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Islanders Can Only Accomplish "Small" Things

“Our Sea of Islands” by Epeli Hau’ofa: Veiwing the Pacific Differently: https://savageminds.org/wp-content/image-upload/our-sea-of-islands-epeli-hauofa.pdf Hau’ofa distinguishes the differences between viewing the Pacific as the “Pacific Islands” and “Oceania.” She refers to these differing views as, “islands in the far sea” or as “a sea of islands.” She argues that the first example, denotes a belief of “smallness”, tiny islands with tiny people in a large and remote sea. Historical evidence of relationships of dominance and subordination, and because the early Europeans believed to hold a dominant position over the natives; helped to further perpetuate the idea that there is a “bigger” man and a “smaller” one. The belittling of the indigenous people, the subordination to their masters, the imaginary lines and boundaries that were drawn by the Americans and Europeans which were used to “confine ocean peoples to tiny spaces for the first time,” all helped to perpetuate this ...
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Am I Hawaiian enough?

Mac Marshall’s, “Openings” from Namoluk Beyond the Reef really hit a core inside of me. His discussion of how places can trigger self-reflection and cause people to identify with them and others, and how this has led to an ongoing argument in anthropology over this idea of “globalization,” reminded me of a conversation I had a few years back with a good friend.   Our discussion, which was about how we stood on the issue of the Thirty-Meter-Telescope on the top of Maunakea, had become one of a passionate but friendly discourse. I was currently taking astronomy classes in college, and she was a Pacific Island Studies major. My argument was that I tried to remind her that we were once a people that often looked to the stars, we were all natural explorers. I tried to make her imagine how proud we would be as a people to know that the largest telescope would be available to our own people, built on our lands, and how this would not only help us as Hawaiians, but how it would help t...
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Searching for your identity, Traditional or Modern Tatau (Tattoos)

In “Tatau-ed: Polynesian Tatau in Aotearoa,” by Sean Mallon and Uili Fecteau, they discuss contemporary Pacific Island tattoos in the context of New Zealand, where many islanders are living in the diaspora. In their article, they briefly discuss the importance of “tradition,” saying that some islanders prefer to get their tattoo done in a particular way because it is more “traditional” (p. 4-5). There are those that emphasize the “pain” as a rite, a ritualistic experience that denotes authenticity for a Samoans receiving a tatau. I’ve personally watched non-Samoans and white people, getting tatted-up, in the traditional way, while at modern day tattoo conventions surrounded by hundreds of non-native spectators. Does that mean that because theyʻve experienced the pain, that they would be given more praise than an actual Samoan whoʻs gotten a tattoo by a machine? In Alexa Masinaʻs comments on her receiving a tatau by machine, she believes that her way of doing it should be honor...
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