1. #INDG 2015//SOCI2810
• Week 12: “Indigenous ecological knowledges: Oceania and the Pacific”
• November 29, 2021
• Dr. Zoe Todd
Copyright Professor Zoe Todd 2020

2. Class outline
• Alice Te Punga Somerville: “Once were
Pacific”
• Tracey Banivanua Mar: “Saltwater: the
separation of people and
territory”Banivanu

3. Recap,
week 10
• Baofo et al. 2015
• IPACC. 2016.
• Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim “Indigenous
Knowledge meets Science to Solve
Climate Change”

4. Copyright Professor Zoe Todd 2020
Sourceh7ps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Islander#/media/File:Oceania_UN_Geoscheme_Regions_with_Zones_and_ISO3166_labels.svg/

5. Source: https://www.geographicguide.com/oceania-map.htm

6. Countries in
Oceania
• “Oceania is a geographic region that
includes Australasia, Melanesia, Microne
sia and Polynesia.[5] Spanning
the Eastern and Western Hemispheres,
Oceania has a land area of 8,525,989
square kilometres (3,291,903 sq mi) and
a population of over 41 million.” source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oceania
• “American Samoa - Australia - Cook
Islands - Federated States of Micronesia -
Fiji - French Polynesia - Guam - Kiribati -
Marshall Islands - Nauru - New Caledonia
- New Zealand - Niue - Northern Mariana
Islands - Palau - Papua New Guinea -
Pitcairn Islands - Samoa - Solomon
Islands - Tokelau - Tonga - Tuvalu-Vanuatu
- Wallis and Futuna.” source:
https://www.iucn.org/commissions/commission-ecosystem-
management/regions/oceania

7. Indigenous
Peoples
(IPs) in
Australia
and Oceania
• |”
Indigenous
Peoples
(IPs) in
Oceania
• “The indigenous people of Oceania are
Polynesians, Melanesians (including Torres
Strait Islanders), Micronesians, Papuans,
and Aboriginal Australians. With the
notable exceptions of Australia, New
Zealand, Hawaii, New Caledonia and Guam,
indigenous peoples make up the majority of
the populations of Oceania.”

8. Indigenous
Peoples
(IPs) in
Oceania and
Australia
Resources from Vehia Wheeler:
• Pacific:
McMillen, H., Ticktin, T., Friedlander, A., Jupiter, S., Thaman, R., Campbell, J.,
Veitayaki, J., Giambelluca, T., Nihmei, S., Rupeni, E. and Apis-Overhoff, L.,
2014. “Small islands, valuable insights: systems of customary resource use
and resilience to climate change in the Pacific.”
Ecology and Society, 19(4).
Marshall Islands:
Marshallese Poet, Kathy Jetnil-Kijner on sea-level rise and how it affects her
atoll island nation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGOuHoKrzBQ
Solidarity poem between Inuk poet, Aka Niviana and Marshallese poet,
Kathy Jetnil-Kijner about how climate change will affect their home islands:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYf4yIYHVws

9. Resources from Vehia Wheeler, con’t
• Aotearoa/New Zealand:
Dr. Rangi Matamua, very amazing, award-winning Maori astronomer talks about stars and Maori and Hawai'i lunar
calendars "Dr Matamua has produced a number of publications in his specialist areas, and sits on a number of
related boards including Society for Māori Astronomy Research and Traditions (SMART)." from his bio at Waikato
University
https://nativestories.org/maori-astronomy-with-dr-rangi-matamua/
https://www.waikato.ac.nz/staff-profiles/people/rmatamua
Hawai'i:
Dr. Kiana Frank, Hawaiian microbiologist and how she uses traditional knowledges in her microbiology work, Na Kilo
Ao Maiki: Observing the Microbial Realm
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQU6Fsgh2WE&t=43s
Dr. Mehana Vaughan, cultural and natural resource specialist from Kauai, Hawai'i
Pāwehe Ke Kai a‘o Hā‘ena: Creating State Law based on Customary Indigenous Norms of Coastal ManagementMB
Vaughan, B Thompson, AL Ayers Society & Natural Resources 30 (1), 31-46

10. Resources from Vehia Wheeler, con’t
• The Moku System: Managing biocultural resources for abundance within social-ecological regions in
HawaiʻiKB Winter, K Beamer, MB Vaughan, AM Friedlander, MH Kido, ... Sustainability 10 (10), 3554
• Australia and the bushfires of 2020:
https://www.culturalsurvival.org/publications/cultural-survival-quarterly/australia-burning-preventing-loss-
using-traditional
Korero o te orau, Cook Islands non-profit who does work on culturally-based science knowledge:
https://www.facebook.com/korerooteorau/
https://www.korerooteorau.org/focal-areas
SOS Mo'orea, non-profit located in Mo'orea, Tahiti that focuses on culturally-based science teaching to
tahitian youth (this is my non-profit! :) )
https://soceanias.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/soceanias

11. Aotearoa
“land of a long
white cloud”
Copyright Professor Zoe Todd 2020
https://www.andrewdc.co.nz/product/te-reo-maori-map-of-aotearoa-new-zealand-
print/

12. Alice Te Punga
Somerville
• Tensions between Māori experiences as
both Indigenous in Aoetearoa and
migrants in the Pacific:
“Certainly Māori once were Pacific. A series of
complex and impressive ocean journeys were
undertaken over the last five thousand years in an
unparalleled and unparallelable feat of navigaAon
and curiosity. The last legs of those deliberate
journeys were across unprecedented distances: to
Hawaı̒i, Rapanui (Easter Island/Isla de Pascua), and
Aotearoa.7” (p. xvi)

13. Alice Te
Punga
Somerville
“Once we arrived in Aotearoa, we began to recall
Hawaiki, the warmer homeland from which we had
physically departed and to which we would
spiritually return after death.11 Hawaiki is a
consolidation of our Pacific origins, and around
Polynesia this mythical homeland bears versions of
the same name. Whereas this Pacific is recalled in
some specific spaces, however, our location (both on
the cold islands of Aotearoa and in the nation-state
of New Zealand) has shaped how we articulate who
we are. Although Māori are ethnically Polynesian
and Aotearoa is clearly a part of the Pacific region,
within the New Zealand national space, Māori and
Pacific colloquially refer to two distinct communities:
Māori are Indigenous, whereas Pacific refers to those
migrant communities from elsewhere in the region.
It can feel like we once were Pacific but are no
longer, and this book explores the ways in which the
relationship between Māori and the Pacific has been
articulated over a long period of time and in multiple
sites.” (p. xvii)

14. Te Ika a Māui
• “When we are on Matiu, we are in the mouth of a fish. Before the North Island
was given its descriptive, poetic, and creative English name, it had another name
that we still use: “Te Ika a Māui.” This name is derived from the original fishing up
of the island by Māui, the trickster demigod figure who pops up all around the
Pacific. Māui took his grandmother Murirangawhenua’s jawbone and fished up te
ika, the memory of which is still encoded in the name for the various parts of the
fish. One end of the island is called “Te Hiku o te Ika,” the “tail of the fish,” and
Wellington is located at the other end: “Te Ūpoko o te Ika,” the “head of the fish.”
Māui’s hook went into the mouth of the fish, which (according to my relatives) is
our harbor. This is a story of firstness: as long as there has been a fish, there have
been us. When we introduce ourselves to other Māori people, we name the
mountains, lakes, rivers, and harbors to which we are related so they know who
we are. We are standing in the mouth of a fish on which our people have always
lived, and on this basis, we are Indigenous.” (p. xviii)

15. Te Ika a Māui
• hFps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7nyFunHx9A&ab_channel=Stor
yIsKingMedia

16. Te Punga Somerville
“When we stand on Matiu,
we are standing on a
memorial to our collective
voyaging from across the
ocean we know as Te
Moananui a Kiwa. On this
basis, we are migrants; we
are Pacific” p.xviii

17. Once were
Pacific
Copyright Professor Zoe Todd 2020
“The project of decolonization in which all Indigenous
people are engaged demands the grappling with, not
the erasure of, colonization; it is about re-
remembering.” p. xix

18. • hFps://www.facebook.com/
maFhew.tukaki/videos/the-
story-of-maori-
migraVon/223702910974810
5/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C4%81ori_m
igration_canoes#/media/File:Polynesian_Migra
tion.svg

19. Te Punga Somerville
• “How do Māori arVculate and negoVate the rather difficult
intersecVon between discourses of migraVon (we came from Hawaiki
on waka) and claims to Indigeneity (we’ve always been here)?
Claiming that we once were Pacific does not undermine or
delegiVmize naVonal or transnaVonal discursive formaVons that seal
Māori into one of two possible relaVons—with the state or with
Indigeneity—but rather suggests that the Pacific is a rich and
significant addiVonal context for Māori arVculaVon and scholarship.”
(p. xxi)

20. “On the other side of the world, when war ended in 1945, a loose coalition
of labour unions, student and women’s organisations, the Pan-African
Federation and anti-colonial organisations from throughout the British
Empire met at the HolbornTown Hall in London under the banner of the
‘All Colonial People’s Conference’. Its name was a play on earlier meetings
held by world powers in Moscow, Dumbarton Oaks and San Francisco as
another new world order of united nations was mapped out. The opening
session of the All Colonial People’s Conference called for elected representatives
of subject peoples to be invited to participate on ‘terms of absolute
equality’ at the United Nations meetings then taking place in San Francisco.
The London Conference was attended by forty delegates and twenty-five
observers representing ‘Burma, India, West Africa, East Africa, Malaya, the
West Indies and other colonies’, and speaker Iqbal Singh remarked that
despite the diversity of voices, he was struck by the unity of their story, that of
‘degradation imposed upon the human spirit by imperialism’.5 Delegates at
the All Colonial People’s Conference produced a manifesto, The Colonies
and Peace, which asserted that imperialism was the root cause of war and
only ‘liberation from [its] tentacles’ would ensure peace.6 Delegates called
for a World Colonial Council, to replace the Permanent Mandates Council,
that would be run by representatives of colonised countries rather than
imperial powers. Its task would be to formulate a programme for
the unconditional and immediate ending of colonialism.” p. 115
•Tracey
Banivanua
Mar:
“Saltwater:
the
separation
of people
and
territory”

21. The impact of WW2 on Pacific Islands was significant:

22. Saltwater
(Tracey
Banivanua
Mar)

23. Summary
• Alice Te Punga Somerville: aFenVon to
local relaVonships to place and
connecVons to broader homelands
(Indigeneity and migraVon are
interconnected)
• Tracey Banivanua Mar: histories of
imperialism in Pacific following WW2 –
liFle aFenVon is paid in US/Europe to
the colonizaVon of Indigenous
peoples/naVons throughout the
Pacific

24. Some things to
consider
• How can we apply the issues raised in this
week’s readings to thinking about topics we
have explored in other parts of the term? For
example, how does Alice Te Punga
Somerville’s conversaBon about
Indigeneity/migraBon in a Māori and Pacific
context help illuminate quesBons about
Indigeneity/migraBon in other regions we
have been learning from this term?