‘Reclamation Road’: A Microhistory Of Massacre Memory In Clear Lake, California, Jeremiah J. Garsha

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

This article is a microhistory of not only the massacre of the indigenous Pomo people in Clear Lake, California, but also the memorialization of this event. It is an examination of two plaques marking the site of the Bloody Island massacre, exploring how memorial representations produce and silence historical memory of genocide under emerging and shifting historical narratives. A 1942 plaque is contextualized to show the co-option of the Pomo and massacre memory by an Anglo-American organization dedicated to settler memory. A 2005 plaque is read as a decentering of this narrative, guiding the viewer through a new hierarchy of …

From Romance To Reality: Images Of Pacific Islanders Across Time And Space, Nancy Lutkehaus, Judith Schachter

Pacific Studies

This article examines the enduring legacy and evolving dynamics of Western representations of the Pacific and its peoples, from early European voyages to contemporary media. This issue marks a shift in disciplinary focus, with anthropologists contributing to a field previously dominated by literary and cultural historians. Through analyses of visual culture, media, and transoceanic connections, the collection interrogates the commodification of culture and the hegemonic influence of Western narratives, while also illuminating the creative and critical responses of Pacific communities navigating these representations in a globalized world.

Jack London’S Pacific Voyage Of Transformation: An Anthropologist Looks At The Cruise Of The Snark (1911), Nancy Lutkehaus

Pacific Studies

This article examines the transformative impact of Jack London’s Pacific voyage aboard the Snark on his views of race and colonialism. Through encounters with both Pacific Islanders and white colonial settlers—missionaries, labor recruiters, and self-styled expatriates—London’s writings reveal a shift in his racial perceptions and self-representation. The Snark voyage played a pivotal role in reshaping London’s literary and ideological engagement with the Pacific and its peoples.

Romanticism And Reality On The Gc: Transnational Māori On The Gold Coast, Sarina Pearson

Pacific Studies

This essay examines the controversy surrounding The GC, a New Zealand reality television series that follows young Māori living on Australia’s Gold Coast, and the cultural debates it sparked about Māori identity, representation, and modernity. By analyzing the show’s reception and its challenge to dominant visual and cultural narratives, the essay explores how primitivism continues to shape public discourse and how Māori media productions can disrupt and redefine the boundaries of indigenous representation.

Representations Of Pacific Islander Identity: Ours And Theirs, Kirsten Mcgavin

Pacific Studies

This article explores how Pacific Islander identities—particularly within diasporic communities in Australia—are shaped through the interplay between stereotypical media portrayals and lived cultural realities. While Western tourism and media have long perpetuated romanticized images of Pacific “paradise,” these depictions often obscure the diversity and complexity of actual Island life. Through case studies—including climate change rallies, community gatherings, and online forums—the article examines how Islanders respond to, resist, and sometimes repurpose outsider stereotypes to articulate self-representations that are both grounded and adaptive. The study highlights the dynamic processes of identity formation in the Pacific diaspora and the ongoing negotiation between authenticity …

Representation As Disaster: Mapping Islands, Climate Change, And Displacement In Oceania, Wolfgang Kempf

Pacific Studies

This study critically examines how Pacific islands and island states are represented at the intersection of global media and popular scientific communication in the context of climate change and sea-level rise. This work contributes to broader scholarship on the media’s role in shaping public understanding of climate change and highlights the need for more accurate, context-sensitive portrayals of island futures.

Anthropophagi In New-York And Other Voyagers, Maria Lepowsky

Pacific Studies

This chapter continues the exploration of maritime cultures of contact by following the post-shipwreck adventures of voyagers in the Pacific in the nineteenth century. The chapter also examines the literary and cultural afterlives of Pacific travel narratives, particularly those of Benjamin Morrell and Thomas Jacobs, whose depictions of islanders influenced canonical works by Poe and Melville. These narratives reveal the contradictory perceptions American sailors held of Pacific peoples—ranging from “cannibal savages” to noble and intelligent individuals—and the enduring tropes of the “noble savage” and “civilized native.” By tracing these voyages and representations, the chapter highlights the early emergence of a …

Imagining The Marshall Islands, Laurence M. Carucci

Pacific Studies

As anthropologists have developed a more critical eye, earlier assumptions about the privileged position of anthropological texts have been dismissed as elitist, self-serving, and paternalistic. Perhaps James Clifford was the first to recognize the limitations of such possessiveness toward these imagined others, but his call for a broader view has been taken up by many in the field. Here, I consider the images of three interlopers, none of them anthropologists, as they each, in separate historical contexts and different positional circumstances, come to imagine Marshall Islanders as certain types of others. A consideration of these accounts reveals a good deal …

Oh, Those Poor Islanders And Threats To An Idyllic Life On A Beautiful Island!, Juliana Flinn

Pacific Studies

This essay examines the representation of Pollap, a Micronesian atoll, in popular media and internet sources, highlighting the contrast between anthropological perspectives and public portrayals. While scholars emphasize indigenous agency and the adaptive use of external influences, popular media—ranging from Peace Corps blogs to disaster reports—often depict islanders through romanticized or victimized lenses. These portrayals reflect more about Western cultural fantasies and assumptions than about the lived realities of Pollapese people. Romantic narratives emphasize idyllic simplicity and harmony with nature, while disaster coverage frames islanders as helpless and dependent on external aid. Notably absent are accounts of local responses or …

Vol. 38 No. 1/2 (2015): 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$40.00 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, and …

From Romance To Reality: An Epilogue, Niko Besnier

Pacific Studies

This epilogue reflects on the political nature of representation, particularly in the context of the Pacific Islands, where images and narratives have long been shaped by colonial encounters and global media. Drawing on historical and contemporary examples—from Enlightenment-era voyages to modern climate change discourse—the essay highlights how Pacific Islanders have both been subjects of external representations and active participants in shaping their own identities.

Vol. 38 No. 1/2 (2015): Pacific Studies Front Matter, The Jonathan Nāpela Center For Hawaiian And Pacific Islands Studies

Pacific Studies

Front Matter for the Vol. 38, No 1/2-Aug 2015 edition of the Pacific Studies Journal.

Reclaiming Paradise: Cinema And Hawaiian Nationhood, Judith Schachter

Pacific Studies

This essay explores the enduring power of the “paradise” trope in cinematic portrayals of Hawai‘i and its evolving role in articulating Native Hawaiian nationhood. While Western media has long romanticized Hawai‘i through idyllic imagery of natural beauty and sensuality, contemporary indigenous filmmakers have begun to reclaim and repurpose these visual conventions. Rather than marking a shift from fantasy to realism, these films strategically reframe romantic imagery to assert cultural autonomy, political sovereignty, and a renewed relationship to the land (‘āina). Through analysis of both outsider and insider productions, the essay reveals how visual narratives critique colonial histories and resist hegemonic …

From Colonial Pomp To Tourism Reality: Commodification And Cannibalization Of The Fijian Firewalking Ceremony, Guido Carlo Pigliasco

Pacific Studies

In 1935 the rite [firewalking] was performed before two members of the British Medical Association. The eminent doctors examined the men carefully before and after the ceremony. . . . The men of Mbengga [sic], not knowing of these learned disputations, unconcernedly carry on the strange custom of their ancestors (Luis Marden, National Geographic, October 1958: 560–61).

The Fijians had another way of disposing of the bodies. They ate them. . . . This was a culture devoted to killing, and when there wasn’t an enemy around to meet their needs, chiefs took to killing the commoners among them …

Does Market Integration Buffer Risk, Erode Traditional Sharing Practices And Increase Inequality? A Test Among Bolivian Forager-Farmers, Michael Gurven, Adrian V. Jaeggi, Christopher Von Rueden, Paul L. Hooper, Hillard Kaplan

ESI Publications

Sharing and exchange are common practices for minimizing food insecurity in rural populations. The advent of markets and monetization in egalitarian indigenous populations presents an alternative means of managing risk, with the potential impact of eroding traditional networks. We test whether market involvement buffers several types of risk and reduces traditional sharing behavior among Tsimane Amerindians of the Bolivian Amazon. Results vary based on type of market integration and scale of analysis (household vs. village), consistent with the notion that local culture and ecology shape risk management strategies. Greater wealth and income were unassociated with the reliance on others for …

Talking Back, With Reawakened Voices: Analyzing The Potential For Indigenous California Languages Coursework At California Polytechnic State University, Logan Cooper

Ethnic Studies

The legacy of colonialism in the United States, including genocidal practices and cultural assimilation, has left Indigenous languages endangered. Native peoples, scholars, and activists have been working to revive and heal the languages of America’s first peoples, and the cultures those languages speak to, yet more work remains in the field of language revitalization. California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo currently does not offer any course specifically teaching or discussing Indigenous languages, even those of the Chumash people who know the San Luis Obispo area as their ancestral homelands.

By synthesizing revitalization and Indigenous activist literature with the narratives …

Depression As Sickness Behavior? A Test Of The Host Defense Hypothesis In A High Pathogen Population, Jonathan Stieglitz, Benjamin C. Trumble, Melissa Emery Thompson, Aaron D. Blackwell, Hillard Kaplan, Michael Gurven

ESI Publications

Sadness is an emotion universally recognized across cultures, suggesting it plays an important functional role in regulating human behavior. Numerous adaptive explanations of persistent sadness interfering with daily functioning (hereafter “depression”) have been proposed, but most do not explain frequent bidirectional associations between depression and greater immune activation. Here we test several predictions of the host defense hypothesis, which posits that depression is part of a broader coordinated evolved response to infection or tissue injury (i.e. “sickness behavior”) that promotes energy conservation and reallocation to facilitate immune activation. In a high pathogen population of lean and relatively egalitarian Bolivian foragerhorticulturalists, …

Native Interactions And Economic Exchange: A Re-Evaluation Of Plymouth Colony Collections, Kellie J. Bowers

Graduate Masters Theses

This research furthers our understanding of colonial-Native relations by identifying and analyzing artifacts that indicate interaction between Native Americans and English settlers in Plymouth Colony archaeological collections. This project explores the nature of these interactions, exposing material culture's role in both social and economic exchanges. Selected 17th-century collections were excavated in modern Plymouth, Massachusetts, and nearby Marshfield and Kingston. My examination includes identifying materials exchanged between the Wampanoag and English settler groups in archaeological collections through scholarly literature and comparative 17th-century sites. This project draws on the documentary resources to provide contextualized insights on the relationships formed by and around …

Origins Of An Unmarked Georgia Cemetery Using Ancient Dna Analysis, Andrew T. Ozga, Raúl Y. Tito, Brian M. Kemp, Hugh Matternes, Alexandra Obregon-Tito, Leslie Neal, Cecil M. Lewis, Jr.

Human Biology Open Access Pre-Prints

Determining the origins of those buried within undocumented cemeteries is of incredible importance to historical archaeologists and in many cases, the nearby communities. In the case of Avondale Burial Place, a cemetery in Bibb County, Georgia, in use from 1820 to 1950, all written documentation of those interred within it has been lost. Osteological and archaeological evidence alone could not describe, with confidence, the ancestral origins of the 101 individuals buried there. In the present study, we utilize ancient DNA extraction methods to investigate the origins of Avondale Burial Place through the use of well-preserved skeletal fragments from 20 individuals …

Study Of Prestige And Resource Control Using Fish Remains From Cathlapotle, A Plankhouse Village On The Lower Columbia River, J. Shoshana Rosenberg

Dissertations and Theses

Social inequality is a trademark of Northwest Coast native societies, and the relationship between social prestige and resource control, particularly resource ownership, is an important research issue on the Northwest Coast. Faunal remains are one potential but as yet underutilized path for examining this relationship. My thesis work takes on this approach through the analysis of fish remains from the Cathlapotle archaeological site (45CL1). Cathlapotle is a large Chinookan village site located on the Lower Columbia River that was extensively excavated in the 1990s. Previous work has established prestige distinctions between houses and house compartments, making it possible to examine …

Indigenous Land Rights Of The Khoi In South Africa, Chelsea Wilkins

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

Upon discussions in classes at James Madison University, I became aware of the Khoi people. I became interested in their way of life, as well as the implications of globalization and industrialization worldwide. After researching the topic, I decided I wanted to not only write my thesis on this topic, but I wanted to travel to South Africa to learn more. I wanted to know how a refreshment station at the Cape for the Dutch East India Company transformed into a fight for land that ultimately led to the extreme disenfranchisement of the Khoi people and their way of life. …

Blood From Blood And Earth From Earth: Examining Cultural Identity In Second And Third Generation Hispanic Americans, Caroline E. Culbreth

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

To what extent does a Mexican American identify with Mexico? With the U.S.? How are these identities formed? Through a series of semi-structured interviews with second- and third-generation descendants of migrants emigrating from seven Spanish-speaking Latin American countries, I explore what it means to be Hispanic American. I begin by examining the informants’ perceptions of boundaries between the broad Hispanic and American ethnic groups and their self-defined positions relative to those boundaries. Having established this position, I then analyze the impact of external conceptions of authenticity and access to “ethnic raw materials” in their construction of this ethnic identity. Findings …

Life History Theory And School-Age Pregnancy: Review And Application, Anna Rozman

Honors Scholar Theses

The United States currently holds one of the highest teenage pregnancy rates in the developed world, but many Americans, including policy makers, view adolescent childbearing as a societal problem that stems from negligence, promiscuity, and poor decision making. This project seeks to frame the institution of school-age motherhood through the lens of Life History Theory, which posits that early reproduction is an adaptation in the face of harsh conditions and high extrinsic mortality rates. This assertion is supported by evidence that adolescent childbearing has been the norm for most of human history, and continues to be practiced in natural fertility …

The Theology And Agency Of Love As The Substance Of Kingian Non-Violent Philosophy And Activism., Matthew Quainoo

Senior Honors Projects

The theology of Love focuses on King’s understanding of God as love:

A Research Abstract (Project Summary)

Problem: Almost 50 years after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., controversy continues to swirl around the motivational forces that inspired the nonviolence approach employed by King in his fight for equality for African Americans, the economically disadvantaged and victims of injustice through peaceful protest. Some scholars argue that Kings was inspired by such advocates of nonviolence such as Mahatma Gandhi and Buddha Shakyamuni. Others believe that Dr. King’s philosophy of nonviolence was an expression of the Christian theology of God …

Traveling Exhibit Native Voices: Native Peoples’ Concepts Of Health And Illness, Patricia Bradley, Laura J. Hall, Gale Hannigan

Posters and Presentations

This exhibit, organized by the National Library of Medicine and hosted at UNM, explores the intersections of health, illness, and culture among Native American, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian communities. Through oral histories, healers, elders, and other key figures recount the impact of epidemics, land loss, and cultural disruption on Native health. The exhibit presents an inspiring narrative of resilience, endurance, and self-determination. Curated locally by Patricia Bradley, Laura J. Hall, and Gale Hannigan, it was displayed at the Domenici Center for Health Sciences Education. April 22, 2015 - October 18, 2015

Education, Crystal C. Gray

Eddie Mabry Diversity Award

Education is a spoken word poem that explores many aspects of the African American struggle within (self-knowledge). It starts with an African American college student who is disappointed with the lack of courses about her culture. Most curricula in the United States tend to be from a Eurocentric perspective, leaving out a multitude of information about people of color. All groups of people of color have unique experiences, however, African Americans have the most known (or perhaps I should say, unknown) history. The standard explanation of their existence is often limited to the start of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, when …

Stoning In Iran: A Sexist And Overlooked Practice, Megan R. Haugh

What All Americans Should Know About Women in the Muslim World

This paper seeks to dissect and expose the ancient practice of stoning in Iran, and to analyze the injustices that are built into this punishment.

Language As The Foundation Of Identity Among Sherpa Youth In Nepal, Joshua H. Ginder

Student Publications

This paper explores how young Sherpas in Nepal use their language as a tool for identifying themselves as uniquely Sherpa in a mutlicultural Nepal. By analyzing the way Sherpas use their language in social settings and at a radio station, the author suggests the Sherpa language is perhaps the only truly unique quality that delineates Sherpas from other Nepalis.

What's Below The Peak? Perceptions Of Media From Those That Live Below The World's Most Famous Mountain, Jonah P. Lucas

Student Publications

This research seeks to explore the perceptions the Sherpa people in the Khumbu region have on the media that has been created about them and their communities. Interviews conducted in the Khumbu region of Nepal with a variety of individuals gave insight into how different socio-economic and educational backgrounds affect these perceptions. This research found that all Sherpa are aware to some extent of the media about them, and its biggest effect is the international tourism trade that it promotes. Furthermore, journalists visiting the region are regarded as normal tourists, and the work they do is considered accurate and suitable …

The Rock Abides, Mike James

Indian Head Rock Project

Article published by Mike James of the Ashland Daily Independent on March 30, 2015 on the storage of the Indian Head Rock at the Greenup County garage.