The Pacific Islands, v
About the Artist: Sue Pearson, vii
articles
From Full Dusk to Full Tusk: Reimagining the “Dusky Maiden” through the Visual Arts
A Marata Tamaira, 1
Absract: For centuries the image of the Dusky Maiden has occupied a prominent place in the Western imagination. Indeed, nowhere has it been so effectively shaped and deployed than through the visual arts. Portrayed as naive belles-cum-femme fatales through early Western paintings and later photographs, Polynesian women were presented to foreign audiences as symbols of the exotic, erotic, and dangerous. In the contemporary period, female Polynesian artists have sought to reconceptualize, challenge, subvert, and invert the image of their dusky maiden “sibling” in order to open up alternative spaces in which to reread this centuries-old icon. Here, I focus on the visual art creations of three women: Rosanna Raymond, Shigeyuki Kihara, and Sue Pearson, each of whom is actively engaged in reinscribing the stereotype of the Dusky Maiden with new and empowering meaning.
Keywords: Dusky Maiden, goddesses, ancestresses, liminality, Polynesia, Polynesianism, visual arts
A “Headless” Native Talks Back: Nidoish Naisseline and the Kanak Awakening in 1970s New Caledonia
David Chappell, 37
Studies of the Kanak independence movement have tended to focus on the turbulent 1980s in New Caledonia and their aftermath, but the roots of the modern nationalist movement go back to Kanak and Caledonian students who attended universities in France in the 1960s. They were radicalized by what they experienced, including the May 1968 student-worker uprising, and they went home again in 1969 to find colonialism alive and well in their own country. Their protest movement gradually grew into a pro-independence political party, when Jean-Marie Tjibaou was still a moderate cultural activist and political autonomist. The words and actions of Nidoish Naisseline, in particular, merit closer examination in tracing the genealogy of anticolonial Kanak and Caledonian radicalism. They show that when he became high chief on an outer island, his own politics began to change, though he remains to this day a local leader who supports indigenous rights.
Keywords: New Caledonia, Nidoish Naisseline, Foulards Rouges, Kanak independence, anticolonialism, Third World
dialogue
Miracle Workers and Nationhood: Reinhard Bonnke and Benny Hinn in Fiji
Lynda Newland, 74
Epeli’s Quest: Essays in Honor of Epeli Hau‘ofa
edited by Terence Wesley-Smith, contributions by Ratu Joni Madraiwiwi, Teresia Teaiwa, Geoffrey White, Tarcisius Kabutaulaka, Steven Edmund Winduo, Vijay Naidu, and Vilsoni Hereniko, 101
political reviews
Micronesia in Review: Issues and Events, 1 July 2008 to 30 June 2009
John R Haglelgam, David W Kupferman, Kelly G Marsh, Samuel F McPhetres, Donald R Shuster, Tyrone J Taitano, 126
Polynesia in Review: Issues and Events, 1 July 2008 to 30 June 2009
Lorenz Gonschor, Iati Iati, Jon Tikivanotau M Jonassen, Margaret Mutu, 163
book and media reviews
Jean-Marie Tjibaou, Kanak Witness to the World: An Intellectual Biography, by Eric Waddell
Reviewed by Harold Brookfield, 206
Transpacific Imaginations: History, Literature, Counterpoetics, by Yunte Huang
Reviewed by John Eperjesi, 208
The Future of Indigenous Museums: Perspectives from the Southwest Pacific, edited by Nick Stanley
Reviewed by Katherine Higgins, 211
Fast Talking PI, by Selina Tusitala Marsh; I Can See Fiji: Poetry and Sounds, by Teresia Teaiwa
Reviewed by Ku‘ualoha Ho‘omanawanui, 213
Moonlight Leta Volume 1: Musical Transitions (Marshallese String Band Music Today and Yesterday) [compact disc]
Reviewed by David Kammerer, 216
We Are the Ocean: Selected Works, by Epeli Hau‘ofa
Reviewed by Eric Waddell, 218
Red Wave: Space, Process, and Creativity at the Oceania Centre for Arts and Culture, by Katherine Higgins
Reviewed by Sean Mallon, 221
Le spectacle de la culture: Globalisation et traditionalismes en Océanie, by Alain Babadzan
Reviewed by Grant McCall, 223
Shiro’s Head [feature film]
Reviewed by Joel Moffett, 225
CONTRIBUTORS, 229