Symposia

• Jean Guiart: L’ethnographie comme marathon d’une vie/Ethnography as Life’s Marathon​​

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Working Sessions

• 2022-2032 International Decade of Indigenous Languages: Pacific Languages
• Being and Belonging: Technologies of Reproduction
• Decolonising Sea of Islands 
• Growing Old in the Pacific
• Mana Moana: Protecting Sacredness
• Proliferation of Models
• Race and Power in Oceania
• Rethinking Decolonization in Papua New Guinea
• "The Soul and the Image": The Story of Film in the Pacific
• Vā Moana: Space and Relationality in Pacific Thought and Identity​

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​​Informal Sessions

• Being Pacific Islander Pasifika, Māori, Indigenous Australian during the Era of Black Lives Matter 
• Complexities of Collaboration on Climate Change
• Documentation as Relation: Experiments with and Challenges to Knowledge
• Dogs and Their Humans
• Ends of Oblivion: Continuities and Discontinuities in Oceania’s Pasts
• Food Sovereignty in the Pacific
• Museums and Repatriation
• Pacific Island Politics, Populism, and Democracy
• Pacific Perspectives: The Fluidity of Time, Space and Relations
• Possessing the Pacific City: A Comparative Dispossessions Working Group
• Slouching towards Christian Theocracy in Western Polynesia
• Trust and Care in Pacific Health Systems
• Talanoa on "The Healer and the Psychiatrist"​

Informal Session: Food Sovereignty in the Pacific

Organizers: Kathleen C. Riley, John Wagner, and Patricia Fifita

Colonialism, capitalism, and industrial food systems have shaped foodways in the Pacific region in ways that challenge individuals’ health and nutrition, undermine local cultural values, and are economically divisive and environmentally destructive. Industrial food systems are frequently powered by unfair, racist labor practices, are a major cause of climate change, and, as the COVID-19 pandemic illustrates, are susceptible to production and supply breakdowns that threaten the food security of all who rely on them. Food sovereignty approaches, as developed in both the global north and global south, offer at least partial remedies for many of these problems, but could benefit by better communication between local communities and the NGOs working at regional and global scales. In this session, we explore Pacific people’s diverse understandings of food, health, work, and the environment, consider their attempts to articulate these in the face of global industrial food forces and discourses, and evaluate the potential for food sovereigntist movements to mobilize constructive change throughout the Pacific region.

Participants:
Laurence Marshall Carucci lamaca@montana.edu
Sophie Chao, sophie.chao@sydney.edu.au
David Fazzino dfazzino@bloomu.edu  and Ashley Meredith meredith.ashley@gmail.com 
Patricia Fifita, pfifita@hawaii.edu 
Robert (Bob) Franco, bfranco@hawaii.edu  & Craig Severance sevc@hawaii.edu
Jessica Harden (RIT), jahgss@rit.edu 
Viali Lameko viali.lameko@oum.edu.ws 
Nancy Pollack, njpollock.nz@gmail.com
Kathleen C. Riley (kriley1125@gmail.com) and Emily Donaldson embillybee@gmail.com
John Wagner john.wagner@ubc.ca 

Please see the session descriptions guide for participants' abstracts. 


For more information, please contact Kathleen C. Riley, Rutgers University <kriley1125@gmail.com>, John Wagner <john.wagner@ubc.ca>, and Patricia Fifita <pfifita@hawaii.edu>