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  5. Volume 11, Issue 2, 2023

Journal of New Zealand & Pacific Studies - Volume 11, Issue 2, 2023

Volume 11, Issue 2

Volume 11, Issue 2, 2023

Language: English
  • Editorial

      • Editorial

        https://doi.org/10.1386/nzps_00168_2

        The whānau, or family, that consists of members of the New Zealand Studies Association (NZSA) and that meets once a year at the Association’s hui, or conference, is a rich gathering of delegates old and new. In the last year NZSA lost three distinguished colleagues from its whānau: Fay Weldon, John Dunmore and Grant McCall. Members of the whānau may depart, but they remain alive through their words, contributions and debates. Two of the four articles in this issue are extensions of papers given at NZSA’s 2023 conference in Stockholm-Turku and this includes a contribution by Witi Ihimaera, who was one of the conference keynote speakers. Questions of indigeneity, identity and Māoritanga are vital to both these articles. They are also important to a third article, which examines taonga pūoro as cultural artefacts that can assist in reconsidering the extent of where the Indigenous peoples of Aotearoa came from. A fourth article on Indonesia’s annexation of West Papua and the role of the United Nations, also adopts a revisionist approach.

  • Articles

      • Sounding out the ‘Hawaiki zone’: What musical instruments reveal about the immediate geographical origins of the peoples who became Māori in Aotearoa

        https://doi.org/10.1386/nzps_00166_1

        A range of linguistic, genetic and archaeological evidence supports the immediate ancestors of Māori having come from central Eastern Polynesia, and this is borne out through a comparative study of central Eastern Polynesian and Māori musical instruments. An examination of Māori musical instruments also shows, however, that a few instrument names, types and usages may be adoptions or adaptations from elsewhere in Oceania – from Hawai‘i, or from Western Polynesia or Eastern Melanesia. While the possibility of convergent evolution cannot be ruled out, these similarities are quite striking and raise some intriguing questions. Are these similarities the result of cultural transmission to central Eastern Polynesia from Hawai‘i and Western Polynesia (and/or Eastern Melanesia) prior to the departure of the ancestors of Māori to Aotearoa? Could they be the result of a limited amount of direct voyaging from Western Polynesia and/or Eastern Melanesia to Aotearoa prior to the Little Ice Age (1400), or from later cultural transmission? Are they the vestiges of practices that, in historical times, had been discontinued in central Eastern Polynesia but preserved in marginal Polynesia (as per the ‘stone in the pond’ model of cultural diffusion)? These questions are discussed in this article, which aims to shed further light on the possible origins of Māori musical instruments and, in so doing, the immediate geographical origins of Māori ancestors.

    • Writing outward into the international world

      https://doi.org/10.1386/nzps_00165_1

      This was written first as a keynote speech, which was given at the midway point of the 27th annual conference of the New Zealand Studies Association, held in Stockholm, Sweden, and Turku, Finland, 26–30 June 2023. It was originally entitled ‘The Māori anthologist’ and addressed the politics and aesthetics of my career as an editor of some sixteen anthologies of, mainly, Māori and New Zealand literature. But after listening to the papers that had been presented, which primarily covered the South Pacific, I decided to alter my presentation and offer a personal intervention on my career as a Pacific rather than a Māori writer, ranging from (1987) through to (2020). Furthermore, the presentation now responded to themes of Pacific and Oceanic transnationality and transculturality, which had arisen from the conference. This article is both a consolidation and extension of thoughts and arguments that were given in that keynote speech, with identity and indigeneity key concerns.

    • Re-thinking agents of empire: The role of the United Nations in the Indonesian occupation of West Papua

      https://doi.org/10.1386/nzps_00163_1

      The years post-World War II were not necessarily a period of independence for everyone. This is especially the case for a number of Pacific locales, West Papua in particular, wherein one colonial power seems to have merely been switched for another. What is more, this takeover was done with the connivance of the United Nations (UN), a non-state agency which, following World War II, was designed to maintain the peace. By way of the 1969 UN-brokered Act of Free Choice, the peoples of this former Dutch colony were instead subjected to an invading Indonesian military and colonial culture. This work, whilst not only drawing attention to an under-discussed process of recolonization in the Pacific, focuses upon another, albeit overlooked method by which empires can be created, namely by way of a non-state agency. In doing so it critiques theories of empire that concentrate primarily upon large state-led entities characterized by physical conquest. Whilst it is true that big state-led powers with vast military forces bent on conquering other sovereign states are the most easily discernible of empires, we argue that this is only one type and that colonialism needs to be differentiated. We suggest that other actors, including non-state players such as private companies, religious organizations, filibusters and now, as emphasized here, international/inter-governmental organizations, should be scrutinized too.

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