The Contemporary Pacific, vol. 18, no. 1 (2006)

TCP 18.1 cover imageAbout the Artist: Albert Wendt, p. vii
Images

ARTICLES

“Got Race?” The Production of Haole and the Distortion of Indigeneity in the Rice Decision, p. 1
Judy Rohrer

This paper is part of a larger project that explores haole (white people, foreigners) as a colonial form of whiteness in Hawai‘i—as a dynamic social assemblage. Haole was forged and reforged in over two centuries of colonization, and it must be understood through that history. I use the recent Supreme Court decision in Harold F Rice v Benjamin J Cayetano, 528 US 495 (2000), as an entry point into the interrogation of haole. Framed by the dominant discourse, the case appeared to be about Native Hawaiians (asking questions about who they are and what rights they have), and not about haole (assuming there are no questions as to who they are and what rights they have).
The Rice case illustrates how Western law renders indigenous claims inarticulable by racializing native peoples, while simultaneously normalizing white subjectivity by insisting on a color-blind ideology. The inherent contradiction in these two positions—race matters /race does not matter—is played out in the frictions surrounding the Rice decision and is evidence of the cracks in the hegemony of Western law that complicate any easy binary of colonizer–colonized. Through an analysis of Rice, I explore how the Western legal framework is set up to accept the teleological narrative of the development, to problematize native identity, and to naturalize white subjectivity. I then broaden the lens to explore the ways Rice points to an epistemological disconnect between Western notions of the production of knowledge and indigenous articulations of the same.
Keywords: indigeneity, whiteness, colonization, Hawai‘i, law, critical race theory

Three Competing Research Perspectives for Oceania, p. 33
Houston Wood

Three research perspectives are currently competing in Oceania. A disciplinebased perspective still dominates, though ever fewer people believe that disciplines produce superior forms of knowledge. An alternative, interpretation-based perspective is becoming more prominent, but this approach relies on confusing and contradictory claims about how interpretations connect to concrete activities. A practice-based approach seems better able to promote diversity and place-based autonomies in Oceania. Research that focuses on practices avoids the universalizing claims of discipline-based research. By treating cultures as dynamic repertoires of practices, a practice-based approach integrates interpretive and noninterpretive activities within a single research frame. Examples from many researchers, including Epeli Hau‘ofa and Ty Kawika Tengan, illustrate the benefits of a practice-based approach.
Keywords: disciplines, Oceania, Pacific studies, practices, research

DIALOGUE

Interview with Albert Wendt: Art, Writing, and the Creative Process, p. 59
Vilsoni Hereniko

On Analogies: Rethinking the Pacific in a Global Context, p. 71
Teresia K Teaiwa

Saipan: From Then to Now, p. 89
P F Kluge

POLITICAL REVIEWS

Micronesia in Review: Issues and Events, 1 July 2004 to 30 June 2005, p. 104
Kelly G Marsh, Samuel F McPhetres, Donald R Shuster

Polynesia in Review: Issues and Events, 1 July 2004 to 30 June 2005, p. 128
Frédéric Angleviel, Lorenz Gonschor, Jon Tikivanotau M Jonassen, Tracie Ku‘uipo Cummings Losch

BOOK AND MEDIA REVIEWS

Aloha Betrayed: Native Hawaiian Resistance to American Colonialism, p. 154
Review Forum by Lyn Carter, Sally Engle Merry, and Jonathan Friedman, with a Response by Noenoe K Silva

Creative Land: Place and Procreation on the Rai Coast of Papua New Guinea, by James Leach, p. 171
Reviewed by Joel Robbins

Remembering Papua New Guinea: An Eccentric Ethnography, by William C Clarke, p. 176
Reviewed by Dan Jorgensen

News Zero: The New York Times and the Bomb, by Beverly Ann Deepe Keever, p. 178
Reviewed by Robert C Kiste

The Secret Guam Study: How President Ford’s 1975 Approval of Commonwealth Was Blocked by Federal Officials, by Howard P Willens with Dirk A Ballendorf, p. 182
Reviewed by Robert C Kiste

L’art des échanges: Penser le lien sociale chez les Sulka (Papouasie Nouvelle-Guinée), by Monique Jeudy-Ballini, p. 185
Reviewed by Marta Rohatynskyj

Approches autour de culture et nature dans le Pacifique Sud, edited by Hamid Mokaddem, p. 188
Reviewed by Elise Huffer

L’oeil du Père Rouel: Autour d’une série de photographies d’Alphonse Rouel en Nouvelle-Calédonie (1913–1969), by Hamid Mokaddem, p. 191
Reviewed by Emmanuelle Crane

Insularités: Hommage à Henri Lavondès, edited by Alain Babadzan, p. 193
Reviewed by Serge Dunis

Atlas of the Pacific Islands, by Max Quanchi, p. 196
Reviewed by James O Juvik and Sonia P Juvik

The Captain Cook Encyclopaedia, written and edited by John Robson, p. 197
Reviewed by Brian Richardson

Na Kkai Taku: Taku’s Musical Fables, collected by Richard M Moyle, p. 200
Reviewed by Denis Crowdy

Stolen Worlds: Fujindian Fragments, edited by Kavita Ivy Nandan, p. 202
Reviewed by Leslie Butt

Waa in Storms, by Teweiariki Teaero, p. 204
Reviewed by Katerina Martina Teaiwa

Mauna Kea: Temple Under Siege (documentary film), p. 207
Reviewed by Georganne Nordstrom

CONTRIBUTORS, p. 211