Race, Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Studies Commons^™

Not Exotic, Lisa Kahaleole Hall

Pacific Studies

This sensual poem explores desire and self-discovery through the metaphor of mangoes—ripe, tart, messy, and irresistible. The speaker recalls the intense flavors and sensations of mango eating, paralleling them with a complex, bold woman who resists sweetness in favor of spice. It captures the tension between sharp edges and tender longing in a relationship that ripens slowly, but promises depth and heat in time.

Maori Women Researching Ourselves, Ngahuia Te Awekotuku

Pacific Studies

This essay, based on a keynote address titled "Maori Women and Research: Researching Ourselves," explores the significance of Maori women conducting research on their own identities, experiences, and communities. Challenging the dominance of non-Maori scholarship, the author advocates for self-representation and sovereignty in knowledge production. Drawing from intergenerational dialogue, collective reflection, and lived realities, the essay unpacks questions of gender, cultural protocol, positionality, and access within Maori society. It highlights the layered complexities faced by Maori women researchers—navigating traditional expectations, community dynamics, and academic gatekeeping—while affirming the transformative power of research as a tool for empowerment, reclamation, and cultural continuity.

Walking With My Grandmothers #2, Jewel Castro

Pacific Studies

Artwork portrays three women, two are grandmothers.

Prologue: Special Issue Women Writing Oceania–Weaving The Sails Of Vaka, Caroline Sinavaiana, J. Kehaulani Kauanui

Pacific Studies

This editorial introduction to Women Writing Oceania reflects on the physical, emotional, and spiritual toll of neocolonial legacies in the Pacific, especially among indigenous women. Editors, writing as activist-scholars, discuss the urgency of storytelling as survival, anchoring their reflections in personal experiences with illness, loss, and the weight of cultural and academic responsibilities. Framed by the broader health and social crises facing Oceanic communities, the collection is both testimony and tribute—dedicated to resilience, community, and the healing power of collective indigenous voice.

Piharamata Tumahai Smoking Her Taho, Marie-Hélène Villierme

Pacific Studies

Photograph of an elderly woman smoking.

Niudity (I-Iv), Teresia Teaiwa

Pacific Studies

The "Niudity" poem sequence by Teresia Teaiwa explores the layered metaphor of the coconut (niu) to reflect on identity, vulnerability, and postcolonial femininity in Oceania. The poems interweave bodily imagery with cultural symbolism—where the coconut’s husk, shell, and flesh represent stages of exposure, resilience, and inner worth. In playful yet poignant verse, Teaiwa deconstructs the idea of nudity into niudity—a state shaped not just by nakedness, but by misrecognition, resistance, and cultural disguise. Her fictional dictionary entries parody colonial linguistic authority while empowering indigenous reinterpretation. The final poem subverts expectations with sharp commentary on exploitation, voice, and …

Tradition, Jewel Castro

Pacific Studies

A painting of a woman's chest, opened to reveal people, perhaps her heritage.

Woven Worlds, Konai Helu Thaman

Pacific Studies

This poem beautifully portrays the act of weaving—both literal and metaphorical—as a shared practice of memory, creativity, and cultural continuity. The speaker reflects on how hands, once weaving traditional materials like voivoi (pandanus), now craft art through movement and color. Together, the weavers form a collective bond, connecting generations and geographies in a creative act that honors ancestral legacy and reimagines the world through shared expression.

Communicating Tradition In Samoan American Art: An Artist’S Reflection, Jewel Castro

Pacific Studies

This reflective essay explores the profound influence of Samoan tradition—particularly the sasa dance—on the author's identity and artistic practice. Through vivid childhood memories of her great-aunties' powerful and spiritually charged performances, the writer illustrates how traditional movement becomes a portal to ancestral connection and cultural affirmation. As a Samoan American artist, she uses these embodied experiences as inspiration for her installation-based storytelling environments, blending painting, sculpture, sound, scent, and space to express tradition as a living, multisensory force. Grounded in both memory and innovation, the essay positions tradition as a universal, transformative language that transcends cultural barriers and invites shared …

2nd Stanza, "Samoa," From Meet You In Hawaiki, Rosanna Raymond

Pacific Studies

An image of a woman with a poem.

Walking With My Grandmothers #3, Jewel Castro

Pacific Studies

An artwork portraying a woman flanked by two women, her grandmothers.

Vol. 30, No. 1/2 (2007): Pacific Studies Full Issue; Special Issue: Women Writing Oceania: Weaving The Sails Of Vaka, The Jonathan Nāpela Center For Hawaiian And Pacific Islands Studies Brigham Young University–HawaiʻI

Pacific Studies

Pacific Studies is published two times a year by The Jonathan Nāpela Center for Hawaiian and Pacific Studies, Brigham Young University Hawai‘i #1979, 55–220 Kulanui Street, Lāʻie, Hawai‘i 96762, but responsibility for opinions expressed in the articles rests with the authors alone. Subscription rate is US $26.00 yearly, payable to The Jonathan Nāpela Center for Hawaiian and Pacific Studies. The Jonathan Nāpela Center for Hawaiian and Pacific Studies (formerly The Pacific Institute) is an organization funded by Brigham Young University Hawai‘i. The Center assists the University in meeting its cultural and educational goals by undertaking a program of teaching, research, …

Indian Gaming And Tribal Sovereignty: Vulnerable, Provisional, Contested, Sandra Faiman-Silva

Anthropology Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Photograph Of The Extraction Crew, Steve Shaffer

Indian Head Rock Project

Photograph of the Indian Head Rock extraction crew on the day of the Rock's removal.

Marketplace Plants Used In Ceremonial Cleansing Among Andean Qechuans Of Ecuador, Sushma Shrestha

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Ceremonial cleansing plays a vital role in indigenous societies where ‘folk illnesses’ such as susto (fright) are common. Indigenous Andean Qechuans commonly use cleansing plants to treat susto, and related ‘folk illnesses’.The purpose of this study was to characterize and compare market plants and to define methods and knowledge used in ceremonial cleansing among Ecuadorian Qechuans. Interviews were conducted with 22 vendors at 13 marketplaces. Regression Analysis (RA) determined preferentially selected plant families and residual value of RA determined the highest and lowest preferentially selected plant families.Hierarchical cluster analysis and coefficient of similarity demonstrated the relationship between marketplaces and cleansing …

Investigating The Heart Of A Community: Archaeological Excavations At The African Meeting House, Boston, Massachusetts, David B. Landon, Teresa Dujnic, Kate Descoteaux, Susan Jacobucci, Darios Felix, Marisa Patalano, Ryan Kennedy, Diana Gallagher, Ashley Peles, Jonathan Patton, Heather Trigg, Allison Bain, Cheryl Laroche

Andrew Fiske Memorial Center for Archaeological Research Publications

In collaboration with the Museum of African American History, an archaeological research team from the University of Massachusetts Boston carried out a data recovery excavation at the African Meeting House on Beacon Hill. The African Meeting House was a powerful social institution for 19thcentury Boston’s free black community. The site played an important role in the abolition movement, the creation of educational opportunity, and other community action for social and political equality. The Meeting House was originally built in 1806, and renovations in preparation for the 2006 bi-centennial celebration prompted an investigation of areas of the property to be impacted …

Four Poems: Snakehead Fish; Departures; Capitol; And Preparations For Southeast Asia, Bryan Thao Worra

Journal of Southeast Asian American Education and Advancement

No abstract provided.

Biopoem, Wongsakorn Chanseawrassamee

Journal of Southeast Asian American Education and Advancement

No abstract provided.

Revealing Santa Clara University's Prehistoric Past: Ca-Sci-755, Evidence From The Arts & Sciences Building Project, Richard Carlson, Joe Hendrickson, Jessica Noller, Vanessa Rodriguez, Cindy Arrington, Kevin Bender, Lisa Brown, Sandra Kelly, Jong Lee, Katherine Mcbride, Jennifer Peritz, Peter Preciado, Ryan Vandenbroeck, Margaret A. Graham, Mark G. Hylkema, Karen Oeh, Lorna C. Pierce, Russell K. Skowronek, Victoria Wu

Research Manuscript Series

This monograph, bearing the unpretentious subtitle "Evidence from the Arts and Sciences Building" stands as an elegant contradiction to all of those easy excuses. Russell Skowronek and his co-investigators have produced a report that stands not only as a template for what can be done with a modest data-set of ten prehistoric burials, but as a template for cooperation with the Ohlone descendants of those who, well over a millennium ago, carefully prepared their loved ones for eternity.

Working from ancient maps and city directories, Carlson and associates have produced a fine summary of virtually everyone who ever occupied what …

The Good, The Bad, And The Inverted: Rhetorical Strategies In The Portrayal Of Cultures In Ruth Benedict's Patterns Of Culture And Margaret Mead's Sex And Temperament In Three Primitive Societies, Phillip Guddemi

Pacific Studies

Patterns of Culture and Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies, published a year apart, have a startlingly parallel structure. Discussions of anthropological method open both; the question of the individual and deviance closes both. The triad of cultures in each book is arranged in the order of "the good, the bad, and the inverted." The first culture emphasizes cooperation and nurturance, the second competition and discord. The third culture in each inverts some feature of Western society, either in the economic realm (Kwakiutl) or in that of gendered personality (Tchambuli). Cultural inversion places Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead in …

Margaret Mead's Other Samoa: Rereading Social Organization Of Manu'a, Paul Shankman

Pacific Studies

Derek Freeman focused his attention on Margaret Mead's Coming of Age in Samoa to such an extent that her ethnography of Samoa, Social Organization of Manu'a, has been neglected. This professional monograph demonstrates Mead's credibility as an ethnographer and as a modern student of social organization. While Freeman believed that Mead was young, naive, and gullible, a closer examination of Social Organization of Manu'a indicates that she was energetic, resourceful, perceptive, and theoretically sophisticated. Any evaluation of Mead's Samoan research should include this enduring contribution to our knowledge of the islands.

Vol. 28 Nos. 3/4 (2005): Pacific Studies Full Issue, The Jonathan Nāpela Center For Hawaiian And Pacific Islands Studies

Pacific Studies

Pacific Studies is published two times a year by The Jonathan Nāpela Center for Hawaiian and Pacific Studies, Brigham Young University Hawai‘i #1979, 55–220 Kulanui Street, Lāʻie, Hawai‘i 96762, but responsibility for opinions expressed in the articles rests with the authors alone. Subscription rate is US $26.00 yearly, payable to The Jonathan Nāpela Center for Hawaiian and Pacific Studies. The Jonathan Nāpela Center for Hawaiian and Pacific Studies (formerly The Pacific Institute) is an organization funded by Brigham Young University Hawai‘i. The Center assists the University in meeting its cultural and educational goals by undertaking a program of teaching, research, …

Vol. 28 Nos. 3/4 (2005): Pacific Studies Front Matter, The Jonathan Nāpela Center For Hawaiian And Pacific Islands Studies

Pacific Studies

Front Matter for the Vol. 28, Nos. 3/4-Sept/Dec 2005 edition of the Pacific Studies Journal.

Margaret Mead And Psychology: The Education Of An Anthropologist, Patricia A. Francis

Pacific Studies

Margaret Mead's brand of anthropology was deeply rooted in the psychological. Mead began her career in psychology, taking a master's degree in that field but switching to anthropology at the urging of Ruth Benedict. Mead's background in psychology equipped her particularly well to embark on her field trip to American Samoa in 1925. While the anthropological training of her day did not emphasize practical aspects of conducting fieldwork, Mead's training in psychology taught her how to conduct case studies, design experiments, and measure results quantitatively and qualitatively. Mead's family background also contributed to her training as a social scientist, particularly …

Margaret Mead's Individual In Culture, Or Cultures And Personalities Without Embarrassment, Gerald Sullivan

Pacific Studies

Margaret Mead is associated with the rubric "culture and personality." Mead herself preferred the formula "individual in culture." This essay traces Mead's uses of her preferred formula from 1928 through 1946. Over the course of this period, Mead developed her idea from its initial concerns with the "role" of the individual in Samoan culture in ways which came to focus on the person as the conjunction of biological, developmental (or "genetic"), and cultural processes. The essay examines both published, if now little known, materials and Ruth Benedict's notes taken during a course on "The Study of the Individual in Culture" …

The Correspondence Associated With Margaret Mead's Samoa Research: What Does It Really Tell Us?, James Côté

Pacific Studies

Derek Freeman based much of his critique of Margaret Mead's Samoa research on the letters she exchanged with Franz Boas and others. However, as I have indicated elsewhere (Cöté 1998, 2000a, 2000b, 2000c), Freeman seriously misrepresented the content and intention of these letters. The present article extends the examination of archival material by reviewing letters from the late 1920s associated with the publication of Coming of Age in Samoa, which reveal that Mead originally wrote it as a commercial book, and that she was heavily influenced by her publisher to further sensationalize her account of life in Samoa. Additional archived …

Contesting The Erotic Zone: Margaret Mead's Fieldwork Photographs Of Samoa, Sharon W. Tiffany

Pacific Studies

Margaret Mead's photographs taken during her first ethnographic fieldwork in the South Pacific have received little scholarly attention. While some of Mead's images borrowed from earlier photographic conventions, her pictures also challenged prevailing representations of Polynesian women. Mead's photos experimented with alternative visual narratives about Samoan women's bodies and their everyday lives, in contrast to signature images of Pacific Islander women as commoditized sex objects, exoticized women of power, or as romanticized primitives. Mead's first effort at using a camera in the field provided a spectrum of representations useful for re-interpreting female embodiment and the gender politics of the photographic …

Margaret Mead And Gregory Bateson In The Sepik, 1938: A Timely Polemic From A Lost Anthropological Efflorescence, Eric Kline Silverman

Pacific Studies

Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson's 1938 study of a Iatmul-speaking village in the middle Sepik River, Papua New Guinea, remains an anthropological efflorescence. At the very least, this collaboration resulted in a well-known fieldwork photo: Mead and Bateson in the famous "mosquito room." Ironically, little is actually known about the 1938 undertaking, which remains, however famous, sadly obscure. Towards correcting this misjudgment, I have two objectives. First, I want to provide a selective overview of the 1938 project, focusing on its unique outlook, tone, voices, morality, and theoretical perspectives. But my objective is not merely historical and descriptive. Hence, my …

Using And Abusing The Works Of The Ancestors: Margaret Mead, Mary Catherine Bateson

Pacific Studies

Because early-twentieth-century anthropologists worked under very different circumstances from those of anthropologists today, they have become easy to criticize and hard to use fruitfully. Finding the appropriate use of Margaret Mead's work today is a goal she would have felt at home with. Criticism and correction are essential, but opportunistic uses of Mead's work, legacy, and persona, like the attack by Derek Freeman that made him famous, are essentially wasteful and exploitative. By focusing attention on Mead's earliest work, Freeman obscured her lifelong contribution and undermined concepts she helped embed in American thinking, like the indispensable (if vague) concept of …

Introduction: The Essentialization Of Margaret Mead, Nancy Mcdowell

Pacific Studies

Margaret Mead and her contributions to Pacific anthropology play a large role in the discipline, and anthropologists need to consider her work carefully and in context. Evaluators of Mead are often guilty of simplifying her work rather than assessing its full complexity. The reasons for this phenomenon are examined here: several commentators have not read the work carefully, while others select only some aspects of it to support their analyses. Many misrepresentations are the result of a failure to consider her work in its appropriate historical context, and a few employ Mead as a symbol or trope for broader phenomena, …