Pacific Islands Monograph Series 30. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2021. xxii, 254 pp. (B&W photos.) US$28.00, paper. ISBN 9780824890285.
A collection of previously published work by the late Teresia Kieuea Teaiwa, who died in 2017 at the age of 48 years, has been selected from various academic publications and assembled by her sister, Katerina Teaiwa, and her co-editors. The book’s title comes from the author’s most well-known quote: “We sweat and cry saltwater so we know that the ocean is really in our blood.”
This book is about the Pacific Islands and its people. Teresia Teaiwa was an academic and teacher specializing in this subject, and was appointed a lecturer at Victoria University of Wellington in 2000. She was, at the time of her death, the director of Pacific studies at the university. It is not surprising then that the first part of the book is devoted to some of her writings under the heading “Pacific Studies.” The second and third parts of the book are titled “Militarism and Gender” and “Native Reflections.”
The first chapter of the book, “The Classroom as a Metaphorical Canoe,” looks at the author’s Banaban, Kiribati, and African ancestry, her early life experiences in Hawai’i and Fiji, and how she regards herself as an indigenous Pacific person who has been colonialized by a Western educational system. She tried to decolonize Pacific studies, and believed it is useful to think of the classroom as a canoe and the students and teachers as members of the crew. Together they foster a cooperative relationship in moving the canoe forward. In her course resources she incorporated Pacific studies with indigenous knowledge. The teacher and students both learn from and teach each other.
Chapter 2 of the book questions the Asia-Pacific agenda in teaching Pacific studies and why we have the coupling of Asia with the Pacific, making the Pacific a vague suffix to Asia. In New Zealand and Hawai’i there are so many students from a “Pasifika” background, with a large number of ethnicities, languages, and cultures from a vast area covering Melanesia, Polynesia, and Micronesia, that the author feels we need to have a separate Pacific Islands studies focus.
In chapter 4, “Charting Pacific (Studies) Waters,” the author describes a non-academic learning method at Victoria University of Wellington, Akamai, an arts and performance course where students journey through the language and cultural heritage of different Pacific Islands: Fiji, Kiribati, Maori, Samoa, Tonga, and others. The author believes in “Native Pacific cultural studies,” where the title does not describe the methodology but rather the frame of reference.
Poetry is introduced in chapter 6 with the lyrics to Amnesia, a song by Teresia Teaiwa and Sia Figiele. Amnesia is about forgetting and it is also about islands, the “nesia” in Polynesia, Melanesia, and Micronesia. The lyrics tell us that it’s easy to forget that there are islands in the ocean between Asia and America, islands that are important to the people of Oceania. And so the book proceeds with poetry and various methods and topics, to bring the reader to greater awareness of the Pacific region.
In part 2, “Militarism and Gender,” the author uses stories from Micronesia to expose the fallacious base of colonial and male domination in the region. United States colonialism, the most recent in Micronesian history, is seen as the most dangerous with its powerful military and economic weapons. With the Bikini Island atomic bomb tests which commenced in 1946 and again at Enewetak in 1954, islands were made uninhabitable and people were alienated from their lands. At the time of the Enewetak tests, most of Micronesia was administered as a United States Trust Territory. On behalf of the United Nations, the US was entrusted to care for the welfare and advancement of the people of Micronesia. Instead, they tested atomic weapons and built military bases there. Along with colonialism came gender bias in favour of males.
Fiji’s military is also discussed and its threat to multiculturalism, democracy, and women’s rights. When a country’s army is able to hold an elected government hostage, as has happened in Fiji, it is a cause of concern for democracy. But many Fijians see the army as a bastion of Fiji ethnicity and masculinity and a way for ethnic Fijians to push back against multiculturalism in Fiji. The book also mentions women in the Fiji military forces. There are a few women in the Army and the Navy. The women recruits have a higher standard of education than the average male soldier and the women are all commissioned officers. The Fijian women’s rights movement seems to have viewed the women recruits as feminist pioneers advancing the cause of women’s equality.
Part 3 of the book, “Native Reflections,” begins with “Some Notes Towards a Treatment for a Film Project,” which was first presented at the conference, “Contested Grounds: Power and Knowledge in Pacific Islands Studies,” at the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa in December 1995. The author intertwines a story about yanqona (kava) drinking in Fiji with kanikani, a skin condition caused by consuming large quantities of yanqona on a daily basis. Then a third thread is introduced into the story with the history of the phosphate mining industry on Banaba Island and subsequent destruction of the island. It is a loose association of the author’s thoughts and it is difficult to see the connection between these threads.
Other chapters in this final part of the book are also very personal to the author, her poetry, her thoughts on the effects of colonization and on sustainable outer island living in the Pacific Islands, as she seeks an escape from the problems of the modern world. Like many others she would like to leave behind the corruption, substance abuse, poverty, animal abuse, and environmental degradation.
The book should be of interest to those in the Pacific Islands, especially students who are enrolled in a formal course of Pacific studies. Each chapter has endnotes and source references and there is a comprehensive bibliography of the author’s published works and a good index.
Peter McQuarrie
Independent Researcher, Auckland