Culture Moves? The Festival of Pacific Arts and Dance Remix in Oceania

This reflective essay is a journey through my dance studies work with a discussion on the role of the Festival of Pacific Arts in shaping dance in Oceania, and particularly its impact on Banaban dance from Rabi in Fiji. I encourage future discussion and development of a field of �Pacific Dance Studies,� with preliminary thoughts on the role of �remix� in Pacific dance practices, especially as they are shaped by and reflected in this important regional festival

Visualizing te kainga, dancing te kainga : history and culture between Rabi, Banaba and beyond

Visualising te kaingal, Dancing te Kainga, is an exploration of Banaban and Gilbertese history and culture through archival texts and photographs, writing in history and anthropology, film, music and dance, and fieldwork or what I call "homework" The form of the thesis resonates with its content as I explore these sites of knowledge production through analysis, narrative, poetry, memory, image, and video. Banaban history and politics has been mainly defined with respect to the British colonial and phosphate mining experiences between 1900 and 1980. Banaban or Ocean Island is viewed as the essential "homeland" while Rabi is still seen as a new and disconcerting place of exile. I go beyond this two-island frame of reference by arguing for Rabi as "home" and including Australia, New Zealand and Kiribati as valid sites for exploring Banaban and Gilbertese identities. Focusing on kainga, or home, is a tool that allows us to connect these places. Like aba, or land, kainga has multiple meanings including people (and their specific relationships), land, residence and genealogy. Banabans are connected genealogically and culturally to specific islands in Kiribati and more broadly to land, history, politics and economics in Australia and New Zealand through phosphate mining and phosphate fertiliser. Both Banaban lands and bodies have been moved over the last 100 years and "movement" is a crucial aesthetic for dealing with Banaban survival as they create their own brand of culture through song and dance on Rabi. Like dance, film contains an excess of meaning and the overall thesis is associative as well as expository inviting the reader to make meaning, along with the author, between text, image and video

Book Reviews

Book Reviews: The Great Land: How Western America Nearly Became a Russian Possession by Jeremy Atiyah ; Sacred Claims: Repatriation and Living Tradition by Greg Johnson ; Who Owns the Crown Lands of Hawai'i? by Jon M. Van Dyke ; White Enough to Be American?: Race Mixing, Indigenous People, and the Boundaries of State and Nation by Lauren L. Basson ; Colonizing Leprosy: Imperialism and the Politics of Public Health in the United States by Michelle T. Moran ; Pacific Performances: Theatricality and Cross-Cultural Encounter in the South Seas by Christopher B. Balme ; Guardian of the Sea: Jizo in Hawai'i by John R. K. Clark ; Pathways to the Present: U.S. Development and Its Consequences in the Pacific by Mansel G. Blackford ; "Whole Oceans Away": Melville and the Pacific edited by Jill Barnum, Wyn Kelley, and Christopher Sten ; Ka Mo'olelo o Hi'iakaikapoliopele: Ka Wahine i ka Hikina a ka la, ka u'i Palekoki Uila o Halema'uma'u -- The Epic Tale of Hi'iakaikapoliopele: Woman of the Sunrise, Lightning-Skirted Beauty of Halema'uma'u by Ho'oulumahiehie ; We Go Eat: A Mixed Plate From Hawai'i's Food Culture edited by Susan Yim ; The White Pacific: U.S. Imperialism and Black Slavery in the South Seas after the Civil War by Gerald Horn

Indigenous Encounters: Reflections on Relations between People in the Pacific

Introduction to the collection of papers and poetry in Indigenous Encounters: Reflections on Relations between People in the Pacifi

Choreographing Difference: The (Body) Politics of Banaban Dance

This article discusses Banaban choreography as an expression of historical and postcolonial identities and, more specifically, relations between Banabans and I-Kiribati in terms of what I understand as the Banaban production of difference through dance. This process is shaped by a strategic approach to representing and reconstructing the past and kinship. I explore some of the tensions around history, kinship, and performance that resulted from the impact of phosphate mining and eventual displacement of Banabans from the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony (now Kiribati and Tuvalu) to Rabi in Fiji. I also discuss how this research opens up possibilities for a more corporeal approach to Pacific studies

Interview with Katerina Teaiwa by Teresia K. Teaiwa for 'Microwomen'

Interview mit Katerina Teaiwa über ihr Buch zu den Umweltschäden und schweren Menschenrechtsverletzungen auf der Insel Ocean Island (Banaba) aufgrund des Phosphatabbaus durch Besatzungs- und Kolonialmächte