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Pacific Islands Languages and Societies

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Articles 361 - 390 of 552

Full-Text Articles in Indigenous Studies

Maori Women Researching Ourselves, Ngahuia Te Awekotuku Mar 2007

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.

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Walking With My Grandmothers #2, Jewel Castro Mar 2007

Walking With My Grandmothers #2, Jewel Castro

Pacific Studies

Artwork portrays three women, two are grandmothers.

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Prologue: Special Issue Women Writing Oceania–Weaving The Sails Of Vaka, Caroline Sinavaiana, J. Kehaulani Kauanui Mar 2007

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.

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Piharamata Tumahai Smoking Her Taho, Marie-Hélène Villierme Mar 2007

Piharamata Tumahai Smoking Her Taho, Marie-Hélène Villierme

Pacific Studies

Photograph of an elderly woman smoking.

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Niudity (I-Iv), Teresia Teaiwa Mar 2007

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 …

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Tradition, Jewel Castro Mar 2007

Tradition, Jewel Castro

Pacific Studies

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

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Woven Worlds, Konai Helu Thaman Mar 2007

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.

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Communicating Tradition In Samoan American Art: An Artist’S Reflection, Jewel Castro Mar 2007

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 …

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2nd Stanza, "Samoa," From Meet You In Hawaiki, Rosanna Raymond Mar 2007

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

Pacific Studies

An image of a woman with a poem.

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Walking With My Grandmothers #3, Jewel Castro Mar 2007

Walking With My Grandmothers #3, Jewel Castro

Pacific Studies

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

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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 Mar 2007

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, …

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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 Sep 2005

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 …

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Margaret Mead's Other Samoa: Rereading Social Organization Of Manu'a, Paul Shankman Sep 2005

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.

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

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, …

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

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.

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Margaret Mead And Psychology: The Education Of An Anthropologist, Patricia A. Francis Sep 2005

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 …

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Margaret Mead's Individual In Culture, Or Cultures And Personalities Without Embarrassment, Gerald Sullivan Sep 2005

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" …

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The Correspondence Associated With Margaret Mead's Samoa Research: What Does It Really Tell Us?, James Côté Sep 2005

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 …

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Contesting The Erotic Zone: Margaret Mead's Fieldwork Photographs Of Samoa, Sharon W. Tiffany Sep 2005

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 …

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Margaret Mead And Gregory Bateson In The Sepik, 1938: A Timely Polemic From A Lost Anthropological Efflorescence, Eric Kline Silverman Sep 2005

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 …

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Using And Abusing The Works Of The Ancestors: Margaret Mead, Mary Catherine Bateson Sep 2005

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 …

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Introduction: The Essentialization Of Margaret Mead, Nancy Mcdowell Sep 2005

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, …

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Tales From The Internet: Margaret Mead's Legacy In American Culture, Merrily Stover Sep 2005

Tales From The Internet: Margaret Mead's Legacy In American Culture, Merrily Stover

Pacific Studies

This essay explores the importance of Margaret Mead for American society as revealed through the cultural domain of the Internet. By examining sites accessible through popular search engines, the essay analyzes Mead's life using Joseph Campbell's myth of the hero's journey. Mead's legend emphasizes her journey to far places and her return with important gifts of knowledge for society. Mead is also a distinctly American hero by representing values of pioneering, defense of personal freedom, and commitment to bettering society. The recognition of the importance of culture on human behavior, Mead's own life as a role model for people, the …

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Freedom House In The Pacific: Democratic Advancement In Fourteen Island States, Dag Anckar Mar 2005

Freedom House In The Pacific: Democratic Advancement In Fourteen Island States, Dag Anckar

Pacific Studies

The Freedom House surveys of political rights and civil liberties in the countries of the world show that the small Pacific island states perform remarkably well as democratic units. A further analysis of the surveys identifies two characteristic traits of democracy Pacific style. First, the general trend over time is one of improvement and advancement. Second, this fortunate development is promoted by betterments in political rights rather than civil liberties. This probably reflects efforts in the region to introduce concessions to traditional authority. However, the Freedom House conception of democracy does not include considerations of policy. Less than prosperous and …

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Expressions Of Interest: Informal Usury In Urban Papua New Guinea, Michael Goddard Mar 2005

Expressions Of Interest: Informal Usury In Urban Papua New Guinea, Michael Goddard

Pacific Studies

This article examines the nature and practice of small scale usury in a "grassroots" urban community in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea. In this environment the moneylenders are people of limited financial resources, barely richer than their clients. The latter are often self-employed in informal occupations. Using examples from cases where usurers have taken defaulting debtors to urban "village courts," I show how debt is negotiated by usurers and clients, and I indicate differences between local attitudes toward usury and those that are generally held in Western societies. I discuss prevalent views in social science literature about the influence of …

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Neville Proof Fence, Antonio De Paulo Buti Mar 2005

Neville Proof Fence, Antonio De Paulo Buti

Pacific Studies

The separation of Aboriginal children from their families formed a central plank of Aboriginal affairs policy in Australia for at least the first six decades of the twentieth century. In no state was the separation policy more pervasive than in Western Australia. And no one individual stands out more in the planning and implementation of the removal or separation policy than Auber Octavius Neville, chief protector of Aborigines in Western Australia from 1915 until 1940. This article focuses on Aboriginal affairs in Western Australia during the Neville era and also on the influence his views and ideas attained on the …

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Vol. 28 Nos. 1/2 (2005): Pacific Studies Front Matter, The Jonathan Nāpela Center For Hawaiian And Pacific Islands Studies Mar 2005

Vol. 28 Nos. 1/2 (2005): Pacific Studies Front Matter, The Jonathan Nāpela Center For Hawaiian And Pacific Islands Studies

Pacific Studies

Front Matter for the Vol. 28, Nos. 1/2-Mar 2005 edition of the Pacific Studies Journal.

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Cultural Constraints And Corrosive Colonization: Western Commerce In Aotearoa/ New Zealand And The Extinction Of The Huia (Heteralocha Acutirostris), Clark S. Monson Mar 2005

Cultural Constraints And Corrosive Colonization: Western Commerce In Aotearoa/ New Zealand And The Extinction Of The Huia (Heteralocha Acutirostris), Clark S. Monson

Pacific Studies

Early Maori occupation of New Zealand was marked by profligate use of avian resources and the resultant extinction of numerous species including the archipelago's famed moas. As in other Polynesian cultures, however, Maoris came to adopt conservation strategies. I suggest that the Maori conservation technique of tapu or rahui - chiefly prohibitions governing the harvest of vulnerable biological resources - offers crucial insights for modern managers. The former efficacy of rahui is examined through a detailed case study of an extinct New Zealand bird - the huia. Formerly protected by the cultural and religious potency of tapu, the huia met …

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Vol. 28 Nos. 1/2 (2005): Pacific Studies Full Issue, The Jonathan Nāpela Center For Hawaiian And Pacific Islands Studies Mar 2005

Vol. 28 Nos. 1/2 (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, …

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Changing Perceptions Of A Missionary-Researcher, Philip Gibbs Svd Dec 2004

Changing Perceptions Of A Missionary-Researcher, Philip Gibbs Svd

Pacific Studies

The missionary-researcher might well begin fieldwork after an existence as book-bound as any Ph.D. candidate. However, the motives for going to live with people differ from those of most academic anthropologists. Whether one has an academic qualification or not, the primary motive for the missionary-researcher is to come to know and understand people so as to share a faith message with them in a meaningful way. The key term is "dialogue" and just how long that dialogue might last is often not a major issue. For the neophyte academic anthropologist and the novice missionary-researcher alike, culture and sharing people's lives …

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