Since most of the world’s international mining and exploration companies—including Barrick— are Canadian, one might expect the Canadian government to exercise some oversight over its corporate citizens abroad.
Really? Is this like, a legitimate fact? If so, I'd be utterly surprised. I'm surprised that Canada, all of places, holds this global title. Again, I would have guessed it to be like the USA, England, France, or Germany. Canada is a complete surprise to moi.
The mine is 95 percent owned and solely operated by Barrick Gold, a Canadian corporation that is the world’s largest gold mining company.
I'm surprised that the mine isn't owned by a European or an U.S. company. You rarely ever hear about Canada intruding onto indigenous people's land.
This exposes them, their families, and the communities around them to a very high risk of mercury poisoning.
The ends do not justify the means here. You get the gold, but at what cost? You and your entire family & friends die a slow, painful, and agonizing death? Nah, chief; this ain't it.
trace elements of chemicals like cyanide
Can't cyanide kill you? Especially when it's in gas form? I know it was used as chemical/toxic warfare during WWI.
Horrifying acts of gang rape were allegedly carried out by members of the mine’s private security force.
I remember the video stating that the local police are not reliable at all. Although, I'm still shocked that the police don't do something to stop/curb this. We've learned a lot though this semester that Pacific Islands don't have the most accountable police forces...
the distribution of recently butchered pigs thatserved as payment for a war death.
The Huli & Orokaiva both live on PNG, and both communities value the importance of pigs in their culture.
‘In tribalfighting, women are notspared,
I feel like these women are actively fighting, it's one thing, but if they are just randomly killed out of the blue, that's an entirely different story. I am surprised that they are attacked regardless though.
Huli oral tradition that exists to maintain a genealogi-cal record of land ownership and dispute.
Another example of oral stories/histories being important to a Pacific Island's culture.
Huli warfare invariably occurs between two individuals, who gather sup-porters to assist in their dispute. Huli wars are highly gendered and only occur betweenmen
I mean "war" is a concept that is driven and executed by men. Only in modern times do you see female soldiers. Historically, you might have seen some rare and occasional instances (like Queen Boudica, some female soldiers in the US Civil War, some females being trained in war during Ancient Sparta), but for the most part, war is a concept that men part take in.
Uncle Don Pakele
I wasn't born in Hawai'i, but my 'ohana has lived here since the early 80s. I still can't understand the whole "uncle" and "auntie" aspect here. To me, the term "uncle" and "aunt" should ONLY be used when addressing your parents' brother or sister. It's a term to describe a blood/DNA family relationship. I understand that the term shows respect to people, but it's just one of those cultural/linguistical things here in Hawai'i I don't think that I'll ever be truly comfortable doing. It seems to "foreign" and "awkward" to me.
“This is why it’s so sad with the haole [Caucasians]. They think we all superstitious.
Most haoles don't think like this. I've only met like 1 or 2 white people that think like this, and they're both 'older' people. Most of the haoles I've met (saying that I am one) are pretty respectful enough to not make assumptions, or they just don't care enough to even think about what Hawaiians believe; but most don't go out of their way to be offensive.
“archae-ology or historic preservation, people who work in there, you don’t get a lot of money; you’re doing it because you’re...interested and have a concern.”
I feel that this career deals more with human passion than with human greed or monetary interest. When I was younger, I wanted to be an archaeologist like Indiana Jones. Then I researched the job. This field does make less money than many other subject clusters do, that's for sure.
The paths traveled by archaeologists and Kanaka Maoli have intersected at various points in the past, often resulting in collisions that left both communities damaged.
What are some examples of archaeologists being damaged? The only example I can think of is the Bishop Museum during the H-3 construction process...
t’s like the hawaiians as they were growing up were inferior. That’s what they taught us in school.
Americans did this with the Native Americans as well. There's depressing horror stories of white Americans forcing the Sioux tribe to attend U.S. schools so that they'll be taught European/American thinking and Christian ideology. The U.S. denied them the freedom to act "Indian like" and were supposed to act like Westerners. That's what a colonizing and imperialist nation does.
our Pacific island people have contributed to this con-versation, calling for greater indigenous involvement
What "Pacific Islander people"? This is a very broad and specific statement. There's hundreds of Pacific Islander ethnicities. This seems like a borderline rude statement to me
archaeology does not play a significant role in his identity; his practice of lua and other Kanaka Maoli cultural practices are more important.
Your culture and your morality before your chosen occupation. I dig it. I like it. I'm a fan.
practices archaeology in the wider Pacific area, where he said archaeologists are expected to interact with the native peoples, unlike hawai‘i, where the dominant western culture and laws do not require the same level of communication.
Hawai'i is a US state, and the US is a Western nation, compared to a plethora of Pacific Islands that are no longer controlled by a foreign Western power. This makes some sense, but I'm surprised that Hawai'i has laws that allow archaeologists to ignore communication with locals.
The imbalanced representation of male (twenty-eighty) and female (thirteen) archaeologists accounts for the dis-parity, more specifically, the limited number of women interviewed in the academic and CrM subgroups.
As sad as it is, this doesn't surprise me very much. Archaeology and the 'world of academia', for the most part, are both dominated by men.
From this movement I have internalized the message that culture is ex-pressed through language, and by speaking the language, the culture is perpetu-ated.
I agree that language is closely intertwined with "culture." However, I believe that culture is more so perpetuated through physical actions than through language. Physical acts are more important than words.
eemed to stem from a desire to see if iwas talking to the right people, and they would suggest other Kanaka Maoli whom i should contact.
What constitutes the "right" people? There should not be a collective/uniform idea regarding topics for one ethnic group. How'd these Kanaka react outside of the interview to other Kanaka that had different and unique opinions? This sentence is the most interesting to me in chapter 3.
however, the honolulu area rapid transit project, where the state at-tempted to evaluate the impact of the project on cultural sites and burials in the path of the twenty-mile route in phases, rather than in its entirety, suggests they have not learned from the past.
The train HAS to be built, and it baffles me as to why it's taking so long to build a few miles of track. The DC & Northern VA metro built like 50 miles of combined track in like 8 years, why is it taking O'ahu like 40+ years to build like 20 miles of track? The island needs the train to reduce traffic---Honolulu traffic is worse than DC and NYC Traffic by a longshot. The bone issue I understand, but like, it's an island. There's only so many places to bury the dead. The island has had people living here for over 1000 years. You will find burials in many areas because you're so limited for space. Bones that are hundreds or a thousand years old should not cause a massive public transit project to run so slowly and inconvenience hundreds of thousands of people. It's just horrible planning, similarly to how horribly the HNL airport and Ala Moana mall is set up.
(Yes, I'm VERY opinionated about the rail, idc).
51Tensions in Hawaiian Archaeologyfor most of the thirty-seven years it took to complete the construction of h-3, the project was plagued by controversy.
I actually like H-3 more than Pali and Likelike. It needed to be built. It reduces the congestion levels of traffic; you can't rely on only two roads over the Ko'olau Range.
the united states seized the island of Kaho‘olawe (see Map 2). since the 1920s the usmilitary had used the island for bombing practice, increas-ing that use after the December 7 attack. The bombing of Kaho‘olawe did not cease at the end of world war ii, however, and continued unimpeded until 1976. an executive order (eo 10436), issued on february 20, 1953, by Dwight eisenhower, secured the island for the use of the usnavy as a bombing target, and placed the island under the jurisdiction of the secre-tary of the navy.
This reminds me of Kwajalein with how the US bombed the hell out of the island and justified it. I question why the US army would even bomb an ENTIRE island in the first place, especially one that was so culturally, historically, religiously, and socially important to an ethnic group.
The museum’s involvement with the controversial h-3 freeway project ultimately
Hot take: I actually love the H-3 highway. It's so much better than Pali & Likelike. You can't always rely on those two roads to get you to the 'Windward side'.
The population of Kanaka Maoli declined to horrifically low levels, just shy of 40,000 people in 1896, due to contact with foreigners and the alien diseases they brought to the islands
This reminds me of Hernan Cortes with the Aztecs and Francisco Pizarro with the Inka. Both conquistadores used diseases such as smallpox, measles, influenza, STDs to wipe out millions of natives.
archaeologists do not necessarily need to be indigenous to do indig-enous archaeology.
This is a really true point. Anyone can do indigenous archaeology, your color of your skin does not matter as long as your work benefits indigenous people.
on august 30, 2002, a federal judge of the us District Court for the District of oregon issued an opinion declaring the human remains could not be clearly linked to modern-day native american tribes.
I'd love to hear more about this ruling. How did the judge declare "the human remains could not be clearly linked to modern-day native American tribes? if no DNA tests or studies were conducted on the bones in the first place? This strikes me as odd.
‘Ōlelo hawai‘i is not foreign to these shores, and it must be recognized as the native tongue
Many people seem to forget this basic concept. Hawai'i's traditional language was NOT English, despite it being a part of the USA. Hawaiian language was spoken a thousand years before the US was even a thought. There should be a bigger emphasis on the native language (but people should not be forced to learn it if they don't want to).
There is no monolithic Kanaka Maoli identity
There's no monolithic any identity. Every person of any nationality, race, or ethnicity may view what constitutes their demographic differently. For example: two Germans may have different ideas on what makes someone a "German", or two Muslims may have different opinions on what makes a person a follower of Islam. Etc.
every anthropologist carries both a personal and an ethnographic self. In this scheme, we are all incipiently bi- (or multi-) cultural in that we belong to worlds both personal and pro
This is just humans in general. We have our professional/public self, and then our personal/private self. People sometimes change their demeanor and put on a façade in social aspects compared to how they act by themselves.
s "social inequality." I observed that my girl cousins were fed after the boys and that although they excelled in school they were not expected to have careers, but I did not cal
Back in the 50s & 60s, my grandma excelled in high school. She wanted to go to college, but my great-grandfather told her that "a woman's job was to stay at home." Different geographic areas and historical time periods have different social and family ideas.
out our own complicity. The fact that we are often distanced-by factors as varied as education, class, or emigration-from the societies we are supposed to represent tend
This is a really important sentence that affects a lot of people. Social and economic situations can drastically change how people act (their culture).
who is this generic subject, "the native"? To use a clump term is to assume that all natives are the same native, mutually substitutable in presenting the same (male) point of view. Yet even
How is this a "male" point of view? Both sexes can be anthropologists. I don't think this idea should be attributed to one gender. Not every male thinks this way and this sentence in general strikes me as odd.
Marshallese come to the United States for many reasons.
Just like Tongans do. Many Pacific Island groups flock to the continental US.
First, older children constantly model adult- inappropriate behavior.
Monkey see, monkey do. Don't be a bad influence to your youngins'.
Finally, despite their mixed playgroups children sometimes prefer to talk to people of their own gender. Children frequently enforce gender segregation.
People feel comfortable around people they can easily relate to. Boys can easily relate to boys and girls can easily relate to girls.
Adults are older than children and are people whom they should fear.
I disagree, a child should never "fear" an adult. Fearing someone isn't a good thing.
It was no use. So Jackie did what adults do when they have trouble asking for something themselves: she gave the errand to a child who could do what she could not.
Kind of just sounds like extreme and utter laziness to me, nothing more, nothing less. Don't make a kid do something that you don't wanna do. That's low.
Children are not responsible for their behavior and speech and cannot be truly bad.
I 50-50 agree here. Parents are ultimately responsible for their children's behavior, but I still feel as if children can tell from a youngish age how their behavior can affect someone and have consequences as well.
But if Jujan intentionally harmed Leny, then Leny’s birth mother had not only an excuse but also a duty to take Lenyaway.
Are there no police officers on the island? Why wouldn't the village call the police if an ADOPTIVE MOTHER sliced her son with a knife, made him bleed, and she left a giant wound? This can't be legal in the FMI.
Figure 4.3 Child displaying a packet of Kool-Aid. Photo by Elise Berman
Why isn't this one little girl's face blurred out, but everyone else's face throughout the book is? This strikes me as very odd.
The lollipop was eminently shareable. Marshallese children (and adults) constantly took candy or gum out of their mouths and gave it to others. Licked or untouched, if seen, a lollipop had to be shared
This takes "sharing" to a whole new level. This is way too far for my tastes. That's disgusting; giving people chewed food and stuff. I don't want mushy food, germs, bacteria, and saliva from other people going into my mouth.
Several friends in Jajikon told me that Marshallese people lie more than Americans. ‘Marshallese people lie a lot,’ one friend told me. ‘American culture is good,’ she continued, ‘Marshallese culture is bad.’ These criticisms of their own communicative practices is an example of “linguistic insecurity,”
Again, this sounds like the Orokaiva. They had many negative feelings towards themselves and respected "white man" culture.
Our typical diet was plain white rice and fresh fish or canned tuna
Reminds me of the Orokaiva back in PNG. Their diet was very similar to those living in Liklob. Canned fish/meat & white rice.
to the Western social scientist, chronological age is age
Hot take: The "Western" way is still the most logical understanding of age. It makes the most sense.
Research into socialization has shown that development is culturally contingent and linguistically mediated, that children in one place are different from children elsewhere, and that children are socialized into different gendered or racialized subject positions within a society
I'd like to use a personal example for this sentence. Growing up in Virginia (VA), children were ALWAYS monitored by adults and they never left their parents' sight up until high school age. Here in Hawai'i, I see young kids walking down the road, around stores, and riding da bus all alone. That wouldn't be allowed in VA, nor would it have even been a thought to allow. That shows culturally the difference between 2 different areas regarding children and "freedom".
Each chapter is focused around a single story that I either experienced or re-corded.
IMMEDIATE FORM & CONFESSIONAL STYLE
Although historically most Marshallese have been Protestant or Catholic (but mainly Protestant), today dozens of different denominations and churches flourish within the nation.
Similarly to how Christianity additionally spread to Tanna (Vanuatu), Papua New Guinea, Kwajalein, Tonga, and Hawai'i. Europeans and Americans greatly affected the religious, cultural, and social aspect of most Pacific Islands in some fashion.
As just a couple of examples of how the United States has failed, the nation moved numerous Marshallese populations off of their native land; ignored these populations as they starved on new atolls unsuitable to human habitation; contaminated many atolls with nuclear fallout, refused to give reparations to many affected residents and used Marshallese people in nuclear medical testing without consent; failed to invest in Marshallese education, health care, or transportation; and created a simultaneous malnutrition and obesity epidemic through providing packaged food as aid and transforming the Marshallese diet
This reminds me of Dvorak's book regarding Kwajalein. He stressed how the U.S. military ruined life for many indigenous Marshallese and messed up the naturalness of the island and its surrounding area. The U.S. has done more harm than good.
I wasn’t yet feeling old and it was then disconcerting when new friends instructed their children to call me Kaha Monty, kaha“grandfather,” and Monty my island-ish name. This grandparental kinship title, of course, sig-nied good village manners, an effort to ease an awkward stranger into ordinary island relationships. Many years later, I happily embrace my grandfatherly sta-tus (gure
So, the title of kaha can be given to any elderly man? I do not believe that Monty is an indigenous Tannese man, so I am wondering if the title is handed to people as a sign of respect, acceptance, and good-will? Kind of like how the term tutu is used here in Hawai'i?
Captain Cook and crew came ashore, Elau shanghaied to London, Manehevi jailed in Port Vila, Soarum wandered a Queensland plantation, Nouar and his team shipped north to work on Efate’s American military bases, Sivur, Kusi, and the rest of the family migrated to town, Soarum and Felina ew overseas to pick grapes and pack mangoes, and Mwatiktiki and other spirits continue to rove.
This is a quick summary of the ENTIRE book. Every chapter talks about a specific person's life, their actions, events, etc.
An entrepre-neur in the valley under the volcano charges tourists to attend cannibal dances, guaranteed to raise goosebumps. Another, at Port Resolution, cleared a cannibal trail charging about US to walk along this.
This is really f*cked up and I'm surprised that the island of Tanna still allows this. These actions & events are something that I'd expect to see back in the 1820s, not in the 2020s. How is Vanuatu going to progress forward if idiots like this "entrepreneur" does racist stuff like this?
anna’s acidic volcanic soils are rough on equip-ment of all sorts. Computers, and books, have short lives in these islands.
So do ALL Pacific islands that are volcanic suffer from this as well? Does the acidic volcanic soil affect technology and paper throughout other volcanic archipelagos as well? Hawai'i is a volcanic chain but I don't hear about that being any issue here...
“Before, life on Tanna was good. But today young people are watching too many videos, learning how people in those videos and in Port Vila behave, and they adopt those behaviors and no longer respect their chiefs.”
This sounds like something a "boomer" would say. A lot of cultures have the older generations complaining about the new generations & vice versa. This isn't uniquely a Tannese thing.
Their attendants blare triton shell trumpets to warn of their passing. No woman may look upon them
This is the opposite of the Orokaiva. Young prepubescent girls are sheltered from the boys for months, and on Tanna, young prepubescent boys are sheltered from girls for months. Same sexual concept, just the genders are reversed.
. And nally, ambitious families may arrange a navegenien asori(big feast) where more substantial gi s of pigs, kava, food, baskets, mats, dyed bark skirts, blankets, and cloth are exchanged, o en a er the birth of the couple’s rst child.
This reminds me of the Orokaiva in Papua New Guinea. Both communities placed a high importance onto feasts and gift giving.
Their objective is not to discipline, or not so much, but to repair the fabric of social relationships that some conict or dispute has shredded.
I really wish the US did this principle instead of throwing people into prison all the time or conducting brutal executions onto people. Discipline only works so far and so much.
In , I attended a reconciliation ceremony in Port Vila’s Freswota neigh-borhood.
I'm shocked that these ceremonies even remotely work. How can people so easily "get over" the fact that their child was killed or murdered? This is the total opposite of how the US would treat the situation.
The rival girl’s family agreed to give her over to replace dead Sivur. One daughter takes the place of another, including her name.
I'm surprised that this is even allowed. I'm fully unaware that many cultures throughout the world are different that the US, but this seems morally wrong. A family shouldn't be allowed to just "give away" their daughter like that. That baffles me.
They should have known that these islands already were much devastated by European diseases. John and Mary, two tuberculosis vectors, would contribute to the epidemic calamities.
This is so incredibly commonplace when Europeans (and later Americans) make contact with indigenous peoples---need it be Hawaiians, Native Americans, Aztecs, Inca, other Pacific Islanders, etc. These native people had NO immunities so Western illnesses, so they died super quickly.
War songs, like this from the s, continue to remind people of wartime events just as earlier mission hymns circulated news of biblical personages and God’s grace, and as nupu celebrate ancestral lives.
This is an example of American & Western culture spreading to a Pacific island. In a way, these war songs kind of made Tanna more "Americanized".
Nupuis the island’s main circle dance which, like most southern hemispheric circle dances, rotates counterclockwise
So, basically, nupu is an importance dance to Tanna? Just like how hula is important to Hawai'i?
eople blamed missionaries, as well as one another, for the era’s rampant death and disease.
This is a common theme throughout many Pacific islands; missionaries bring diseases which kill off the native populations, and the natives get angry and blame the white outsiders for it.
They reg-ularly disappointed Americans who were on the hunt for local women, telling them “we too have no women in Vila.”
Similarly to how Americans & Europeans conducted themselves sexually with Hawaiian & Native American women. The "beauty" and "exoticness" of indigenous women caught their eyes many times.
Kava as masculine and feminine.
Kind of like how in Ancient Hawai'i, the banana was a symbol of men (since it resembles a penis) and red fish were a symbol of women (since the color red is associated with a woman's menstrual cycle).
Come to Tanna, an island in the southern reaches of Vanuatu, a Y-shaped archi-pelago in the southwestern Pacic, miles west of Fiji and , miles east of Australia
Is Vanuatu a part of "Melanesia"?
Chief Boki, and his agship Kamehameha, sank at sea along the way to Erro-mango.
I'm pretty positive that ali'i Boki (Poki) died at sea by drowning when his boat sunk. He never returned to Hawai'i and his body is at the bottom of the deep Pacific Ocean.
Bennett proposed further scienti c experimentation with Elau. Could she, he wondered, be schooled? Might a savage be civilized?
This reminds me of how in the late 1800s, Americans forced Native American children into "Western" schools. Their goal was to get rid of their "savageness" and teach them "the ways of white people" to make them "civilized". Pretty depressing history.
I spat on the sidewalk
Why did he feel the need to do this?
Bubu’s life between islands and atolls is a bit like the necklaces she makes: woven together intricately.
Pacific Island groups have been linked together for thousands of years. An example of this is the Vasa Loloa exchange network between Tonga, Fiji, & Samoa.
“One day an American airplane came in really low over our schoolhouse all of a sudden and there was a machine gun sound, ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta!!” Her eyes grow fierce.
The US continues to do this to school children, except in Middle Eastern countries like Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, etc. But so much for American democracy & freedom, right?
the torii gate
The torii gate is a symbol of Shintoism, so I'm surprised that it is being associated with Buddhism here. This strikes me as kind of odd.
I love this place and so I wanna take care of it somehow. I feel like that’s my real job.”
I feel like this is a lot of non-natives regarding Hawai'i. They might not be from the islands ancestrally, but they feel in love with the archipelago and wish to protect their island home. They connected to the islands just like locals do.
Marshallese deep-time histories collapse into the short but cata-strophic histories of American nuclear testing. Japanese soldiers are forgotten; Americans are remembered.
Marshallese history is thousands of years old. US History is only a couple hundred of years old (excluding the Native Americans). As such, Marshallese History has far more layers & "depths" of history, since they existed so much longer than Americans have.
Marshal-lese have been colonizing the entirety of the United States
Ehhh...I understand what he was going for here and I agree to an extent, but this is a bit of a stretch. It's a little bit of an exaggeration. I don't think there's a noticeable population of Marshallese in a lot of US places...like South Dakota, Delaware, Wisconsin, Maine, etc.
Nevertheless, the fact that Marshallese still use the word kōkan (Japanese for “exchange”) to mean “prostitute,” or Mādke (“America”) to mean “venereal disease,” is evidence of a long legacy in which Marshallese women’s (and men’s) bodies have been exploited in previous conflicts over land and power
This entire section (imo) should have been expanded. This is a really important topic that just got glazed over. European/US colonial powers did horrific things to indigenous women (and sometimes men) and Greg doesn't really talk about this. Japan was especially bad with sexual crimes during their imperial era.
But the colonel on Kwaj couldn’t arrest us, because it was our land.
I'm a little bit confused by this. I thought Kwaj was now a US base? So why couldn't people get arrested? Whose land is it???
European or American military and missionary forces are often credited (often by themselves) with bringing peace to the Marshalls and quelling the flames of battle between island groups and clans.
I've mentioned it quite a few times in my annotations already, but America regarding the Marshall Islands gives off "White Man's Burden" vibes. It's like the US believed that it was their duty to bring civilization and technology to the "primitive" islanders.
Colonial narratives from European, American, and Japanese per-spectives typically represented Islander “warriors” as primitive rel-ics of the premodern, “uncivilized” past.
This begs the question, what is the difference from a "warrior" and a "soldier"?
We own land because we are born. The island has belonged from generation to generation. That land is not really ours—it belongs to the next generations too. That means you cannot give it away.
This indicates the commonly held Pacific Islander belief that no one truly owns the land. There is no "land ownership". Humans are connected to the land, since land gives us life. Therefore, no one can take or give land.
Recognizing that they are not likely to get it back, they want to continue declaring their rights and to seek proper compensation.
Sad as it is, this probably won't do anything. As I mentioned earlier, the USA has a bad track record of this stuff. They don't really care.
Despite the slight, three-mile span of reef that separates the islets, calling Kwajalein is an expensive long-distance cal
This is super stupid.
Agriculture was close to impossible in Ebeye’s postwar rubble and crowded setting.
This reminds me of Ancient Rome & Carthage. When Rome conquered Carthage, the legionaries threw salt onto Carthage's land so that they could never grow crops there again. This similarly happened with the US & Ebeye, just in a more modern-day technological setting.
“Marshallese land-tenure customs are, to an American, both curious and feudal in concept and operation”
Kind of sorta with how Americans viewed Hawai'i. They thought it was asinine how the Native Hawaiians had NO land ownership. And then when King Kamehameha III issued The Great Mahele, most Hawaiians lost their native lands and rich Americans swooped in, bought the land, and borderline stole the indigenous land out from Hawaiian's feet.
In other parts of the atoll, the US government literally wrote off the land it seized by condemning it as worthless and unusable, thereby avoiding paying compensation altogether
The US has a history of being a "bully" towards other groups of people that they view as "lesser". Need it be Native Americans, African Americans, Asians, certain Europeans, Pacific Islanders, Muslims, LGBTQ+, etc. The USA has a really terrible track record when it comes to treating people with decency.
The Ri-Kuwajleen, who had already been “herded into labor camps hastily hoisted together with material at no cost to the United States,”
What exactly does Greg mean by "labor camps"? I wish he expanded on this more. When I think of "labor camps" I think of the Nazi's or Soviets, but I highly doubt that the Americans were remotely as bad as they were. So I'm interested in how bad these camps were and what they were like---what they entailed.
about 20 grams of sand in a small vinyl bag for each family.
I used to have a small glass jar of sand from the D-Day Beach in Normandy, France. It was super cool to be holding a small piece of history like that.
Behind this table is a classic icon of Shintōism, a gigan-tic mirror, an oval framed with elaborate carvings of phoenixes, vari-ous leaves, and crests.The music stops
"Shintoism" was the ancient religion of Japan and is still one of the most popular religions in the country.
The ofuro in Japanis often a place for fraternization, a peaceful safe world where men can form close brotherly bonds.
Bath houses were also super popular in Ancient Rome & Ancient Greece. Men & women could come together and bond through peaceful actions...butt naked. In this regard, Japanese culture and Ancient Mediterranean culture was somewhat similar.
Connecting with the place where so many people had perished, it became clear to me how these men had come here and they knew they were going to die here, in this beautiful and yet devastating place.
I can only truly imagine what was going through the minds of these young men. It must have been a mental and emotional HELL for them. They knew that they most likely were going to die, but they couldn't do anything. It must have been horrifying and incredibly depressing.
Long-term AmericAn reSidentS of KwAjAlein speak about how their children see ghosts of Japanese soldiers, the most notable being “the Japanese commander,” an apparition who has befriended many American children but never seems to visit any adults.
My great-grandparents lived in a house that apparently served as a house for Union soldiers during the Civil War. I still remember my father & grandma telling me and my cousins when we were young "Don't go into the attic or the basement, ghosts live up there". One time we decided to go into the attic, and there was a little tiny window up there.
I specifically remember looking out the window down the dirt road, and I CLEARLY saw a man wearing a blue soldier outfit with a gun---like the kind that the Union Army had. I stared at the man outside, rubbed my eyes and shook my head, and re-opened my eyes. The man outside was gone; totally vanished. I sprinted down stairs and told my dad what I saw. He just looked at me and said "Yeah, I thought I saw the same exact 'thing' out of that window at your age. Who knows". I went outside later, and stood where that "man" stood, and there was no foot prints or anything.
I still remember that day vividly, and I 100% believe that what I saw was a ghost of a Union soldier and I 100% believe in ghosts. I totally believe that these kids could be seeing ghosts on Kwajalein, especially near this battle site. I don't believe in like Bigfoot or Nessie, but I completely believe in ghosts & aliens. Ok, my story and ramble is over now.
Other than what I had read in the newspapers and seen in the mov-ies, I had no conception of what the Japanese were like. . . . The stereotype image we got from the movies and cartoons typically showed the Japanese soldier as some sort of single-minded fiend, bent on murdering whoever got in his way.
I meannnn Dr. Seuss drew A LOT of super racist propaganda images during the 1940s. It was supposed to help with the war effort. America has a long history of racism and also of utilizing propaganda against groups of people they deem "inferior".
But this is a special flag. Upon closer inspection, it is clear that this nisshōki Japanese flag is covered with brush-written characters.
I've watched a YouTube video of one of these flags being returned to a Japanese family. It's a super emotional and impactful video. Maybe we could watch it in class?
Here's the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxIrRKdsIwU
granted these “freedoms” through the paternalistic intervention of American men, who offer these pleasures as a gesture of shared manhood.
This gives off major WHITE MAN'S BURDEN vibes. It sounds like the American marines believed that they were bringing advancements in civilization to the Marshallese.
In contrast to the humiliating images of prisoners of war stripped naked and made to wait in barbed-wire pigpens, nudity in the white American context of postwar liberation takes on completely different meanings of purity, wholesomeness, and renewal.
I mean, in general, male nudity throughout the history of the US has not been as taboo of a subject as female history as. In this example, the skinny dipping soldiers show off "masculinity", but if women were doing it instead, it'd be viewed as inappropriate and sexual.
I don't really think it's "white America", as much as it is "American men". I think this whole section should be focusing on gender divisions in the US during the 1940s instead of race. But that's just me.
Women would never have worn the skirts shown here in this photograph. In fact, they look like in, the kind of skirts that were once worn by Marshallese men (Spennemann 1998). They also resemble the skirts worn by male dancers during the sacred and chiefly jebwa dance.
This is a really important section. These 3 sentences show how incorrect the American fetishization of Pacific Islanders wearing grass skirts is. In terms of the Marshall Islands, MEN would have worn the infamous skirts, not the ladies. That shows, in part, how many colonizers don't care to learn the history or culture of the native peoples.
The ideal of gyokusai was that a soldier was to offer his life for the emperor rather than become a prisoner, even if it meant killing himself with a grenade or engaging in another form of suicide.
KAMIKAZE!
The invasion of the Marshall Islands was, of course, much more com-plex than the simplistic narratives I had gleaned from my childhood and my high school education in the United States.
Growing up in Virginia (a southern state) I always learned in school until 11th or 12th grade that the Civil War was "The War of Northern Aggression" and that "the Union were bad guys". I also learned that "the Native Americans were good friends with colonists." I also learned that "Hawai'i was conquered by the superior US Military, but the US brought awesome change to the poor Hawaiian Islands".
It's wild and insane how twisted public schools in the US can be when it comes to retelling American history. There's so many lies thrown into it.
“That’s where our soldiers came onto the island when we came to free this island from the Japanese,”
Sure. You freed an island just to then occupy the island. That's like the meme "not freed.... more like, under new management".
A cASuAl wAlk Around moSt of the iSlAndS throughout the Marshall Islands immediately reveals the scars of fighting from the Pacific War.
The actual fighting during WWII in the Pacific was must more gruesome than the actual fighting in Europe and Africa. Bloodshed was immensely high and the Japanese fought in a much more extreme style than the Nazis & Italians did.
1923
What??? How??? How do we jump from 2005 to 1923? I'm confused by this sentence.
A 1934 propaganda animated short by Komatsuzawa Hajime also fuses American and Japanese popular cultural images in support of imperialism and militarization
Propaganda has been utilized so much throughout history to gain support for so many wild and crazy things. This sentence is no exception.
Indeed, as McClintock writes, the colonial imagination of land as feminine and virgin is:
This is a really interesting hot take and I agree with this assessment. Colonial Virginia/Jamestown (where I'm from originally) is a perfect example of this statement.
It is a satirical device that emphasizes the perceived inferiority of “blackness” within the Japanese imperial racial hierarchies.
Historically, Japan was influenced quite a lot by Europe and especially by the USA, so I can understand where they get this mindset from. They were exposed to it and it rubbed off onto them.
paint-ing their faces black
So basically, these Japanese school boys are doing the type of "black face" that was super popular with the Jim-Crow South & extremist Neo-Confederates?
“If we do not take care of our land, we will no longer be Islanders and we will die . . . the meaning of our names is connected to our land; our identity is our land”
This goes hand-in-hand to EVERYONE on Earth. If we don't take care of our 'aina, we will perish. Earth gives us life.
However, Pacific ISLANDers live on ISLANDS. So they are attached to their 'aina through what they call themselves. They also live on smaller pieces of land than continental people do, so they have to especially take care of their home better than others do.
represent the islands and ocean currents as a dynamic and ever-changing environment that is tied deeply to the genealogical, matrilineal tenure of land
How? Why? I'm a little bit confused by this comparison between genealogy and ocean currents....
No map—indigenous, foreign, or otherwise—is innocent.
This is the most interesting sentence in this book thus far. I totally disagree with this sentence. A map can 100% be made without any ill-intent or ulterior motive. Also, a map is not a living creature so it can't be innocent or guilty of anything; that lies with the cartographer.
It is now taken for granted that the Pacific Ocean is an “American Lake
This comment screams Spanish-American War political cartoon vibes, and honestly, I kind of agree with this assessment. The U.S. kind of does act like the Pacific is mostly theirs.
“big” and “little” histories
Is "big" history referring to Western History and "little" history referring to indigenous history? Because this sounds like a very Euro/U.S. way of thinking and I wouldn't be surprised if this is the case.
, coral and concrete
Hidden meaning?? Does "coral" refer to the natural environment and "simple" indigenous living, while "concrete" refers to Western urbanism and industrialization? This sentence's structure makes me think so.
Like coral, human settlers in Oceania were swept along by various currents of migration, driven by politics and other big forces; yet often they have chosen their islands deliberately.
This is an amazing simile. It's a great comparison between human settlers and floating/drifting coral. This basically explains how many islands in the Pacific came to be in terms of environmental and man-made changes.
In a relatively peaceful confrontation, Japanese forces took over the former German territories and, in 1922, established the Nanyō Guntō (South Seas Islands) territories of Japan under a League of Nations international mandate (inin tōchi ryō).
I'd love to learn more about this event, specifically. It seems like a pretty important historical event. This was soon after WWI (which Germany lost), but you don't hear much regarding Germany's loss of Pacific colonies.
I also highlight the form and aesthetics of socio-spatial relations.
He did go into extreme detail with his evidence and claims.
For example, sharing genealogy is a Tongan protocol that is common in social encounters.
This is the case in MANY Pacific Island cultures, especially throughout Polynesia. Family and ancestral ties, in general, are extremely important to the indigenous people who live in those areas. They are very proud of where they come from and the family who came before them.
why people lose face (ngalivale) when they fail to perform their fatongia.
This isn't the case in JUST Tongan culture. If you fail to do something important to help your kin, friends, or community---you will make yourself look bad and people will not view you favorably. That's the case throughout many different cultures and areas.
People are burdened, according to Vili, because they are so concerned with the way people look at them. If someone gives $100 for a funeral, the other person tries to give $100.
Trying to "one up" each other, but in a good way. I can see how this can become problematic, though, if people try to give more money than the next person. Someone could hurt themselves financially through this,
On the day my kāingalotu went to present our funeral gifts to Lia’s kāinga, I arrived at my bishop’s home early.
The Tongans make a funeral sound so much nicer and better than our Western funerals. Ours are typically gloomy, depressing, and dark; there's are more lively and family oriented...similar to Hawai'i.
In conclusion, I maintain that indigenous anthropology should include more indigenous theories and practices.
I fully agree 100%. Work regarding indigenous peoples should be conducted by indigenous people more than there currently is. They know themselves better than anyone else, and can do studies on their culture(s) better than any outsider can do.
Native Hawaiian anthropologist Ty Kāwika Tengan
I had him as a professor last semester for ANTH 485. He was an AMAZING professor and I learned so much from him; he's a super intelligent and friendly kumu.
In the art of sociospatial relations, Tongans try to avoid placing too much burden on one another.
That's really good. Stress is always a bad thing. People should always try to limit it onto others.
Even though I had donated only $20, I felt satisfied that I had fulfilled my fatongia of cooking food for Lia’s failotu.
Actions speak louder than words. His action of spending hours cooking the food versus people simply giving $100 for the funeral speaks loudly of his great character. Him volunteering to cook was awesome and it definitely helped his fatongia.
Attending a funeral is an important part of tauhi vā on Maui. Tongans who do not attend funerals feel shame (mā).
As it should. If you don't go to someone's funeral, regardless of the reason, you should feel immense shame. It's the person's "goodbye from this world". You should suck it up and do it for a few hours.
By failing to attend the faikava, Tōmasi and Sēmisi created vātamaki between themselves and their fellow villagers
This makes sense. Not attending in any other culture would also result in the community having negative/bad feelings towards the two men. They have a MORAL OBLIGATION to attend.
Tauhi vaha‘a, according to Fifitaniua, involves sharing goods with all peo-ple, not just one’s nuclear family.
This is an interesting concept. I'm not too sure how I'd feel about sharing my stuff with random strangers. I feel like most white people, in general, wouldn't like to do this. This is definitely different from what I am used to seeing.
Today, Lā‘ie is a hub for Tongans in Hawai‘i. In 2001, more than six hundred Tongans resided in Lā‘ie alone (Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism [DBEDT] 2001). This number shows that Lā‘ie had the highest population of Tongans in the State of Hawai‘i. Moreover, BYU–Hawai‘i (formerly CCH) had probably the highest number of Tongan students in any university in the United States. On average, BYU–Hawai‘i had about 140 Tongan students a semester in 2006 (‘Isileli Kongaika, personal communication, June 14, 2006).34
This portion REALLY shocks me. I'm super surprised that La'ie has the most Tongans out of everyone in all of Hawai'i. I'm additionally surprised that BYU-HI has the most Tongan students out of any university in the state. My guess would have been simply Honolulu and UHM or HPU. La'ie isn't that big so a significant Tongan population living there really surprises me.
botanical metaphors
What exactly is a "botanical metaphor"? Is it just a comparison between 2 objects while using plants as a comparison?
Would an example be how in Ancient Hawai'i a banana was forbidden to women since it resembled a penis? That is a comparison between a fruit and a body part. I'm just a tad bit confused what he means by this, exactly.
Similarly, Fale argued that Tongan oral traditions indicate long-distance voyaging between Tonga and Antarctica (1990, 104–5).
Yeah, I'd love to read the "evidence" for this claim. I don't see how Tongan seafarers could have ever made it to Antarctica of all places. I don't think anyone even knew the continent existed until the 1800s, let alone set foot onto the icy continent. This is just a "history conspiracy theory".
The story of Maui: a deified ancestor.
Maui reminds me of Hercules in Roman mythology. Both figures are powerful, young men who are demi-gods and they go on supernatural adventures to help their people. A specific example is the belief of how BOTH Maui and Hercules held up the sky (Hercules holding up the heavens for Atlas). It's crazy how different cultures thousands of miles away with no contact amongst each other came up with somewhat similar stories!
Sharing genealogy not only provided the basis for establishing relationships but also supported a communal approach to research.
My father's ancestry is PENNSYLVANIA DUTCH. Similarly to Tongan culture, genealogy is very important to the PA Dutch. At our family reunions, the older generation uses ancestry ties to talk to family and understand how we're all connected to one another; and some of the elders in the family know our family back hundreds of years. It's interesting to see 2 cultures have similarities to one another even though they had no contact with one another. Humans are similar in different ways.
Disharmonious social patterns often yield various social forms of disharmony
I mean this makes sense. Doing something badly results in bad (negative) results, versus doing something well results in good (positive) results. That's common sense.
For example, Vaka did not ask me to help him paint his house, but I knew that he needed help. Therefore, I decided that the best way to take care of my responsibility to him was to help paint his house.
This shows the importance of close friendships, along with good community ties. Helping one another in a community--especially when you're not asked to--is a great way to boost your vaha'angatae.
The ceremonial name (hingoa fakamatāpule) comes from the paternal side of one’s genealogy and place of origin in Tonga.16 It is an indication of one’s genealogical connection, through paternal lines, to a particular village (or island) in Tonga. On Maui, most people take names from their paternal lines.17
I would be more surprised if they did NOT use the paternal (father's) side of the family for last names. Most societies throughout history have done this, and it even is the case most of the time today. The father's last name is usually passed down throughout the generations, and a married woman usually takes the man's name. It is rarer if this is not the case! Tonga seems to fit into this action very well!
FIGURE 4.Performers of tauhi vā.
I really like the inclusion of figure #4. It makes it a little bit easier to comprehend the complexity stemming around tauhi va. Ka'ili's description of the term makes much more sense now.
crucial role of genealogy in Tongan interactions.
Genealogy/ancestry is super important to Tongan culture. Most ancestry lines were passed down ORALLY throughout the generations, from elders to youth. This action is similar to the other Pacific Island groups throughout the Pacific. It's how they kept their history and family alive.
However, ancient ancestors link Tongans to Hawai‘i and Hawaiians to Tonga.
There's MANY ancient links between different Pacific Island groups. The most famous is the Vasa Loloa exchange network of items and marriages between TONGA, Samoa, and Fiji in 'Polynesia'.
The Tongan people originated in the moana.
I mean, the space between islands is water. Lots of it. But Pacific Islanders are "people of the sea", so this is an interesting sentence. However, in terms of evolution, life (including humans) did originally come from the ocean. So this sentence can have many meanings and interpretations. Tongans literally evolved from the sea, they are people of the sea, the sea gave them life, etc.
AS PART OF DECOLONIZATION within the Pacific, there is a reclaiming of the indigenous name Moana.
I'm interested into where/how this term EXACTLY originated from. This term is a significant piece of Pacific Island culture and I'd love to know the history behind the word "Moana". Which island group was the first to use this term? Do we know the linguistical history of it?
Maui used the net to capture the sun and ordered the sun to travel more slowly across the sky.
I believe that this was done at Haleakala at Maui, since the mountain's name is "house of the sun". Either way, it's interesting to see the similar belief in Tongan mythology as well!
On Maui, most Tongans hold two to three jobs with relatively short breaks between them.
I feel like this is sadly the case for a lot of people living in Hawai'i. It's an extremely expensive place to live. I only work one job, and that in it-self is demanding enough!
Indigenous Time and Space
This is a test
Theorizing Tā-Vā
This is a test.