Indigenous 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, …

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.)

"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 …

Colonial Constructs And Legally Sanctioned Sexually Violent Consequences In R V. Edmondson, Nicholas Bonokoski

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

What kind of a system or process would portray a twelve-year-old girl from the Yellow Quill First Nation as a sexual threat to three twenty-something white men, who promising her a ride home, picked her up and got her drunk? The answer: The Canadian legal system. In R v Edmondson a twelve-year old Aboriginal girl, who was sexually assaulted by Dean Edmondson, Jeffrey Brown, and Jeffrey Kindrat from Tisdale Saskatchewan, was portrayed by the judge as a "sexual aggressor". This paper focuses on the trial of Dean Edmondson in which, according to Judge Kovatch, the girls "sexual aggression" led to …

Origins Of The Jingle Dress Dance, Mark G. Thiel

Library Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Black Elk's Legacy, Mark G. Thiel

Library Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Draft Effects Report: Potential Transfer Of Garrison Project Lands Within The Fort Berthold Reservation Boundaries, Pursuant To The Fort Berthold Mineral Restoration Act, Us Army Corps Of Engineers, Omaha District, Nebraska

US Government Documents Related to Indigenous Nations

This report, dated May 2006, from the United States (US) Army Corps of Engineers (Omaha District, Nebraska) explains the potential transfer of unused lands from the Garrison Dam Project back to the Three Affiliated Tribes of Fort Berthold Reservation. The land transfer proposed to return a portion of land out of the 153,000 acres taken by the US Government for the construction of the Garrison Dam. The authority of this transfer is granted by the Fort Berthold Mineral Restoration Act of 1984 (Public Law 98-602). This report is broken into four sections: Introduction, Background, Proposed Determination, Public Comment and Response. …

Race, Nation, And Religion In The Americas, Edited By Henry Goldschmidt And Elizabeth Mcalister, R. Bryan Bademan

History Faculty Publications

Book review by R. Bryan Bademan.

Goldschmidt, Henry and Elizabeth McAlister, eds. Race, Nation, and Religion in the Americas. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.

ISBN 978-0195149197

Native America History, Comparative Genocide And The Holocaust: Historiography, Debate And Critical Analysis, Brenden W. Rensink

Department of History: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This study explores the complex issues surrounding comparative genocide studies and how Native American history relates to this field. Historical contexts for Native American historiography, particularly the scholarship of Vine Deloria, Jr., are examined. In addition, the manifestation of some problematic trends in the field is detailed through the mordant debate between scholars of native America and the Jewish Holocaust. Arguments over Holocaust uniqueness and how the depopulation of Native America should be classified typifies how certain aspects of comparative genocide studies have a propensity for subjectively motivated and biased methodology. Finally, a case study using the historiography of the …

Peace Medals And The Great Father, Mark G. Thiel

Library Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

The Seven Years' War In New York State: Introduction, Timothy J. Shannon

History Faculty Publications

Ask the average person on the street about the Seven Years' War and you are likely to get a blank stare. Try again, only this time call the conflict "The French and Indian War" and you might get a faint smile of recognition. Take a different approach: ask random strangers their opinion about The Last of the Mohicans. Many will tell you they loved it, although they will more likely be thinking about Daniel Day-Lewis than James Fenimore Cooper.

Such has been the fate of one of the most important events in early history. In 2004, the 250th anniversary of …

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 …