Symposia

• Positioning Culture within Pacific Christianities  

Working Sessions

• Affect and Place in the Contemporary Pacific
• De-colonising the Sea of Islands 
• Decolonizing Anthropology: A View from Oceania 
• Environmental Resistances in Oceania
• Growing Old in the Pacific
• Mana Moana: Protecting Sacredness
• Pacific Queer Communities and Artistic Creation
• Porgera, Whither and Whence? 
• The Proliferation of Models
• Satan in the Pacific 
• Stitching New Traditions: Quilting in Polynesia 

​​Informal Sessions

• 2019 International Year of Indigenous Languages
• Agriculture, Food Security and Climate Change 
• Astronomies of Oceania 
• Connecting Wealth and Space: Environmental Intimacy Working Against Capitalism
• Considering Lata: Hero of a Thousand Faces
• Dreaming in the Pacific
• Education and Empowerment: Decolonising Schooling in Oceania​
• Honoring Kale Langlas​   
• Jean Guiart: L’ethnographie comme marathon d’une vie/Ethnography as Life’s Marathon 
• Kava: A Global Phenomenon?
• New Voices in Pacific Anthropology
• Rethinking Labor and Work in the Global Pacific​
• “The Soul and the Image”: The Story of Film in the Pacific
• Stratified Reproduction in a Global Oceania
• Uta ma Tai: Inside looking out in Pacific Island scholarship 
• Vā Moana: Space and relationality in Pacific thought and identity
• We will get over it when it is over: Race and Power in Oceania  
• Women and Politics in Polynesia

Working Session: Mana Moana: Protecting Sacredness​

Organizers: Tevita Ka’ili and Matanginifale Nuhisifa Seve-Williams​

Due to the success of the Mana Moana: Protecting Sacredness working session in Aotearoa, we are going to reconvene another working session in Hilo, Hawaiʻi. We will arrange the tā-vā, time-space, of our working session in collective and circular modes to foster talanoa, “talking-critically-yet-harmoniously” (Hūfanga). Our session will continue to critically examine issues relating to protecting the sacred, desecration, cultural theft, cultural appropriation, (mis)representation, commercialization, commodification of sacredness, colonialism, consultation/collaboration, and Oceanian agency.

Three years ago, Disneyʼs movie Moana raised a number of critical issues for Indigenous scholars that are still debated through media and social media with particular reference to protecting the sacred, cultural theft, islander participation, and commodification of sacredness. We welcome participants from all sides of the debate to share their thoughts on Disneyʼs Moana, patenting of Aloha and Bula, proliferation of kava bars, ownership of motifs and hula movements, guarding Indigenous knowledge, historicizing navigational knowledge, cultural appropriation, (mis)representation, commercialization/commodification, colonialism/neocolonialism, consultation (Free Prior & Informed Consent), Indigenous agency as well as the latest struggle in the protection of Mauna Kea.

We are looking forward to talanoa at this working session. Participants interested in this session should e-mail intention to participate and a topic either to Tēvita O Kaʻili (tevita.kaili@byuh.edu) or to Nuhisifa Seve-Williams (williams346@slingshot.co.nz) by 1 November 2019.

Participants:

• Nuhisifa Seve-Williams (Matanginifale) - Disneyfying research and consultation.
• Tēvita O. Kaʻili (Maui-Tāvā-He-Akó) - Mining the Cultural Seabed of Moana Nui: A Tāvāist Critique of the Atomistic Arrangement of Time and Space.
• ʻOkusitino Māhina (Hūfanga), Sēmisi Fetokai (Tavakefaiʻana), Kolokesa Uafā Tuai-Māhina  - What is Kupesi: A Tāvāist Philosophical Critique?
• Malia Talakai - Is Cultural Appropriation Offensive?
• Tina Ngata - Māori Storytelling and Visual Culture as a Site of Sovereignty Reclamation.
• Anne Keala Kelly - Of Gods and Kings: The Disneyfication of the Sacred.
• Vince Diaz - "Wayfinding and the Unwitting Disavowal of Carolinian Seafaring Instrumentalities."
• Brian Kāfakafa Dawson - Manipulating Moana
• Ping-Ann Addo, Ashlie Kiʻilanikapuokalani Duarte-Smith, and Christopher Fung - ReAppropriating the Disney Formula in Drag
• Kuʻualoha Hoʻomanawanui - Moʻolelo Moana Maoli (Indigenous Oceanic Narratives of the Sea), Moʻolelo as Mana
• Tarisi Sorovi-Vunidilo - Indigenous Knowledge, Rights and Ownership: Case Study of the “Bula” Belongs To Fiji Movement-A Fijian Perspective

Nuhisifa Seve-Williams <williams346@slingshot.co.nz>
Tevita O Ka‘ili <tevita.kaili@byuh.edu>