Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2021. viii, 274 pp. (B&W photos, illustrations.) US$30.00, paper. ISBN 978-0-295-74858-0.
Children and youth are the largest demographic groups in most Pacific countries. Despite this, as Keith L. Camacho notes in the introduction to his edited volume, Reppin’: Pacific Islander Youth and Native Justice, this dearth of literature has led to significant gaps in our understanding of the issues facing young Pacific and Pasifika people in their homelands and the diaspora. Commonly filling these gaps are government and development policies and programs that identify Pacific youth as ‘“risks” to themselves and “problems” to society (3). This book challenges these portrayals, contesting colonial narratives that continue to demonize Pacific youth through sharing (mainly) prosocial stories of their engagement with their communities and cultures.
Through an introduction and ten chapters, we are provided a variety of stories about how the nurturing or absence of cultural identity and belonging impact on Pacific and Pasifika youth. The stories chart the experiences of youth throughout the Pacific, as well as Pasifika experiences in Aotearoa/New Zealand, Australia, and the United States. The inclusion of stories from Marshallese and Chuukese communities addresses an important gap in existing youth literature that rarely engages northern Pacific cultures: Jessica Schwartz discusses Marshallese performance art that asserts connection to place, and Demiliza Saramosing offers an account of a culturally grounded bike exchange program attended by immigrant populations near Honolulu.
Camacho writes that he chose the title, Reppin’, “to represent the vital roles that Pacific Islander youth have played in shaping the cities of Oceania and the diaspora” (5). How Pacific youth present and re(-)present their identities is a theme that runs through the chapters, with discussions of the need for young people to have prosocial civic engagement opportunities available to them. Stella Black, Jacquie Kidd, and Katey Thom detail how Pakeha institutions of youth justice fail Maori and Pasifika youth in Aotearoa/New Zealand and detail the alternative community support model through Marae to root young offenders in culture and place. Similarly, Kepa ‘Ōkusitino Maumau, Moana ‘Ulu‘ave-Hafoka, and Lea Lani Kinikini’s creatively assembled multi-author chapter documents how marginalization and stigmatization of Tongan youth in Utah can push young men into gang membership, with its associated ills. Vaoiva Ponton’s exploration of a homework group for (mainly female) Samoan students in Melbourne shows how the provision of prosocial activities for young people that meet them at their stages of cultural development can provide spaces for belonging and positivity.
The connection that Pacific and Pasifika youth make with hip hop culture as a way of presenting and re(-)presenting identity repeats through several chapters. Mary Good writes of how early online social networking practices in Tonga on the now-defunct Bebo platform affirmed transnational Tongan identities and collapsed ta-va social relations. She notes that the early adopters utilized stylized written language and narratives of hardship common in hip hop music of the 1990s. Moses Ma’alo Faleolo’s exploration of how gang affiliation for Samoan youth in Aotearoa takes inspiration from the Bloods of California demonstrates how seeking community following an episode of grief for Pasifika children of immigrants can lead to engagement in antisocial activities. Powerfully, he also discusses how gang affiliation can affirm cultural connection through discussion of a gang whose membership criteria included abstinence from drugs and alcohol and that “one had to be a Samoan who wanted to learn fa’a Samoa” (204).
The ways that Pacific youth “rep” their cultural identities in ever-evolving ways is perhaps best captured by Thomas Dick and Sarah Doyle in their chapter on young ni-Vanuatu artists in the local music scene who “rimix” (remix) “digital media in new ways that reflect their own desires, identities, and languages” (111). The intentional way that these young people present and re(-)present their identities offers a contemporary case study in the actualization of complementary anthropological concepts of neotradition, indigenization, hybridity, vernacularization, and similar terms. Contrasting the example of youth using new media to affirm culture in ways that resonate contemporarily, Arcia Tecun, Edmond Fehoko, and ‘Inoke Hafoka discuss how long-established methods for creating and upholding cultural identity continue to have cachet. They discuss how kava circles in diasporic communities can create spaces for young men to “re-imagine themselves and their masculinities” (233) through engagement in spaces where hierarchies dissipate, sensitive topics can be discussed, and vulnerability can be expressed.
As with any edited volume, some chapters are stronger than others and some gaps exist. Although the chapters dialogue with one another, there is a limited situation of the case studies in broader political and developmental discourses around youth globally and in the Pacific. Popular narratives of the risks associated with “youth bulges” or youth as “the future” are largely glossed over. And though a number of the chapters touch on the marginalization of youth and the particular minimization of young women in Pacific societies, there are missed opportunities to connect these conversations to wider debates within youth studies of the position of young people in society. Camacho also notes the under-representation of women’s experiences in the book, although the authors were doubtlessly influenced by the predilection of youth programs from governments and development agencies to focus on males.
There are significant highlights to the volume. Not least, the number of Pacific and Pasifika authors, whose voices are not always centred in Pacific texts. Also, the disciplinary diversity and the richness of data in the case studies means that some chapters open themselves to alternative readings. For example, Alika Bourgette exhorts that her exploration of oral histories of young men in Waikiki in the early twentieth century details practices of homosociality and heteronormativity at a time when Hawai’i was seeing rapid expansion of tourism. In reading of the pranks, petty thuggery, and hustling for tourist dollars that the men discussed engaged in, I was more struck by the agency they demonstrated in switching between different behaviours to suit their needs and conditions. In a field of literature currently so lacking, this book adds valuable nuance and complexity, demonstrating the desire and practices of Pacific and Pasifika youth to positively connect to and represent their cultures.
Aidan Craney
La Trobe University, Melbourne