Anthropology Commons^™

Recognizing Indians: Place, Identity, History, And The Federal Acknowledgment Of The Ohlone/Costanoan-Esselen Nation, Philip Blair Laverty

Anthropology ETDs

Long considered extinct,' in 1992 the Ohlone/Costanoan-Esselen Nation (OCEN) began its bid to achieve federal acknowledgment as an American Indian tribe. This dissertation is a study of the history of the Native peoples of the Monterey Bay region and the current recognition efforts of OCEN. Using ethnographic and ethnohistorical methodologies and the fieldnotes of John Peabody Harrington as a key archive, it focuses on social and cultural aspects of identity change and community persistence, particularly in relation to land and place. It explores contemporary understandings of precontact political organization as they presently affect the Esselen Nation in the context of …

Feminine Identity Confined: The Archaeology Of Japanese Women At Amache, A Wwii Internment Camp, Dana Ogo Shew

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In 1942, approximately 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry were evacuated from the West Coast to ten different internment camps in the interior of the United States. One of these camps was the Granada Relocation Center, otherwise known as Amache, located in southeastern Colorado. Through the analysis of archaeological material, archival documents, and oral histories, this thesis explores the experiences of Japanese American women interned at Amache. Feminine identity was greatly changed and redefined during confinement. These changes in feminine identity are examined in the public and private arenas of daily life within confinement. The construction of new and altered individual …

Omengeredakl: Aesthetics Of Sound And Vocal Music In Palau, Birgit Abels

Pacific Studies

Omengeredakl are group chants sung on the islands of Palau, West Micronesia. They stand out from the rest of the repertoire of Palauan vocal music because of certain musical features nor found in other extant Palauan songs. The distinctly Palauan sound of this song type, and how this "audible locality" is manifested in song, has at times been used extensively in the localization of Self, and at times less so. The article argues that this has led to changes in the popularity of omengeredakl over the course of the last century.

Ethnoracial Land Restitution: Finding Indians And Fugitive Slave Descendants In The Brazilian Northeast, Jan Hoffman French

Sociology and Anthropology Faculty Publications

This chapter considers how a desire for land and development can lead to a refashioning of ethnoracial identities and identifications. Debates in development studies have centered on culture as an impediment to development. I turn that debate on its head and argue that new assertions of cultural particularity have in certain settings advanced the equity goals of development. The chapter explores the contrasting responses of two neighbouring communities of related African descended, mixed race rural workers who over a 25-year period (1975- 2000), under new laws, were recognized and given land by the Brazilian government. One was identified as an …

Speaking Reflections: Whaikoorero (Speech Making) And Karanga (Welcoming Cry) In Recent Theatre By Maaori Women, Mei-Lin Te-Puea Hansen

Pacific Studies

This essay suggests that contemporary Maaori/bicultural theatre is becoming a potent site for the articulation of Maaori women’s aspirations and concerns. Drawing on Maaori women’s biographical koorero from four plays performed between 1986 and 1997, the essay presents a kind of “vocal kaleidoscope.” This vocal kaleidoscope reflects the complexities of balancing a contemporary existence with a traditional past. Rena Owen’s Te Awa I Tahuti, Riwia Brown’s Roimata, Renee’s Jeannie Once, and Briar Grace-Smith’s Ngaa Pou Waahine render audible gender and cultural identity issues pertinent to Maaori women. Pieced together, the reflective voices of these waahine koorero help locate points of …

Silauni‘I, Jacinta Galea‘I

Pacific Studies

This poignant story follows the narrator’s friendship with Silauni‘i, the daughter of a village minister in Samoa. Silauni‘i is quiet, unconventional, and full of subtle resilience—her zig-zag pigtails, uncombed hair, and luminous smile defy rigid expectations placed on minister’s children. Together, the girls navigate school, village gossip, and the burdens of being “examples” in their community. As they study Samoan grammar at A‘oga Samoa, the story builds to a heartbreaking moment when Silauni‘i is publicly beaten after failing a quiz, a punishment that reflects the weight of expectations and the cruelty of discipline cloaked in righteousness. Through intimate details and …

Blood And Reproduction Of (The) Race In The Name Of Ho‘Oulu Lāhui—A Hawaiian Feminist Critique, J. Kehaulani Kauanui

Pacific Studies

This essay interrogates the colonial legacy and contemporary consequences of blood quantum laws in defining Native Hawaiian identity, focusing on the exclusionary impact of the 1921 Hawaiian Homes Commission Act’s 50% rule. Through personal reflection and political critique, it examines how these policies fragment genealogical connection, displace indigenous knowledge systems, and fuel internalized anxieties about authenticity and extinction. Drawing on statements by sovereignty leaders Mililani Trask and Lynette Cruz, the essay explores how nationalist calls to ho‘oulu lāhui (reproduce the nation) place disproportionate reproductive burdens on Hawaiian women, often framed within heteronormative, racialized, and even eugenicist logics. While Trask emphasizes …

Village Princess, Tusiata Avia

Pacific Studies

This poem reflects on the tension between traditional cultural roles and personal freedom, using the figure of a taupou—an honored ceremonial title in Samoan culture—as a lens. The speaker contrasts their sister’s symbolic beauty and status with her eventual rejection of expectations, choosing instead a life of independence and reinvention in America. The shift from reverence to silence around titles suggests a broader commentary on changing values and the cost of self-determination.

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 …

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.

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 …

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.

Réécritures Romanesques Du Mythe De Médée Chez Maryse Condé Et Marie N’Diaye, Jean-Luc Manenti

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

The mythical figure of Medea, made notable by child murder, has had a significant diffusion in contemporary fiction. A comparative analysis of her apparition in some novels by Maryse Condé and by Marie N’Diaye demonstrates the transposition and the updating of the myth according to varied cultural contexts. Situated between transgression and sublimation, the renovated figure of the infanticidal genitrix associates the imaginary of the beneficent mother to the one of the harmful mother. This hybrid status allows her to reveal a different specificity, one that goes beyond manichean classifications.

The Self-Perceived Identities Of Six English Teachers At One Islamic Language School In Cairo, Rama Ma Abdelaziz Ghazi

Archived Theses and Dissertations

Since the 1970s Egyptian society has witnessed a wave of Islamism. This tern1 refers to a surge of religious revivalism based on the precepts of Islam. This religious resurgence has been reflected and manifested in the increase in the emergence of a type of schooling knm\n as Islamic schools. Such schools aim at implementing certain goals and standards which are in-line with their ideology, in this case Islamic. The teacher is an access point between the school's administration, the Ministry of Education and the student. He or she acts as a mediator between the school (as a system, structure) and …

The Roma Of Eastern Europe In Transition: Historical Marginalization, Misrepresentation, And Political Ethnogenesis, Michael Bobick

Honors Papers

This thesis primarily deals with how the ongoing political transformations in Central and Eastern Europe have affected one particular group, the Roma or Gypsies. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, many initially greeted the radical reconfiguration of hegemonic governmental structures with nationalist zeal, and the democratization of socialist regimes was universally hailed as a victory for all. But for the Roma, a historically persecuted pariah group continually surrounded by misconceptions and Orientalist stereotypes, the radical transformation to "Western" capitalism and democracy must not be viewed in such a positive light. As an ethnic group the Roma exhibit a wide-ranging …

Writing Identity Into Space: The Relationship Between Ethnography, Autobiography, And Space In Bronislaw Malinowski's A Diary In The Strict Sense Of The Term And Claude Lévi-Strauss's Tristes Tropiques, Lawrence Phillips

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

From a number of disciplinary perspectives autobiography has always presented a challenge to more or less discrete modes of reading and evaluating the text. To read autobiography as a literary text is to suppress its close relationship to the writer, however fictionalised and evasive the writing subject might be about a textual identity so closely related to his or her public persona. On the other hand, to read it as history or a documentary presentation of a life is to fail to acknowledge the heavy use of literary techniques and imbedded subjectivity that makes autobiography what it is. …

Vol. 23 No. 1/2 (2000): Pacific Studies Front Matter, The Jonathan Nāpela Center For Hawaiian And Pacific Islands Studies

Pacific Studies

Front Matter for the Vol. 23, No 1/2-Mar./Jun. 2000 edition of the Pacific Studies Journal.

Where Has Rotuman Culture Gone? And What Is It Doing There?, Alan Howard, Jan Rensel

Pacific Studies

This article explores the now-problematic concept of “culture” and related terms in the context of a diffuse transnational Rotuman population, more than three- fourths of whom live abroad in Fiji, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the United States, and Europe. We begin by reflecting on prevailing criticisms of the culture concept, then present data in historical perspective on Rotuman communities in five different locations: Rotuma, Fiji, Australia, New Zealand, and Hawai‘i. In presenting these data we examine the patterning effects of four key variables, in- cluding (1) macrosocietal attitudes, (2) the nature of the migration flow, (3) the size of communities, …

Book Review: Jürg Wassmann, Ed., Pacific Answers To Western Hegemony: Cultural Practices Of Identity Construction, Laurence Marshall Carucci

Pacific Studies

Jürg Wassmann, ed., Pacific Answers to Western Hegemony: Cultural Practices of Identity Construction. Oxford: Berg, 1998. Pp. 449, bib., index. £44.99 cloth; £17.99 paperback.

Reviewed by Laurence Marshall Carucci, Montana State University

Book Review: Donald Denoon With Stewart Firth, Jocelyn Linnekin, Malama Meleisea, And Karen Nero, Eds., The Cambridge History Of The Pacific Islanders, Joel Robbins

Pacific Studies

Donald Denoon with Stewart Firth, Jocelyn Linnekin, Malama Meleisea, and Karen Nero, eds., The Cambridge History of the Pacific Islanders. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Pp. xvi, 518, index, maps. US$79.95 cloth.

Reviewed by Joel Robbins, University of California, San Diego

The Vogue Of Life: Fashion Culture, Identity, And The Dance Of Survival In The Gay Balis, Tara Susman

disClosure: A Journal of Social Theory

No abstract provided.

Vol. 23 No. 1/2 (2000): 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, …

Books Noted: Recent Pacific Islands Publications: Selected Acquisitions, June 1999–February 2000, Riley M. Moffat

Pacific Studies

This list of significant new publications relating to the Pacific Islands was selected from new acquisitions lists received from Brigham Young University –Hawai‘i, University of Hawai‘i at Mânoa, Bernice P. Bishop Museum, University of Auckland, East-West Center, University of the South Pacific, National Library of Australia, Melanesian Studies Resource Center of the University of California–San Diego, and Secretariat of the Pacific Community Library. Other libraries are invited to send contributions to the Books Noted Editor for future issues. Listings reflect the extent of information provided by each institution.

Geoffrey M. White's Review Of Storytellers Of The Pacific, Geoffrey M. White

Pacific Studies

No abstract provided.

Marcelous Akapito And Joakim Peter's Review Of Vicente M. Diaz's Sacred Vessels: Navigating Tradition And Identity In Micronesia, Marcelous Akapito, Joakim Peter

Pacific Studies

No abstract provided.

Touting Touristic Primadonas: On Tourism, Ethnic Negotiation And National Integration In Sulawesi Indonesia, Kathleen M. Adams

Anthropology: Faculty Publications and Other Works

No abstract provided.

Mother Ireland: Women, The State And The Abortion Referendum In The Republic Of Ireland, Jennifer K. Dewan

Honors Papers

In this paper, I examine the relationship between women and the Irish state, particularly how the nationalist state has defined and controlled women through their reproductive capabilities. I outline the factors that have contributed to the construction of women's identity and how women have resisted the limitations of this construction in a variety of ways. The issue of abortion is an excellent point on which to base the discussion of women in Ireland because of it extraordinary impact on Irish society. To outline the methodology of this examination, this thesis is theoretically grounded in feminist anthropology, in which the category …

From Herds Of Goats To Herds Of Tourists: Negotiating Bedouin Identity Under Petra's Romantic Gaze, Cynthia Allison Wooten

Archived Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Vol. 19 No. 2 (1996): 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 …