Race, Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Studies Commons^™

Living Small, Kim Meredith

Pacific Studies

This story traces Luisa’s quiet reflections during a bus ride through the city and into the suburbs, blending present experiences with vivid memories of a full, familial past. As she recalls life with her husband in her grandparents’ home and her grandmother’s moving speech at her university graduation, we see Luisa grappling with the contrast between her youthful dreams and her current life. Her grandmother once called her “a dreamer” and supported her late-night intellectual curiosity, forging a bond that shaped Luisa’s path. When a coworker sits beside her on the bus, Luisa is drawn back into the present, revealing …

Manōwai, Victoria Nālani Kneubuhl

Pacific Studies

This story follows Kanoe, a woman who retreats to rural Kona to recover from an emotionally abusive relationship with Frank, a manipulative academic. Through journal-like reflections and quiet moments in the heat-soaked coastal town, Kanoe processes her heartbreak and rediscovers herself. Her interactions with locals—particularly the wise and warm-hearted Luisa—reveal a rhythm of life grounded in history, resilience, and a subtle but profound sense of healing. As Kanoe begins writing again and exploring her surroundings, her journey shifts from escape to restoration, where stories, memory, and new connections light the path forward.

It Began With A Question, Konai Helu Thaman

Pacific Studies

This poem reflects a quiet, profound moment of surrender and trust. Rooted in timelessness and uncertainty, the speaker is called into action not by clarity, but by faith. Despite feeling disconnected from place and time, they answer a rare question with a brave "yes," grounding themselves in something enduring—a rock that "noticed" them. It’s a meditation on belonging, voice, and hope whispered into a weary world.

Walking With My Grandmothers #1, Jewel Castro

Pacific Studies

Image of three women, two are grandmothers

The Night Woman, Sia Figiel

Pacific Studies

This evocative poem honors the resilience, knowledge, and sacred power of the “Night Woman”—a symbolic figure who endures judgment and violence from the dominant “Day People.” Though wounded, she hides her pain behind silence and laughter, carrying ancient wisdom of the natural and cosmic world. In a transformative act at the ocean’s edge, she sheds societal expectations (“Day Skin”) to embrace her true self, birthing new generations whose identities are written in the stars. It’s a lyrical celebration of hidden strength, ancestral legacy, and feminine sovereignty.

Diagnosis, Caroline Sinavaiana

Pacific Studies

This poem captures a moment of tense uncertainty, likely surrounding a medical diagnosis revealed by ultrasound. The natural imagery—sea of shadows, swaying grass, warring rain and wind—mirrors the speaker’s emotional turbulence. Faced with a 50/50 prognosis, they turn inward, preparing for struggle or protection by invoking ancestral strength, symbolized by “ancient arrows” and a tightened bowstring. It’s a poetic meditation on fear, resilience, and readiness in the face of potential loss.

Butterfly Thighs Flutter By The Bye, Rosanna Raymond

Pacific Studies

An artwork displaying a woman in sepia tones in front of a background of text.

Waimanalo Litany, Caroline Sinavaiana

Pacific Studies

This elegiac poem, “Waimanalo Litany,” written in memory of Mahealani Dudoit, is a lyrical meditation on loss, healing, and the sacred presence of place. With vivid imagery of ocean, land, and ancestral spirits, the poet weaves a prayerful plea for mercy and peace across beloved Pacific landscapes. The repeated invocations to the spirits of moana, Koʻolau, Makapuʻu, and Waimānalo evoke a sense of cultural rootedness and spiritual continuity, even amid physical pain and environmental disruption. It is both a personal tribute and a collective chant of remembrance.

My Pigeon, From The Samoan, Caroline Sinavaiana

Pacific Studies

This poem is a lyrical elegy expressing love, longing, and loss through the metaphor of a pigeon in flight. Rooted in Samoan tradition, it evokes a deep emotional landscape where nature mirrors the ache of separation. The forest becomes both a literal and symbolic space of mystery and mourning, as the speaker watches and waits in vain for a beloved who has disappeared. Through its gentle cadence and sensory imagery, the poem captures the enduring ache of absence and the hope—however faint—that love might return on silent wings.

Dialoguing Across The Pacific: Kūkā Kūkā And The Cultivation Of Wahine Maoli Identities, Noelani Goodyear-Ka'opua, Lana Sue Ka‘O ̄Pua

Pacific Studies

Hilihewa ka mana‘o ke‘ole ke kūkākūkā. As thoughts can become miswoven when there is no discussion, so it is with our identities as Wahine Maoli, Native Hawaiian women, and the ensuing choices we make about how to live in this world. Other recent collaborative articles by Kānaka Maoli have used kūkākūkā to refer to face-to-face “talk-story” sessions. This kūkākūkā is different, as one of us is living in Hawai‘i and the other in California. We used e-mail and telephone conversations to enable kūkākūkā spanning distances of time and space. As we communicate across generations and across our ocean home, we …

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, …

Indians In Unexpected Places (Book Review), Jeffrey P. Cain

English Faculty Publications

Book review by Jeffrey Cain:

Deloria, Philip J. Indians in Unexpected Places. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004. ISBN: 9780700613441; 9780700614592 (pbk.)

Black Heritage Stamp Series: Ella Fitzgerald, United States Postal Service. Stamp Division

Rodney Lawrence Hurst, Sr. Stamp Collection

Informational pages for Ella Fitzgerald Commemorative stamp – Black Heritage Series, includes images of the stamps, information about the physical stamps and biographical information for Ella Fitzgerald. First issued January 10, 2007, 30th in a series.

'Remember Me?' The Life And Legacy Of Jean Byers Sampson, University Of Southern Maine, Joseph S. Wood, Abraham J. Peck, Mark Lapping, Margaret Ann Brown

Publications (Annual Event Catalog)

In April 1961, Jean Byers Sampson wrote to the director of branches of the NAACP notifying him that she was involved with establishing a branch in Lewiston-Auburn. Because Jean had worked for the national branch of the NAACP in the late 1940s, she began her letter with a friendly “Remember me?” It is a short, intimate phrase that characterized how Jean worked throughout her life. “‘Remember Me?’ The Life and Legacy of Jean Byers Sampson,” the third annual event of the Sampson Center, is a tribute to how one person’s life changed Maine.

Table of Contents:

The Mosaic of Maine …

"The Desired Effect": Pontiac's Rebellion And The Native American Struggle To Survive In Britain's North American Conquest, Joseph D. Gasparro

The Gettysburg Historical Journal

Ravaged by war and in debt after its victory in the French and Indian War, Britain was not only recuperating, but rejoicing over the signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1763. This treaty officially ended the fighting and gave Britain all of the land east of the Mississippi River, formerly owned by the French. The ink on the treaty was barely dry when a new insurgence arose in British occupied North America. Native Americans, dissatisfied after the war with their position as conquered people and not as allies, rebelled collectively against British colonists and forts along the frontier. Before …

Currents Of Liberty, Seas Of Change: Black Sailors As Subversive Agents Of Freedom In The Early Republic, Skye Montgomery

The Gettysburg Historical Journal

Years after being kidnapped from his native Ibo village as a young boy, Olaudah Equiano vividly recalled his wonder at seeing a European ship for the first time. Although he failed to realize it at the time, that same ship, and the Atlantic currents it navigated, would shortly transport him and millions of his countrymen to lives of slavery on the far shores of a distant continent. In addition to providing a convenient avenue for the initial transport of slaves, water enabled the development of a trade network linking scattered plantations in the Caribbean to centers of trade in North …

'The Senator And The Socialite: The True Story Of America's First Black Dynasty,' By Lawrence Otis Graham, Eric S. Yellin

History Faculty Publications

Lawrence Otis Graham attempts to tell the important story of the Bruces and their legacy in The Senator and the Socialite: The True Story of America’s First Black Dynasty. Starting his story before the Civil War, Graham follows the “First Black Dynasty” through its ultimate fall from grace in mid-twentieth-century New York City. As with his previous bestseller, Our Kind of People: Inside America’s Black Upper Class (1999), Graham takes on the ambitious task of capturing the meaning and importance of an underappreciated group of American’s.

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 …

Origins Of The Jingle Dress Dance, Mark G. Thiel

Library Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.