shell money. Shell
money oiled trade that was used extensively by the Langalanga people to get their supplies
from the neighbouring islands. Shell money was produced in different currencies and the
different currencies have different denominations. Trade was done in the currency of the
locality.
Representing Difference: Prominent Maori and Aboriginal Women and the Print
Media, 1950-2000
Karen Fox
PhD History
Australian National University
karen.fox@anu.edu.au
Karen’s research is an exploration of the print media experiences and representations of a
number of famous Maori and Aboriginal women in Australia and New Zealand. It considers
recurring tropes of representation which appeared in stories about these women in the print
media, as well as the extent and nature of the involvement of the women themselves in
shaping and changing those depictions. Covering a period of great social cultural and political
change on both sides of the Tasman, this research also considers ways in which
representations shifted over the period.
The effect of church and state upon Fijian village hierarchies, 1900-1950
Kirstie Close
Melbourne University, School of Historical Studies
PhD Candidate at Deakin University, Australia
kirstie.louise.close@gmail.com
66
An investigation of the effects of church and state upon traditional Fijian lifestyle between
1900 and1950. In particular, the level of autonomy maintained by Fijian chiefs and how
missionaries and the state assisted (or denied) continuation of autonomy and how village
hierarchies were affected by changes in church and state policy.
Remembering the ‘other’ Anzacs: Commemorating indigenous war service in Oceania
Adam Marre
PhD Candidate
Queensland University of Technology
a.marre@qut.edu.au
The majority of the growing body of literature on the remembrance of war has a European or
colonial focus. Few scholars have wrestled with the subject of commemoration and
memorialisation in an indigenous or colonised context. My thesis seeks to investigate how
Pacific Islanders, Maori and indigenous Australian involvement in War has been
commemorated (with a focus on the First World War and Niueans, Cook Islanders and
indigenous Australians). In doing so I also hope to demonstrate that research into how the
war service of formerly (and presently) colonised societies has been remembered and
commemorated can contribute significantly to the growing field of memory studies.
But I'm not a real Gilbertese woman: portraits from the 1960s women's movement in
Kiribati
Samantha Rose
PhD Candidate
Queensland University of Technology
s.rose@qut.edu.au
Nei Katherine Tekanene was the first Gilbertese woman from the Gilbert and Ellice Islands
Colony to travel abroad to attend a conference. Her participation at the 1961 Community
Conference in Apia, Samoa led to the widespread development of village based women's
clubs in the Colony. More importantly, her attendance signaled recognition by the colonial
administration for the need to further women's development. This paper reflects on her
journey 'beyond the reef' and how she and other women like her, were able to negotiate
custom in a strongly patriarchical society in an endeavour to advance the status of women.
Disentangling Indigenous Agency in Nineteenth Century German Accounts of New
Guinea
Hilary Howes
Pacific and Asian History
Australian National University, Australia
hilaryhowes@gmail.com
Hilary’s research examines specific encounter events in the works of two nineteenth century
German naturalists Adolf Bernhard Meyer and Otto Finsch, and discusses various strategies
for accessing traces of indigenous agency in their writings. Their responses to indigenous
actions, appearances and behaviour have much to illuminate both German-New Guinean cross
cultural encounters and corresponding developments in European sciences of race.
Negotiating with the power of space in nineteenth century Hawaii
Spencer Leineweber
PhD History
Australian National University, Australia
spencer.leineweber@anu.edu.au
Spencer is working on early post-contact changes in indigenous architecture in Hawaii. The
overall research concerns the domestic sites of the ali`i (royalty) and the ABCFM
(Congregational missionaries) as expressions of cultural identity and positioning for power
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during mid nineteenth century Hawaii. This paper is a narrative of the first encounter
between the missionaries and the indigenous people in the spring of 1820. The meeting
foreshadows many of the social exchanges that will inform the research including greeting,
gifting, proxemics, pageantry, sexuality, symbolism, and kinship.
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GUIDE TO SUVA
This guide was originally prepared by Jeff Siegel for a linguistics conference in 1984 and has
been updated by Justin Francis and the 2008 PRS-PHA Joint-Conference Committee.
Corrections and updates welcome! (Paul Geraghty, Morgan Tuimaleali’ifano and Tui Clery)
MAPS & INTERNATIONAL CALLING NUMBERS
Useful maps of Suva are in the 2008 Telephone Directory, pp. 10-27. Pacific Theological
College is corner of QEII and Vuya Rd. p. 11 and USP is pp. 16-17. The section includes maps
of Nasinu, Nausori, Lami, Pacific Harbour, Sigatoka, Nadi, Lauoka, Ba, and Labasa.
International Calling Numbers are in pp. 72-73. Government Ministries in pp. 96-113. Medical
Practitioners in p.3.
TRANSPORT:
Buses: cheap and efficient bus service is available all around Suva. Fares according to distance
travelled. University to City Centre Bus Stand is less than a dollar. Taxis are easily available and
metered: $2 on flagfall and a very laidback meter thereafter. For trips beyond city limits, agree on
a price before taking off. Rental cars: see yellow pages in telephone directory.
SHOPPING:
Watch out for over-friendly Fijian men, who are probably touts or "sword-sellers". Let them
know firmly that you are not interested. Keep purses and wallets out of sight. Hours: 8-6 Monday
to Friday (some later), 8-1 Saturday. Duty Free Goods: bargaining is the rule in the smaller
shops, especially in the Duty Free Jungle of Cumming Street. Be prepared for the hard sell.
Running (walking) shoes: Often fake top brands, but still great value.
Handicrafts: Fijian baskets, mats, carvings, masi (tapa cloth), and other handicrafts are sold
mainly in: The Handicraft Centre on Stinson Parade (hard sell with some bargaining), Fiji
Museum Shop, and the flea market, opposite the main Suva bus stand (also second hand books
and many other miscellaneous and interesting items). The small eateries inside the flea market
serve very reasonable and big serves of fish in lolo (coconut milk) for around $5.
BUSINESS HOURS:
Government Offices: 8-1,2-4.30 Monday-Thursday, 8-1,2-4 Friday
Banks: 9.30-3.00 Monday-Thursday, 9.30-4.00 Friday. ATM machines 24 hours. There are two
on campus: Wespac is along the USP library front wall near the library carpark and ANZ outside
the ANZ branch.
Post Office: 8-4.30 Monday-Friday. Stamps are sold at the USP Book Centre and there is a
postbox just outside.
EMERGENCY MEDICAL:
CWM (Colonial War Memorial) Hospital, Toorak, 3313444
Suva Private Hospital 3303404
Dr John Fatiaki (USP Medical Officer), Epworth House, 3302421, 3304858, residence 3300577
SELECTED RESTAURANTS AND BARS & THEIR SPECIALTIES:
Town House (on the roof terrace) 3 Forster St, opposite Sacred Heart Cathedral: watching the
sun set over Suva Harbour.
Holday Inn, Victoria Parade: pretending you're back in Ohio.
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MHCC, Thomson St next to the Nubukalou Creek: pretending you’re in an Ozzie Mall with all
the usual eateries.
Tiko's: Floating restaurant off Stinson Parade: sea food and Fiji’s famous crooner Jese
Mucunabitu.
Trapps, Victoria Parade: wine-bar type atmosphere, often live music and poetry readings.
Bad Dog Restaurant and O’Reilly’s Bar.
NIGHT CLUBS:
Combinations of live house band and disco; cover charges: $3-$5, (Dress: no flip-flops). The
action starts after 10 pm and goes till 1.00am (midnight on Saturday).
Lucky Eddies & Rockefellers, Victoria Parade - two for the price of one - Lucky Eddies (loud
music flashing lights) and next door Rockefellers (more quiet and classy), a Fiji institution.
Etiquette, Carnavon Street, newly opened; The Barn (new name?), Carnarvon Street, for more
matua crowd.
Golden Dragon, Victoria Parade, the original Suva night spot! Chequers, Waimanu Road, a bit
rougher. Bali Hai, Rodwell Road, genuine local atmosphere, bring a bodyguard.
FOOD:
Fresh fruit and vegetables at Suva Market and supermarkets and roadside markets around Suva.
Cheap lunches can be bought at the dozens of small cafes, snack bars, and takeaway places ($25). Cafeteria on Stinson Parade, the MH (Morris Hedstrom) Snack Bar on Thomson St, and other
take-aways on Marks Street and Terry Walk (along Nubukalou Creek).
TOWARDS A CLASSIFICATION OF SUVA RESTAURANTS
This preliminary classification is based on a comparative study of 20 items from a Swadesh
menu (restaurants marked with * are worth some fieldwork).
WESTERN GROUP
Features a variety of reflexes of proto steak and potatoes with some Fijian borrowings.
Nuclear Western subgroup ($15-30):
*Victoria’s, Holiday Inn - Smorgasbord lunch excellent value
*Tiko's, moored along Stinson Parade
Various eateries in Harbour Centre, Thomson Street
Bad Dog, 5 McArthur St
Upper Western subgroup (research permits in the $20-$40 range):
The Aberdeen Grill, Noble House (formerly Scotts Restaurant) Bau St
Swiss Tavern, Kimberly St - French & German cuisine
CHINESE GROUP
Flashy subgroup: characterized by diffusion of culinary and decorative features from Chinatowns
across the world ($10-20)
Fongs, Carnavon St
Lantern Palace, Pratt Street
Castle, Lami Shopping Centre
New Peking, Victoria Parade
Chopsticks, Thomson Street
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*Vinayard, Victoria Parade
More expensive:
Great Wok of China, Flagstaff, specialises in Sichuan Taipan, Noble House, Bau St.
Grundgy subgroup: more conservative subgroup, specialising in tea and Fiji cakes, steak and dalo
(taro), and reanalysed chop-suey ($5-10):
Carshine cafe, Marks St., prototype for many others in Marks St.
and up along Waimanu Rd Nanking, Golden Cockerel & others, Victoria Parade
INDIAN GROUP
Unlicensed subgroup: characterized by the shared innovation of hot steam plate displaying
various curries (including the Fiji specialties goat or crab), served with obligatory dhal (lentil or
split pea soup), chutney, vegetable curry, and options of rice or roti (Fiji Indian chapatties or
tortillas) - $7-20:
Singh’s Curry House, Gordon Street
*Hare Krishna, Pratt St and opposite USP upper lodge - vegetarian meals and ice cream
Licensed subgroup: loss of steam plates (at least in surface structure), compensated by tablecloths, waitresses, booze, and a few dollars extra at the end ($10-30)
Star of India, Hotel Suva, Waimanu Road
Copper Chimney, Sports City
AMERICAN OUTLIERS
Wishbone, Harbour Centre, Thomson Street, and KFC close by
Pizza King, Harbour Centre, Thomson St
CREOLISED VARIETY
*The Old Cottage, Carnarvon St. The best features of the Indian and Chinese groups plus Fijian
specialties: vakalolo fish (fish with coconut cream) and curry kai (clams).
PLACES TO VISIT IN SUVA
Fiji Museum: one of the best in the South Pacific, and Thurston (botanic) Gardens (surrounding
the museum). Queen Elizabeth Drive, running along the harbour from Albert Park to Laucala
Bay: Sunday evening promenade a specialty
PLACES TO VISIT - A SHORT DRIVE FROM SUVA
COLO-I-SUVA: A delightful rainforest park, with marked tracks to a series of waterfalls, 20
mins drive north of Suva. Sawani bus from central bus station or approx $10 one way in a taxi.
You can leave valuables at the Raintree Lodge, close to rainforest park, it is recommended to go
into the park carrying as little as possible.
ORCHID ISLAND: Well presented array of pre- and post-contact history & associated artifacts
plus a range of flora and fauna, 20 mins drive along Queens Rd. 3302996
DAY TRIPS FROM SUVA
PACIFIC HARBOUR: Cultural Centre, International Resort and Golf Course, 45 mins drive
along the Queens Road. 3450100
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SPORTING ACTIVITIES
Swimming: Olympic Pool next to the Carnegie Library, and National Aquatic Centre (behind
Vodafone arena) $3.00, USP has a smaller pool (a three minute’s walk from N111) about $2. A
Marina for paddlers is at Lower Campus.
Tennis + Squash: Victoria Courts – 3312748. USP Courts. Gym about $5.
Golf: Fiji Golf Club - Rifle Range Road - 3382872
CHURCHES AND TEMPLES
Muanivatu Hindu temple across USP upper campus gate. A mosque is at Holland Street, Toorak.
Laucala Bay Catholic church, about 200 meters on Grantham Rd. from USP. Methodist church at
Butt Street, Suva. Anglican and Presbyterian in the same neighbourhood. Tongan Methodist
Church top of Laucala Bay Rd (opened in September 2008) and Samoan Congregational Church
on Thurston Street. Most Christian denominated services are in English and begin around 9 or
10. Check newspaper. Watch out for Suva’s Sunday Rock Market at corner of Carnarvon and
Loftus streets for a variety of bargains, souvenirs and Island dishes including Austronesian earth
oven cooked food.
CINEMAS
Village Six (Scott Street) has an interesting range of cinemas, air-conditioned, and show a variety
of the latest popular movies at giveaway price of $5.50 See daily newspapers for what's on.
PRIVATE CLUBS
A number of private clubs in Suva offer inexpensive food and drinks and colonial ambience but
you need to accompany a member: The Fiji Club, Defence Club, Union Club, United Club,
Merchants Club, Royal Suva Yacht Club.
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