Indigeneity and Nation 9780367245313, 9780367263232, 9780429291838

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Series
Title
Copyright
Contents
Notes on contributors
Preface
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1 Indigeneity in Southern Africa
2 Oceanic Identities: trans/national formations in New
Zealand and the Pacific Islands region
3 Storied nationhood: literature, constitutionalism, and
citizenship in Indigenous North America
4 Finding nation: the nation and the state in F. Sionil Jose’s Mass and Edwin Thumboo’s A Third Map
5 Indigenous peoples and nation interface in India
6 African indigeneity: the Southern African challenge
7 Two poets of the Pacific: Hone Tuwhare and Haunani-Kay Trask
Index

Citation preview

INDIGENEITY AND NATION

Part of the series Key Concepts in Indigenous Studies, this book focuses on the concepts that recur in any discussion of nature, culture and society among the Indigenous. The book, the third in a five-volume series, deals with the two key concepts of indigeneity and nation of Indigenous people from all the continents of the world. With contributions from renowned scholars, activists and experts across the globe, it looks at issues and ideas of indigeneity, nationhood, nationality, State, identity, selfhood, constitutionalism and citizenship in Africa, North America, New Zealand, Pacific Islands and Oceania, India and Southeast Asia from philosophical, cultural, historical and literary points of view. Bringing together academic insights and experiences from the ground, this unique book with its wide coverage will serve as a comprehensive guide for students, teachers and scholars of Indigenous studies. It will be essential reading for those in social and cultural anthropology, tribal studies, sociology and social exclusion studies, politics, religion and theology, cultural studies, literary and postcolonial studies, Third World and Global South studies, as well as activists working with Indigenous communities. G. N. Devy is Honorary Professor, Centre for Multidisciplinary Development Research, Dharwad, India, and Chairman, People’s Linguistic Survey of India. An award-winning writer and cultural activist, he is known for his 50-volume language survey. He is Founder Director of the Adivasi Academy at Tejgadh in Gujarat, India, and was formerly Professor of English at M. S. University of Baroda. He is the recipient of the Sahitya Akademi Award, Linguapax Prize, Prince Claus Award and Padma Shri. With several books in English, Marathi and Gujarati, he has co-edited (with Geoffrey V. Davis and K. K. Chakravarty) Narrating Nomadism: Tales of Recovery and Resistance (2012); Knowing Differently: The Challenge of the Indigenous (2013); Performing Identities: Celebrating Indigeneity in the Arts (2014); and The Language Loss of the Indigenous (2016), published by Routledge.

Geoffrey V. Davis was Professor of Commonwealth and Postcolonial Literatures at the University of Aachen, Germany. He was international chair of the Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies (ACLALS) and chair of the European branch (EACLALS). He coedited Cross/Cultures: Readings in the Post/Colonial Literatures and Cultures in English and the African studies series Matatu. His publications include Staging New Britain: Aspects of Black and South Asian British Theatre Practice (2006) and African Literatures, Postcolonial Literatures in English: Sources and Resources (2013).

Key Concepts in Indigenous Studies

Series Editors: G. N. Devy, Honorary Professor, Centre for Multidisciplinary Development Research, Dharwad, India, and Chairman, People’s Linguistic Survey of India and Geoffrey V. Davis, former Professor of Commonwealth and Postcolonial Literatures, University of Aachen, Germany

This series of volumes offers the most systematic and foundational literature available to date for use by undergraduate and postgraduate students of Indigenous studies. It brings together essays by experts from across the globe on concepts forming the bedrock of this rapidly growing field in five focused volumes: Environment and Belief Systems (Vol. 1); Gender and Rights (Vol. 2); Indigeneity and Nation (Vol. 3); Orality and Language (Vol. 4); and Performance and Knowledge (Vol. 5). These contain short, informative and easily accessible essays on the perspectives of Indigenous communities from all continents of the world. The essays are written specifically for an international audience. They thus allow drawing of transnational and cross-cultural parallels, and form useful material as textbooks as well as texts for general readership. Introducing a new orientation to traditional anthropology with comprehensive and in-depth studies, the volumes foreground knowledge traditions and praxis of Indigenous communities. Environment and Belief Systems Edited by G. N. Devy and Geoffrey V. Davis Gender and Rights Edited by G. N. Devy and Geoffrey V. Davis Indigeneity and Nation Edited by G. N. Devy and Geoffrey V. Davis Orality and Language Edited by G. N. Devy and Geoffrey V. Davis Performance and Knowledge Edited by G. N. Devy and Geoffrey V. Davis For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/ Key-Concepts-in-Indigenous-Studies/book-series/KCIS

INDIGENEITY AND NATION

Edited by G. N. Devy and Geoffrey V. Davis

First published 2021 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 selection and editorial matter, G. N. Devy and Geoffrey V. Davis; individual chapters, the contributors The right of G. N. Devy and Geoffrey V. Davis to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-0-367-24531-3 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-26323-2 (pbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-29183-8 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Apex CoVantage, LLC

CONTENTS

Notes on contributors ix Prefacex Acknowledgementsxiv Introduction G. N. Devy

1

1 Indigeneity in Southern Africa Brendon Nicholls

9

2 Oceanic Identities: trans/national formations in New Zealand and the Pacific Islands region Paloma Fresno-Calleja

24

3 Storied nationhood: literature, constitutionalism, and citizenship in Indigenous North America Katja Sarkowsky

45

4 Finding nation: the nation and the state in F. Sionil Jose’s Mass and Edwin Thumboo’s A Third Map68 Lily Rose Tope 5 Indigenous peoples and nation interface in India Virginius Xaxa and Roluah Puia

85

viii Contents

6 African indigeneity: the Southern African challenge Yvette Hutchison

102

7 Two poets of the Pacific: Hone Tuwhare and Haunani-Kay Trask123 Robert Sullivan Index157

CONTRIBUTORS

Paloma Fresno-Calleja is Senior Lecturer in English at the University of the

Balearic Islands, Spain. Yvette Hutchison is Reader in the Department of Theatre & Performance Studies

at the University of Warwick, UK and Associate Editor of the South African Theatre Journal and the African Theatre series. Brendon Nicholls is Acting Director, Centre for African Studies and also works in

the School of English, University of Leeds, UK. Roluah Puia is Faculty at the Department of Social Sciences and Humanities,

Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati, India. Katja Sarkowsky is Chair of American Studies, University of Augsburg, Germany. Robert Sullivan is Professor, Department of English and former Deputy Chief

Executive (Māori), Manukau Institute of Technology, Auckland where he founded the creative writing programme, and former Associate Professor of English at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa. Lily Rose Tope is Professor of English, University of the Philippines, Manila. Virginius Xaxa is former Professor of Sociology, Delhi School of Economics and

Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Guwahati campus, and Visiting Professor at Institute for Human Development, Delhi, India.

PREFACE

The volumes in this series have long been in making. The idea came up in 2011 in a conversation between Prof. Geoffrey Davis and me. The two of us had by then worked on six anthologies related to Indigenous Studies to which scholars from all continents had contributed. Two of these are published by Orient BlackSwan (Indigeniety, 2009 and Voice and Memory, 2011) and four by Routledge between 2012 and 2016 (Narrating Nomadism, Knowing Differently, Performing Identities and The Language Loss of the Indigenous). However, we felt that we need to do more, a lot more, in order to firmly establish this newly emerging field. Shashank Sinha and Shoma Choudhury of Routledge showed a keen interest in our proposal. Enthused by the idea of bringing out a set of volumes dealing with some of the definitive themes of the field, and assured by the possibility of publication of the volumes, we started our work. Of course, it was not an entirely easy going for us. The challenges were many and the scale in which we wanted to cast the volumes was not easy to handle. Despite the difficulties and setbacks expected in such an intellectual venture, we kept up. Most of the editorial was completed by early 2018. As we were getting ready to send the typescripts, alas, Prof. Geoffrey Davis died in a short internment in an Aachen hospital. His last mail came to me a day before he was to be admitted. The loss was a big blow to me. His friends and colleagues spread over all continents deeply mourned his death. For me, the most civilized way of mourning is to ensure that the volumes to which he had contributed so much care and toil get published. Who was Geoffrey Davis and why was he interested in the Indigenous? Perhaps the best way for me to explain this is to repeat here the response I sent to two questions from Prof. Janet Wilson (hereafter JW) of the Southampton University. JW:  What

were the points of synergy (ideological, intellectual, political activist) that brought you and Geoff together, and when and how did this happen,

Preface  xi

i.e., what were the particular contexts/motivations? I remember I think Geoff had just retired and was possibly looking for a new project? And might have been inspired through his involvement with ACLALS. DEVY:  I think I met him the first time in 1984 at the EACLALS conference at Sitges, Spain. During the 1980s, I was a “regular” at the EACLALS since India did not have an active Commonwealth Literature culture as yet. But, my memory of that meeting is not very clear. In 1988, Geoff had convened a conference at Aachen, Germany, where Geoff spent most of his academic life. I was invited to it for a plenary. This experience left me impressed by his organisational ability. In between, we had met at other places too, Austria, Hungary, Singapore. But all these meetings were casual; and I do not recall any memorable conversation having taken place between us during these conferences. During the 1990s, Geoff hosted a conference on Literature and Activism. I left my professorship at Baroda, India, in 1996. Geoff had heard about this move from friends. He asked me to lecture at the conference. I did. It was during this conference I noticed that he was deeply respectful of activism, that his empathy for the dispossessed was genuinely deep. I also noticed that he was extremely wary of using clichéd and fashionable jargon. The impression these qualities made on me was strong. A few years later, he was to attend the ACLALS Triennial in Hyderabad, India. He wrote to me asking if he could visit me after the Hyderabad conference. He knew that I had stopped attending academic conferences and there was no chance of our meeting in Hyderabad. So, I invited him to Baroda, a 1500 km north of Hyderabad. I am not sure if he enjoyed his visit to Baroda. On the day he was to arrive, for reasons difficult for to me know, I forgot about his arrival altogether. I was to meet him at the airport. Baroda in those days was a very small airport and every day only three or four flights arrived there. And overseas visitors were not a common sight. Geoff waited there till almost the last co-traveller had left the meeting area. The last one to leave happened to be an architect named Karan Grover, who is a living legend in the field of architecture. Grover asked Geoff if he was expecting anyone. Geoff mentioned my name. This worked. Karan Grover and I had been friends for decades and Geoff was made to feel welcome on my behalf, brought to his lodgings and, the forgetting and forgiving over, we met over dinner. The next day, I drove him in my car to the location of the Adi­ vasi Academy (the Tribal University) that I was trying to establish in those years. This location was 90 km east of Baroda. On the way, I talked with passion about all my plans, my dreams. He listened. He spent another day in Baroda meeting Karan and enjoyed the famous Grover wine. I was busy in my work with the tribal academy. The next morning, I drove Geoff to the airport as he was leaving for Bombay and then to Aachen. At the airport, he asked me if I could have him visit the Adivasi Academy again for a longer time, perhaps a week or so. I said, “Why do you not stay for a semester?” He was a bit puzzled by my offer, made in

xii Preface

such a casual manner. So, I added, “Be a Fellow with us.” He took that offer and returned to Baroda the following year, but for a short time. I think it was after two more brief trips that he agreed to spend six months in Baroda. I must explain that the Adivasi Academy is not like a university. It is a community workstation at best, with really very minimum facilities that makes for most of us what we call “civilization.” The “Fellowship” had no set rules. They were made looking at the individual’s ability and desire to contribute what one had promised to contribute. The “projects” ranged from writing a book or an article, teaching music or language to children, keeping the library or museum in good order, tending a piece of agricultural land, setting up a community micro-credit group or just documenting any of these activities. When Geoff became a Fellow of the Adivasi Academy, there were three others, Brian and Eileen Coates from Limerick, Ireland and Lachman Khubchandani, a Linguist from Pune, India. Eileen had agreed to help us with the Museum and Lachman was to write a book in linguistics. I was more ambitious with Geoff. I said to him, “If you do not mind, please do nothing, only watch what goes on here and when it pleases you discuss ideas with me.” He agreed. The facilities given to the Fellows included housing in Baroda and meals when they visited the Academy, 90 km away from Baroda. All my meetings with tribals were transacted in their languages. English words were rarely heard. Only occasionally, some visitors helped Geoff with English interpretations. Geoff, I must say, braved all of this discomfort without a murmur. The impression I had formed about his deep empathy for the dispossessed became firmer. In the fifth month of his stay, I sent a word to him asking if he was available for a serious conversation. He obliged. We met in my Baroda office – the Bhasha Centre – at 2 PM. I asked him if he would join me in imagining an international “non-conference” for looking at the world through the perspective of the Indigenous. He said, “I cannot promise, but I will try.” Our conversation continued for several hours and, probably, both of us had a reasonably good idea of what must be avoided in making our idea of a conference completely rooted to the ground. I proposed the name “chotro” (a shared platform); he consented to it with great enthusiasm. Next morning, I found him at Bhasha. He had a “Call for Chotro” ready with him. I made several calls to various offices and individuals in Delhi to finalize the material arrangements for the First Chotro. That afternoon, Geoff sat at the computer and sent out close to 150 emails. Before he left Baroda, we were fully involved in putting together the unusual conference. He made one visit to India before the conference was held in Delhi in January 2008. We met in Delhi. I had to combine some of my other works with the work related to Chotro. One of these involved a visit to the prime minister’s office. He was a bit shocked when I told him that after sorting out the conference-related arrangements for stay and local transportation, I would be going to the PM’s office and he was welcome to join me. Years later, I heard him narrating this anecdote to friends over a glass of wine. The Delhi Chotro was the first one. We put together several more in subsequent years and worked on the conference volumes, meeting in several countries. Geoff became

Preface  xiii

a frequent visitor to India to Baroda, and also to my home and family. I am not aware if we shared an ideology. In a way, all of us in the field of literature have varying degrees of a progressive outlook on life and society. But, what clicked between Geoff and me is something else, and that is his immense patience with my and his ability to cope with surprises and shocks, which could not be avoided considering my involvement in several social causes. John Keats, speaking of William Shakespeare’s “genius” used the term “negative capability” – the ability to live amidst uncertainties. The mutual recognition of this negative capability brought us together for undertaking an unconventional kind of work – serious, though not strictly academic. JW:  What

roles/or positions did Geoff take as collaborator e.g. in co-organising Chotro and in working with the Adivasis/Bhasha more generally? DEVY:  When we thought of creating the Chotro non-conferences, we had no funding support. We had no sponsors, no funds for international travel. Bhasha Centre was not a full-scale “institution” till then. Besides, “Indigenous Studies” was not any accepted field of academic work. We were not sure if any self-respecting publisher would accept to publish the proceedings. Therefore, in all of these matters, we shared responsibility. But, generally speaking, he dealt with the overseas participants and I handled the Indian issues, material and academic. I accepted to identify publishers, negotiate with them, do the necessary correspondence, Geoff focused on copy editing of the texts. But, this division of work was not sanctimonious. Either of us was free to cross over and even required to do so looking at each other’s convenience. Never forget that Geoff had his other major obligations and academic projects, and I had mine. We had no desire to claim credit for the work we were doing. It was born out of our desire to create a legitimate space for the voice of the Indigenous. I hope my response to Janet Wilson will have made it clear why I enjoyed working with Geoffrey Davis on so many intellectual projects. In India’s intellectual history, there have been glorious examples of intellectual collaboration between Indian thinkers and scholars, and writers and scholars from other countries. W.B. Yeats and Purohit Swamy, Yeats and Tagore, and Tolstoy and Gandhi developed their ideas through such collaborations. In our time, the rising tide of the Right political parties and a narrow idea of nationalism is gaining a greater currency that makes such collaborations difficult to carry through. I am pleased that this series of volumes is seeing the light of the day, bringing my work together with Geoffrey Davis to a successful conclusion.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The initial idea of this volume and the series to which it belongs came up in 2012. Since then, Prof. Geoffrey Davis, who was to be the co-editor, corresponded with several scholars from the field of commonwealth literature from other academic disciplines. These scholars from various disciplines and several continents gave their advice and suggestions for identifying scholars to be involved in the project. They are too numerous to be mentioned individually. I would like to record my gratitude to them. The scholars and activists who consented to contribute, and a majority of them who kept their promise, made putting together the volumes possible. Their participation in the most tangible way calls for my thanks. Several organizations and institutions offered Prof. Geoffrey Davis and me opportunities of meeting and taking forward our plans for these volumes. They include the Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies, for a conference in Cyprus; Bhasha Research and Publication centre, Baroda, for various events through these years; the Kiel Voche organized by Kiel City Council in Germany; the German Academy for convening a conference at Hamburg; Aide et Action, for convening a meeting in Geneva; and several Indian colleges and universities, for creating spaces on the sidelines of conferences – I thank all of them. I wonder if the project would have moved forward at all without these meetings. I would like to thank Ingrid, Prof. Davis’s wife, for ungrudgingly encouraging him to spend his funds and time on travels to India to work on this project. Surekha, my life partner, has most generously supported the project throughout its years of slow progress by providing ideas, hospitality and courage. I cannot thank her enough. The publication of these volumes would not have been at all possible had it not been for the abiding friendship and support of Dr. Shashank Shekhar Sinha, Publishing Director, and his inspiring colleague Shoma Choudhury at Routledge. I carry in my heart the comfort drawn from their genuine friendship.

INTRODUCTION G. N. Devy

Identity, environment, language, gender, belief systems, performance traditions and rights are some of the more central issues relating to the struggles and the survival of the Indigenous all over the world. Their local features vary from community to community and from country to country. However, the general narrative is fairly common. Quintessentially, this narrative refers to a colonial experience that hammered a break in the long-standing traditions of the Indigenous, and yet they kept close to their traditions and close also to nature, losing in the process the control over natural resources, land, rivers, and forests and coming in clash with a radically different framework of justice, ethics and spirituality. For the Indigenous, invariably, there are two points in time marking their emergence: one that is traced back to a mythological time enshrined in their collective memory and expressed in their community’s “story of origin,” and the other that is synchronous with a Columbus or a Vasco de Gama setting foot on the land that was once their dominion. It is true that no established research or theory in archaeology, anthropology, genetics, cultural geography, historical linguistics, agriculture and forestry goes to show that all or any of the Indigenous people have been inhabitants of the land where they were when colonialism was inaugurated, and that a very small portion of them have been associated with their present habitat since the time the homo sapiens have inhabited the Earth. There were migrations from place to place and from continent to continent during the pre-historic times as well. Yet, despite pre-historic migrations, it is true that the Indigenous communities have been associated with their habitats for a considerably long time. The European colonial quest, the territorial and cultural invasion associated with it, and the interference of alien political, ecological and theological paradigms brought a threat to the traditions that the Indigenous had developed. The absence of desire on their part to accept the new paradigms and to internalize them made them stand out, be marked as “others,”

2  G. N. Devy

interpreted as “primitive” and represented as “indigenous.” It is common sense that term “indigenous” as a part of a binary can have meaning only when there are other terms such as “alien,” “outsiders,” “non-native” and “colonialists.” The one without the other would cease to have the meaning that it now has. Though the census exercises in different countries do not use a uniform framework, methodology and orientation, the data available through the census carried out by different nations shows that approximately 370 million of the world population is Indigenous. The communities identified as Indigenous on the basis of their location, uniqueness of tradition, social structures and community law number close to 5,000 and are spread over 90 countries (World Bank, Indigneous People). Several different terms are used for describing them in different continents: “aborigine” “janjati,” “indigenous,” “First Nations,” “natives,” “Indian” and “tribe.” In most countries, the identification and listing of such communities is by no means complete and has remained, over the last seven decades, since the United Nations Organization was set up, an unfinished process. Despite the inadequacy in the world’s knowledge about the Indigenous, it is clear that their existence, environment, cultural ethos, lifestyles and values have been under a relentless assault by the practices, culture and values of the rest of the world. In recognition of the threat to Indigenous cultures and knowledge systems, to their land and environment, to their languages, livelihood and law, the United Nations came out with a Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People, accepted by the UN General Assembly in September 2007. The following three Articles of the Declaration address the most fundamental issues involved in the genocidal threat to their survival and their unique cultures: Article 25 Indigenous peoples have the right to maintain and strengthen their distinctive spiritual relationship with their traditionally owned or otherwise occupied and used lands, territories, waters and coastal seas and other resources and to uphold their responsibilities to future generations in this regard. Article 26 1

Indigenous peoples have the right to the lands, territories and resources which they have traditionally owned, occupied or otherwise used or acquired. 2 Indigenous peoples have the right to own, use, develop and control the lands, territories and resources that they possess by reason of traditional ownership or other traditional occupation or use, as well as those which they have otherwise acquired. 3 States shall give legal recognition and protection to these lands, territories and resources. Such recognition shall be conducted with due

Introduction  3

respect to the customs, traditions and land tenure systems of the Indigenous peoples concerned. Article 27 States shall establish and implement, in conjunction with Indigenous peoples concerned, a fair, independent, impartial, open and transparent process, giving due recognition to Indigenous peoples’ laws, traditions, customs and land tenure systems, to recognize and adjudicate the rights of Indigenous peoples pertaining to their lands, territories and resources, including those which were traditionally owned or otherwise occupied or used. Indigenous peoples shall have the right to participate in this process. Given that the population of the Indigenous is less than five percent of the world’s total population, and also that they are sharply divided in terms of tribe and community within a given country, every Indigenous community exists as a miniscule minority within its political nation. To be Indigenous is, in our time, to be severely marginalized in economy, politics, institutionalized knowledge and institutionalized religion. The space for the Indigenous is rapidly shrinking. This year, 2019, has been declared by UNESCO as the Year of the Indigenous Languages. There have been official celebrations and academic conference to “celebrate” the year. However, it is a fact that several thousand of the languages still kept alive by the communities are close to extinction. A comprehensive survey of languages that I had conducted of the 780 living languages in India in 2010 showed that nearly 300 languages, all of these spoken by the Indigenous peoples, may disappear in the next few decades. In India, the national government passed a law in 2008 requiring the land ownership of tribal communities to be returned to them. However, nearly half of the claims have yet to be settled and the Supreme Court of India has already asked the families whose land title claims not been accepted to evacuate them. This is the situation not only in India. It is so in Thailand, where the tribals in the Chang Mai area have been fighting a bitter battle for land ownership. In Mexico, they are struggling to keep their languages alive; in Australia, despite the best efforts by government, the status of the aborigines in professions and educational institutions remains far from what was visualized; in New Zealand, they had been facing social discrimination and continue to do so; in Africa, their plight still deserves the description “a genocidal neglect.” Despite legal provisions aimed at safeguarding the communities and their cultures, they are diminishing and suffering an undeserving obsolescence in the world that is considering when to officially announce that the Anthropocene, the epoch of unprecedented interference with nature fundamentally altering the Earth, has commenced. On 29 May 2019, I received a press release in my email inbox from ESRC, an international network for economic and social rights network. It referred to an

4  G. N. Devy

ongoing struggle of the Ogoni people in Nigeria whose land is slotted to be used for oil drilling. It claims that The said oil operation, with military cover, is billed to commence in the coming months, as parties involved have been instructed on their respective roles. Each of the security agencies listed in the plan has been tasked with specific roles and responsibilities, particularly, in tackling voices of dissent in the Ogoni community. It rued the fact that rather than going through the proper and legitimate means and process, the government chooses to ignore the people of Ogoni and prefers to engage and impose an oil prospecting company on them, even with an intent to intimidate, suppress and kill the people more with the use of heavily armed security forces. The press release concluded by reminding the readers that the Ogoni people have never opposed government activity in the Ogoniland, but have insisted on “the issues of benefits-sharing, community participation and the proper environmental management of the Ogoni ecosystem, including legacy issues arising from the over four decades of reckless oil operations in the land.” For nearly a quarter century, since the internet became a means of communication, I have been receiving such statements in my mailbox from the Indigenous communities or organizations working on their behalf. They bring a narrative in which the characters change but the plot is predictably the same. It involves a rather helpless Indigenous community trying to establish that the natural resource involved is its legacy and a corporate body – supported by the government and aided by the police, military or private security troops – is denying the community’s rights. Normally, the conclusion of this story is in the slow dissemination of the community voice and in a gradual success of the state in imposing its will on the community. Rarely do the Indigenous succeed in getting their voice heard and respected. From Paraguay to Malaysia and from Canada to Australia – west, east, north, south – the story of conquest of the natural resources of the Indigenous peoples by the “civilized” – read exploitative economies and industrial technologies – has been commonplace for the last few decades. An unending environmental degradation of habitats of the Indigenous has been the norm, not an exception, implied in the massive movement of capital across countries. Exploitation of the natural resources has left the traditional habitats of the Indigenous people devastated. This situation is not peculiar to any single country or continent; it is the general condition of the Indigenous all over the world. The unjust exploitation of natural resources in Indigenous habitats has implications far more profound than either anthropologists or ecologists like to accept. European countries engaged in the hugely exploitative project of colonialism proposed

Introduction  5

an idea of the ‘savage’ as a descriptive category for the ancient surviving civilizations in distant continents. Initially, the ‘savage’, as in William Shakespeare’s The Tempest, was a mindless brute, more mindless perhaps than brute. Later, during the eighteenth century, the ‘savage’ became an object of the colonial curiosity; and, as genocide of the ancient surviving peoples was a raging priority in the colonies, a great amount of ‘literature of curiosity’ emerged in European languages. Though Rousseau’s ‘noble savage’ was not exactly drawn upon the dispatches about the Indigenous sent back home by the colonial administrators and adventurists, the need to weave the Indigenous in the grand theory of ‘society’ was beginning to be felt. The three decades from the 1820s were of crucial importance in this direction. On the one hand, the regulations related to land, land measurement and land ownership, as well as forest land, were being formulated in Britain, France and Germany with a great gusto during these decades, and, on the other hand, the ideas of citizenship had started taking into account land and forests as inescapable factors. The result of these legal, economic and political shifts within Europe had an irreversible impact on the destinies of the Indigenous in all continents. For instance, in India, the entire forest cover in the sub-continent was passed on to the British sovereign as a ‘non-civil domain.’ This was precisely where the Indigenous communities in India had been living for several thousand years. The transfer of their land at once made them ‘a little less than the subject citizens’. They became isolated from history and reduced to the status of anthropology’s laboratory objects. This process has not been, it could not have been, exactly identical in all continents: Africa, North and South America, Australia and the Pacific; but the general trajectory of the process in these continents was fairly similar. It began with curiosity, passed through confrontation and ended with a unilateral imposition of sovereignty of the colonial state. When countries in these continents acquired self-rule, in most cases during the first half of the twentieth century, the colonially produced ‘state’ had come to be an antagonist for the Indigenous ‘nation’. The general theme of this volume is to show in a non-pedantic way the complexities in the evolution of the idea of nation among the Indigenous peoples of the world. To this end, Brendon Nicholls begins Chapter 1 by highlighting the paradox that indigeneity has increasing political leverage for Fourth World communities, but has fraught political status in African contexts. He has chosen Southern Africa as a case study in order to interrogate the history of settler imaging of Indigenous communities. His chapter details how: the initial colonial discourse of the ‘lazy’ and ‘unproductive’ indigene provided a justification for settler occupation of and productivity on the land. Settler genocide and land enclosure forced Indigenous communities to assimilate into the agricultural economy. He comments on the international craze for the Tarzan movies and Ernest Cadle’s Denver Africa Expedition. For the present generation of students, that may be slightly history. Dr. Nicholls goes on to show the not-so-remote fallout of this imagination and stereotyping of the Indigenous as ‘natural man’ during the Apartheid

6  G. N. Devy

era and the struggle against it. His chapter has a particularly poignant conclusion. It highlights the life of the institutions during the post-Apartheid era and emergence of a new kind of identity conflict in Southern Africa. Like Nicholls, Paloma Fresno-Calleja opens her Chapter 2 by revisiting the colonial era in order to offer an overview of history of the Indigenous in Aotearoa New Zealand and the Pacific Islands. The geographical area she has chosen for her chapter is the one that supported the rise of anthropology as a ‘science of the indigenous’ within European social sciences. Anthropology and Colonialism, together, deprived the Indigenous of the region of their native sovereignty. Fresno-Calleja depicts the conflict arising out of the historical denial and the cultural and intellectual struggles that the Indigenous had to wage in order to find the due recognition for the being and the world views. Katja Sarkowsky’s Chapter 3 offers a theoretical position which deepens the arguments of Nicholls and Fresno-Calleja. Sarkowsky postulates that ‘nationalism’ can at times be, but is not inherently, based on the assumption of a nation’s superiority over others. The Indigenous attitude of a non-competitive nationalism is at the heart of her chapter which defines ‘nationalism’ as: a collective self-understanding based on a shared cultural, linguistic, political, and territorial heritage perpetuated and interpreted in narrative; ‘nationhood’ as a ‘nation’ that takes a political form other than the nation state; and ‘nationalism’ as a sentiment that affirms a ‘nation’ or ‘nationhood’ and that may but does not necessarily aim at the creation of a nation state. Such granular and nuanced understanding of ‘nation’ is indeed greatly necessary for understanding the essential nature of the flash points between the Indigenous nations and the constituted states dotting the world map. It is the unavoidable conflict between nations as the Indigenous understand and the ‘nation-state’ as the non-indigenous post-colonial world understands that forms the theme of Lily Rose Tope’s Chapter 4. She writes: Today, the ideas of state and nation are often conflated, as in the term nationstate. But technically, the two are not necessarily the same. The ‘state’ can be generally described as the ‘political institutionalisation of a society within fixed boundaries as a necessary system to organise the social life of a group’ and is represented by a government. ‘Nation’ which is more elusive in its essence consists of a ‘specific solidarity and a specific group feeling bound to the community called ‘nations’ together and which would exceed a ‘merely’ rational decision or cause for the establishment of such a community. Tope uses the case of two southeastern countries, Singapore and the Philippines, for presenting her formulation. Readers of the volume need to bear in mind that this collection of chapters is not an exercise in academic political theory. This volume and the other volumes in the five-volume series are intended as a ‘position’ by activists who are also scholars and as scholars who in no mean measure have been activists. Virginius Xaxa and

Introduction  7

Rolua Puia, whose jointly written Chapter 5 about what ‘nation’ means for the Adivasis of India should work as a glowing testimony to our claim. Virginius Xaxa, who wrote the most comprehensive report on the Indigenous people during the UPA (United Progressive Alliance) government in 2013, comes to the question of nation from the perspective of an activist and a policy maker. Xaxa and Puia draw our attention to the consequences of the policy of keeping Indian ‘tribes’ isolated and yet expected to be part of the modern nation building in India. Yvette Hutchison, too, like other contributors to this volume, in Chapter 6 draws our attention to the colonial conditioning of the Indigenous in the African context. She proposes that colonial taxonomies and representations of ethnic groups have affected subjugated peoples in Africa in general and Indigenous peoples specifically, and argues that African belonging still tends to be defined by colonially constructed notions of ethnicity and race, which have subsumed Indigenous peoples into overstated assertions of ethnic homogeneity. Robert Sullivan’s long Chapter  7 is strikingly different from the preceding chapters in this book. Sullivan examines poetic works using the Malayo-Polynesian concept of ‘indigenous perspective.’ His chapter is an elaborate example of ‘wayfinding.’ As he explains, “Wayfinding is used to identify/chart the identity assertions, cultural signs, re-told narratives, linguistic and social references in the poetry of these writers.” Placed together, these chapters are expected to offer the readers of this volume and academic disciplines in general a view of things – nation, nationality, citizenship, state, identity and selfhood – which the Indigenous communities use as part of their being, as their culture and natural mental habit. This five-volume series is intended to comment on the processes through which the clash of civilizations has played out and is impacting the society, culture, belief-systems and languages of the Indigenous. Each of the volumes deals with a related set of two key issues crucial to understanding the Indigenous and thinking about the processes affecting their culture and life. These are: Environment and Belief Systems, Volume 1; Gender and Rights, Volume 2; Indigeneity and Nation, Volume 3; Orality and Language, Volume 4; and Performance and Knowledge, Volume 5. These key concerns were selected for discussion based on my three-decade-long experience of living amidst and working with some of the Indigenous communities in western India. A large number of consultations, discussions, workshops and field visits have led me to believe that at this juncture of history, these ten form the “key concepts” that one must understand in order to imagine and understand the Indigenous peoples. The volumes present in-depth studies in the form of long essays, ranging from 8,000 to 10,000 words, and useful bibliographies. However, these essays are not exactly and purely academic studies. Their reference is not so much to the previously accumulated knowledge in the fields of anthropology, linguistics, literature, social sciences, law and art criticism; the essays focus on life lived more than on any field of knowledge. They relate to the prevailing contexts surrounding the communities discussed, without, however, lacking in academic rigour. Many of the contributors have been activists in addition to being scholars. Besides, they are drawn from all continents, in most cases from the communities themselves, and they bring to these

8

G. N. Devy

volumes their valuable experience of the Indigenous from all of those continents. Thus, the five volumes, focusing on ten key concepts, effectively speak about the Indigenous peoples in Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific region; in India and East Asia; in Africa and in the Americas. Each of the volumes has seven or eight intensive essays which open up a range of themes and questions related to the specific key terms discussed. It is hoped that these volumes will form valuable reading for students, researchers and academics interested in knowing what the Indigenous communities think about themselves and about the contemporary world. The publication of this series of volumes brings me a great personal satisfaction. I was trained in literary studies in an era when “excellence” in literature was ascribed to works in the main European languages alone. In my early years as a professor at an Indian university, I started noticing that the rich and unique culture of the Indigenous communities was at that time like a continent about to be submerged under the ferocious cultural assault of the urban-industrial values and materials. My unease increased so much that I felt compelled to drop out of academic life and to move to a tiny village where the Rathwa Indigenous community lived. That opened a new universe for me. There was so much to experience, see and learn from them, most of all how limited what I had till then imagined as “knowledge” was. Throughout my years spent with them, it was never my intention to “represent” them to the rest of the world that was on a path of ecological destruction. My task was to let the Indigenous express themselves, to create spaces for their voice, to facilitate that expression. I realized that the gap between the Indigenous and the universe of formal knowledge, labour and economy was unbridgeable. During the last three decades, all of my intellectual and activist work has remained devoted to bridging this abysmal gap. The publication of this series, Key Concepts in Indigenous Studies, is a small step in that direction. I would like to hope in all humility that it will achieve what it aims to, and will remind the readers that the Earth does not belong to us, we belong to it.

References Platvoet, J.G. 1992. ‘African Traditional Religions in the Religious History of Humankind’, in G. ter Haar, A. Moyo and S.J. Nondo (eds.), African Traditional Religions in Religious Education: A Resource Book With Special Reference to Zimbabwe 11–28. Utrecht: Utrecht University. World Bank, ‘Indigenous Peoples’, www.worldbank.org/en/topic/indigenouspeoples (accessed 29 May 2019).

1 INDIGENEITY IN SOUTHERN AFRICA Brendon Nicholls

Any reflection upon ‘indigeneity’ and critical practice in African Studies should inspire a degree of ambivalence. To set this out in terms, we might learn something from the indigenous practitioner. It is likely to be something learnt about practice, not indigeneity. As a critical marker, ‘indigeneity’ poses specific challenges to African Studies. With the exception of African language debates, in which ‘indigenous languages’ are opposed to the global linguistic primacy of English, the term ‘indigeneity’ has been surprisingly seldom deployed in African post-independence debates. This tendency is changing. However, despite the evident strategic usefulness of the term ‘indigeneity’ and its undoubted applicability to a wide variety of African contexts and communities, it remains comparatively unarticulated, at least in its commonly understood sense, which Māori film director Barry Barclay has pithily formulated as ‘remnant prior peoples who live on their former lands on the margins of nation states.’1 Incontrovertibly, there are widely recognised indigenous African communities in a political sense. Their indigenous character is typically structured by a relation to threat, such as incursions into their former lands, mining, militarisation and deforestation, among others. Broadly speaking, such communities are understood in terms of a primarily displaced relation to the means of agrarian production, whether they are historically hunter-gatherers – such as the Efe, Mbuti or Twa (‘Pygmies’), the San (‘Bushmen’) – or agro-pastoralists  – such as the Khoi (‘Hottentots’) – or large-scale micro-minorities within nation-states such as the Ogoni. These communities’ struggles to retain land, environment, resources, health, languages and cultures place them squarely within wider Fourth World or First Peoples’ political movements  – global movements to which African indigenous communities increasingly attach themselves. As actors whose minority status often places them on the sidelines of national self-definition, or indeed in transnational

10  Brendon Nicholls

interstices – positioned across national boundaries, often without certain any claim on space – African indigenous communities face both infrastructural and identificatory challenges. However, in the vast majority of cultural and academic discourse, indigeneity in a decolonised, post-independence African context has seemed a claim upon the world that is too immediately obvious, too self-evidently validated, to make any sense as a social category with useful political leverage. In other words, to say that one is indigenous in a situation in which almost everybody else is ‘indigenous,’ too, is to erase the marker of difference upon which indigeneity’s oppositional and critical potential would seem to rely. Indigenous cultural formations and their decolonising political leverage risk become diluted even as their key descriptor is formulated.2 If the term ‘indigeneity’ has occurred with comparative infrequency in postindependence African cultural politics, then it would be worth adding that the sentiments or ideas that characterise indigenous community in the Fourth World are abiding concerns in wider African cultural formations. These characteristics are: an emphasis upon the authentic, the originary or the organic; a custodial attachment to the land; the persistence of oral forms and ancestral belief as modes of cultural memory; strong ties of blood community; and a history of resistance to colonialism (Allen 2002: 200). So while the term indigeneity has had little cultural currency, its overriding symbolic concerns of ‘blood,’ ‘land’ and ‘memory’ (Allen 2002: 196) have resonated very strongly in an African register of feeling. In Nigeria, the word ‘indigenous’ emerged prominently to describe the struggle of Ken Saro-Wiwa and the Ogoni people for political self-determination. It became associated with the Ogonis’ bid to rescue their mineral and environmental resources, to protect their minority rights, and to prevent the Shell oil company’s exploitation and pollution of the Niger Delta.3 But there are also a number of concomitant problems with Ogoni claims upon the indigenous. The term ‘indigeneity’ seems descriptively inadequate when it is deployed as a marker of resistance against successive Nigerian governments, who have been – in terms of heritage, though perhaps not in political practice – indigenous, too. Ken Saro-Wiwa implicitly concedes as much when he refers to the Nigerian ethnic majorities practising ‘indigenous colonialism’ upon the Ogoni (1998: 333). Furthermore, when read against the larger historical background of Nigeria’s struggle for national independence and the subsequent secession of Biafra and the calamitous Biafran war, the assertion of Ogoni indigeneity – in order to decolonise ‘indigenous colonialism’ – always runs the risk of repeating Nigeria’s disastrous follies of ethnic secession. Saro-Wiwa (1998) himself would not have dissented from this conclusion. In fact, he refers more than once in an interview to the need for ethnic minority self-determination in a confederation of Nigerian states, precisely in order to prevent a repetition of the Biafran disaster. Hence, the localised claims that we might associate with the indigenous, even when expressed with caution, approach a potentially explosive ethnic register. In interview, Saro-Wiwa finds a

Indigeneity in Southern Africa  11

precedent for Ogoni self-determination in the relative autonomy that the Ogoni experienced under the British colonial regime. But whatever the very real injustices of the Ogoni’s situation and whatever the pressing urgency of the call for Ogoni self-determination, this ‘political precedent’ risks making a virtue of the British colonial policy of Indirect Rule and thus risks perpetuating colonialism’s most divisive effects. In a highly sceptical view, the indigenous begins to read like a nostalgia for colonialism, even as it contests ‘indigenous colonialism.’4 There is a tangle of terms here, whose effects work to relativise the indigenous (Ogoni, Nigerian) and the colonial (British, Nigerian), in order to more effectively distinguish the ethnic (Ogoni). And yet, a more subtle reading of Saro-Wiwa is possible, in which indigeneity is an internally divided, and therefore strategically mitigated, claim. Saro-Wiwa’s terms ‘indigenous’ and ‘colonialism’ split along their own axes so that both become ambivalently inflected. It is impossible to think the valence of either term without reflecting upon the ambiguity with which both are already loaded. In short, Saro-Wiwa is not incautiously entering into a revisionist history (in which Nigerians were the real colonisers of the Ogoni). The Ogoni, of course, are Nigerians, too, and would remain so under a confederate arrangement. Indeed, Saro-Wiwa’s allegiance during the Biafran war was to the Federal side (see Saro-Wiwa 1989). We need to see a tactical inversion of understanding at work even as Ogoni sovereignty is invoked. This inversion destabilises the idea of the indigenous, too. Built into Saro-Wiwa’s apparent ethnic centre is the refusal of all centres. Saro-Wiwa’s insight relies upon a devolution of authenticity (British or Nigerian colonialisms may be indigenous allies but in very different ways and with very different mechanisms and effects). In Saro-Wiwa’s decentering discourse, we see territorial distribution and the political devolution of claim – the momentary allegiance to one precedent or another – upon which indigenous assertions of sovereignty so often rely for their tactical purchase. As we have seen, indigeneity risks becoming a relativised term within broader discourses of African decolonisation. To put this another way, a bi-cultural or biracial understanding of indigenous political relations to a history of settlement (such as we find in Australia or New Zealand Aotearoa) is difficult to sustain in decolonised African frameworks of political understanding (see Saro-Wiwa, earlier). First, in incautious usage, indigenous self-definition risks collapsing into straightforward ethnic division. Minorities, where they co-exist in conditions of precarity, may not always benefit from ethnic division. Second, there is the problem of the lingering colonial epistemological inheritance. Indigeneity carries the baggage of Imperial fantasies of the ethnic. Formal knowledge systems about indigenous peoples have long been underpinned by and compromised by such ethnic fantasies. Third, there is the ongoing imaging of the indigenous as a placeholder for sentimental global media fantasies of originary humankind.5 The global media endlessly produces, packages, circulates and resells the indigene as a primitive good, a raw resource, for consumption. What is peddled is the authentic,

12  Brendon Nicholls

the organic, the premodern, the near-naked but morally unperturbed, the undiscovered, the spiritual, the endangered and disappearing, and so on. Indigeneity sells. The rarity, scarcity or disappearance of an indigenous community inflates its value and drives its commoditisation. The market, it seems, prizes death. Indeed, Keyan Tomaselli has insightfully argued: TV channels like Discovery continue to trade on myth and stereotype, especially about Africa. Their use of often anthropologically incompetent producers, who appear to form the lifeblood of that Channel, inevitably tilts global discursive power in favour of the myths which John Marshall and Rob Gordon identify as genocidal. (1999: 134) In such indulgent media schemes, the indigenous is a melancholic marker. The indigene is what we would like to think we once might have been. The indigene, therefore, is a lost and abiding object expressing all that we (modern) consumers are no longer, but also all that we never really were in the first place (Landau and Kaspin 2002). The indigenous is a nostalgia our own former plenitude, but it is also a fantasy of our own contemporary absence. That is to say: the indigenous is an ever-receding index of what little our lifeworld has not yet touched or altered. The genocidal danger in such media myths of the indigene is that cultural narratives rapidly become twinned with worldly institutions: charitable campaigns, aid and development programmes or tourist initiatives. Such interventions carry fabricated and wildly sentimental assumptions about the communities that they propose to assist (see Weinberg 2000: 16). The relationship between media simulation and political outcome forms the bearing of the sharp analysis of the Ju/’Hoan leader, Tsamkxao =Oma, who said in 1988: There are two kinds of bioscope [movies]. One kind shows us as people like other people, who have things to do and plans to make. The other kind shows us as if we were animals, and plays right into the hands of people who want to take our land. (quoted in Biesele and Hitchcock 1999: 137) At stake in Tsamkxao =Oma’s taxonomy of film is the unintended consequence of the image. Images set to run in wider global culture may rebound upon indigenous communities in unforeseen ways. If, as Robert Gordon once claimed, ‘Some films can kill’ (1992: 1), then there is an ethics of the image that is very difficult to anticipate and to guard against. One has to reflect not only on what one shows, but also on what others might see and choose to understand as a basis for action or intervention. Images rapidly decontextualise and mystify. Not infrequently, images claim performance as unmediated ethnic truth. Moreover, the capacity for damage within imaging links to a further challenge posed by the indigenous to African Studies. Indigenous communities are often highly mediated (Weinberg

Indigeneity in Southern Africa  13

1997). Around them, a surfeit of supposedly benevolent gatekeepers and coconstructors circulate. As Tony Weaver puts it, ‘The San have seen academics, writers, photographers, aid workers, priests, philosophers and filmmakers come and go and become famous on their story’ (2000: 23–24). The authentic, the genealogical, and even cultural memory, exhibit the pressures of institutionalisation within their emergence. Indeed, Tomaselli has drawn attention to the San community’s framing within ‘the extraordinary international focus of photographers, TV and film directors, anthropologists and environmentalists, development agencies, artists, zoologists and tourists, and all manner of academic enterprise.’ (1999: 131). Weaver offers a first-hand account of a visit to the Nyae Nyae conservancy which supports Tomaselli’s view: Our host, Arno Oosthuysen, told us that National Geographic had booked several rooms. . . . ‘Last week we had a BBC film crew; the week before it was the French.’ That’s the San of southern Africa. They are among the most filmed, photographed and written about people on earth. (2000: 12) Here, we see multinational competition between media channels from the United States of America, the United Kingdom and France. If the institutions coconstructing the indigenous do so within such competing and often marketised discourses (which would include, of course, academic discourses with their increasingly incentivised obligation to impact measurably upon the world), then this reality institutes multiple sites of fracture, corruption and conflict into the definitions and outcomes of the indigenous world. So far, I have set out some of the dangers that beset African indigenous communities. In line with what we can learn from Saro-Wiwa’s conceptual advances and philosophical care, I  now propose to reflect upon how we might further understand the term ‘indigeneity’ as a critical tool within Southern African ­Studies. In Southern Africa, the indigene has long been placed at the intersections of visual media, science, development initiatives, tourism and leisure, and the military. I want to track the imaging of Southern African indigenous communities as they have been twinned with emergent political formations (colonialism, Apartheid, post-Apartheid democracy) and global cultural formations within the region’s wider history. An extensive survey of such traditions of imaging and mythopoesis would allow us to consider how not only how political formations enable visual technologies, but also how visual technologies impact on or enable already politically impacted indigenous communities. In short, the relationship between cultural imaging, visual history and indigenous precarity is what I now proceed to explore. One way of thinking about Southern African indigenous communities is via the idea of successive waves of precarity. To begin with, the imaging of the indigenous was from the outset placed in the service of colonialism’s self-justifying discourses. J. M. Coetzee’s landmark study, White Writing: On the Culture of Letters in South

14  Brendon Nicholls

Africa (1988), demonstrates that although the colonisation of the Cape was spurred on by the need for a ‘garden settlement’ to replenish the Dutch East India Company ships with fresh produce as they rounded the peninsula, the myth of a new Eden never took root (1–2). Instead, the myth that attached to this settled landscape was that white labour fended off ideas of its own degeneracy into the savage and idle (unproductive) state of the indigenous inhabitants (here, the ‘Hottentots’, or Khoi). Because white labour’s vigour had to be visible in order stave off degeneracy, signs of black labour had to be erased. As Coetzee succinctly puts it: ‘Blindness to the colour black is built into the South African pastoral’ (5). The visibility of black labour might have justified – as the visibility of white colonial labour indeed did – a claim to ownership of the land.6 A similar pattern played out in European travellers’ accounts of the subcontinent. There, the idea of indigenous idleness is crucial to white self-making: ‘Idleness, indolence, sloth, laziness, torpor – these terms are meant both to define a Hottentot vice and to distance the writer from it’ (18). Condemned for these character-traits, and at supposed leisure in the landscape, the indigene is banished from a white pastoral (18–19). In essence, the indigene’s familiarity with, ease with, and comfort within the landscape are the very qualities that disqualify her prior possession of political territory. Indigenous knowledge – which is what allows the indigene to flourish in and be at leisure in an inhospitable climate and topography  – is also the paradoxical sign of her unproductive nonrelation to the land. We see something like the inversion of this stereotype at work in Thomas Pringle’s well-known poem, ‘The Hottentot’ (Pringle and Ritchie 1839: 64). The character portrait offered in Pringle’s poem is sympathetic – this ‘Hottentot’ is a man who tends flocks in another’s fields. But prior ownership of these very lands by his own father subverts the idea that the indigene is incapable of productive labour. In fact, prior possession of the land and indigenous labour on it are presumed by the speaking voice. Moreover, listlessness is not constitutive in the ‘Hottentot,’ but has been actively produced by the settler’s oppression via ‘the brand, the blow’ (64). Perhaps the most telling subversion in the poem resides in the master’s final words. Having dispossessed the ‘Hottentot’ of his lands and food security, having demeaned him to a base and dehumanised existence, the settler condemns the Hottentot to further food precarity according to his imperfect insertion into an exploitative wage labour economy (he is ‘not worth his food’ [64]). It is not enough that the ‘Hottentot’ is humiliated and impoverished. According to his master in the poem, the ‘Hottentot’ also lacks gratitude with it. Pringle’s sympathy for the indigene is exceptional. Within settler culture at large, the myths of the unproductive and occasionally subhuman indigene provided an alibi for the large-scale genocide against the Khoisan.7 The displacement of the Southern San from the Western Cape to the Northern Cape was partly driven by genocide. It was legal until the early 1900s to shoot San individuals and groups, subject to a permit from a magistrate. As waves of San moved further north, or assumed new ethnicities to camouflage themselves and survive,8 their languages and

Indigeneity in Southern Africa  15

cultures came under strain. Moreover, the habitual landscapes of plenty to which these peoples were accustomed gave way to more barren, arid terrain in the Karoo and the Northern Cape. This led to frequent food shortages and sporadic famine, especially when the exodus of Cape Dutch trekboers (‘trek farmers’) out of the British-controlled Western Cape led to the settlement of Northern Cape land for stock farming and the hunting out of game and predators alike. The influx of the trekboers from the Cape into the interior meant that those San who had fled north to escape genocide were subject to encroachment by farmers onto the land which the San had settled. Predictably enough, this caused conflict – stock theft after the game had been hunted out and when the San faced famine, or in more extreme cases, the straightforward murder of San communities. The Bleek-Lloyd archive, comprising 12,000 pages of material on San culture, song, story and language, is a product of this history of displacement.9 Bleek and Lloyd’s San informants were sequestered from Mowbray prison. They were not research collaborators in the sense of freely consenting participants. Their only choice was whether or not to be housed with Bleek on his terms, or in prison on the magistrate’s terms.10 The crimes of which these San informants had been convicted were stock theft and, in fewer cases, the murder of trekboers who threatened them. At the root of Bleek and Lloyd’s phenomenal archive and their scholarly works on /Xam language and lore is the straightforward material circumstance of land theft, famine and genocide. It is interesting that the ‘deep folklore’ of the Bleek-Lloyd collection is not always the product of a long indigenous memory. On occasion, folklore bespeaks the immediate present circumstance of cultural conflict. For instance, the origin of the moon in San myth is that it is one of mantis’ velskoen (‘skin [leather] shoes’), shoes that would first have been witnessed in the encounters with trekboers in the 1850s. Moreover, the moon’s seasonal waning is described as resulting from the sun stabbing the moon and cutting pieces off it – which is perhaps a corollary of familiar contemporary episodes of trekboer violence against the person (see Bleek and Lloyd 1911: 53, 38–39). Thomas Pringle’s poem ‘Song of the Wild Bushman’ (Pringle and Ritchie 1839: 11–12) retains a nostalgia within its allusions to the ‘Bushman’s’ displaced relation to farming, and especially to animal husbandry. In this poem, the ‘Bushman’ is a sovereign whose domain is the desert. Because he has all he needs in this arid space, he does not envy the settler’s flocks, but that lack of envy at the level of lifestyle also implies that the ‘Bushman’ lays no political claim to the land that the settler has stolen from him in the first place. This is why the desert is a home – a claim that only makes sense if we disregard how the ‘Bushman’ got to the desert in the first place. Pringle is of course aware of the servitude that leads the speaker to be ‘lord of the Desert Land’ (12), and yet this is obviously a degraded version of political sovereignty, a compensation or consolation for the stolen lands in which real claims to sovereignty and dominion might reside. Pringle’s poem alerts us to the costs of indigenous assimilation to settlement. As a result of the circumstances of displacement and diaspora, many San were absorbed

16  Brendon Nicholls

into the farm economy and possibly also occasionally assimilated into Cape Coloured ethnicity in what has been termed a ‘bloodless genocide.’11 A 1910 photo of a San community in Prieska shows them dressed in tattered sackcloth, the garb of the indigent farm labourer. In fact, as Pippa Skotnes observes, the young men in the photo are anatomically taller than their parents, having been raised on farms and nourished better than previous generations (2002: 257). None of those pictured could remember the lore of their people. Many spoke Afrikaans and all were survivors of the bloody Boer war (256). The great irony is that this impoverished, undernourished and poorly resourced band of survivors provided the anatomies for lifecasts of the South African National Museum’s dioramas of ‘Bushmen’ in their bucolic, ‘natural’ and prehistoric state. There is a schism between the materiality of community and its imaging here. Natural man, clad in a loincloth, subsisting as a hunter-gatherer and speaking in exotic clicks, is imaged in a diorama that purports to be scientific, anatomically exact and historically accurate. But this imaging is only accomplished via the medium of post-Boer war, hessian-clad, Afrikaansspeaking, culturally amnesic but better nourished and therefore anatomically inaccurate /Xam farm labour. What is disguised and distorted in science’s and history’s claims to reference is, precisely, indigenous prior presence. Unassimilated San communities fled even further north into the arid desert zones where contact with trekboer farmers and nomadic pastoralists was less likely. By the 1920s and 1930s, these communities persisted and endured, but in circumstances of extreme hardship and degradation. Where the San formed part of the farm economy, labour conditions were exploitative and pay was at extremely low levels. Land tenure was almost unheard of for these communities. In addition, there was the criminalisation of dissent, so that the San were a visible presence in the prison and mental asylum populations. In the 1930s, Wulf Sachs records a visit with John Chavafambira to a mental asylum. There, an elderly Afrikaans-speaking ‘Bushman’ with delusions of being King George debates the madnesses of the other inmates (1996: 250). Additionally, the increasing urbanisation of indigenous communities is observed when Chavafambira first arrives in Johannesburg station. To his right, he sees a ‘small, wizened, yellow-skinned Hottentot, clad in a ragged miscellany, clutching his tall shepherd’s staff and swearing softly, but competently, in Afrikaans’ (140). In the margins of black story, we find the relics of Khoi pastoralism (the incongruous ‘shepherd’s staff’ in a railway station) alongside indigenous assimilation into settler city space and settler language. At precisely this point in the 1920s and 1930s, the white rural order so fêted by the South African pastoral is beginning to lapse as waves of urbanisation take place (Coetzee 1988: 6). In 1920s South Africa, urbanisation is characterised by the failure of the white urban workforce to successfully tie its fate to black labour. Hence, we see the emergence of the nostalgia for an undisturbed white pastoral – in which the black figure is not competing labour, and in which the rural has not yet lapsed. This is also precisely the point at which the stereotype of the ‘Bushman’ begins to change from a degraded, abject, lazy, dirty and subhuman presence to the idyll of

Indigeneity in Southern Africa  17

the indigene as natural man, living contentedly in a paradise in which the woes of modernity have not yet prevailed.12 It is obvious that by the very point that the indigene comes to be associated with the natural, his or her relationship to both the natural world and political territory has been largely supplanted – as our Khoi shepherd in the railway station or our San farm labourers in Prieska attest. Natural man is already an anachronism, even as he is articulated. What helps to consolidate this shift to the indigene as natural man is a pseudo-scientific expedition, the Denver African Expedition, led by a South African, Ernest C. Cadle. Following Raymond Dart’s discovery of the hominid fossil, the Taung child, in 1924, and the enormous success of the early Tarzan films, Cadle was able to market and fund his expedition by promising to find and film live ‘Bushmen.’ Prior to the Denver African Expedition, ‘most postcards [presented] Bushmen as decadently impoverished. . . . The Denver expedition was the first attempt on a large scale to present a systematically romanticised image of bushmen’ (Gordon 1997: 3). The effect of the Denver African Expedition was to transform the ‘Bushman’ from a colonial type of degenerate subhumanity into a global stereotype of the ideal primitive. The Denver African Expedition’s premise was that it sought to acquire knowledge, but its marketability resided in its ability to entertain. This meant that media fantasies of the bucolic indigene became discursively congealed as scientific fact. The power of this mythmaking, of what Robert J. Gordon has called the ‘pristine Neolithic’ (1997: 123), meant that mid-20th-century epistemologies of the ‘Bushmen’ were framed by the romance of ‘natural man.’ As a result, even anthropologists were led into disregarding factual evidence that contradicted what they expected to find in San communities. For example, the pioneering documentary filmmaker, John Marshall, unintentionally misrepresented the idyllic qualities of the San community in his early documentaries.13 Marshall later revised his own prior position, vocally attacking mythologies of the ‘Bushman.’ The Apartheid government, which had occupied South West Africa (Namibia) since the victory over Germany in World War II, became increasingly suspicious of filmmakers and interfered when they filmed San communities, on the grounds that they might disturb the prevailing political order in the protectorate. Marshall himself was denied a visa for two decades on the basis of a spurious rumour (Gordon 1992: 287). A mere twenty years after Marshall produced his first film, the San community in Tsumkwe had become the most militarised in the world (2). During the 1960s and 1970s, the South African Defence Force drew upon their numbers in an effort to ward off the South West African People’s Organisation (SWAPO) then fighting the Border War. By the 1980s, quarter of all San in Tsumkwe were employed by the military. Many were employed as trackers on the grounds that their closeness to ‘nature’ and to hunting traditions made them ideal for military reconnaissance. In fact, Tsumkwe had become a slum, rife with alcoholism and disease. The ‘death rate exceeded the birthrate’ (3). The San community was not tracking big game, but was living on produce grown in their own meagre gardens. As Namibia gained independence, some San communities chose to be rehoused in

18  Brendon Nicholls

South Africa, fearing reprisals for their allegiance to the erstwhile occupying force (in Namibia) or the incursion (into Angola). Promises made to them by the military were not honoured. As a result, former combatants languished without employment or housing in a tent city outside Kimberley.14 As the militarisation of the San gathered pace in the early 1980s, Jamie Uys (1980) made a blockbuster film, The Gods Must Be Crazy, in which actors drawn from the impoverished community were induced to portray idyllic, huntergatherer lifestyles. The film was a multi-million dollar, international success, and it promulgated the fantasy that the San might become an ally against revolutionary decolonisation.15 As South Africa itself progressed towards democracy in the late 1980s, Uys’ mythmaking could no longer be sustained and the sequel The Gods Must Be Crazy II (1989) adopted a fallback position in which the ‘Bushman’ was a natural ally in the project of game conservation. Predictably enough, this played into wider political interests among white landowners. If farms could be rebranded as ‘game reserves,’ white ownership could defend itself against the land redistribution, using the argument that the animals were there first, and that threatened species required ‘protection’ from the general black population (but not, it seems, protection from ‘canned hunting’ by rich tourists). As South Africa’s film industry entered the post-1994 era, Uys’ films could no longer be guaranteed a government subsidy, and so he franchised the subsequent three sequels to Far Eastern film companies. There is an object lesson in this sequence. The political utility of myths of the ‘Bushman’ during Apartheid gives way to the practical utility of ‘game conservation,’ which in turn gives way to the economic utility of selling franchise rights to indigenous visual images. In the post-Apartheid era, the San have remained an intrinsic element of contemporary South African national self-imaging. Thabo Mbeki’s famous ‘I am an African’ speech celebrating the drafting of a democratic constitution claimed: I owe my being to the Khoi and the San whose desolate souls haunt the great expanses of the beautiful Cape – they who fell victim to the most merciless genocide our native land has ever seen, they who were the first to lose their lives in the struggle to defend our freedom and independence and they who, as a people, perished as a result. (1996).16 The claim that the San are a disappearing or disappeared people was one of the centrepieces of Apartheid anthropology17 and it is not borne out by facts on the ground – which attest to a living and enduring community presence. The importance of the ‘Bushmen’ as disappearing figures is that they make the narrative ground of Mbeki’s speech incontestable. They bear witness to his rhetorical claims via their staged absence. Moreover, the San appear as mouthpieces for the new multicultural ethos on the national coat of arms: two stylised rock art figures shake hands on an Nguni cowhide shield. Underneath, the motto in /Xam reads ‘!Ke

Indigeneity in Southern Africa  19

/Xarra //Ke’ (‘Diverse People Unite’). Fossilised on the picture plane, indigenous communities, though absent from Mbeki’s Africa, were once upon a time always already multicultural. (A clandestine reading of the cowhide shield unwittingly raises the secret 19th-century history of /Xam famine and stock theft, too!). Given the charge that San communities have been slow to receive the yields of the postApartheid nation, Mbeki’s claim to firstness (‘I am an African’) reads like an erasure of indigenous claim and a refusal of indigenous presence. This erasure takes us back to my introduction to this chapter, which emphasised the fault line that indigenous claim represents in decolonising African contexts. Despite the tensions that emerge from the San’s place in contemporary South African self-imaging, there are increasingly successful efforts to use community-centred cultural tourist initiatives as a means of deriving income and according profit-sharing to San communities. The cultural tourist co-operative model allows an interface between the profit motive of capital investment and a viable economics of indigenous performance.18 While there are risks intrinsic to the marketisation of the indigene, there are also real dangers to be found in the absence of income. In literary texts, we see the emergence of the indigenous influence on Bantuspeaking South African communities, especially Zakes Mda’s The Heart of Redness (2000), which features a Khoi ancestress (Qukezwa) for a Xhosa family and a group of Abathwa (Secret San), who emerge from deep historical ethnic disguise as Zulus in order to demand from the Xhosa the return of one of the Abathwa’s dances. Additionally, the street child protagonist of K. Sello Duiker’s Thirteen Cents (2000) takes refuge on Table Mountain and enacts a San trance dance, inspired by rock art, in which – recalling the new national coat of arms – two stylised San figures hunt a cow.19 In both instances, indigenous ancestry and heritage is something lent to and borrowed by Nguni fellow-citizens. Such moments of hybridity bespeak the institutionalisation of indigenous influence and presence in emergent South African writing, where new post-ethnic identities and modes of cultural transformation are very much at stake. The indigene offers a way of thinking outside of Xhosa ethnic nationalism in Mda and the racialisation of authority in Duiker (whose street child, Azure, has blue eyes). In this sense, indigenous influence in post-Apartheid literature may well allow the ideal of diverse people uniting in newly congealed post-racial identifications. However, the material implications and impacts of such imaging for Khoisan communities themselves are still far from clear, not least when one considers the habitual appropriation of the indigenous in South African national history. The new, in short, exhibits mechanisms of national self-imaging that are known of old and familiar. The post-Apartheid era has been characterised by a resurgent indigenous politics, which is notable for its collective organisation of communities around land and intellectual property theft. In a watershed case, the Khomani San prosecuted a 1995 land claim for the restitution of ‘400,000 hectares of land in the Kalahari Gemsbok Park’ (see Khomani San 2018). In 1999, they won their land claim, with additional success in 2007. Emboldened by these victories, the Khomani sought and secured

20  Brendon Nicholls

tentative World Heritage Site status in 2004 for their cultural landscape (including their unique linguistic traditions and their archaeological heritage). Alongside these initiatives, the South African San Council campaigned successfully for a 6–8% benefit-sharing agreement in respect of sales of products containing Hoodia gordonii, a scrubland shrub fabled for its appetite-suppressing qualities (Foster 2011). This ethno-botanical, used by Southern African indigenous communities for centuries, had previously been subject to biopiracy by the South African Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, who sold its Hoodia patent on to the multinational corporation Unilever (see Vermeylen 2007). These recent victories in indigenous activism indicate that communities marginalised by both settler-colonial and African nationalist movements are organising at both local and national levels in the furtherance of their sovereign political status and economic interests. In short, indigenous presence is not disappearing (as Apartheid anthropology once claimed), nor has it disappeared (as Mbeki more recently claimed). Instead, indigenous activism is increasingly visible and vocal, leveraging sovereignty and prior presence in acts of identitarian recovery, but also as part of a sustained project for political rights and economic interests. As a critical tool, indigeneity in Southern Africa is best understood as a form of practice, a strategic performance that looks backwards for political sovereignty and prior historical claim, and forwards for legal rights and economic benefit sharing. It is a canny, ambivalent term in its best usage, irrecoupable for nostalgia and alert to the risks of co-option and the dangers of exclusion. These mixed valences of the indigenous may complicate academic work on Southern African indigeneity, but – crucially – they may empower its communal practitioners, too.

Notes 1 Introductory remarks at the Fourth World Cinema Hui [meeting], University of Leeds. 2 Rosalind C. Morris observes of the beginning of Deputy President Thabo Mbeki’s speech on the adoption of the new constitution (‘So let me begin. I am an African’): In the doubling of these two interests [nationalism and Pan-Africanism], the idea of indigeneity emerges as the basis of all claims to authority. Power accrues to the one who is in place, and in the place of his or her origins. (2011: 174) This suggests that, even as it defines itself in opposition to erstwhile settler-colonial authority, Mbeki’s claim to indigeneity splits into national and transnational registers. I  would argue that we might go further. Newly constituted in legal terms, Mbeki’s authoritative utterance lays claim to a prior, indigenous constitution. The Law that Mbeki seeks to acclaim is declaimed in the very same moment by a prior indigenous instance. In my reading, the political claim to indigeneity always risks being riven by the movable sites of its discursive iteration. Expressed otherwise, indigenous claims may be split by their accompanying forms of address. 3 For instance, Saro-Wiwa addressed the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Populations in Geneva in 1992 (Nixon 2000: 114–15)

Indigeneity in Southern Africa  21

4 In the case of Rwanda, the dangers of indigenous claims were played out most tragically in the widely promulgated Hutu claim that the Tutsi were in fact Watussi nomads who originated in Ethiopia (see Tadjo 2002: 22). 5 To take just one example, a recent BBC documentary featuring Alice Roberts (2009), The Incredible Human Journey: Out of Africa, began with the presenter going tracking with ‘Bushmen’ in loincloths, before launching an argument for the origins of human genetic codes in African pre-history. The documentary is not atypical. ‘Public science’ is still wedded to discourses of colonial romance (‘Out of Africa’) flowing from encounters with the indigene and is fascinated by the indigene’s proximity to the animal (‘The Incredible [Human] Journey’). The irony in The Incredible Human Journey is that San hunters are adorned with plastic beads and one shot of Roberts foregrounded against a village backdrop shows San women making plastic bead and wire jewellery. The globalised indigene, the unconscious figure in evolutionary science, could not be more apparent in such scenes. 6 A modern incarnation of this justificatory pattern can be found in the Botswana government’s removal of up to 2,000 people from the Central Kalahari Game Reserve at the turn of the millennium. Weaver states: According to all the literature, the San have lived in the central Kalahari for [30,000] years or longer – ergo, they own the land and the diamonds, the animals and the pans and the bushveld and the tourist revenue. That’s how simple it is. And that is why the government cannot allow them to stay. (2000: 28) 7 Adhikari (2010) is a key study of these events. 8 Szalay (1995) is the most prominent study offering this thesis. 9 Excerpts from the archive were published as Specimens of Bushman Folklore (Bleek and Lloyd 1911). 10 The definitive history of the Bleek-Lloyd archive is provided by Andrew Bank (2006). 11 See ‘ “Coloured” Classification Was “Bloodless Genocide” – Khoi, San’ (Watson 2018). 12 An earlier 1821 stereotype of the ‘Bushmen’ is that they have the superficial appearance of living in a natural paradise, but this appearance is deemed deceptive (see Burchell in Coetzee 1988: 32–33). 13 See Tomaselli and Homiak (1999: 169–70). 14 The definitive account of this community’s history, and of its members’ visit to their Angolan relatives, is David Robbins’ On the Bridge of Goodbye (2007). 15 For a discussion of the film in relation to late apartheid ideology, see Nicholls (2008). 16 The speech is widely available online. 17 See Potgieter’s The Disappearing Bushmen of Lake Chrissie (1955). 18 For a detailed discussion of the politics and ethics of such initiatives, focused on the !Xaus Lodge, see Tomaselli (2012). 19 Lewis-Williams (2015) is the definitive source on rock art.

References Adhikari, Mohamed. 2010. The Anatomy of a South African Genocide: The Extermination of the Cape San Peoples. Cape Town: University of Cape Town Press. Allen, Chadwick. 2002. Blood Narrative: Indigenous Identity in American Indian and Maori Literary and Activist Texts. Durham: Duke University Press. Bank, Andrew. 2006. Bushmen in a Victorian World: The Remarkable Story of the Bleek-Lloyd Collection of Bushmen Folklore. Cape Town: Double Storey. Biesele, M. and Hitchcock, R. 1999. ‘ “Two Kinds of Bioscope:” Practical Community Concerns and Ethnographic Film in Namibia,’ Visual Anthropology 12 (2–3): 137–52.

22  Brendon Nicholls

Bleek, Wilhelm and Lloyd, Lucy. 1911. Specimens of Bushman Folklore: Collected by the Late W. H. I. Bleek and L. C. Lloyd, Edited by the Latter and with an Introduction by George McCall Theal, D. Lit., LL.D., etc. London: George Allen and Company, reprinted by Cornell University Library Digital Collections. Coetzee, J. M. 1988. White Writing: On the Culture of Letters in South Africa. Wynberg, South Africa: Radix. Duiker, K. Sello. 2013. Thirteen Cents. Athens: Ohio University Press. Foster, Laura. 2011. ‘Inventing Hoodia: Vulnerabilities and Epistemic Citizenship,’ CSW Update, Centre for the Study of Women, University of California Los Angeles, April 14–19. https://csw.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2017/07/Apr11.pdf (accessed on 8 March 2020). Gordon, Robert J. 1992. The Bushman Myth: The Making of a Namibian Underclass. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Gordon, Robert J. 1997. Picturing Bushmen: The Denver African Expedition of 1925. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press. Khomani San. 2018. www.khomanisan.com/about-us/ (accessed on 10 June 2018). Landau, Paul S. and Kaspin, Deborah D. (eds). 2002. Images of Empire: Visuality in Colonial and Postcolonial Africa. Berkeley: University of California Press. Lewis-Williams. 2015. Myth and Meaning: San-Bushman Folklore in Global Context. London: Routledge. Mbeki, Thabo. 1996. ‘I am an African,’ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_an_African (accessed on 10 June 2018). Mda, Zakes. 2000. The Heart of Redness. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Morris, Rosalind. 2011. ‘Crowds and Powerlessness: Reading //Kabbo and Canetti with Derrida in (South) Africa,’ Critical Studies 35: 167–212. Nicholls, Brendon. 2008. ‘Apartheid Cinema and Indigenous Image Rights: The “Bushman” Myth in Jamie Uys’ The Gods Must Be Crazy,’ in P. Flanery and A. van der Vlies (eds), Scrutiny2: Issues in English Studies in Southern Africa, Special Issue on South Africa and the Global Media 13 (1): 20–32. Nixon, Rob. 2000. ‘Pipe Dreams: Ken Saro-Wiwa, Environmental Justice and Microminority Rights,’ in C. McLuckie and A. McPhail (eds), Ken Saro-Wiwa: Writer and Political Activist. pp. 109–26. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner. Potgieter, E. F. 1955. The Disappearing Bushmen of Lake Chrissie: A Preliminary Survey. Pretoria: J. L. Van Schaik. Pringle, Thomas and Ritchie, Leitch. 1839. The Poetical Works of Thomas Pringle, With a Sketch of His Life by Leitch Ritchie. London: Edward Moxon. Robbins, David. 2007. On the Bridge of Goodbye: The Story of South Africa’s Discarded San Soldiers. Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball. Sachs, Wulf. 1996. Black Hamlet: The Mind of An African Negro Revealed by Psychoanalysis. 1937. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Saro-Wiwa, Ken. 1989. On a Darkling Plain: An Account of the Nigerian Civil War. London: Saros. Skotnes, Pippa. 2002. “The Politics of Bushman Representations,” in Paul S. Landau and Deborah D. Kaspin (eds), Images of Empire: Visuality in Colonial and Postcolonial Africa. pp. 253–74. Berkeley: University of California Press. Szalay, Miklós. 1995. The San and the Colonization of the Cape 1770–1879: Conflict, Incorporation, Acculturation. Köln: Rüdiger Köppe. Tadjo, Veronique. 2002. The Shadow of Imana: Travels in the Heart of Rwanda. Translated by Veronique Wakerley. Oxford: Heinemann.

Indigeneity in Southern Africa  23

Tomaselli, Keyan. 1999. ‘Encounters in the Kalahari: Some Points of Departure,’ Visual Anthropology 12 (2–3): 131–36. Tomaselli, Keyan (ed.). 2012. Cultural Tourism and Identity: Rethinking Indigeneity. Leiden: Brill. Tomaselli, Keyan and Homiak, John P. 1999. ‘ “Powering Popular Conceptions:” The !Kung in the Marshall Family Expedition Films of the 1950s,’ Visual Anthropology 12 (2–3): 153–84. Uys, Jamie. 1980. The Gods Must Be Crazy. Wendywood, South Africa: Mimosa Film Productions and Ster Kinekor Home Entertainment. Uys, Jamie. 1989. Film. The Gods Must Be Crazy II. Language: English. Vermeylen, Saskia. 2007. ‘Contextualizing “Fair” and “Equitable:” The San’s Reflections on the Hoodia Benefit Sharing Agreement,’ Local Environment 12 (4). Watson, Amanda. 2018. ‘ “Coloured” Classification Was “Bloodless Genocide” – Khoi, San,’ The Citizen, 8 May  2018. https://citizen.co.za/news/south-africa/1917678/colouredclassification-was-bloodless-genocide-khoi-san/ (accessed on 10 June 2018). Weaver, Tony. 2000. ‘Kalahari, Namibia and Botswana: No Respite for the San,’ in Paul Weinberg (ed.), Once We Were Hunters: A  Journey with Africa’s Indigenous Peoples. pp. 12–30. Cape Town: David Philip. Weinberg, Paul. 1997. In Search of the San. Johannesburg: Porcupine Press. Weinberg, Paul (ed.). 2000. Once We Were Hunters: A Journey with Africa’s Indigenous Peoples. Cape Town: David Philip.

2 OCEANIC IDENTITIES Trans/national formations in New Zealand and the Pacific Islands region Paloma Fresno-Calleja

As is often the case with general approaches to the Pacific, this account of nationalism in the Pacific Islands region must start by acknowledging the difficulties in dealing with its vastness and cultural diversity. The colonial history of the region, endlessly imagined, represented and labelled by westerners from the 16th century, involved multiple imperial powers which imposed different systems and colonial agendas, in turn determining the current socio-political idiosyncrasies of its many countries and territories. As recurrently discussed by theorists of the nation, western forms of nationalism were both a revulsive towards independence and played a key role in the process of forging their ‘imagined communities’, to follow Anderson’s (1983) well-known formulation, while being conceptually problematic when clashing with Indigenous understandings of communal identity and tribal organisation in territories where the concept of ‘statehood’ was unknown before colonisation (Fischer 2002: 199). As Linnekin observes, ‘[f]or most Pacific peoples under colonial rule, the independent nation was a self-evident political goal; but the dichotomy of colony-or-nation may be too rigid to capture the range of Island experiences’ (2004: 400). A useful starting point would be to establish a distinction between nationalism in sovereign Pacific Island nations (like Fiji, Samoa or Tonga); nationalism in Aotearoa New Zealand, where Māori people’s struggles for sovereignty are framed within wider discussions of post-settler nationalism; and nationalism in nonsovereign territories like Guam, Hawaiʿi and New Caledonia, still subject to ongoing forms of external control. Ideas of national liberation also need to be critically reassessed in relation to the class, ethnic and gender factors that condition the lives of the nation’s citizens after independence and their degree of identification with these diverse national projects and anti-colonial narratives emerging in the Pacific throughout the 20th century. In the first and second sections, I look at overlapping

Oceanic identities  25

nationalist formations in Aotearoa New Zealand, paying particular attention to Māori nationalism, and then move on to offer some general considerations about the process of decolonisation in some Pacific Island countries in the light of the ongoing neo-colonial forces operating in the region. Nationalism in the Pacific also needs to be approached by referring to the supranational or sub/regional frameworks which have characterised politics in the region since the end of the Second World War, and which I discuss in the third section. These regional alliances have been variously reshaped with different degrees of success, by rejecting or appropriating colonial labels and definitions – particularly the colonial tripartite Polynesia, Melanesia and Micronesia  – to establish political alliances, highlight cultural commonalities, secure their economic interests and reinforce their global status. Parallel to these political, administrative and economic denominations, Indigenous intellectuals have rethought unifying definitions of the Pacific Islands region as Oceania, the term generally favoured in these discussions, with the aim of overcoming both reductive colonial views and defective nationalist articulations by emphasising a common oceanic identity. Some of these theoretical approaches are summarised in the fourth section. The chapter concludes by looking beyond national frameworks to explore transnational itineraries and transcultural connections, focusing on the migration of Pacific Island peoples to Aotearoa New Zealand, now home to a large Pacific diasporic community.

New Zealand’s nationalisms Indigenous configurations of the nation in Aotearoa New Zealand  – a British colony from 1840–1907 – need to be understood within a wider picture of overlapping national formations. Mark Williams defines these distinctive articulations, characterised by ‘vigorous internal dissensions and various, often incompatible, motivations’ (1997: 19), as ‘post-settler Pākehā nationalism, Māori nationalism and bicultural nationalism’ (1997: 21). Post-settler Pākehā nationalism gained momentum at the turn of the 20th century as a result of increasing political, social and cultural transformations of the colony, which enhanced the settlers’ feelings of difference. New Zealand historian James Belich defines this period as characterised by ‘Better Britonism’, a belief in their superiority as members of a more egalitarian society, paradoxically combined with ‘a patriotic and martial British “imperialism” ’ (2001: 116). Egalitarianism was formulated as a distinctive feature of New Zealand Pākehā identity, actually working at the expense of the Indigenous Māori peoples, as well as non-Anglo/Celtic migrants, especially the Chinese, who were excluded from participating in the formation of these emerging national narratives. Simultaneously, New Zealand’s links with Britain were sustained through its involvement in a number of international conflicts. The First World War, and in particular the 1915 Gallipoli campaign, marked a turning point for the consolidation of a distinctive national identity, not only due to the tragic dimension of the event, but also because the collective sacrifice and patriotic effort of the soldiers

26  Paloma Fresno-Calleja

was read as the sign of a nation that had finally ‘come of age’ (King 2003: 299). Māori soldiers who formed part of the New Zealand troops came to be seen as ‘better blacks’ or ‘honorary whites’ (Belich 2001: 209), in a move that contributed to shape the myth of the harmonious interracial relations which was to become a basic component of Pākehā nationalism. The origin of the ‘one people myth’ (Hohepa 1978), framed around the theoretical partnership between Māori and Pākehā, can be traced back to 1840, when Governor William Hobson pronounced the words ‘He iwi tahi tatou’ (‘We are one people’) (Walker 1990: 96), after signing of The Treaty of Waitangi, which was to become ‘the most contentious and problematic ingredient in New Zealand’s national life’ (King 2003: 157). The Treaty, signed by over 500 Māori chiefs and representatives of the British Crown, placed Māori people under the protection of the Queen as British subjects. The controversy associated with the document lies in the differences between the original English version and its Māori translation, the one discussed and signed by most of the Māori chiefs (King 2003: 159). Whereas the English version specifies that Māori people cede ‘all the rights and powers of Sovereignty’ over their land to the Queen of England, the Māori translation rendered the word ‘sovereignty’ as ‘kāwanatanga’, which actually translates as ‘governorship’, thus guaranteeing Māori their ‘tino rangatiranga’ – or full authority – over the land (Walker 1990: 93; King 2003: 160). The subsequent massive purchase and indiscriminate confiscation of Māori tribal land dismissed the implications of the Māori version, as Pākehā (European) settlers went on to lay out the foundations of New Zealand as a white monocultural nation, disregarding the interests and rights of its Indigenous inhabitants and overtly practising a policy of assimilation while struggling to articulate their ‘indigenous’ connection to the land by physically and symbolically displacing the native Māori. Although Māori nationalism dates from the late 1960s, it can be traced in various forms of resistance and protest from the 19th century, as documented by Māori scholar Ranginui Walker in his monograph Ka Whawhai Tonu Matou. Struggle without End (1990). Early forms of resistance to Pākehā hegemony were directed at reinforcing a unified Māori identity (unknown in pre-colonial times) and retaining control of Māori land, and culminated in the establishment of the Māori King Movement (Kīngitanga) in 1858, aimed at reinforcing intertribal cohesion under the figure of a Māori king. Early strategies of ‘disengagement’ and separation from Pākehā culture, as Belich defines them, coexisted with forms of ‘engagement’ (2001: 194) through direct political representation. From the 1890s to the 1940s, the Young Māori movement – led, among others, by Apirana Ngata, Maui Pomare and Peter Buck, university-educated leaders who occupied prominent political positions  – worked to improve Māori life in rural areas and to maintain traditional cultural practices as essential for Māori survival. The Ratana movement of the 1920s, which grew around the figure of prophet and spiritual leader Tahupotiki Wiremu Ratana, preached the faith in the unity of all Māori contributing to forge common spiritual and political links among his followers (King 2003: 335).

Oceanic identities  27

The achievements of these leaders were crucial in the struggle for Māori survival and development, but by the 1950s, the massive urbanisation of the Māori population irremediably damaged tribal structures and affiliations, relegating many Māori to poverty and marginalisation in the cities while giving way to new forms of cooperation which would be crucial for the development of the Māori protest movement in the following decades. Māori nationalism emerged with renewed strength in the late 1960s, fuelled by the international Indigenous and Civil Rights movements, and reinforced by a period of cultural renaissance characterised by the invigoration of Māori arts and literature, as well as the revival of Māori language. The passing of the Māori Affairs Amendment Act in 1967, which gave additional power to the government to control Māori land, is often considered as the origin of the Māori protest movement, consolidated in the 1970s with the formation of protest and action groups like the Māori Organisation on Human Rights and Nga Tamatoa (the Young Warriors) and characterised by the increasing politicisation and radicalisation of Māori demands. Land became the focus of the Māori protest movement; the 1975 Land March, led by Māori activist Whina Cooper, took thousands of Māori to protest in front of the Parliament building in Wellington, the occupation of Bastion Point (1977–1978), the protests at Raglan (1981), and yearly protests at Waitangi reinforced the idea of Aotearoa New Zealand as a nation of two peoples (Hohepa 1978: 111), with Māori now firmly claiming their Indigenous status as tangata whenua (the people of the land). Māori protests continued in the 1980s and 1990s, running parallel to the development of ‘a more confidently bicultural kind of nationalism’ (Williams 1997: 27). The official bicultural policy implemented from 1984 by the Fourth Labour Government was directed to redress historical injustices and ongoing political and socio-economic imbalance between Māori and Pākehā by upholding the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi and recognising the status of Māori and Pākehā as Treaty partners. Among the measures taken to implement this policy was the declaration of te reo Māori (Māori language) as an official language in 1987, and the decision that the Waitangi Tribunal, originally created in 1975 to rule on alleged breaches of the Treaty of Waitangi, could consider claims retrospective to 1840 (King 2003, 484). Although important claims have been settled since the 1990s, and New Zealand’s biculturalism has continued to be implemented institutionally, it has been questioned for merely ‘incorporating a Maori dimension into state practices and national symbols [which] seldom means Maori claims for tino rangatiratanga rights’ (Fleras and Spoonley 1999: 239). Many believe that Māori claims should be better understood in terms of bi-nationalism rather than the current depoliticised forms of biculturalism (1999: 220, 240). Moreover, as a result of the unprecedented diversification of New Zealand’s ethnic make-up, a parallel discourse around multiculturalism emerged in the early 1990s. Claims by the largest non-Indigenous ethnic groups, namely the Asian and Pacific communities, to rethink former national configurations to accommodate

28  Paloma Fresno-Calleja

the country’s demographic diversity have often been perceived as placing the Indigenous people at risk (Walker 1995), on the understanding that ‘multiculturalism is . . . a “dishonest” and “reactionary” position that serves to deny the Maori status as a treaty partner’ (Bartley 2013, 99). This has resulted in a generalised perception that biculturalism and multiculturalism are competing and irreconcilable discourses. The overall picture is thus one of overlapping conceptions of Aotearoa New Zealand, as a post-settler bicultural nation, still engaged in refining the partnership between the Indigenous Māori and the Pākehā majority, while showing increasingly awareness of the demands of the growing Asian and Pacific communities.

Independence and neo-colonialism in the Pacific Islands region In the rest of the Pacific, independence and the consolidation of national identities was accelerated after the Second World War when a new political order was shaped by the imperial powers involved in the region: the United States, Britain, France, Australia, New Zealand and the Netherlands. The complexity of this postindependence scenario partly derived from the tensions between national aspirations, modelled around boundaries and definitions created by the colonial powers and intended to serve their interest even after decolonisation (Lal 1994: 439), and local, tribal and ethnic demands for cultural difference and autonomy (Linnekin 2004: 397). Interestingly, and as James Clifford reminds us, because independence came later to the Pacific than to other parts of the post-colonial world, the notion that political independence under the leadership of nationalising elites would lead to certain kinds of liberation [and] social justice, was pretty definitely exploded by then [and] the very word “independence” began to have quotation marks placed around it. (in Borofsky 2000: 95) There were important differences in how these societies followed the path to independence, with Indigenous nationalist movements developing in relatively peaceful transitions towards self-government in some cases, and more violent interethnic conflicts in others. The former German colony of Western Samoa, administered by New Zealand from the end of the First World War, was the first Pacific nation to become independent (1962). The increasing discontent with New Zealand’s administration crystallised in the 1920s in the formation of the ‘O Le Mau’ Movement, whose motto was ‘Samoa for Samoans’. The repression of the movement reached its most tragic moment during the ‘Black Saturday’ in 1929, when several people were killed by the New Zealand police during a demonstration. After the movement was declared illegal, the Mau men fled to the bush. The ‘Women’s Mau’ continued the struggle, until the New Zealand administration eventually recognised their legitimate political status and Sāmoan people gradually

Oceanic identities  29

advanced towards self-government (Fischer 2002: 186–87). Other territories formerly administered by New Zealand, however, chose to maintain closer ties with the country. Whereas Tokelau remains a dependency, the Cook Islands (1965) and Niue (1974) became self-governing territories in free association with New Zealand, which retains control over certain matters such as defence and foreign affairs. Another example of the diverse fates of Pacific nations after independence is found in the cases of Tonga and Fiji, both fully independent from the British from 1970. Tonga had been a British protectorate since 1900, but was the only nation of the Pacific which managed to maintain its sovereign status and its monarchy, which made it possible to shape a stronger and more homogeneous national identity. In recent years, the privileges of Tongan’s royal and aristocratic elites have been questioned by pro-democratic movements, with violence exploding in 2006 in the Nuku‘alofa riots. A series of reforms resulted in the transformation of Tonga into a constitutional monarchy in 2010. Fiji’s post-independence history, on the other hand, has been determined by the ongoing conflicts between Indigenous Fijians, who amount to 57% of the population, and the Indo-Fijians, descendants from the Indian indentured workers brought by the British from the 1870s to work in the sugar plantations, and representing 37% of the country’s population (Fraenkel 2013: 329). The social breach between both groups established in the colonial period increased after independence, and interethnic conflict and dissent took the form of a series of coups in 1987, 2000 and 2006, staged for different reasons, but generally resulting in an increasing breach not only between Indo-Fijians and Indigenous Fijians, but also among different sectors of the Indigenous Fijian population (2013). Interethnic conflicts have also characterised the process of national consolidation in other Melanesian countries, like the Solomon Islands, which had obtained their independence from Britain in 1978, and were immersed in civil conflict from 1998–2003; and Papua New Guinea, independent from Australia since 1975, which experienced a civil war from 1988 to 1997 as a result of the secessionist movement arising in the province of Boungainville. The conflict ended with a peace agreement and the promise of a future referendum. This non-binding independence referendum was held in 2019, with independence being overwhelmingly supported by Boungainvilleans (https://bougainville-referendum.org, accessed 22 June, 2020). The continuity of national projects in some parts of the Pacific, however, is conditioned by ongoing forms of external control: France still maintains control over French Polynesia, Wallis and Futuna, and New Caledonia, where the referendum held in 2018 resulted in 56.7% of the population voting against independence, frustrating the demands of the Indigenous Kanak (39% of the population) (https:// www.gouvernement.fr/en/referendum-in-new-caledonia-a-true-democraticsuccess-for-the-people, accessed June 22, 2020). The Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, American Samoa and Guam hold the status of ‘unincorporated territories’ of the United States, which means that their residents are US citizens but without the constitutional rights of mainland American citizens. From

30  Paloma Fresno-Calleja

the late 1970s, a strong sovereignty movement has also developed in Hawaiʿi, a state of the United States since 1959, after the overthrowal of its monarchy in 1893 and its annexation in 1898. The sovereignty movement in Hawaiʿi encompasses multiple organisations, with very different views in relation to self-governance and self-determination (Kāhealani Pacheco 2009: 352), from full independence, to the articulation of a ‘nation-within-a-nation’ system. In her collection of essays From a Native Daughter. Colonialism and Sovereignty in Hawaii (1993), Hawaiian poet, activist and academic Haunani Kay Trask offers a comprehensive analysis of the sovereignty movement and its various ramifications. Among other topics, Trask reflects on the tensions between Indigenous women’s struggles and western feminism, illuminating the gendered dimension of the decolonisation project and the role of women in these new national formations. In New Zealand, for instance, the Māori women’s movement, Mana Wahine Māori, was both crucial to the development of Māori nationalism and needs to be understood within this nationalist context, rather than in relation to the white women’s movement which was developing at the same time (Mohanram 1996: 61). While Trask places nationalist concerns over gender issues and favours alliances with Hawaiian men over haole (non-native) women (1993: 264–65), other Indigenous thinkers advocate a reworking of western feminism to suit their specific concerns, placing Indigenous and non-Indigenous patriarchal forms of domination as their target ( Jolly 2005: 146). Moving beyond a mere rejection of western feminist theories, Selina Tusitala Marsh, a New Zealand poet and academic of Sāmoan descent, proposes ‘a reconceptualization of locally relevant and culturally resonant feminism, . . . a continually migratory . . . critical framework that adapts, adopts, and rejects old, new, and different ideological environments’ (1998: 666) in a way that is relevant to the Pacific context. Economically speaking, the process of decolonisation in most Pacific nations was marked by generalised opinions that these microstates were too small and underdeveloped to become self-reliant, resulting in a discourse of belittlement (Hauʿofa 1995: 97) whose damaging effects continue to affect them. The ongoing dependency of these island nations from larger countries was captured with the acronym MIRAB, which stands for ‘migration, remittances, foreign aid and bureaucracy’ (Bertram and Watters 1985). Massive population movements in the 1960s to urban centres in Australia, New Zealand and North America ensured jobs and educational opportunities, and helped to sustain households in the form of remittances; these, together with foreign aid, have been crucial for most Pacific countries to survive, but have resulted in the abandonment of traditional subsistence economies and agricultural activities, in turn reinforcing their dependency on foreign imports (Fischer 2002: 269) and placing Pacific Island nations at the mercy of global capitalism and neoliberal policies. Tongan intellectual Epeli Hauʿofa claims that the process of decolonisation ‘has integrated the Pacific islands into the Australian/NZ economy and society to the extent that the islands cannot or will not disentangle themselves’ from the former imperial countries and that these

Oceanic identities  31

countries do not relate to these smaller countries as fellow nations but as ‘patron governments’ (1998: 399), endowed with the power to force their opinions and interest in the regional organs to which they belong. This is the case of organisations like the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) – originally founded in 1970 as the South Pacific Forum – which counts as its members Australia and New Zealand. While the Forum’s mission is to equally represent the interest of all members, these two nations are viewed as occupying a position of prominence which does not serve the interests of the region at large (Lawson 2016: 393–94). Some of the strongest forms of intervention and control in the region derive from US military imperialism during and after the Second World War. The war transformed the life on many Pacific Islands, particularly in Melanesia. These changes not only derived from the actual conflict, which involved the recruitment of many Pacific Islanders (especially in Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands) as combatants or workers, but from regular contact with US soldiers (many of which were Black Americans), as a result of which Melanesians reassessed their previous experiences of colonial oppression in the hands of their British and Australian administrators (Keown, Taylor and Treagus 2018: 13). These encounters were crucial in the development of anti-colonial movements, like the Maʿasina Rule movement in the Solomon Islands, as well as the so called ‘cargo cults’, millennialist movements which adapted indigenous religious beliefs to explain the new material wealth brought by the Americans and which derived in forms of resistance against colonial authority (2018: 14). During the Cold War, US power in the region was consolidated by its administration of the Micronesian territories taken from Japan, redefined as a ‘strategic trust’, and where the United States maintained military bases and carried out nuclear tests (2018: 14). From 1946–1996, when France finally put an end to its nuclear programme, ‘250 nuclear devices were detonated at Bikini, Enewetak, Jonston Atoll, Christmas Island, Malden, Mururoa and Fangataufa’ (Fischer 2002: 230) by Britain, France and the United States, leaving behind a legacy of destruction. A strong protest movement joined Pacific nations in demanding a ‘nuclear-free and independent Pacific’, eventually ratified by the Treaty of Rarotonga in 1985. The dramatic effects of the radiation and the environmental damage caused by nuclear tests and detonations continue to be felt while, ironically, Pacific Island nations are still represented as idyllic paradise destinations. Scholar Teresia Teaiwa, of Banaban, I-Kiribati and African American descent, employs the term ‘militourism’ (1999) to refer to the construction of the Pacific as both a tourist location and a site of western militarisation, a phenomenon ‘by which military or paramilitary force ensures the smooth running of a tourist industry, and that same tourist industry masks the military force behind it’ (1999: 251). She provides multiple examples of how militarism and tourism work ‘in almost perfect tandem’ (1999: 252), determining the economies of whole islands by providing employment and commodities, but also destroying native resources and ways of life (1999: 251). Hawaiian scholar Paul Lyons proposes the term

32  Paloma Fresno-Calleja

‘histouricism’ to define historical and popular narratives which employ the conventions of touristic writing to justify US expansion in Oceania (2006: 151). There is also a striking contrast between the touristic idealisation of the islands and the realities of some Pacific nations like Kiribati, Tuvalu and the Marshall Islands, with low-lying atolls literally at risk of disappearing due to the rising sealevel as a result of global warming. Pacific Island peoples today continue to face many challenges deriving from these ongoing forms of neocolonialism, but are also developing multiple forms of resistance, as discussed by Tracey Banivanua Mar in Decolonisation in the Pacific (2016). Shifting the focus from independence as an end to decolonisation as a continuous process, Banivanua Mar reformulates the conventional ‘history of flawed nation-making, weak national consciousness, failed political independence or poor governance’ (2016: 7) often applied to Pacific nations to defend three basic premises. First, she proves that decolonising movements can be traced back to colonial times; she defines them as ‘examples of locally defined decolonisation, of people doing independence, rather than waiting for it to be granted’ (2016: 134). Second, Banivanua Mar opposes the decolonisation planned by the formal imperial powers in their own interest to Indigenous decolonising efforts, which ‘happened as Indigenous peoples frustrated imperial agendas, and determined their own strategies’ (2016: 159). These strategies were informed by ‘a political sophistication, physical mobility and a cosmopolitan connectedness to international networks’ (2016: 3), and have been ignored in conventional historical accounts. Her work places the focus on people, not on territory, thus rethinking decolonisation beyond the borders of the nation, and highlighting the role played by the diasporic communities, responsible for the development of ‘a unique, diasporic and stateless process of daily decolonisation characterised by a globalised connectivity’ (2016: 225). Although many Pacific territories continue to endure neo-colonial forms of oppression and hegemony, the daily decolonising efforts and ongoing acts of resistance carried out by people in the Pacific continue beyond – and often despite – the nation.

Nationalism and (sub)regionalism in the Pacific The struggles of Pacific nations to forge independent and distinctive national identities cannot be disentangled from the diverse supranational or regional configurations shaped during the decolonising period. The region, as well as the nation, needs to be imagined, in Anderson’s terms (1983), and this imaginative process continued to be exerted by outsiders in the period immediately following decolonisation. During the 1980s, for instance, a powerful discourse of the ‘Pacific region’ ( Jolly 2007: 526) as a ‘doomsday scenario (2007: 528), contributed to frame Australia as ‘both as model and saviour of the Pacific, its future and its prophet’ (2007: 527), becoming simultaneously, its ‘neighbour, military ally, economic investor, trade partner, and aid donor’ (2007: 529). Labels like the ‘Pacific Rim’ were created to distinguish certain Pacific countries with expanding economies from the

Oceanic identities  33

smaller and less significant ‘Pacific Basin’ nations (Sharrad 1990; Jolly 2007), with the Rim countries becoming the region’s ‘geographical limits and its commanding heights – the high ground of strategic economic and geopolitical interest and of moral presumption’ ( Jolly 2007: 525). Likewise, the term ‘Asia-Pacific’, coined in 1989 as a result of the foundation of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), included the richer Pacific Rim countries while excluding all Pacific Island nations. The effort to establish and institutionalise Indigenous supranational and regional entities needs to be understood as a response to those external denominations. One of the best-known Indigenous formulations of a regional identity was the concept of ‘the Pacific Way’, an expression first used by Fijian Prime Minister Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara in a speech pronounced before the United Nations General Assembly following Fiji’s independence in 1970. Mara used this concept to refer to the peaceful transition towards independence in most Pacific nations. The expression was soon embraced as synonym of a way of acting and doing things based on common Pacific values, such as the importance of cooperation, communality and an emphasis on dialogue (Vaai 1999: 32–33). The notion of the ‘Pacific Way’ has been the object of much criticism. Hauʿofa questioned it for being too shallow and incapable of achieving regional unity (1998: 394); Sāmoan writer Albert Wendt argues that the Pacific ‘both in the pre-European times and during the post-colonial present [has] hundreds of Ways’ (quoted in Vaai 1999: 34), and proposes Indigenous phrases like ‘Fa’a Pasefika’ and ‘Vaka Pasefika’ as alternatives to the English expression (Vaai 1999: 34). Lawson argues that the ‘Pacific Way’ was hardly intended as expression of subalternity and anti-colonialism (2001: 301), but was given strong post-colonial connotations by different thinkers and scholars after its original formulation. What is true, however, as Sāmoan historian Damon Salesa reminds us, is that although the ideology of the Pacific Way has been ‘much scrutinised and criticised, [it has also been] central to a crucial integrating discourse’ (2014: 50) for the region. Cultural institutions like the University of the South Pacific, for instance, played a key role in the development of Indigenous arts and literatures closely following the ideology of the ‘Pacific Way’ (Keown 2007:117). An example of an alternative sub-regional label was the concept of the ‘Melanesian Way’, developed by Papua New Guinea politician Bernard Narokobi in the late 1970s, to articulate an anti-colonial discourse which worked by reversing colonial definitions and to emphasise a positive Melanesian identity ( Jolly 2007: 524). The Melanesia Spearhead Group (MSG) was formed in 1983 to give a more prominent voice to Melanesian countries – Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands. Events like the Melanesian Festival of the Arts and Culture or the Melanesian Games have contributed to reinforce this sub-regional identity articulating it against a ‘Polynesian other’ (Lawson 2016: 401), fuelled by a process of cultural revival evolving around the notion of kastom (tradition) and wantok, a complex term which generally refers to ‘a network of cooperation, caring and reciprocal support, and a shared attachment to kastom and locality’ (Nanau 2011: 32).

34  Paloma Fresno-Calleja

Identity tensions around the Polynesia-Melanesia divide, as well as between Australia and New Zealand and the rest of the Pacific Island nations (Lawson 2016), have resulted from 2009 in what Tarte defines as a ‘new regional dynamism’ (2014: 313) whereby Pacific identity has been rethought through the creation of new institutions and alliances, giving way to ‘dramatic new developments in Pacific diplomacy at sub-regional, regional and global levels’ (Fry and Tarte 2015: 4). The aim of these regional configurations is to pursue greater internal control and a more prominent presence of Pacific nations in global forums on key aspects like climate change and the management of fishing and mining resources (2015: 4). For instance, the Polynesian Leaders Group (PLG) was constituted in 2011 to reinforce common Polynesian culture and economic interests (Lawson 2016: 402); in 2013, Fiji, suspended both from PIF and the Commonwealth in 2009 for failing to hold democratic elections, led negotiations to create the Pacific Islands Development Forum (PIDF) with the idea of constructing a stronger regional identity without the interference of Australia and New Zealand (2016: 393). Other instances of new regional forms of cooperation are the Parties to the Nauru Agreement (PNA), established in 2009 to exert greater control over fisheries, and the strengthening of the Pacific Small Islands Developing States (PISDS) as a key agent of negotiation at the United Nations in matters related to climate change (Fry and Tarte 2015: 7–8). Parallel to the political efforts developed within these regional organs to strengthen the position of Pacific sub-regions and negotiate matters of common interest, and as discussed in the next section, indigenous thinkers have elaborated alternative critical discourses on regionalism, stressing a common oceanic identity as crucial to overcome divisions and build a stronger identity for the region.

Oceanic identities, peoples and epistemologies In order to rearticulate (supra)national Pacific identities, Indigenous scholars have shifted the attention from the island, perceived by western colonisers as limiting and isolating, to the ocean as a unifying and fluid medium and a source of cultural richness. These theories are postulated upon what Lyons and Tengan define as a common ‘Oceanic Reason, . . . based on a fluidity of being in the world . . . that flows from awareness of one’s environment’ (2015: 545) and can be collectively read as theoretical moves ‘to de-universalise, historicise and relativise nationalism and the nation state’ (Douglas 2000: 1). In the work of these scholars, the Pacific Ocean works both as ‘a primary space to imagine the histories of diaspora [and] a vital space for the production of the Indigenous Pacific’ (Deloughrey 2007: 24). While I consider diasporic trajectories in the last section, here I focus on Indigenous articulations of identity emerging from the centrality of the Pacific Ocean. An early effort to rethink labels and identities beyond the scope of the national can be found in ‘Towards a New Oceania’ by Albert Wendt, originally published in 1976, wherein he questions the constructed homogeneity of national cultures (1996: 645) and the internal racial discrimination that ensues from those

Oceanic identities  35

constructions. Wendt also rejects the idealised perception that it is possible to go back to a pure pre-colonial past (1996: 644) and advocates for the development of an oceanic conscience that supersedes nationalistic divisions and interests, calling for hybridity as a shaping force in the forging ‘a new Oceania’ (1996: 644). Besides Wendt’s, the best-known critical articulation of a transnational oceanic identity is undoubtedly that of Tongan scholar and writer Epeli Hauʿofa, in particular, his seminal and much-quoted essay ‘Our Sea of Islands’, first published in 1993. This work articulates a critical regionalism grounded in the ocean, as the medium and source of a common and rich identity. Hauʿofa starts by establishing a difference between two levels of operation: ‘national governments and regional and international diplomacy . . . and ‘ordinary people’ (1995: 86–87). It is from the quotidian behaviour of these people that Hauʿofa shape his vision of Oceania. His main argument is that Pacific peoples must overcome their feelings of inferiority and the notion that they are ‘too small, too poorly endowed with resources, and too isolated from the centers of economic growth’ (1995: 88). To do so, he highlights the long involvement of Pacific peoples in an ongoing process of ‘world enlargement’ (1995: 90), carried out by all those who for centuries have moved across the Pacific ‘making nonsense of all national and economic boundaries . . . crisscrossing an ocean that had been boundless for ages before Captain Cook’s apotheosis’ (1995: 90). To question western notions of isolation, smallness and confinement, as well as the prioritisation of land and borders in the mapping and belittlement of Pacific nations, Hauʿofa talks of the surrounding ocean as central to the lives, myths and traditions of the people of Oceania – the term he favours over other denominations. He reformulates the definition of the Pacific as a ‘sea of islands’ rather than ‘islands in a far sea’ (1995: 91), and encourages fellow Oceanians to think of themselves as part of the common oceanic medium: We are the sea, we are the ocean, we must wake up to this ancient truth and together use it to overturn all hegemonic views that aim ultimately to confine us again, physically and psychologically, in the tiny spaces which we have resisted accepting as our sole appointed place, and from which we have recently liberated ourselves. We must not allow anyone to belittle us again, and take away our freedom. (1995: 98) These views are further expanded in ‘The Ocean in Us’ (1998), where Hauʿofa offers a critique of labels and definitions of the Pacific imposed by outsiders and questions the old forms of regionalism as a ‘direct creation of colonialism’ (1998: 398), proposing a ‘stronger and genuinely independent’ (1998: 398) regional identity as ‘something additional to other identities that we already have, or will develop in the future, something that should sever to enrich our other selves’ (1998: 393). This regional identity comes from recovering and understanding the ancient oceanic connections and heritages and reinforcing a unity of purpose that should guide the diverse peoples and national projects in the Pacific (1998: 402).

36  Paloma Fresno-Calleja

Although Hauʿofa’s views have been criticised for not providing specific historical evidence for traditional oceanic connections (D’Arcy 2006), for diminishing the importance of land in the configuration of Pacific identities (Griffen 1993; Deloughrey 2001: 44) and for being too idealistic and unable to offer solutions (Griffen 1993), the impact of his ideas for rethinking Pacific identities, economies, cultures and societies is undeniable, as evinced by the innumerable critical elaborations of his ground-breaking work. Salesa, for instance, coins the notion of the ‘Native Seas’ (2014), in an effort to recover Indigenous agency when it comes to knowing, naming, narrating and inhabiting the ocean. Salesa offers evidence of multiple native seas, alternative Indigenous denominations that reflected contacts, trading exchanges, kinship ties and boundaries of diverse kind, which ‘nested in each other, or overlapped’ (2014: 49). On his part, Carolinian and Filipino scholar Vicente Diaz proposes a reading of traditional seafaring practices to articulate ‘an Indigenously-ordered, anti-colonial praxis that can simultaneously furnish  .  .  . an Indigenous oceanic critique of political programs that are centered firmly on nation-state based claims of sovereignty’ (2011: 21). Diaz’s project rethinks the prominence of the is/land as a basic constituent of identity and illustrates the productive tensions between roots and routes, considering the history of Pacific peoples as seafarers and the diasporic trajectories that determine the lives of most Pacific Island citizens nowadays: To view the mobility of the canoe as a cultural foundation as well as to understand foundational culture in fluidic ways is to capture . . . the dialogical and generative tensions between cultural forces or routing and historical processes of rooting Indigenous identities and tradition. (2011: 22) Alternatively, other critics have revised the oceanic dimension of Hauʿofa’s project, focusing instead on the notion of the archipelago and the ‘disjuncture, connection and entanglement between and among islands (Stratford et al. 2011: 114, emphasis in the original), as a more accurate way of accounting for processes of resistance and protest that are primarily organised in relation to the ‘I-land’ (Deloughrey 2001: 24). This focus on ‘archipelagraphy’, that is ‘a historiography that considers chains of islands in fluctuating relationship to their surroundings seas, islands and continents’ (Deloughrey 2001: 23) is informed by ‘complex geo/aquatic metaphors’ (Deloughrey 2001: 40) and a discourse of ‘tidalectics’ (Deloughrey 2007) to articulate the interrelated and fluid engagements between islands and their surrounding seas. Further adaptations of these ideas can be found in the work of Chamorro poet and scholar Craig Santos Perez and his reading of the United States not as a continental power but an ‘imperial archipielago . . . produced in relation to islands’ (2015: 619) under its control, and defined as ‘terripelago (which combines territorium and pélago, signifying sea), to foreground territoriality as it conjoins land and sea, islands and continents’ (2015: 620); or in Suvendrini Perera’s work,

Oceanic identities  37

which has redefined the island-continent of Australia as Terra Australis infirma, ‘a state of shifting-watery foundations’ (2009: 2). These proposals are also connected to the emergent field of Transpacific Studies and its emphasis on the multiple ‘transnational affiliations that appear to exceed or transcend the boundaries of the nation [and which] have in fact been materially re-routed, revived, or inhibited by imperial histories, national cultures, and the nation-state’ (Suzuki 2016: 352). The term ‘transpacific’ is meant to transcend the limited and now outdated concept of the ‘Pacific Rim’ and, as Suzuki explains, refers to historical, cultural, demographic and economic processes which have determined life in the region for the last four centuries. In False Divides, Lana Lopesi recovers the Māori name for the Pacific Ocean, Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa, to argue that Moana (Pacific) peoples are now reconnected thanks to the internet and social media, which she believes are ‘making Hauʿofa’s and Wendt’s Oceania . . . possible’ (2018: 96–97). These are all exciting expansions or revisions of Hauʿofa’s pioneer articulation of Oceania as a relational space inhabited by interconnected ‘human beings with a common heritage and commitment, rather than as members of diverse nationalities and races’ (1998: 402). Hauʿofa’s conclusion that adopting this relational approach ‘opens up the possibility of expanding Oceania progressively to cover larger areas and more peoples than is possible under the term Pacific Islands Region’ (1998: 402) is essential to the discussion of Pacific diasporic identities developed in the next section.

Pacific Trans/nations Although national borders and definitions irremediably continue to play a role in the definition of Pacific identity, this section moves beyond the scope of the nation to focus on what Hauʿofa defines as the process of ‘ “world enlargement” carried out by tens of thousands of ordinary Pacific islanders right across the ocean from east to west and north to south . . . making nonsense of all national and economic boundaries’ (1995: 90). Indo-Fijian writer Subramani mentions that Pacific diasporas ‘broaden the epistemological frame’ (1999: 7) from which culture and indigeneity can be considered, and this not only applies to the contemporary Pacific but to the long history of pre-colonial movements, diversified during colonialism and evidently intensified from the second half of the 20th century. Migration to large urban centres in New Zealand, Australia and North America continues to be a viable alternative to sustain families and communities at home, and has radically altered the demographic configuration of some island nations; there are, for instance, more Niueans, Tokelauans and Cook Islanders living in New Zealand than in their countries of origin (Spoonley 2001: 83). On the other hand, thousands of Pacific people have also been forcibly relocated after their islands have been devastated by mining (Teaiwa 2015: 385) or nuclear testing (Hauʿofa 1998: 397), while many more are likely to leave them due to the effects of climate change (Campbell 2014). These multiple and overlapping diasporic experiences have resulted in the

38  Paloma Fresno-Calleja

redefinition of national boundaries, cultural identities and even the disciplinary boundaries of Pacific Studies (Gershon 2007). In this section, I specifically focus on the Pacific community living in Aotearoa New Zealand to consider two interrelated questions: how the experience of diaspora has given way to transnational articulations of Pacific identity deriving from a specific New Zealand location, and the need to reassess the position of New Zealand as a Pacific country in the light of the increasing visibility and strength of its Pacific community. Pacific peoples began to arrive in New Zealand from the 1950s thanks to a combination of temporary permits, quota schemes and programmes of family reunification, facilitated by the growing economy and the development of air travel (Spoonley and Bedford 2012: 126–29). The peak of Pacific migration occurred in the 1960s, with the demand for unskilled labour following the increasing industrialisation of the country. Pacific people saw migration as a chance for a better life, although they faced marginalisation and exploitation from their arrival. This was more acute during the late 1970s, when due to the economic recession, Pacific peoples came to be perceived as a threat, responsible for the decay of certain neighbourhoods and accountable for acts of violence and crime (2012: 133). The racialisation of the Pacific community was also reflected in the implementation of stricter immigration laws. Particularly shameful was the official policy of control, which included the infamous Dawn Raids carried out by the police entering Pacific houses at dawn to locate alleged ‘overstayers’ (2012: 134) and the ‘random’ street checks to demand identification (Anae 2012: 223). Authorities in charge of the searches were unable to tell the difference between Pacific peoples, and often targeted Māori and people from Niue, Cook Islands and Tokelau who were actually New Zealand citizens (Spoonley and Bedford 2012: 134). The legacy of this period remains in ongoing perceptions of Pacific peoples ‘as marginal to many social and economic activities, as contributing little to New Zealand, and as posing a threat in a number of ways’ (Fleras and Spoonley 1999: 198), which reveals the inconsistencies of defining New Zealand as a ‘Pacific nation’ while still placing Pacific peoples as alien and marginal to the national narratives. Nevertheless, despite institutionalised racism and social exclusion, this decade was also crucial to forge a strong sense of identity based on a shared experience of marginalisation and dislocation. The Polynesian Panthers, for instance, a protest group founded in 1971 (Anae 2012), appropriated the ideology of the Black Power movement to carry out protests and actions in defence of the Pacific community. From the 1990s, the Pacific community has experienced several transformations, mostly due to the substantial increase in the number of New Zealand-born people who face their position in the country very differently from the newly arrived migrants. Pacific peoples in Aotearoa New Zealand now amount to 8.1% of the total population; they form the youngest ethnic group in the country (with an average age of 23  years) and live mostly in urban areas. Auckland, deemed ‘the largest Polynesian city in the world’, is home to almost two-thirds of the Pacific population of the country (Stats NZ 2018), a phenomenon which Sāmoan

Oceanic identities  39

sociologist Melanie Anae defines as the ‘browning of Auckland’ (2004). Anae recovers Hauʿofa’s oceanic formulation to talk about a process whereby ‘Pacific peoples . . . are from their sea of islands, continuing the voyages of their ancestors across time and space and taking breathers along the way. Auckland is one of these breather sites’ (2004: 92). For Anae, this browning involves ‘the consolidation of a strong Pacific identity, the growth of a Pacific ‘middle class’ and the infiltration of Pacific identity . . . on New Zealand’s infrastructure at national and community levels’ (2004: 92). Indeed, and despite facing socio-economic, health and educational disadvantages, upward social mobility has allowed many of members of the Pacific community to succeed and intervene in the construction of Pacificoriented national narratives. This process has been facilitated by what Karlo Mila, a New Zealand-born poet of Tongan descent, defines as ‘Polycultural capital’ (2010), the resources acquired by New Zealand-born Pacific people as a result of their diasporic heritage and multicultural upbringing which they have invested in the articulation of stronger panPacific identities. Terms like ‘Pacific Islander’, a pan-ethnic construct created with administrative purposes and often considered to be generalising and negative (Anae 1997: 128), has been shed in favour of more positive denominations, such as ‘Pacific peoples’ or ‘Tangata Pasifika’ (People of the Pacific), to define the transnational, urban, diasporic identity specifically deriving from a New Zealand location. The term ‘Tangata Pasifika’ implicitly acknowledges the Indigenous status of the Māori people as ‘Tangata Whenua’ (people of the land), while simultaneously expressing the New Zealand roots of the Pasifika community and the formative character of their oceanic routes. These pan-Pacific denominations constitute a ‘strategic amalgam [which] can create visibility and the grounds for collaboration’ (Somerville 2012: xxii), while articulating a group identity which transcends national boundaries and insular restrictions, expressing ‘a diverse and dynamic experience that is additional to, rather than, a replacement for, home island identification’ (2012: 96). Through these multiple and reconcilable affiliations, it is also possible to reinforce the links between the New Zealand-based Pacific peoples and those living in their home countries, reinforcing the transoceanic connections in what have been defined as ‘transnational communities’ (Spoonley 2001) or ‘Pacific transnations’ (Salesa 2014: 51), formed by people who might have not visited their ‘home’ islands or people who have never left those islands, but who are nevertheless interconnected materially and symbolically. These ‘connections are sustained less by watercraft than aircraft, and especially through other means such as social network websites, remittances, electronic media and the military’ (Salesa 2014: 51). This oceanic transnationalism, enriched by the multiple diasporic trajectories of peoples within and across the Pacific, evinces the limited nature of national denominations, while offering boundless possibilities for articulating Indigeneity (Clifford 2001). On the other hand, the evolution of Pacific identity in New Zealand has also brought about a reassessment of New Zealand’s status as a Pacific nation. Spoonley, Bedford and McPherson argue that New Zealand’s national identity

40  Paloma Fresno-Calleja

has always been negotiated transnationally, but that former ties with Great Britain have now been substituted by new forms of transnationalism involving Asian and Pacific nations as well as anxieties about how to deal with these transnational networks (2003: 27). The oft-quoted statement that Aotearoa New Zealand is a Pacific nation evidently signals its geographical location, highlighting the country’s political, historical and cultural links with its neighbouring island nations, but hardly ever implies a proper reassessment of what this definition entails or how the demands of the Pacific community can be accommodated within the official bicultural framework. The relationship between New Zealand and other Pacific nations has historically been dominated by an assumed position of superiority of the part of New Zealand, and often gravitates either around the ‘good Samaritan stance when assisting its neighbours to improve their lot; or . . . the form of a neighbourhood watch system in which New Zealand acts as the vigilant neighbour’ (Teaiwa 2012: 246). The articulations of New Zealand’s Pacific status can be improved by recovering the importance of inter-indigenous relationships and diminishing the mediating role the nation-state. Smith argues that the disconnections between the Pacific and Aotearoa New Zealand derive from a decolonising politics which is ‘entangled in a logic of national identity that has become pathologically land-based’ (Smith 2011: 124). Rethinking the country’s ‘as part of a sea of islands might help to decentre the settler-centric logic that underpins New Zealand’s decolonising agenda’ (2011: 124), thus reconnecting it to the wider Pacific region. Similarly, Salesa highlights that despite the primary reorientation of their identity towards land, and ‘though most of their exchanges were now across coastal waters, rather than deep seas, New Zealand Maori remained a people of the water’ and these aquatic connections are ‘an integral part to establishing one’s claim to place, and one’s belonging to a people’ (2014: 46). On their part, Teaiwa and Mallon remind us of the ties between Māori and Pacific peoples living in New Zealand both by recalling the traditional ‘respect model of “tuakana/teina” (senior sibling/junior sibling) common in Polynesian societies’ (2005: 225), as well as ‘the more modern model of “comradeship” through alliance building in civil rights and activist groups’ (2005: 225). In her monograph Once Were Pacific, Māori scholar Alice Te Punga Somerville condemns the ‘paralyzing’ rhetoric (2012: xxxiii) whereby discussions of Māori and Pacific identity are primarily filtered through the prism of the New Zealand nation-state (2012: xxiii), therefore setting their claims apart and often in conflict. Her work elaborates on Māori and Pacific multiple engagements, offering an alternative articulation of ‘horizontal modes of Indigenous-Indigenous connections’ (2012: xxvii), which views the Pacific as ‘a rich and significant additional context for Maori articulations’ (2012: xxi). These scholars are then contributing to rethinking the status of New Zealand as a Pacific nation, while recognising the contribution of the Pasifika community to New Zealand’s changing trans/national narratives.

Oceanic identities  41

References Anae, Melani. 2012. ‘All Power to the People: Overstayers, Dawn Raids and The Polynesian Panthers,’ in Sean Mallon, Kolokesa Mahina-Tuai and Damon Salesa (eds), Tangata O le Moana. New Zealand and the People of the Pacific, pp. 221–39. Wellington: Te Papa Press. ———. 2004. ‘From Kava to Coffee: the “Browning” of Auckland,’ in Ian Carter, David Craig and Steve Matthewman (eds), Almighty Auckland, pp. 89–110. Palmerston North: Dunmore Press. ———. 1997. ‘Towards a NZ-born Samoan Identity: Some Reflections on “Labels”,’ Pacific Health Dialog, 4 (2): 128–37. Anderson, Benedict. 1991 [1983]. Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso. Banivanua Mar, Tracey. 2016. Decolonisation and the Pacific. Indigenous Globalisation and the Ends of Empire. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bartley, Allen. 2013. ‘(Un)problematic Multiculturalism: Challenges and Opportunities for Social Cohesion in New Zealand,’ in Norman Vasu, Yolanda Chin and Kam-yee Law (eds), Nations, National Narratives and Communities in the Asia-Pacific, pp. 84–110. London: Routledge. Belich, James. 2001. Paradise Reforged. A History of the New Zealanders from the 1880s to the Year 2000. Auckland: Allen Lane. The Penguin Press. Bertram, Geoff and Ray F. Watters. 1985. ‘The MIRAB Economy in South Pacific Microstates,’ Pacific Viewpoint, 26 (2): 497–519. Borofsky, Robert. 2000. ‘Valuing the Pacific – An Interview with James Clifford,’ in Robert Borosfsky (ed.), Remembrance of Pacific Pasts. An Invitation to Remake History, pp. 92–99. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Campbell, John R. 2014. ‘Climate-Change Migration in the Pacific,’ The Contemporary Pacific, 26 (1): 1–28. Clifford, James. 2001. ‘Indigenous Articulations,’ The Contemporary Pacific, 13 (2): 468–90. D’Arcy, Paul. 2006. The People of the Sea. Environment, Identity and History in Oceania. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Deloughrey, Elizabeth. 2007. Routes and Roots. Navigating Caribbean and Pacific Island Literatures. Honolulu: Hawai’i University Press. ———. 2001. ‘ “The Litany of Islands, the Rosary of Archipelagoes”: Caribbean and Pacific Archipelagraphy,’ ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature, 32 (1): 21–51. Diaz, Vicente M. 2011. ‘Voyaging for Anti-Colonial Recovery: Austronesian Seafaring, Archipelagic Rethinking, and the Re-mapping of Indigeneity,’ Pacific Asia Inquiry, 2 (1): 21–32. Douglas, Bronwen. 2000. ‘Weak States and Other Nationalisms: Emerging Melanesian Paradigms?’ State, Society and Governance in Melanesia Discussion Papers 2000/3. The Australian National University, 1–10. http://spas.anu.edu.au/melanesia Fischer, Steven Roger. 2002. A History of the Pacific Islands. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Fleras, Augie and Paul Spoonley. 1999. Recalling Aotearoa. Indigenous Politics and Ethnic Relations in New Zealand. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fraenkel, Jon. 2013. ‘The Origins of Military Autonomy in Fiji: A Tale of Three Coups,’ Australian Journal of International Affairs, 67 (3): 327–41. Fry, Greg and Sandra Tarte. 2015. ‘The “New Pacific Diplomacy”: An Introduction,’ in Greg Fry and Sandra Tarte (eds), The New Pacific Diplomacy, pp. 3–20. Canberra: Australian National University Press.

42  Paloma Fresno-Calleja

Gershon, Ilana. 2007. ‘Viewing Diasporas from the Pacific: What Pacific Ethnographies Offer Pacific Diaspora Studies,’ The Contemporary Pacific, 19 (2): 474–502. Griffen, Vanessa. 1993. ‘Putting our Minds to Alternatives,’ in Eric Waddell, Vijay Naidu and Epeli Hauʿofa (eds), A New Oceania. Rediscovering Our Sea of Islands, pp. 55–66. Suva: University of the South Pacific. Hauʿofa, Epeli. 1998. ‘The Ocean in Us,’ The Contemporary Pacific, 10 (2): 392–410. ———. 1995. ‘Our Sea of Islands,’ in Rob Wilson and Arif Dirlik (eds), Asia/Pacific as Space of Cultural Production, pp. 86–98. Durham: Duke University Press. Hohepa, Pat. 1978. ‘Maori and Pākehā: The One-People Myth,’ in Michael King (ed.), Tihe Mauri Ora: Aspects of Maoritanga, pp. 98–116. Auckland: Methuen. Jolly, Margaret. 2007. ‘Imagining Oceania: Indigenous and Foreign Representations of a Sea of Islands,’ The Contemporary Pacific, 19 (2): 508–45. ———. 2005. ‘Beyond the Horizon? Nationalisms, Feminisms, and Globalization in the Pacific,’ Ethnohistory, 52 (1): 137–66. Kāhealani Pacheco, Amanda Mae. 2009. ‘Past, Present, and Politics: A Look at the Hawaiian Sovereignty Movement,’ Intersections Online, 10 (1): 341–87. Keown, Michelle. 2007. Pacific Islands Writing. The Postcolonial Literatures of Aotearoa/New Zealand and Oceania. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Keown, Michelle, Andrew Taylor and Mandy Treagus. 2018. ‘Introduction,’ in Michelle Keown, Andrew Taylor and Mandy Treagus (eds), Anglo-American Imperialism and the Pacific Discourses of Encounter, pp. 1–22. London: Routledge. King, Michael. 2003. The Penguin History of New Zealand. Auckland: Penguin. Lal, Brij V. 1994. ‘The Passage Out,’ in K. R. Howe, R. C. Kiste and B. V. Lal (eds), Tides of History. The Pacific Islands in the Twentieth Century, pp. 435–31. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Lawson, Stephanie. 2016. ‘Regionalism, Sub-regionalism and the Politics of Identity in Oceania,’ The Pacific Review, 29 (3): 387–409. ———. 2001. ‘ “The Pacific Way” as Postcolonial Discourse. Towards a Reassessment,’ The Journal of Pacific History, 45 (3): 297–314. Linnekin, Jocelyn. 2004 [1997]. ‘The Ideological World Remade,’ in Donald Denoon, Stewart Firth, Jocelyn Linnekin, Malama Meleisea, and Karen Nero (eds), The Cambridge History of the Pacific Islanders, pp. 397–438. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lopesi, Lana. 2018. False Divides. How Do We Get to Know Each Other Again? Wellington: Bridget Williams Books. Lyons, Paul. 2006. American Pacificism. Oceania in the U.S. Imagination. London: Routledge. Lyons, Paul and Ty P. Kāwika Tengan. 2015. ‘Introduction: Pacific Currents,’ American Quarterly, 67 (3): 545–73. Marsh, Selina Tusitala. 1998. ‘Migrating Feminisms: Maligned Overstayer or Model Citizen?’ Women’s Studies International Forum, 21 (6): 665–80. Mila, Karlo. 2010. ‘Polycultural Capital and the Pasifika Second Generation: Negotiating Identities in Diasporic Spaces,’ PhD dissertation, Massey University. http://mro.massey. ac.nz/handle/10179/1713 Mohanram, Rhadika. 1996. ‘The Construction of Place: Maori Feminism and Nationalism in Aotearoa/New Zealand,’ NWSA Journal, 8 (1): 50–69. Nanau, Gordon Leua. 2011. ‘The Wantok System as a Socio-economic and Political Network in Melanesia,’ OMNES: The Journal of Multicultural Society, 2 (1): 31–55. Perera, Suvendrini. 2009. Australia and the Insular Imagination. Beaches, Borders, Boats and Bodies. Basingstoke: Palgrave.

Oceanic identities  43

Salesa, Damon. 2014. ‘The Pacific in Indigenous Time,’ in David Armitage and Alison Bashford (eds), Pacific Histories. Ocean, Land, People, pp. 31–52. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Santos Perez, Craig. 2015. ‘Transterritorial Currents and the Imperial Archipelago,’ American Quarterly, 67 (3): 619–24. Sharrad, Paul. 1990. ‘Imagining the Pacific,’ Meanjin, 49 (4): 597–606. Smith, Jo. 2011. ‘Aotearoa/New Zealand: An Unsettled State in a Sea of Islands,’ Settler Colonial Studies, 1: 111–31. Somerville, Alice Te Punga. 2012. Once Were Pacific. Maori Connections to Oceania. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Spoonley, Paul. 2001. ‘Transnational Pacific Communities: Transforming the Politics of Place and Identity,’ in Cluny McPherson, Paul Spoonley and Melani Anae (eds), Tangata O Te Moana Nui: The Evolving Identities of Pacific Peoples in Aotearoa/New Zealand, pp. 81–96. Auckland: Dunmore Publishing. Spoonley, Paul and Richard Bedford. 2012. Welcome to Our World? Immigration and the Reshaping of New Zealand. Auckland: Dunmore Publishing. Spoonley, Paul, Richard Bedford and Cluny McPherson. 2003. ‘Divided Loyalties and Fractured Sovereignty: Transnationalism and the Nation-state in Aotearoa/New Zealand,’ Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 29 (1): 27–46. Stats NZ. 2018 ‘Census Population and Dwelling Counts.’ www.stats.govt.nz/ information-releases/2018-census-population-and-dwelling-counts Stratford, Elaine, Godfrey Baldacchino, Elizabeth McMahon, Carol Farbokto, and Andrew Hardwood. 2011. ‘Envisioning the Archipielago,’ Islands Studies Journal, 6 (2): 113–30. Subramani. 1999. ‘The Oceanic Imaginary,’ SPAN, 48/49: 1–13. Suzuki, Erin. 2016. ‘Transpacific,’ in Rachel Lee (ed.), The Routledge Companion to Asian American and Pacific Islander Literature, pp. 352–64. London: Routledge. Tarte, Sandra. 2014. ‘Regionalism and Changing Regional Order in the Pacific Islands,’ Asia and the Pacific Policy Studies, 1 (2): 312–24. Teaiwa, Katerina. 2015. ‘Ruining Pacific Islands: Australia’s Phosphate Imperialism,’ Australian Historical Studies, 46: 374–91. Teaiwa, Teresia. 2012. ‘Good Neighbour, Big Brother, Kin? New Zealand’s Foreign Policy in the Contemporary Pacific,’ in Sean Mallon, Kolokesa Mahina-Tuai and Damon Salesa (eds), Tangata O le Moana. New Zealand and the People of the Pacific, pp. 242–63. Wellington: Te Papa Press. ————. 1999. ‘Reading Paul Gauguin’s Noa Noa with Epeli Hauʿofa’s Kisses in the Nederends: Militourism, Feminism, and the “Polynesian” Body”,’ in Vilsoni Hereniko and Rob Wilson (eds), Inside Out. Literature, Cultural Politics and Identity in the New Pacific, pp. 249–63. New York: Rowman & Littlefield. Teaiwa, Teresia and Sean Mallon. 2005. ‘ “Ambivalent Kinships?” Pacific People in New Zealand,’ in James H. Liu, Tim McGregor, Tracey McIntosh, and Teresia Teaiwa (eds), New Zealand Identities. Departures and Destinations, pp. 207–29. Wellington: Victoria University Press. Trask, Haunani-Kay. 1993. From a Native Daughter. Colonialism and Sovereignty in Hawai‘i. Monroe: Common Courage Press. Vaai, Sina. 1999. Literary Representations in Western Polynesia: Colonialism and Indigeneity. Suva: National University of Samoa. Walker, Ranginui. 1995. ‘Immigration Policy and the Political Economy of New Zealand,’ in Stuart Greif (ed.), Immigration and National Identity in New Zealand. One People, Two Peoples, Many Peoples, pp. 282–302. Palmerston North: Dunmore Press.

44  Paloma Fresno-Calleja

———. 1990. Ka Whaiwhai Tonu Matou. Struggle without End. Auckland: Penguin. Wendt, Albert 1996 [1976]. ‘Towards a New Oceania,’ in John Thieme (ed.), The Arnold Anthology of Postcolonial Literatures in English, pp. 641–52. London: Arnold. Williams, Mark. 1997. ‘Crippled by Geography? New Zealand Nationalisms,’ in Stuart Murray (ed.), Not on Any Map: Essays on Postcoloniality and Cultural Nationalism, pp. 19–42. Exeter: Exeter University Press.

3 STORIED NATIONHOOD Literature, constitutionalism, and citizenship in Indigenous North America Katja Sarkowsky

Introduction: storied nationhood Concepts of nation, nationhood, nationalism, and sovereignty have been crucial in the debates about Indigenous rights and self-determination in contemporary North America.1 Nationalism, argues Anishinaabeg scholar Scott Lyons, “has been of paramount importance since the arrival of Europeans and, later, the establishment of settler colonialism, and it will not be disappearing from indigenous discourse anytime soon” (“Nationalism” 171). ‘Nationhood’ and ‘nation’ are central paradigms in contemporary Native American and First Nations studies for addressing historical and political forms of Indigenous association, as is ‘sovereignty’ for issues of treaty rights, territorial integrity, and collective agency. The question of terminology is a tricky one; given the long-standing and emotional debate in both Indigenous and non-Indigenous contexts, the terms under discussion are not simply descriptive, and definitions imply – and demand – a critical self-positioning. In the following, I will use the term ‘nation’ as a collective self-understanding based on a shared cultural, linguistic, political, and territorial heritage perpetuated and interpreted in narrative; ‘nationhood’ as a ‘nation’ that takes a political form other than the nation-state; and ‘nationalism’ as a sentiment that affirms a ‘nation’ or ‘nationhood’ and that may but does not necessarily aim at the creation of a nationstate. Thus understood, ‘nationalism’ can be – but is not inherently – based on the assumption of a nation’s superiority over others. The status of Indigenous groups as nations and the implications of such identification continue to be in dispute. In 1827, the Cherokee implemented a constitution for the Cherokee nation, a document that, as Deloria and Lytle point out, “proclaimed the Cherokee nation to be free and independent, a nation, not a tribe” (pos. 317; emphasis added). The conflict between the Cherokee nation and the state of Georgia was continuous, revolving around the applicability of state and federal

46  Katja Sarkowsky

laws to Cherokee citizens as well as the inviolability of Cherokee land and property (pos. 317–35). In his ruling on Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (1831), Supreme Court Chief Justice Marshall declared the Cherokee nation a “domestic dependent nation,” a political entity not eligible to bring claim against a state but nevertheless identifiable as a distinct society – despite Marshall’s condescending declaration of the Cherokee to be in a “state of pupilage”, their relation with the United States resembling “that of a ward to his guardian.”2 In the following ruling on Worcester v. Georgia (1832), Marshall was more explicit about the status of Cherokee nationhood. He wrote: The Indian nations had always been considered as distinct, independent political communities retaining their original natural rights as undisputed possessors of the soil, from time immemorial. . . . The very term ‘nation’, so generally applied to them, means “a people distinct from others.”3 The status of a nation, both self-declared and recognized by the court, did not prevent the removal and dispossession of the Cherokee in the second half of the 1830s. But, from both Cherokee and Anglo-American perspectives, this legal struggle tells a story of contested nationhood; not so much the status of Indigenous nations was at stake, but what exactly this entailed in a constellation of colonial power asymmetry. Definitions of these key terms abound and keep shifting; they are as contested as they are prominent, and their contestation includes scrutinizing their very applicability; in this discussion, nation, nationhood, and nationalism tend to blend. One group of critics distrusts the very concept of nationalism, regarding it as limiting (Borrows 13) or even destructive (Vizenor, Manifest 4). Some critics, most prominently Mohawk scholar and activist Taiaiake Alfred, have argued that the very grounding of a vocabulary of nationhood and sovereignty in European and Euro-American political and intellectual traditions, and the ways in which they have been used against Indigenous communities in the process of colonization, dispossession, and termination, makes them unsuited as a basis for a decolonizing political and intellectual practice. For Alfred, this is a linguistic and, as a result, a conceptual problem. “Using a legalistic and politically situated English term to counter the hegemonic colonial discourse,” he argues, is essentially futile (“First Nation Perspective” 17) and above all does not do justice to the complexity of Indigenous political and philosophical concepts (ibid. 5–6). In a common equation of nation and nation state, he regards the semantic field of nationhood as implicitly accepting “the state as [a] model to allow indigenous political goals to be framed and evaluated according to a ‘statist’ pattern,” including coercive aspects of statehood (Peace 80). Alfred’s insistence on considering the history of the concepts and the effects they had on Indigenous peoples in North America is an important and muchdebated objection to their application in Indigenous contexts. However, other critics question the exclusiveness of a European heritage manifest in these terms

Storied nationhood  47

and call for a more flexible and culturally heterogeneous understanding of nationhood. Muscogee scholar and writer Craig Womack argues that, on the contrary, “nationhood and sovereignty are not European constructs, but that Creeks had their version of such notions” (Red pos. 348). Moreover, as David Carlson has recently argued, “sovereignty”, even in its development as a Eurocentric concept, “has some of its roots in acts of resistance” and in the idea of natural law; he reminds us of a tradition often forgotten in the contemporary debate, the legacy of which might overlap with other, more flexible understandings of the idea, thereby being helpful for a productive deployment of the concept in the struggle for Indigenous self-determination (2–4).4 In effect, these latter two positions that revolve around conceptual applicability may not be as far apart as they initially appear; critics like Alfred also pragmatically use the term ‘nation’ to denote a kind of polity, which he continues to conceptualize very differently from a state-directed or state-based understanding. Indeed, Ernest Gellner, the influential theorist of nationalism, has sharply distinguished between the nation and the state. Yet, he sees a direct connection between them when he argues that nationalism – which in Gellner’s understanding “requires that ethnic boundaries should not cut across political ones” (pos. 496) and which as a sentiment precedes the nation – “emerges only in milieux in which the existence of the state is already taken for granted” (ibid. pos. 543). This is a reading of nationalism very much conducive to the understanding of Indigenous nationhood in the context of North American settler nations. Scott Lyons, following Gellner and Anthony Smith’s theorization of the nation, correspondingly regards Indigenous nationhood as a modernization of the ethnie (X-Marks 121) that basically follows the patterns of other nationalisms but differs in the manifestation of the ethnie and the kind of nationalism that produce the nation. In either case – that is, in Alfred’s pragmatic and Lyons’ conceptual use of the term – ‘nationhood’ is a powerful concept of political association. Regardless of whether they consider ‘nationhood’ as dangerous and/or limiting, see it as an adequate term to capture Indigenous political associations and aspirations in North America, or regard the term as an inadequate substitute for culturally more appropriate concepts, these theorists share a critique of how legal frameworks in Canada and the United States adumbrate the recognition of Aboriginal communities and identities, and how they regulate the possibilities and forms of self-governance.5 Historic and contemporary legislation have thus often been understood as a tool of colonization and assimilation. The Indian Act in Canada, argues Stó:lō writer Lee Maracle, “was intended to hasten the confinement of our citizens, legally limit access to our territories, and facilitate the appropriation of those territories not specifically allocated to us as reserve lands” (qt. in Alfred, “First Nation Perspective” 14). The controversy surrounding constitutional patriation in Canada and the affirmation of treaty rights in Section  35(1) of the constitution exposed a dilemma of Aboriginal nationhood in Canada: while it affirmed – at least in principle – the nation-to-nation status implicit in treaty-making, it also literally framed Indigenous rights and status in a Canadian national context (Ladner 269).6

48  Katja Sarkowsky

These legal frameworks therefore present a powerful attempt to codify the very meaning of Indigeneity in terms of the underlying understanding of identity, governance, and sovereignty. Nevertheless, as Bonita Lawrence has emphasized, [t]o speak of how pervasively the Indian Act (in Canada) or federal Indian legislation (in the United States) has permeated the ways in which Native peoples think of themselves is not to deny Native people the agency to move beyond its logic. Nor does it suggest that traditional ways of understanding self in relation to other people, and the land, have been entirely effaced. It does, however, suggest that we should think carefully about the various categories of Native identity that have been legally defined under federal laws, and consider the possibility of choosing new paths that might create common goals, rather than pursuing the separate routes to empowerment that ‘Indian’ legislation creates. (4) Hence, discourses of Indigenous nationalism and nationhood in North America provide an agonistic engagement with these categories, as well as an insistence on Aboriginal sovereignty. What is to be understood as the ‘core’ of Indigenous nationhood – or if there is such a core at all – is controversial. For some scholars, there are characteristics and categories that are fundamental to Indigeneity. Tom Holm, Diane Pearson, and Ben Chavis define sacred history, language, the land, and the ceremonial cycle as crucial components of peoplehood (12–13),7 and along similar lines, Lakota scholar and writer Elizabeth Cook-Lynn considers Indigenous nationhood as being grounded in a specific understanding of the link between peoplehood, land, language, and mythology (Why 88). In contrast, Anishinaabeg legal scholar John Borrows insists that “there is no timeless trait, characteristic, custom, or idea that is categorically fundamental to being Indigenous,” with tribal denominations being “political, social, legal, linguistic, and/or cultural facts that are fluid and subject to change through time” (3); in this view, ‘nationhood’ is less an expression of inherent peoplehood, as it is a construction of a particular political form under changing circumstances. This contribution is not concerned with questions of essential or inessential nationhood; as a non-Indigenous critic based in Europe, I instead seek to provide an overview of how the contours of Indigenous nationhood are narrated, contested, and affirmed in the contemporary debate. While hegemonic categories, as discussed previously, have framed and continue to frame Indigeneity in the context of the two North American settler nations, my interest is not so much invested in these categories and their legal manifestations as it is in the debate about nationhood as an affirmation of Indigenous survivance (as Gerald Vizenor has termed it) and sovereignty. Homi Bhabha’s understanding of the nation as a “system of cultural signification”, a “representation of social life rather than the discipline of social polity” (1–2), points to the importance of narrative in the constitution, perpetuation, and contestation of nationhood. Nevertheless, as the discussion of nationhood

Storied nationhood  49

in Indigenous North America clearly illustrates, social polity does play a central role in the understanding of nationhood; when the Iroquois National Lacrosse Team refused to travel with US passports (as prominently happened in 2010), insisting that “we are representing a nation, and we are not going to travel on the passport of a competitor” (Frichner qt. in Simpson 1), the Iroquois Confederacy passport functioned as a metonym of a nation understood as a narrative of both social life and social polity. The boundaries of nationhood are both discursive and territorial. The debate about Indigenous nationhood and nationalism is broad, interdisciplinary, and multifaceted, and it is impossible to do this complexity justice in the scope of an article. Therefore, in the following two sections, I will selectively zoom in on how two specific institutions of modern nationhood have been conceptualized in the context of Aboriginal debates and how they have been deployed in the exploration of and claim to sovereignty: Indigenous literatures as national literatures; and Indigenous constitutions, with a particular focus on how they conceptualize tribal citizenship. Both institutions – literature and tribal constitutions – present central arenas where Aboriginal nationhood is negotiated and narrated. The novel, as Benedict Anderson has so prominently argued, is a crucial instrument in creating the ‘imagined community’ of the modern nation (25). This argument has resonated not only in the analysis of literature and the nation in the context of the nation-state. In a similar vein, Daniel Heath Justice claims such a function for Cherokee literature as a national literature when he sees it as a “textual testament to our [Cherokee] endurance” and, furthermore, he continues, that “just as our oral traditions reflect the living realities and concerns of those who share them, so too do our literary traditions” (7). Justice not only claims a direct continuity (and simultaneity) of oral and written cultural expression but also a communityconstituting function that is not just ‘tribal,’ but national. And, while constitutions certainly define and legally circumscribe governance and membership and thus at first glance appear as very different types of texts, they are documents that do not ‘fix’ but – in the understanding of legal narratology – ‘narrate’ nationhood.8 ‘Constitutions’ and their provisions and criteria for ‘citizenship’ – membership and belonging in the national community – are part of larger narratives of nationhood and closely intertwine with literary and critical imaginations.9 Hence, I will discuss both institutions as potentially interwoven; they explore, I argue, forms of cultural and political organization and forms of belonging that actualize specific intellectual and political traditions and that, to varying degrees, oscillate between ‘ethnic’ and a ‘civic’ components of nationhood.

Indigenous literatures as national literatures Anishinaabeg scholar Jill Doerfler has pointed to the role that not only oral but also written narratives have played to “argue political agendas or subvert the colonial histories created by the dominant society. . . . Stories are both accounts and acts of survivance” (175, 176). Along similar lines, Maureen Konkle, in Writing Indian Nations (2004), looks at what Indigenous writers of the 19th century

50  Katja Sarkowsky

involved in political struggles “wished Indian nations to be and what role writing, and specifically writing history, played in that struggle” (6). The importance of writing history is as crucial in the 20th and 21st centuries as it was in the 19th, a point not only illustrated by novels such as James Welch’s Fools Crow and Leslie Marmon Silko’s Gardens in the Dunes, or plays such as David Daniel Moses’ Brébeuf’s Ghost, that rewrite histories of encounter, colonial violence, and Aboriginal relations to the settler nation state, but also, and perhaps more strongly so, in novels like Craig Womack’s Drowning By Fire or Lee Maracle’s Celia’s Song that link historical struggles over tribal sovereignty and treaty rights explicitly to concerns of present nationhood. Writer, activist, and educator Jeannette Armstrong’s novels particularly negotiate contemporary Okanagan community, land relation, and forms of political activism. Writer and theorist Gerald Vizenor served as the principal writer of the White Earth Anishinaabeg constitution in 2009, a text marked not only by some of Vizenor’s distinctive terminology, but which was also followed by two novels that center on the crucial question of banishment and loss of citizenship.10 The categorization of Indigenous literatures in North America and their status as either part of or separate from US and Canadian literature has been a contentious issue. The early 1990s saw an increasing engagement of Aboriginal writers and scholars in attempts to define specifically Indigenous approaches to Native American and First Nations literatures. In her editor’s note to the essay collection Looking at the Words of Our People, Armstrong suggests that when reading Indigenous literatures in English, there must first be “an acknowledgement and recognition that the voices are culture-specific voices and that there are experts within those cultures who are essential to be drawn from” (7). While the insistence on the necessary cultural knowledge of the critic was not, per se, an argument for Indigenous literatures as national literatures, there is nevertheless a connection between this position and what soon emerged as literary nationalism: the claim that despite the heterogeneity of contemporary Indigenous writing in English (or other colonial languages), “there is such a thing as a Native perspective” (Womack, Red pos. 101, emphasis in the original) that sets Indigenous literatures apart from other literatures. Literary nationalism emerged strongly in the 1990s and early 2000s, and is particularly associated with texts such as Robert Warrior’s Tribal Secrets (1995), Elizabeth CookLynn’s Why I Can’t Read Wallace Stegner and Other Essays (1996), Craig Womack’s Red on Red (1999), and Jace Weaver’s That the People Might Live (1999), as well as with the subsequent collaboration American Indian Literary Nationalism (2005) by Warrior, Weaver, and Womack.11 Literary nationalism explicitly countered the incorporation of Indigenous literatures as an ‘ethnic’ literature in a multicultural American or Canadian national canon. In Red on Red, Womack acknowledges the value of pushing for an inclusion of Native American literature into the American canon – a struggle for an opening of the national canon to include ‘ethnic’ writers that had dominated the 1980s – but then proceeds to argue for a fundamental shift of perspective; that is, for an understanding of tribal literatures as “not some branch waiting to be grafted onto the main trunk. Tribal literatures are the tree, the oldest

Storied nationhood  51

literatures in the Americas, the most American of American literatures” (pos. 148, emphasis added). Largely critical of postcolonial theory for both its proximity to postmodernism and its temporal implication of colonialism being ‘over’,12 literary nationalism draws on Indigenous intellectual traditions with its conceptualization of Aboriginal literatures being distinct national literatures, occasionally understood as a ‘pan-Indigenous’ category, but more frequently and systematically insisting on tribal specificity; Womack’s focus on Muscogee literature in Red on Red, Daniel Heath Justice’s history of Cherokee literature Our Fire Survives the Storm (2006), or Margaret Noodin’s Bawaajimo. A Dialect of Dreams in Anishinaabe Language and Literature (2014) are such examples.13 In either of these cases, Indigenous nationhood is taken as a given; political sovereignty is linked not only to cultural sovereignty, but also very specifically to “intellectual sovereignty,” as Warrior has called it (Tribal 87). Literature, as well as literary criticism, are regarded as being endowed with responsibility towards the communities, the social realities of which form the bases of literary representation; in this context, Jace Weaver has coined the term “communitism” – a combination of ‘community’ and ‘activism’ (People 43) – to capture the community-oriented thrust of literature and literary criticism. Concepts such as autonomy, sovereignty, and self-determination are literary as well as political (Womack, Red pos. 230).14 Stó:lō (Coast Salish) writer and educator Lee Maracle’s writing may serve as an example of literary negotiations of Stó:lō nationhood and its embeddedness in political, cultural, and social discourses. For Maracle, “stories are tied to history and serve the direction the communities need to take in the context of human catastrophe. They don’t exist separate from the everyday business of the nation” (Memory 204). This conceptual link between stories and nationhood as everyday practice, I would like to suggest, is precisely the starting point for Maracle’s second novel, Celia’s Song (2014). While Maracle is highly critical of the state administrative tendency in Canada to address each village as a separate ‘nation’, seeing it as a strategy of division and facilitated control (Memory 118), she nevertheless presents the novel’s village community as partaking in a Stó:lō national consciousness and as actively reestablishing cultural practices that follow Salish law and an understanding of healing and justice that run counter to Canadian legal and political frameworks. The local community is deeply distrustful of those frameworks. Early in the novel, the protagonist Celia thinks about the time when First Nations people were enfranchised. Nothing had ever been solved by the vote. Before the vote families talked to each other through their men, from men to women, from women to women, between children who overheard the women, back to the men, then back to the chief. By the time a decision was made it was clear what needed to be done. . . . The vote was silent, ominous in its lack of community and collaboration. It stood between them and the ordinary conversations they needed to have to make decisions about their lives. (Song 64)

52  Katja Sarkowsky

The vote synecdochically stands for a political  – as well as an epistemological  – colonial system that destroyed central community practices and processes, and it is seen as being “like the white men, all-powerful and silencing, except it was invisible” (Song 64). Celia’s Song intertwines two storylines. The story is told mostly by a shapeshifter figure, Mink, who calls themselves a “witness” to the catastrophes and slow restoration processes that unfold in the course of the novel. Mink serves as the narrative link between the two closely related story lines: the mythic story of the twoheaded serpent whose fury about the people’s breach of contract between humans and the serpent is unleashed and threatens to destroy the Salish community; and the story of a horrific crime, the rape of a 5-year-old girl. In the course of these two storylines, the novel presents a number of instances whereby different epistemological and legal frameworks irreconcilably clash; by way of these clashes, the novel negotiates and affirms the distinctiveness of not merely a local community, but of that community as part of a more broadly conceived understanding of the Stó:lō as a national community, as combining political organization and rules of membership with cultural self-understanding and practice. This is most obvious when it comes to the community’s dealing with the rape of the little girl Shelley. The family of the child’s mother, Stella – herself an addicted and multiply abused woman who not only cannot protect her daughter from violence, but also contributes to her violation – does not call the police. Instead, the perpetrator Amos is made to participate in a dance ritual in the newly erected longhouse, itself a manifestation of the possibility and necessity of community restoration. Amos is introduced early on in the novel as a man filled with murderous rage; his cruelty against both Stella and her daughter is nearly lethal. However, he is not only presented as an extremely violent man, but  – without exculpating him – also as a victim of the residential school system,15 who reacts to his own traumatic experiences of sexual abuse, hunger, displacement and denigration; while he dances, “the horror stories his body collected float in his belly and leave his body through his song” (254). He dances “faster and harder” until his body, marked by years of substance abuse and “reek[ing] of the deep toxicity of the memory of hate, of hurt” (255), does not hold out any longer. He dies while dancing, and his death is presented as a form of purification, healing, and eventual return to community: “Redemption comes as his ancestors reach for his dancing body. His spirit struggles to extricate itself from the living world” (255).16 ‘Community’ encompasses both the living and the dead; the ancestors are present, as other episodes in the novel highlight, and Amos is eventually redeemed through ritual. His death is not narrated as an ending or a punishment, but as a transformation and reintegration, and as such presents a counter-model to Canada’s legal framework. As Diana Brydon has observed, Amos’ dancing is a “communally sanctioned death, presented here as a voluntary, ritual suicide” that “challenges not only the rule of law which recognizes only that legal system determined by the colonial state, but also Canadian rejections of capital punishment” (n.p.).

Storied nationhood  53

There is no consideration in the novel of handing him over to the police; the way in which Amos’ dance and death are described – as a process of healing and redemption – highlights the clash between the Anglo-Canadian legal system and a Stó:lō understanding of how to deal with transgression and crime. Thinking about the way in which the child rapist would be treated in the court system – arrest, trial, sentence, jail – the protagonist’s mother regards this process as an undue caring for a violent offender. For her, white people’s laws are crazy; they starve the innocent and feed the guilty. She knows the law functions to help you know what to do in a moral crisis, so she doesn’t hold it against them. She just wants to know the law of her grandmothers, the law that will tell her what to do. She has never tried to cross the two languages in her mind before. They don’t fit. (149) Accordingly, the entire situation is handled without the involvement of any state institution. Not only is Amos not turned in to the police, but the way in which the family deals with Stella and her violated daughter presents an exploration of different understandings of crime, transgression, and victimization. The men of the family organize a forced alcohol withdrawal for Stella, keeping her under constant surveillance in her shack and trying to find out what happened. This improvised detox facility is not primarily about helping Stella as a victim, but about restoring her into a state in which she can take responsibility for herself, for her actions, and for her failures. Ned’s anger is a hot rock rolling relentlessly; it sears everything he thinks about. This is his clanswoman. She has no right to be this way. It outrages him to see what she let happen to her child – his blood, his great-niece. He is determined to will his rage along a path to sober Stella up, exactly as the women in his house instructed him. (Song 165) This passage illustrates how Ned regards family and clan obligation; this concerns Stella, as well as himself and the other men: even though there is some initial hesitation when the men embark on their mission, there is no question of the obligations they have – and of the women’s power of calling them onto this obligation. The fact that Stella is being held against her will and coerced to detox is not presented as a ritual, but it nevertheless functions as a means of reintegrating her into the community by forcing her to take responsibility for herself, her past actions, and her child. Like Amos being made to dance, it is part of a community-based intervention that  – depending on the perspective  – disregards and even breaks Canadian law (which would have demanded the involvement of the police, as well as medical institutions) and insists on the application of Stó:lō practices to deal with the perpetrators and the victim.

54  Katja Sarkowsky

The issues addressed in novels such as Maracle’s obviously allow for a range of readings; my own reading of Celia’s Song as a text that openly addresses and insists not only on peoplehood, but on nationhood, rests on both the way in which it presents conflict and resolution and, given the close intertwinement of the different genres in Maracle’s oeuvre, on her elaboration of nationhood and literature in her essays. In short, I argue that she and other writer-critics – most prominently Womack, Justice, and Cook-Lynn  – use storytelling as a form of social theorizing and of theorizing nationhood. The conflicts focused on in the novel are not only individual conflicts of moral crisis; they arise from a fundamental spiritual crisis of community, and they point to the incompatible differences between two legal systems – Canadian and Stó:lō – and their ways of dealing with transgression. The confrontation of two social and legal frameworks based on different epistemological and philosophical systems in the novel addresses a question central to Indigenous sovereignty: how do Aboriginal nationhood, its legal provisions, and the demands of its membership relate to the framework of the settler nation in case of conflict? In 1992, the British Columbia Supreme Court ruled in the case Thomas v. Norris. David Thomas had been subjected to a four-day initiation ritual and syewan at the request of his wife and against his will. While the court saw syewan protected as a ceremony by Article 35(1) of the Constitution Act, it did not see this protection extended to the forceful subjection of an individual to this ritual.17 In short, it upheld individual rights against community demands.18 At the basis lies a different understanding of the relationship between individual and community also explored in Maracle’s novel, and Celia’s Song can be read, I propose, at least in part as a response to this ruling and its implications. Celia’s Song serves as an example of negotiating Stó:lō nationhood and the insistence of cultural and political separateness. Spatially, the Salish village is separated from the white town. The bridge between these spaces serves both as a metaphor of the distinct life worlds and epistemologies, and of the possibilities to cross from one to the other. Crucially, the crossings that do happen are presented in national terms, with the white characters in Maracle’s Celia’s Song who move to the ‘Salish side’ to live with their Stó:lō partners, learning to accept the application of a different set of rules. For instance, Steve, a medical doctor, eventually refrains from calling either the police or the hospital and instead applies his expertise to the care of the child, aware of the fact that he is risking his license. His own participation in the longhouse ceremony at the end of the novel is emphatically not an adoption; rather, he can be seen as receiving a citizen’s education. As Maracle has put it, regarding a Stó:lō understanding of citizenship before the passing of the Indian Act in 1876, “we were entitled as nations to include among our citizens any individual willing to integrate themselves into our cultures and communities. . . . Families adopt; nations accord citizenship” (in Alfred, “First Nation” 14, 15). Citizenship is membership in and belonging to a collective; here it is clearly that of a nation. As Lisa Brooks has suggested, “before any political structure can be formed, it must be creatively and collectively pictured” (“Constitution” 59).

Storied nationhood  55

Constituti(onalizi)ng nationhood and citizenship The nation, as Guyora Binder and Robert Weisberg have argued, is “at once the popular sovereign that creates the law and legitimates the state and the creature of state policies of national integration and mobilization. It both invents and learns its own culture” (288). A central instrument of such integration is the constitution. National constitutions are – ideally – contracts between citizens; they are also covenants that put the past, the present, and the future into a narrative relation. They regulate membership in the nation, the system of governance, and modes of conflict resolution, and hence they are constructs deeply embedded in the cultural systems that generate them and that, in turn, they help perpetuate. They have, as James Mackay puts it, the “triple responsibilities of being inspiring to those who would hear its idealism, precise for those who need to use it to make judgments, and clear enough so every citizen feels included in its embrace” (4). As the literary example of Maracle’s novel and the juridical example of Thomas v. Norris illustrate, Indigenous communities are positioned in a complicated constellation of competing models of nationhood. On the one hand, their status is historically defined in relation to the settler nation, often but not always by treaty; and in both Canada and the United States, Indigenous status is – however insufficiently and contradictorily – defined in the respective national constitution.19 On the other hand, Aboriginal nations claim sui generis sovereignty (Henderson, “Interpreting”), have their own constitutions, and define their own criteria of membership, relations between community and individual, and system of governance and jurisprudence. As the initial example of the Cherokee constitutions of 1827 and 1839 illustrates, in the United States, Indigenous nations have passed constitutions since the early 19th century; in the late 19th century, the Osage used the Cherokee constitution as a model for their own before it was declared invalid in 1906 in the wake of Oklahoma statehood (Warrior, Word 49). The Indian Reorganization Act (IRA) from 1934 led to a large-scale implementation of constitutions; “under the provisions of this act any tribe or the people of any reservation could organize themselves as a business corporation, adapt a constitution and bylaws, and exercise certain forms of self-government” (Deloria and Lytle, pos. 115). The provisions left no space for traditional forms of governance and tended to impose a particular understanding of democracy.20 Since the 1970s, as one result of Indigenous political mobilization in both the United States and Canada, more and more communities either sought to replace earlier constitutional impositions or give themselves written constitutions for the first time (Gover, “Comparative” 690).21 Not all tribal nations adopted constitutions; in some communities, constitutions were (and continue to be) rejected as not culturally appropriate. This rejection does not necessarily concur with a rejection of the concept of nationhood: While the Diné of Arizona and Utah call themselves the ‘Navajo Nation’, hence adopting the concept of nationhood to describe their polity and self-understanding, constitutionalism has been a contentious issue: a policy paper reviewing the long standing debate regards constitutionalism as necessarily linked to the concept of the

56  Katja Sarkowsky

nation-state and as “inappropriate and ineffective as applied to the Navajo Nation” (Yazzie et al. 3). In other tribal contexts, constitutions are regarded as appropriate, even necessary, means to give expression to and further develop Indigenous nationhood. Referring to the 1881 Osage constitution, Robert Warrior argues that it should not be regarded merely as a historical document but as an “expression of the modern intellectual aspiration of a people confronting the need to transform themselves on their own terms” (Word 51). This illustrates that just as there is no consensus regarding the aptness of the concept of nationhood, there is also no definitive position of the suitability of tribal constitutions: for some they are an instrument of assimilation; for others, they present a crucial textual form of nation building and the affirmation of nationhood and, as such, are not only an interpellation of shared descent and peoplehood, but even more so a political act to ensure control and collective agency (Gover, Constitutionalism 3). A much-discussed example for the latter position is the new democratic Constitution of the White Earth Nation Anishinaabeg in Minnesota, ratified in 2009 and passed by community vote in 2013. It replaced the earlier document implemented in the aftermath of the IRA.22 The previously cited Anishinaabeg author and literary theorist Gerald Vizenor served as its principal writer; the new constitution, he explains, was “inspired by native reason, narratives of survivance and cultural traditions, totemic associations, cosmopolitan encounters, and modern democratic constitutions, and was ratified by Native delegates with a determined sense of Native presence, of resistance and survivance over absence and victimry” (“Constitutional Consent” pos. 151). The key term is “survivance”; combining ‘survival’ and ‘endurance’, the term in Vizenor’s understanding means “an active sense of presence over absence, deracination, and oblivion; survivance is the continuance of stories” (“Aesthetics” 1). The constitution programmatically combines elements of checks and balances – the separation of powers between legislative and executive bodies and the judiciary missing in the IRA constitution – with consensus-seeking bodies such as advisory councils. By so doing, the constitution not only affirms tribal sovereignty, but it also reflects the embeddedness of legal traditions in culturally specific knowledge systems.23 As such, it is both a manifestation and expression of Anishinaabeg nationhood.24 As a “hermeneutic event”, the constitution is both an interpretation of nationhood and the basis for an ongoing process of interpretation, “built on the premise that concepts mean through a provisional process of definition and redefinition, positioning and repositioning” (Carlson 21, emphasis in the original). The Constitution of the White Earth Nation (CWEN) and its process of implementation illustrate the ongoing deliberation on the political, constitutional, and cultural practices of contemporary Indigenous nationhood – what constitutes good government; how its institutions shall be organized; who is considered a citizen, and on what basis; and which rights and obligations this status entails. Beyond its obvious function to establish a framework for political and judiciary institutions on the White Earth reservation, CWEN also creates a narrative of the White Earth Nation that is historically and culturally grounded as well as future directed.

Storied nationhood  57

The preamble is twofold, highlighting both collective ‘being’ and collective ‘doing’. First positing the Anishinaabeg of the White Earth Nation as “the successors of a great tradition of continental liberty, a native constitution of families, totemic associations” and as creators of “stories of natural reason, of courage, loyalty, humor, spiritual inspiration, survivance, reciprocal altruism, and native cultural sovereignty” (“Constitution,” preamble), it then projects them as collective agents setting out “to secure an inherent and essential sovereignty, to promote traditions of liberty, justice, and peace, and reserve common resources, and to ensure the inalienable rights of native governance for our posterity” (“Constitution,” preamble). Indigenous sovereignty is presented as inherent and sui generis.25 It is not separatist but, as Henderson has put it, “about the subtle art of generating and sustaining relationships,” operating as an “implicit, inherent, epistemic, unwritten, and living concept” (“Trans-Systemic” 59). CWEN was drafted using the American and Japanese constitutions as examples (Vizenor, “Constitutional Consent” pos. 520), establishing a separation of powers missing in the IRA constitution as well as listing a set of rights that mirror the Bill of Rights and the Indian Civil Rights Act of 1969 (Chapter 3, Article 17). While these models at first appear to confirm the assumption that constitutions are merely reflecting a ‘non-Indigenous’ understanding of governance, a number of provisions clearly seek to both integrate culturally specific means of governance and acknowledge the complex realities of contemporary Anishinaabeg life. Chapters  7–9 of the constitution outline the advisory role of councils: Community Councils, the Council of Elders, and the Youth Council. The Community Councils add a ‘federal’ element to the constitution by providing for the input of: “geographically based communities”, but these councils are also meant to “promote, advance and strengthen the philosophy of mino-bimaadiziwin [to live a good life and in good health], to live a good life, and in good health, through the creation and formation of associations, events and activities that demonstrate, teach, and encourage respect, live, bravery, humility, wisdom, honesty and truth for citizens. (Chapter 7) As with the Council of Elders, which is responsible for “ideas and thoughts on totemic associations, traditional knowledge, cultural and spiritual matters” (Chapter 8), the Community Councils thus not only have – like the Youth Council – the responsibility to provide the Legislative Council with information on matters that affect a particular group (a regional community, or young people), but they are also instruments of constituting and perpetuating a community life on the basis of Anishinaabeg philosophy.26 If these constitutional chapters are designed to ensure the input of particular groups, as well as the continuation of White Earth Anishinaabeg culture as a living tradition and philosophy, Chapter 6 Article 7 acknowledges the complexity of contemporary Anishinaabeg life by providing for the representation of Minnesota

58  Katja Sarkowsky

citizens of the White Earth who do not live on the reservation. Representation in the national legislative body is hence not restricted to those immediately affected by White Earth legislation but also includes those potentially affected; a territorially bound concept of nationhood is complemented here by a kinship-based peoplehood beyond the territorial boundaries of the White Earth Nation. Anthony Smith sees the nation shifting “the emphasis of community away from kinship and cultural dimensions to territorial, educational, and legal aspects, while retaining links with older cultural myths and memories of the ethnie” (Smith qt. in Lyons, X-Marks 120); in a slightly different move, with a strong focus on kinship and culture, CWEN nevertheless seeks to balance these two aspects. A central component of CWEN (as of other Indigenous constitutions) is the definition of tribal citizenship. The question of ‘who belongs’ to the nation is not only crucial with regard to its formal organization, but also for its self-narrative; the criteria for inclusion are thus constitutive. The drafters of CWEN opted for a model of family lineage instead of blood quantum. The role of blood quantum has been notorious in the debate about tribal citizenship.27 The constitution of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe (MCT) – replaced by the new constitution on White Earth – required one-quarter MCT blood and, as Jill Doerfler explains, “literally divided families, with some qualifying for citizenship and others excluded” (174). It also led to a decline in tribal enrollment; intermarriage would eventually threaten the survival of the White Earth Anishinaabeg as a group.28 Thus, like other Indigenous constitutions, CWEN retains a strong focus on kinship as the basis of citizenship; citizenship in CWEN, argued Lisa Brooks, “is based on kinship affiliation with a large extended family, which has particular characteristics and particular responsibilities to the group, rooted in both actual historical experience and in narratives of emergence” (“Constitution” 63). In short, while not explicitly excluding naturalization, there are no provisions made for it. ‘Becoming a citizen’ is the shift from tribal member to citizen qua constitution.29 At the same time, CWEN assumes and enables – but does not force – the link between identity and practice  – Chapter  3 of the constitution entitled “Rights and Duties” lists rights, but no duties, of individual citizens. The constitution appears to regard citizenship “not merely as a condition of ‘being’ ” but as involving responsibilities (Brooks, “Constitution” 63). However, while citizens’ participation is made possible in multiple forums, the constitution on the whole also appears to be designed to protect, not to prescribe: Chapter 3 Article 16 prohibits the banishment from the reservation; neither misconduct nor political dissidence can be punished by the loss of citizenship.30 Although the potential revocation of citizenship is a crucial issue in every national context, the previously mentioned article discussed the close link retained between citizenship and kinship. Besides correcting ‘faulty’ enrollment, disenrollment or banishment has been used in Indigenous constitutions to deal with criminal misconduct on the reservation. As Brooks convincingly argues, prohibiting banishment of kin places responsibility on all citizens for the actions of other citizens (68) – much like the characters in Maracle’s novel.

Storied nationhood  59

In light of this complex understanding of citizens’ responsibilities, it is of particular interest that, in 2010 and 2016, respectively, Vizenor published two novels that directly reflect some of the concerns of this new constitution, Shrouds of White Earth and Treaty Shirts. While Shrouds of White Earth is set briefly after the ratification of the new constitution, Treaty Shirts takes place twenty years later, in 2034. A central issue in both novels is the protagonists’ banishment from the reservation, and in both novels, banishment is the result of a process in which the constitution is either abrogated (Treaty Shirts) or simply corrupted by banished politicians (Shrouds of White Earth). Also, in both novels, Vizenor makes the protagonists the true protectors of the constitution; “the actual story of the constitution started with the exiles” (Treaty 51), and political dissidence and critique of tribal corruption and casino politics are the obligation of good citizens. In a characteristically ironic move, Vizenor combines his critique of nationalism – “the native nationalists assumed their terminal creeds were an absolute immunity to critical thought and creative stories” (Treaty 65) – with a presentation of characters whose loyalty to the constitution is not static but creative, imaginative, and engaged, and whose national citizenship is enacted passionately from outside the nation. Citizenship is status and practice, an identity and a role (Lyons, X-Marks 171). Vizenor’s novels can be read as elaborating on and complicating the question of tribal citizenship, constitutional interpretation, and the understanding that a constitution needs to be lived, in order to fulfill its function in the process of writing the nation. Perhaps this is, despite the difficult integration with the conventional separation of powers, also the crucial potential of the different councils implemented in the constitution. As a document, it is, as Mackay has pointed out, “strictly speaking inessential to the business of governance” (Vizenor and Mackay “Constitutional” 136, emphasis added). In the novels, however, it is an expression of a modern and transcultural Anishinaabeg self-understanding, a vision of “a nation that is fundamentally open-ended, discursive, allowing for difference, allowing tradition to have a role without becoming the ultimate arbiter of all decision-making” (135). The constitution presents a central arena of negotiating an Anishinaabeg polity.

Nationhood and cosmopolitanism? The concepts of the nation, of nationhood, and even more so of nationalism, have come very much under attack with the ‘transnational turn’ in the social sciences and the humanities. The porosity of national borders in a global context, the constructedness of the nation, and the all to obvious dangers of nationalism have led critics to fundamentally question the role and benefits of national as well as nationalist models, politically, culturally, and economically. At the same time, the critique of global capitalist circulation has complicated any simplified celebration of transnationalism. In the controversial debate about literary nationalism, ‘cosmopolitanism’ served as one of the potential counter-models. Arnold Krupat has argued that the importance of sovereignty, so central to literary nationalist concerns, is more productively

60  Katja Sarkowsky

framed in what he calls a ‘cosmopolitan’ perspective (622). Indeed, while hybridity remained a contested concept in the debate, ‘cosmopolitanism’ was not rejected by literary nationalists but seen as compatible with Indigenous nationalist agendas; as Robert Warrior explains in his section of American Indian Literary Nationalism, he learned from Edward Said that “it is possible to be a critic, a nationalist, a cosmopolitan, and a humanist all at the same time” (Warrior, Weaver, and Womack 192). Jace Weaver recently has called Gerald Vizenor both a “cosmopolitan critic” and a “nationalist” (“Turning West” pos. 731). Vizenor might not agree with the latter label; but his work can be read as exploring a pluralist and cosmopolitan nationhood.31 Particularly in the current political climate, the discussion about Indigenous nationhood examined here, with regards to two different but intertwined forms of narrations – literature and constitutions – points to a fundamental question of nation, nationhood, and nationalism as necessarily context-specific terms. Kwame Anthony Appiah emphatically opposes the nation to cosmopolitanism (624), and his rejection of the nation is directed centrally against the nation as an arbitrary category based on ethnicity. Indeed, the models of Indigenous nationhood discussed here are overwhelmingly models of ethnic nationhood, if ‘ethnic’ is understood as a collective identification on the basis of shared cultural ancestry; kinship structures and territory are foundational for all of these models. In the theoretical discussion on nation and nationalism, the shift from the ethnic to the civic nation has usually been seen as a crucial move from exclusivity to inclusivity, from kinship’ to ‘citizenship’ (Braun). While there are models of Indigenous nationhood that appear as highly problematic, regarding their basic assumptions of identity and cultural conformity, the current debate is dominated by concepts of nationhood that, as Jace Weaver has argued, “take as a given settler colonialism” (“Turning” pos. 590) and hence presuppose and react to a constellation in which Indigenous communities are under pressure to define themselves in relation to the settler nation, legally, politically, and culturally. In this specific context, nationhood and nationalism – despite all doubtlessly problematic aspects of ‘ethnic’ nationalism – can be emancipatory concepts. Lisa Brooks, in her afterword to American Indian Literary Nationalism, offers a vision of such an ‘alternative’ nationalism when she writes of a: nationalism that is not based on the theoretical and physical models of the nation-state; a nationalism that is not based on notions of nativism or binary oppositions between insider and outsider, self and other; a nationalism that does not root itself in an idealization of any pre-Contact past, but rather relies on the multifaceted, lived experience of families that gather in particular places. (“Afterword” 229) Brooks’ vision of a non-coercive, non-essentialist nationalism remains vague, but it points in a direction explored by many critics and activists in Native North

Storied nationhood  61

America. In his critical discussion of the nation, Appiah speaks of a “cosmopolitan patriotism” to indicate the complicated, largely affective overlap of a cosmopolitan attitude with the attachment to a particular place. His understanding of both cosmopolitanism and patriotism highlights them as sentiments, not primarily as action-directed (622). Indigenous nationalism, in all of its facets, appears to be action directed, but in light of visions such as that of Brooks, it remains to be seen if a concept of what provisionally could be called ‘cosmopolitan nationhood’ provides a model for future discussions.

Notes 1 Given the heterogeneity of Indigenous cultures in North America, I try to be as precise as possible when referring to a particular group or to the affiliation of an individual writer or scholar. Whenever a generalized term is called for, I  use ‘Indigenous’ and ‘Aboriginal’ interchangeably for pragmatic reasons. 2 Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, 30 U.S. (5 Pet.), 1,20 (1831). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Worcester_v._Georgia, accessed January 6, 2020. 3 Worcester v. Georgia, 31 U.S. (6 Pet.) 515, 559 (1832). 4 Carlson relates here to a recently rejuvenated debate that highlights the link between early modern concepts of sovereignty and natural law; see for instance Troper; for specific facets of the debate, see Hunter and Saunders. 5 See, for instance: Lawrence; Schmidt; Spruhan; Villazor. 6 For the debate about Aboriginality, the constitution, and constitutional patriation in Canada, see, for instance: Webber ch. 8, and Ladner); for a critical exploration of alternative interpretations of Indigeneity in the constitution and in law, see: Borrows, particularly chapters 3 and 4; Milward. 7 Holm, Pearson, and Chavis chose the term ‘peoplehood’ rather than ‘nationhood’; the latter appears in one category with statehood. In principle, however, the term appears to mean something very much like ‘nationhood’ in nationalist scholars’ terminology. 8 Clearly, there are differences between the types of texts under discussion here: constitutions tend to be written for the purpose of defining the national community and its organization, and thus explicitly deal with questions of nationhood; literature, in contrast, can be read as a form of storytelling that negotiates the constitution of a polity as ‘storied’ nationhood, but that also potentially disavows nationhood or national frameworks and their terminology more generally. 9 This contribution is concerned with the complicated status of Indigenous peoples in the constitutions of Canada and the United States only insofar as state regulations – such as the Indian Act – have impacted Aboriginal constitutions and definitions of citizenship. These constitutions and definitions embody central narratives of cultural and political – in short, national – self-understanding and self-assertion, and they do so in a context of competing constitutionalism and citizenship regimes and define who is recognized as a member of the national community, the rights and obligations of those members, and the complex relationships between community and citizens, between citizens, and between the community and the land. 10 It needs to be stressed that not all – or even the majority – of the writers listed here position themselves as ‘nationalists’; as indicated, some, like Vizenor, are very critical toward nationalism. However, I would argue with Joseph Bauerkemper that all of these writers effectively articulate concepts and images of Indigenous nationhood “that fundamentally depart from modern state-nationalism and the underpinning ideologies of progressive, linear history” (Bauerkemper, “Narrating” 28). 11 For discussions of this emergence, see for instance Bauerkemper, “Narrating”; Weaver, “Turning West”; and Carlson, chapter 4.

62  Katja Sarkowsky

12 See e.g., Maracle, “Post-Colonial”; Cook-Lynn, Why I Can’t Read Wallace Stegner and A Separate Country. 13 Noodin’s study is not explicitly nationalist, but her approach follows a logic of tribal specificity and literary traditions very much in line with tribal-nationalist understanding of literature as national. 14 In the 1990s and the first decade of the 2000s, literary nationalism was very contentious; literary nationalists were criticized for their attempts to regard Indigenous literatures as aesthetically separate, (Vizenor, “Aesthetics” 17), as well as for overlooking “the complex level of hybridization and cultural translation that is already operating in any form of Native discourse (including their own) – the product of more than five hundred years of cultural contact and interaction” (Pulitano 61). I will come back to this criticism at the end of this chapter. 15 Residential schools were government-sponsored schools run by religious denominations that were intended to assimilate Indigenous children into Euro-Canadian society. Children were separated from their families, forbidden to speak their language, and often physically and/or sexually abused. The effect of residential schools has frequently been extremely damaging both for the individual children and for their communities. In reaction to political mobilization by residential school survivors, the Canadian government expressed an official apology in 2008. For a detailed history of the school system and the reconciliation process, see: Miller, Vision and Residential. 16 Maracle is careful about what she reveals of the ritual and hence is not specific about details or its identification. 17 Justice Hood states in his reasons for judgment: Placing the aboriginal right at its highest level does not include civil immunity for coercion, force, assault, unlawful confinement, or any other unlawful tortious conduct on the part of the defendants, in forcing the plaintiff to participate in their tradition. While the plaintiff may have special rights and status in Canada as an Indian, the ‘original’ rights and freedoms he enjoys can be no less than those enjoyed by fellow citizens, Indian and non-Indian alike. . . . He cannot be coerced or forced to participate in one by any group purporting to exercise their collective rights in doing so. His freedoms and rights are not “subject to the collective rights of the aboriginal nation to which he belongs.” (www.courts.gov.bc.ca/jdb-txt/sc/92/01/s92-0141.htm) 18 There are different interpretations of this decision; highlighting the clash between individual and collective rights is a dominant reading of this case. For this and other interpretations, see for instance: Isaac; Eisenberg; Milward; Denis, who discusses the case under the alias ‘Peters v. Campbell’. 19 In the following, I will take the status of Indigenous peoples in the Canadian and US constitutions into account only where that status directly impacts Indigenous constitutionalism. For detailed discussions of Aboriginal people in these settler constitutions, see for instance: Borrows; Henderson, Treaty Rights for the Canadian context; and Deloria, Lytle, and Wilkins for the United States. 20 For a discussion of the benefits and problems of the act, see for instance: Rusco; for a conceptual link between the IRA constitutions and narratives of Indigenous nationhood, see Bauerkemper, “Federalism Reconfigured”. 21 For details on the constitutional reforms of the 1970s and after, see for instance: Lemont. 22 The 1934 constitution was implemented by the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, which consisted of six different reservations, including the White Earth Chippewa. The new constitution only applies to the White Earth Nation. For details, see Doerfler, 174. 23 See Henderson, “Trans-Systemic” 63–65; Treaty 483–490. 24 Vizenor is deeply skeptical about nationalism, including the nationalism promoted by literary nationalists (“Aesthetics” 17); nevertheless, as Niigonwedom James Sinclair has convincingly argued, not only is Vizenor’s work deeply grounded in

Storied nationhood  63

“Anishinaabeg-centered discourses”, he also creates visions of nationhood that clearly do not replicate ‘nationhood’ as conflated with “the historically European, progressivist, and patriotic ‘nation-state’ ” (135; 133). In Sinclair’s nuanced reading, Vizenor’s involvement in the drafting of the new constitution is – while surprising in the dominant readings of Vizenor’s work – the latest and logical step in his engagement with Anishinaabeg nationhood being understood as non-essentialist, dynamic, and imaginative (149). It might be added that Vizenor’s vision is also distinctly transcultural. 25 For a discussion of the understanding of Indigenous sovereignty as sui generis, see: Henderson, “Trans-Systemic” and “Interpreting.” 26 For a careful exploration of the difficulties to fully integrate these councils with the checks-and-balances system adopted from the US Constitution, see: Lisa Brooks, “Constitution” 66. 27 The discussion of blood quanta is a highly loaded one with a prominent role in the discussions about criteria for tribal membership. For pragmatic reasons, I confine my discussion to CWEN. For a broader discussion on the role of blood quantum in determining citizenship criteria in Indigenous nations, see for instance Goldberg; Lyons, X-Marks 178–85; Simpson, ch. 2; for further references, see also footnote 5. 28 Nevertheless, the decision to not mention blood quanta in the new constitution was contested. See Vizenor and Mackay, 135, and for further references on the debate, 146n14; Vizenor, “Constitutional Consent” pos. 437–66. 29 For a discussion of ‘ethnicity’ and ‘kinship’ vis-à-vis ‘citizenship,’ see Braun. 30 The prohibition of banishment, as Vizenor explains in an interview, was the only definite request for the document made by Erma Vizenor, Chairwoman of the White Earth Anishinaabe, when deliberations began (Vizenor in Eils, Laderman, and Uzendoski 218). 31 Despite the clear disagreements, as the more recent debate has shown, there are obvious attempts to find a middle ground that regards “North America as a field of overlapping sovereignties” (Taylor 26) and to highlight commonalities between different approaches to Indigenous literatures. In 2011, a discussion panel involving Womack, Pulitano, Krupat, and other scholars of Native literatures came to an acknowledgement of shifts in the respective positions that relativized the seemingly initial incompatibility, and the estimation of at least one participant led to an exploration of terms such as nationalism and cosmopolitanism as being not mutually exclusive but complementary (Pulitano in Womack, Brooks, Elliot, Krupat, and Pulitano).

References Alfred, Taiaikake. “First Nation Perspective on Political Identity,” First Nation Citizenship Research & Policy Series: Building Towards Change. Assembly of First Nations 2009. http:// firstnationcitizenship.afn.ca/uploads/A1_First_Nation_Perspectives_on_Political_Identity.pdf, accessed August 18, 2017. ———. Peace, Power, Righteousness. An Indigenous Manifesto. Oxford: OUP, 2008. Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso, 1991. Appiah, Kwame Anthony. “Cosmopolitan Patriots,” Critical Inquiry 23.3 (1997): 617–39. Armstrong, Jeannette. “Editor’s Note,” Looking at the Words of Our People. First Nations Analysis of Literature. Ed. Jeannette Armstrong. Penticton: Theytus, 1993, 7–8. Bauerkemper, Joseph. “Federalism Reconfigured: Native Narrations and the Indian New Deal,” The Routledge Companion to Native American Literature. Ed. Deborah L. Madsen. Abingdon-on-Thames: Routledge, 2016, 167–80. ———. “Narrating Nationhood: Indian Time and Ideologies of Progress,” SAIL 19.4 (2007): 27–53.

64  Katja Sarkowsky

Bhabha, Homi. “Introduction: Narrating the Nation,” Nation and Narration. Ed. Homi Bhabha. Abingdon-on-Thames: Routledge, 1990, 1–7. Binder, Guyora, and Robert Weisberg. Literary Criticisms of Law. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2000. Braun, Sebastian F. “Building on Native Sovereignty: From Ethnic Membership to National Citizenship,” Native American Nationalism and Nation Re-Building Past and Present Cases. Ed. Simone Poliandri. Albany: SUNY Press, 2016. Kindle Edition. Brooks, Lisa. “The Constitution of the White Earth Nation: A New Innovation in a Longstanding Indigenous Literary Tradition,” Studies in American Indian Literatures 23.4 (2011): 48–76. ———. “Afterword: At the Gathering Place,” American Indian Literary Nationalism. Eds. Robert Warrior, Jace Weaver and Craig S. Womack. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2005, 225–52. Borrows, John. Freedom & Indigenous Constitutionalism. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2016. Boyden, Joseph. Three Day Road. London: Penguin, 2006. Brydon, Diana. “Imagining Community Resurgence: Lee Maracle’s Celia’s Song revisions a West Before and After the West,” https://dianabrydon.com/2016/05/11/imaginingcommunity-resurgence-lee-maracles-celias-song-revisions-a-west-before-and-after-thewest/, accessed June 16, 2018. Carlson, David J. Imagining Sovereignty: Self-Determination in American Indian Law and Literature. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2016. “Constitution of the White Earth Nation, The,” The White Earth Nation. Ratification of a Native Democratic Constitution. Eds. Gerald Vizenor and Jill Doerfler. Introduction by David E. Wilkins. Lincoln/London: U of Nebraska Press, 2012. Kindle edition. Pos. 644–798. Cook-Lynn, Elizabeth. A Separate Country: Postcoloniality and American Indian Nations. Lubbock: Texas Tech UP, 2011. ———. Why I Can’t Read Wallace Stegner and Other Essays. A Tribal Voice. Milwaukee: U of Wisconsin P, 1996. Deloria, Vine, and Clifford M. Lytle. The Nations Within. The Past and Future of American Indian Sovereignty. New York: Pantheon Books, 1984. Kindle Edition. Deloria, Vine, Clifford M. Lytle, and David Wilkins. Tribes, Treaties, & Constitutional Tribulations. Austin: U of Texas P, 1999. Denis, Claude. We Are Not You. First Nations and Canadian Modernity. Louisville: Broadview Press, 1997. Doerfler, Jill. “A  Philosophy for Living. Ignatia Broker and Constitutional reform among the White Earth Anishinaabeg,” Centering Anishinaabeg Studies. Understanding the World through Stories. Eds. Jill Doerfler et  al. East Lansing: Michigan State UP, 2013, 173–89. Eils, Coleen, Emily Laderman, and Andrew Uzendoski. “ ‘You’re Always More Famous When You’re Banished’: Gerald Vizenor on Citizenship, War, and Continental Liberty,” The American Indian Quarterly 39.2 (2015): 213–27. Eisenberg, Avigail. “The Politics of Individual and Group Difference in Canadian Jurisprudence,” Canadian Journal of Political Science 27.1 (1994): 3–21. Gellner, Ernest. Nations and Nationalism. Oxford: Blackwell, 1983. Kindle Edition. Goldberg, Carole. “Members Only: Designing Citizenship Requirements for Indian Nations,” American Indian Constitutional Reform and the Rebuilding of Native Nations. Ed. Eric Lemont. Austin: U of Texas P, 2006. Kindle edition. Pos. 1149–848.

Storied nationhood  65

Gover, Kirsty. “Comparative Tribal Constitutionalism: Membership Governance in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States,” Law & Social Inquiry 35.3 (2010): 689–762. ———. Tribal Constitutionalism. States, Tribes, and the Governance of Membership. Oxford: OUP, 2010. Henderson, James (Sa’ke’j) Youngblood. “Trans-Systemic Constitutionalism in Indigenous Law and Knowledge,” Critical Collaborations. Indigeneity, Diaspora, and Ecology in Canadian Literary Studies. Eds. Smaro Kamboureli, Christl Verdyn. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2014, 49–68. ———. Treaty Rights in the Constitution of Canada. Toronto: Thomson-Carswell, 2007. ——— “Interpreting Sui Generis Treaties,” Alberta Law Review 36.1 (1997): 46–96. Holm, Tom, J. Diane Pearson, and Ben Chavis. “Peoplehood: A Model for the Extension of Sovereignty in American Indian Studies,” Wicazo Sa Review 18.1 (2003): 7–24. Hunter, Ian, and David Saunders (eds.). Natural Law and Civil Sovereignty. Moral Right and State Authority in Early Modern Political Thought. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002. Isaac, Thomas. Aboriginal Law: Commentary and Analysis. Fourth Edition. Saskatoon: Purich, 2012. Justice, Daniel Heath. Our Fire Survives the Storm. A Cherokee Literary History. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005. Konkle, Maureen. Writing Indian Nations. Native Intellectuals and the Politics of Historiography, 1827–1863. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004. Krupat, Arnold. “Nationalism, Indigenism, Cosmopolitanism: Critical Perspectives on Native American Literatures,” Centennial Review 42.3 (1998): 617–26. Ladner, Kiera. “An Indigenous Constitutional Paradox: Both Monumental Achievement and Monumental Defeat,” Patriation and Its Consequences. Constitution Making in Canada. Eds. Lois Harder and Steve Patten. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2016, 267–89. Lawrence, Bonita. “Gender, Race, and the Regulation of Native Identity in Canada and the United States: An Overview,” Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy 18.2 (2003): 3–31. Lemont, Eric D. (ed.). American Indian Constitutional Reform and the Rebuilding of Native Nations. Austin: U of Texas P, 2006. Kindle edition. Lyons, Scott Richard. “Nationalism,” Native Studies Keywords. Eds. Stephanie Nohelani Tevers, Andrea Smith, and Michelle Raheja. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2015, 168–79. ———. X-Marks. Native Signatures of Assent. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2010. Mackay, James. “Introduction,” SAIL 23.4 (2011): 3–12. Maracle, Lee. Memory Serves: Oratories. Edmonton: NeWest Press, 2015. ———. Celia’s Song. Toronto: Cormorant Books, 2014. ———. “The Post-Colonial Imagination,” Fuse 16.1 (1992): 12–15. Miller, J.R. Residential Schools and Reconciliation: Canada Confronts Its History. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2017. ———. Shinwauk’s Vision. A History of Native Residential Schools. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1996. Milward, David. Aboriginal Justice and the Charter. Realizing a Culturally Sensitive Interpretation of Legal Rights. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2012. Noodin, Margaret. Bawaajimo. A Dialect of Dreams in Anishinaabe Language and Literature. East Lansing: Michigan State UP, 2014. Pulitano, Elvira. Towards a Native American Critical Theory. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2003.

66  Katja Sarkowsky

Rusco, Elmer. “The Indian Reorganization Act and Indian Self-Government,” American Indian Constitutional Reform and the Rebuilding of Native Nations. Ed. Eric D. Lemont. Austin: U of Texas P, 2006. Kindle edition. Pos. 632–1120. Schmidt, Ryan W. “American Indian Identity and Blood Quantum in the 21st Century: A Critical Review,” Journal of Anthropology (2011): 1–9. Silko, Leslie. Gardens in the Dunes. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999. Simpson, Audra. Mohawk Interruptus. Political Life Across the Borders of Settler States. Durham/ London: Duke University Press, 2014. Sinclair, Niigonwedom James. “A Sovereignty of Transmotion: Imagination and the ‘Real,’ Gerald Vizenor, and Native Literary Nationalism,” Stories through Theories, Theories through Stories: North American Indian Writing, Storytelling, and Critique. Eds. Gordon Henry et al. East Lansing: Michigan State UP, 2009, 123–58. Spruhan, Paul. “A Legal History of Blood Quantum in Federal Indian Law to 1935,” South Dakota Law Review 51 (2006): 1–50. Taylor, Christopher. “North America as Contact Zone: Native American Literary Nationalism and the Cross-Cultural Dilemma,” SAIL 22.3 (2010): 26–44. Thomas v. Norris [1992] 2 C.N.L.R. 139 (B.C.S.C.), www.courts.gov.bc.ca/jdb-txt/ sc/92/01/s92-0141.htm, accessed June 15, 2018. Troper, Michel. “Sovereignty and Natural Law in the Legal Discourse of the Ancient Régime,” Theoretical Inquiries in Law 16.2 (2015): 315–35. Villazor, Rose Cuison. “Blood Quantum Land Laws and the Race Versus Political Identity Dilemma,” California Law Review 96.801 (2008): 801–38. Vizenor, Gerald. Treaty Shirts. October 2034 – A Familiar Treatise on the White Earth Nation. Hanover: Wesleyan UP, 2016. ———. “Constitutional Consent: Native Traditions and Parchment Rights,” The White Earth Nation. Ratification of a Native Democratic Constitution. Eds. Gerald Vizenor, Jill Doerfler. Introduction by David E. Wilkins. Lincoln/London: U of Nebraska Press, 2012. Kindle edition. Pos. 89–637. ———. Shrouds of White Earth. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2010. ———. “Aesthetics of Survivance. Literary Theory and Practice,” Survivance. Narratives of Native Presence. Ed. Gerald Vizenor. Lincoln/London: U of Nebraska Press, 2008, 1–23. ———. Manifest Manners. Postindian Warriors of Survivance. Hanover: Wesleyan University Press, 1994. Vizenor, Gerald, and James Mackay. “Constitutional Narratives. A Conversation with Gerald Vizenor,” Centering Anishinaabeg Studies. Understanding the World through Stories. Eds. Jill Doerfler et al. East Lansing: Michigan State UP, 2013, 132–48. Warrior, Robert. The People and the Word. Reading Native Non-Fiction. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005. ———. Tribal Secrets. Recovering American Indian Intellectual Traditions. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994. Warrior, Robert, Jace Weaver, and Craig S. Womack. American Indian Literary Nationalism. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2005. Weaver, Jace. “Turning West: Cosmopolitanism and American Indian Literary Nationalism,” The Native American Renaissance. Literary Imagination and Achievement. Eds. Alan Velie, A. Robert Lee. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2013. Kindle edition. Pos. 337–839. ———. That the People Might Live. Native Literature and Native American Community. Oxford: OUP, 1997. Webber, Jeremy. The Constitution of Canada. A Contextual Analysis. Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2015.

Storied nationhood  67

Welch, James. Fools Crow. New York: Viking, 1986. Womack, Craig. Drowning by Fire. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2001. ———. Red on Red. Native American Literary Separatism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999. Womack, Craig, Lisa Brooks, Michael Elliot, Arnold Krupat, and Elvira Pulitano. “Cosmopolitanism and Nationalism in Native American Literature: A Panel Discussion,” Southern Spaces, June  21, 2011, https://southernspaces.org/2011/cosmopolitanism-and-national ism-native-american-literature-panel-discussion, accessed August 25, 2017. Worcester v. Georgia, 31 U.S. (6 Pet.) 515, 559 (1832); https://supreme.justia.com/cases/ federal/us/31/515/case.html, accessed June 15, 2018. Yazzie, Robert et al. “Navajo Nation Constitutional Feasibility and Government Reform Project.” Tsaile, AZ: Diné Policy Institute, 2008.

4 FINDING NATION The nation and the state in F. Sionil Jose’s Mass and Edwin Thumboo’s A Third Map Lily Rose Tope

Finding the Southeast Asian nation Independence in Southeast Asia has brought forth a search for genuine nationhood. Contrary to expectations, the creation of a state emerging from a strengthened political power did not necessarily lead to a creation of nation. Powerful groups  – the elite or dominant political parties  – became the basis of statehood. This often led to a divide between the state and nation. Ideally, the narratives of state and nation should be one and the same, or at least complementary. But early nationhood showed the cracks between state and polity, revealing opposite expectations of the ideal political life. While the state has become a necessity for political survival and quotidian civic functions, the nation requires a more social and emotional commitment. Its often amorphous nature makes it more difficult to ascertain, yet it determines allegiance and the sense of national belonging. Its desirous and yet indeterminate nature makes it the object of the citizen’s quest. This study chooses to examine the contentious nature of statehood and nationhood in the early decades of independence of two Southeast Asian countries, Singapore and the Philippines. I  will use two literary texts that chronicle the early negotiations between state and nation as both countries explore the intricacies of self-rule. F. Sionil Jose’s novel Mass was published in 1979, three decades after the Philippines was declared independent in 1946. A Third Map by Edwin Thumboo is a collection of poems published in 1993, a little less than three decades after the 1965 independence of Singapore, but it also contains poems written during the second decade of independence. Conditions today in both countries may already be different, but the early years have created an indelible mark in the still ongoing search for nation.

Finding nation  69

State and nation Today, the ideas of state and nation are often conflated, as in the term nation-state. But technically, the two are not necessarily the same. The ‘state’ can be generally described as the ‘political institutionalisation of a society within fixed boundaries as a necessary system to organise the social life of a group’ (Heidt 1987: 122) and is represented by a government. ‘Nation’, which is more elusive in its essence, consists of a ‘specific solidarity and a specific group feeling bound to the community called ‘nations’ together and which would exceed a ‘merely’ rational decision or cause for the establishment of such a community’ (Heidt 1987: 122). The idea of nation has been variously defined, by Renan to Gellner and Anderson, just to mention a few, and its formation has been given properties that pertain to primordial feelings of belonging, as well as the effects of a language understood by all or the spread of knowledge and aspirations due to print capitalism. But these definitions of nation have been challenged by ideas of globalization and new forms of knowledge that suggest the eventual removal of national boundaries as a standard of belonging. Moreover, there are studies such as one by Andrea Wimmer and Yuval Feinstein (2010), which uses empirical data to test and contest the theories of Gellner, Anderson, Tilly and Hechter, and works by women scholars interrogating the absence of the female voice and presence in the discourses of nation and nationalism. Be that as it may, some scholars such as Hedva Ben-Israel (2011) are convinced that the ‘nation-state has proved durable not due to some sacred or moral value embedded in it but because it makes sense from a democratic point of view and also due to its malleability’ (66). For many postcolonial countries, statehood has been attained without the benefit of a gradual evolution and may have been born out of a contingency. In Malaysia, contingency lies in the dispersed racial energies of a people with different origins. In the Philippines, it is found in the deep social stratification by class. The colonial structures familiar to colonized societies have been partially destabilized by independence, creating an expectation (and this is ultimately only an expectation) of their termination. While independence may have been a moment of triumph, it may also have been a moment of crisis, for it, in a way, also meant a demolition of a center that had held things together for decades or centuries. The fledgling state has to create a new center to which nation can cleave for self-validation. Ideally, the lives of both state and nation should run along parallel lines, but history has shown that they may have conflicting desires. The state usually desires stability and ease of governance, the pursuit of which may run counter to the desire of nation. Young countries are often insecure and their desire for security often leads it to the path of coercion. Consequently, a wedge may be driven between state and polity. When the state abuses its power against the community which has meager defense, the relationship between state and nation becomes adversarial. The hegemonic activities of the state consequently have led some postcolonial writers to be suspicious if not downright hostile to the state brand of nationalism.

70  Lily Rose Tope

While the idea of nation as a community’s goal was crucial during the struggle for independence, these writers are also cognizant of the possibility of its Janus-like transformation under the hands of state actors. Frantz Fanon (1965) and Edward Said (1978) believe that nationalism should be discarded after independence and decolonization. Anna Rutherford (1992) speaks of nationalism’s essentializing tendencies. Simon Gikandi (1992) is even more censorious and cynical. Whereas the goals of nationalism used to be clear during the struggle for independence, they are now confounding and ambivalent. Interchanging state and nation here, he indicts what the ‘nation’ has become. ‘The divinity of nation has collapsed; the nation is not the manifestation of common interest but the repressor of desires’ (380). Both Rutherford and Gikandi, in their condemnation of the injustice done in the name of nationalism, are thus resisting the hegemonic and marginalizing project of state nationalism.

The Southeast Asian context Home to about 600  million people, Southeast Asia is a diverse community. Its nations’ main cultural links with each other include pre-colonial exchanges which can be seen in commonalities in language and tradition, the colonial experience (except Thailand), and the effects of neoliberal structures either accepted or rejected. Southeast Asia in contemporary terms is considered an emergent hub of political, economic and cultural power flows, strategically located in the corridors of trade and influence in the Pacific region. Colonialism is one of the important commonalities. The specific experiences may vary, but the similarities in colonial experiences are worth noting. Colonization introduced Western systems and structures to ‘organize’ the chaotic systems of local communities. It introduced Western languages and cultures to ‘civilize’ the uncouth, primitive inhabitants (Tope 2018a). The Philippines was under Spain for 300  years and under America for 50  years. Spain made the Philippines Roman Catholic and America introduced the English language and Hollywood. Singapore was under the British for about 100 years, giving it British culture and the English language. This accounts for the use of English in the works of Jose and Thumboo. Independence and release from colonialism may be a euphoric moment, but it also offers a tray of serious challenges such as ‘knowledge and cultural systems (are) located within the interplay of ancient traditions, colonial legacies, postcolonial struggles and imperatives and neo-liberal economies, technologies and cultures’ ( Joseph and Matthews 2014: 21). Reeling from long years of colonial subjugation and a devastating world war, these nations began to work at a sustainable and stable nationhood. Conflicts were not advantageous to nation-building. In the last half of the twentieth century, Southeast Asia experienced a seemingly common rise of strong men who eventually controlled national interest. Authoritarian rule became the means to foster national development, a political phenomenon that bound Southeast Asian nations during that period. The state could exercise its power to halt unrest and pursue an instrumentalist policy towards dissent. But it could also

Finding nation  71

be regarded as benign. Modern democracies with a parliament or congress would debate the adjective ‘authoritarian’. Whether benign or extreme the rule, the flow of power is clear. In Southeast Asia, authoritarianism seems to be culturally understood and sometimes even accepted. There is a perception that in some instances, authoritarianism has been helpful in providing social and political order that promoted civility. I use the term ‘benign’ to describe this kind of authoritarianism because the degree and frequency of state coercion are low. A good example is Singapore. Relatively speaking, the Singapore state under the ruling party PAP (People’s Action Party) has not experienced overt resistance from its citizens, whose rice bowls are kept full. Under Lee Kuan Yew’s leadership as Prime Minister (1965–1990), the government provided social and educational opportunities and the country’s economy began to surge even as early as the first decades after independence. Currently, Singapore is the most economically developed country in Southeast Asia, with a standard of living almost on par with developed Western countries. Although the state has the Internal Security Act which allows the arrest of anyone considered a threat to national security, the use of this act since independence has not been extreme. However, this has created a culture of fear in which self-censorship has become common. Using the discourse of state security as the citizen’s security, the Singapore state would remind the citizens not to endanger hard-earned national gain. In contrast, the Philippine state, representing coercive authoritarianism, experienced widespread resistance, both overt and covert. Under Ferdinand Marcos’ government (1965–1986), the state took a strong grip on its citizens and did not give them the social and economic opportunities that would have made authoritarian rule more acceptable. Marcos gave substantial power to the military, jailed his opponents, confiscated private property and turned it into state property; he robbed the national treasury, leaving Filipinos poor, powerless and with little opportunity for social mobility (Tope 2018b). Authoritarianism meant the construction of a strong state that was self-sufficient and no longer vulnerable to external and internal threats. The Singapore model convinced most citizens to take the side of the state. The Philippine version sealed the divide between state and nation. With the removal of Marcos from office, democratic freedoms have since been restored in the Philippines, but the moral fiber of society has been destroyed by 20 years of dictatorship. Singapore continues to function under the Lee Kuan Yew paradigm in that it still hesitates to grant more rights than is necessary to its citizens; instead, the state concentrates on keeping its citizens free from want by creating a prosperous society. The Filipino novel Mass, while advancing the nationalism of the poor and the powerless, articulates the discourse of those dislocated by the currents of hegemony. The novel proves that indeed, nationalism is Janus-like. The defense against negative nationalism is its other face. The two faces of nationalism, that of the state and the nation, are portrayed as divergent – one subjugates while the other liberates. Mass also demonstrates the realignment of post-independence forces based on class. This regrouping shows the fragility of the coalition of revolutionary forces

72  Lily Rose Tope

during the struggle for independence. The gap between social classes goes deeper than what an independence movement can bridge. Following Fanon’s (1965) formulation of the transfer of power from the colonizer to the elite, the subjugator acquires a native face. The bourgeoisie of an underdeveloped country, explains Fanon, is a bourgeoisie in spirit only. It does not possess the economic strength, leadership and breadth of ideas usually associated with its Western counterpart. And yet it claims the privilege of power in order to legally promote self-aggrandizement in the guise of national development. The politics of class privileges the national desire of the elite who dominates the state. It creates a nation ‘opposite to that imagined by the masses’ and uses the nation as a ‘strategy for containment’ (Sicat 1994: 124). The dispossessed masses have to recover their place in the formation of nation. Ultimately, they have to pit their nationalism from below with the nationalism of national development. Not all state nationalisms are absolutely negative and elicit intense resentment. When a state nationalism produces economic miracles, pulls the nation from the mire of uncertainty, grants the citizen his basic needs and enough opportunities for advancement, even if it has withheld some of the citizen’s freedoms, a hasty indictment of this economic nationalism would seem imprudent. At best, a certain ambivalence emanates from the relationship between state and nation, as what pervades Edwin Thumboo’s A Third Map. The ambivalence stems from Singapore’s style of governance. As the architect of Singapore’s economic success, the state has proven its capability to the people. This has given the state the political leverage to actively promote, even to impose, its program of national development. The trade-off is clamping down on dissent, especially when it is a sustained and systematic public criticism of the government deemed inimical to the economy and security of the country. Yet it does not close itself completely to criticism regarding administrative matters. It encourages ‘discussion on national issues from anti-establishment but not anti-national critics’ (Chan 1991: 178). It prides itself in the openness with which it discusses policies and its inclusion of grassroots political organizations in the formulation of these policies. The nationalisms of state and community in Singapore are not as clearly divided as those in the Philippines. In fact, it may sometimes be difficult to disavow certain acts of the state without disavowing the community. Rumblings of dissent, though, exist – and it is this which prevents the community’s total domination by the state. It is a quieter nationalism in the wake of a very visible, very persuasive state (Tope 1998). Contemporary readings of nation seem to lead to two important conclusions: One is that the finding and founding of nation cannot be without each nation’s particular historical and cultural context. Two, the concept of nation continues to evolve and remains in a state of flux (Bernard 2013). It is therefore not strange to have more than one strain of nationalism running through a single history, for there is no one uniform source of nationalistic impulse (Anderson 1983). Through the works of Jose and Thumboo, I  will attempt to

Finding nation  73

delineate the sensitive relationship between polity and state. The works of both writers are their articulation of nation and their answer to a fundamental question regarding it: nation for whom?

The struggle for nation in F. Sionil Jose’s Mass The novel Mass begins with a boy raised in the countryside whose needs are limited to the physical and the personal. Pepe Samson, the protagonist, journeys from the iniquities of his village to the cruelty and violence of the city. His ignorance and self-centeredness are slowly replaced by social awareness and ideological commitment as he absorbs and understands the issues of his class. The oppositional binaries of the ruler and the ruled, the rich and the poor, and even state and nation, form the ideological and allegorical matrix of the novel. The desire of the novel is for Pepe to situate and authenticate himself within this configural conundrum in order to ascertain his sense of nation. This ascertainment demands from Pepe a choice, a commitment, that is not easily made or given by one who has not traveled the path of the functionary. It is therefore essential that Pepe first learns his truths primarily through a journey wherein characters and situations form the allegory of the Filipino nation. Pepe discovers that nationalism is neither learned theoretically nor felt instinctively. It is drawn from an immersion in the vortex of social confrontation and experience shared by others. The novel’s search for nation therefore begins with the initiation of the novice and ends with his social and political transformation. The novel answers the question through its title which bears the banner of its advocacy. It concretizes the forces that form and weaken the fiber of Filipino society. It particularly locates the center of Filipino social dynamics, especially its social and psychological battlefield, in the confrontation of classes. The journey begins in the village. Cabugawan is an ordinary Filipino provincial town but the burdens of poverty are not lost on Pepe, in fact, they precipitate a restlessness and a strong urge to leave. ‘I saw Cabugawan as the end, a monotonous prison where people grew old yet remain the same’ ( Jose 1979: 4). At this point, Pepe has no inkling that his poverty is not predetermined. His desires are individualistic and often selfish, and his young mind, though intellectually active, has not been visited by thoughts of community or nation. It is significant that Pepe goes to Manila, the jugular of the nation, straight to its overcrowded squalid streets, to embark on the functionary’s journey. After all, according to Jose, ‘the Philippines was a one-city nation. Where Manila went, so did the Philippines’ ( Jose 1988: 59). It is the Filipino melting pot and in its everyday life dramatizes the sociopolitical dynamics of the country. Ultimately, it becomes the encompassing spirit and cultural foreground of the novel as well as its ‘central sensibility’ (Lim 1993: 45). As Pepe dips into its honey and slime, he is inevitably constructed by it. He falls into its abyss due to self-centeredness and resurrects from its pit because of national purpose.

74  Lily Rose Tope

He was at first impressed by the amoral sophistication of the city. Nick, the drug pusher, advises him: ‘Do not think about decency, Pepe,’ his voice rose again. ‘This was an indecent world. All those people dressed up, attending concerts, those fancy parties, splashed in the society pages – they were all indecent. Each has a little scheme and in the end, they all used people’ ( Jose 1979: 74). Then he goes to the underbelly of the city, a slum community in Tondo called the Barrio where he sees naked urban squalor and witnesses the absence of reason and civility in the midst of extreme poverty. He descends into the bowels of Philippine society, but this was not enough to resolve his vacillation between political commitment and self-preservation. That Pepe is lumpen is central to his inaction. Fanon (1965) distinguishes between two kinds of peasants: those who rush into towns and settle in tin-shack settlements, and those who stay put to defend their traditions. While the latter demonstrate a transcendence of personal deprivations in order to sustain a cause, the former assumes a personalistic survivor mentality. The self-centered, selfprotective mantle with which the lumpen covers itself also serves its justification for exploiting others, especially the poor and the desperate. That Pepe cannot rise above his primal urges toward food and sex, that he cheats even those dear to him, that he goes into noble ventures for a price, pigeonhole him into the role of lumpen. Cynical and apathetic to the social problems of his land, Pepe, at this stage, reflects the mentality of the unpoliticized inchoate mass. Pepe, however, is a functionary, a university student, an intellectual. His truancy and poverty are offset by a sharp critical mind. He is street smart and skeptical of good intentions, but his native intelligence gives him a perspicacity which discerns political posturings and dogma. He is difficulty to blind with impressive theories: he is inclined toward checking text against reality, theory against experience. His lumpen functionary subject position is a contradiction and therefore striking because he has to configure himself between the clashing cultures of the lumpen (self-serving, apathetic, comfort-seeking) and the functionary (intellectual, otheroriented, idealistic). This is perhaps to prove the point that a revolutionary is constructed, not born. The transformation of Pepe from lumpen to revolutionary is the most significant representation in the novel regarding the search for nation. For one, Pepe’s journey is not particularistic. It has been undergone by countless Filipino youth who struggled against colonizers and a dictator. Second, the novel’s argument rests upon the hero being an intellectual. It is his knowledge that is disseminated and utilized in the process toward change. It also rests upon the fact that Pepe is from the lower classes. Gramsci describes the role of the intellectual as the leader and organizer of the masses. The masses, being in disarray, need to be organized geographically and ideologially. An intellectual from the masses is leadership from below. Pepe’s mentor, Professor Hortenso, impresses upon Pepe that his role in the movement is exactly that. In Philippine history, educational institutions are places of social and political epiphanies. Despite colonial origins and structure, institutions of higher learning serve as nexus of ideas and functionaries. The university, one of the intellectual

Finding nation  75

centers of nation, is responsible for the first impulses toward Pepe’s transformation. In the context of Philippine realities, especially in the 1970s, which is the setting of the novel, the university is not only an educational institution; it is microcosmic Philippines and a training ground for a wide range of politics. Moreover, ideologies are formed not inside the classroom but outside. Hence, the novel sets Pepe’s introduction to nationalist ideology outside the classroom. He establishes a friendship with Toto, idealist and ideologue, who introduces him to Professor Hortenso and the Brotherhood. Initially, Pepe balks at the theoretical proclamations regarding the masses and the class struggle, thinking of these as ‘hot house ideology’. His innate distrust of speeches and politicians stems from his knowledge of who really exploits the people. Even Professor Hortenso’s genteel poverty and professional sacrifice fail to impress him. His lumpen attitude makes him ‘an unlikely candidate for heroism’ (Lim 1993: 46). It is from Professor Hortenso, though, that Pepe experiences the politicizing effect of the intellectual life. Professor Hortenso declares the need for leadership from the masses and the necessity of sacrifice in the construction of a new order, since this will be enjoyed by future generations. It is significant that Professor Hortenso has refused better appointments and has tenaciously taught in a diploma mill. His commitment is to the education of leaders (functionaries) such as Pepe who are from the masses and cannot afford better schools. Then there is the Brotherhood, a functionary organization of politically committed intellectuals, whose methods of protest, advocacy politics and social mobilization teaches Pepe lessons in unity. The multisectoral nature of the mammoth demonstrations he helps organize makes him realize ‘that alone, you were nobody. But the Brotherhood gave you numbers. Unity’ ( Jose 1979: 25). Pepe’s intellectual development must be accompanied by objective realities that test his truths. After all, a Westernized education may elide the confrontation between knowledge and class realities. Pepe’s transformation consequently can only be accomplished by praxis. The theories are validated only when signified in experienced reality. Pepe has to be hurt and outraged by events; he has to mourn for an entity outside himself. Toto’s death, for example, is a turning point in that it marks the beginning of the state’s invasion of Pepe’s private space. While his previous experiences in politicization has been limited to the theoretical, his life in the slums and the brutal death of Toto hammer in the fact that state repression is as real as the slime beneath the shanties and the bullet that killed Toto. The Barrio, a ghetto in Tondo, the cistern of the city, is crucial to Pepe’s praxis. It has no sewers and where the streets end, rows of wooden planks – which separate people from the blackish mud below – begin. It is ‘a demented world where perspectives changed, as if one saw through cracked lenses or glass smeared with mud’ ( Jose 1979: 80). However, it is the metropole of the poor. They came from all over the country – farmers running away from the Huk rebellion in Central Luzon, the ravages of typhoons in Samar, the poverty of Bicol, the laziness and inertia of the Visayas; they lived together because they were relatives or because they came from the same benighted place and it was here in the

76  Lily Rose Tope

Barrio where relationships became stronger as, perhaps, they had never been elsewhere. Relationships were a bulwark against disease, unemployment, hunger and in some instances, from the gangs that preyed the dark and convoluted recesses of the Barrio ( Jose 1979: 80). Pepe’s advanced education begins here in the land of lumpen. The process reinforces what he already knows – that the poor can condemn themselves to a life of perdition, just as Lily the masseuse does when she goes over the edge and becomes a prostitute. In contrast, he also learns that they can be saved from themselves. Roger, the community toughie, and his gangsters represent the misguided energies of the lumpen. Unpoliticized, they vent their anger on their own kind. Pepe earns their respect because he speaks their language and understands their plight. Under Pepe’s leadership, they join the Brotherhood. The politicization process turns their visceral but vacuous strength into civic and progressive use. The Brotherhood is an exact demonstration of Fanon’s formulation regarding the revolutionary potential of the lumpen proletariat. This ‘horde of starving men, uprooted from their tribe and from their clan’ (Fanon 1965: 103), constitutes the evidence of social and moral decay, making it the more direct threat to peace and order. Their unstable energies, however, can be redirected and their squalid life can become the source of a revolutionary impulse. ‘The classless idlers would by militant and decisive action discover the path that led to nationhood’ (Fanon 1965: 103). Pepe’s leadership of the Brotherhood, therefore, suggests the seminal formation of a nation from below. It is a nation divorced from and oppressed by the state and simultaneously revived and maintained by the masses. Theirs is a recuperated nation representing their neglected interests. The Brotherhood serves as an instruction on the fundamentals on founding a nation, not through state edicts but through the consolidation of a community. The novel is also unequivocal in identifying the enemy. They are the elite, residents of gated housing estates, and landlords ‘no longer the mestizos of yesteryears but brown like us, children of farmers who had forgotten what their fathers were and therefore were no different from the landlords they had replaced’( Jose 1979: 56). They too had their intellectuals who are not just wealthy but influence the production of knowledge. They can manipulate history and ‘lead revolutions without lifting a sword’ ( Jose 1979: 229). By universalizing their values in the form of tradition, codes of conduct and even religion and morality, and by entrenching such values through the various knowledge systems, the elite has conquered the minds and spirits of the masses. The character Juan Puneta embodies the evils of his class. On the surface, he is a man of great wealth, a champion of nationalist causes. In reality, he spies for the military, is an agent provocateur and as he confesses to Pepe, is only interested in the perpetuation of his class. He joins the revolutionary movement yet in private regards the masses with disdain and considers them a means to wrest power. The elite cannot achieve its political ambition if not for its political arm: the state. The state has functioned as the apparatus of the elite. Because the elite

Finding nation  77

arrogates power to itself to the detriment of the majority, the divorce between the state and nation becomes inevitable. Mass was written in the context of the Marcos dictatorship, considered the darkest years in contemporary Philippine history. Since all avenues of redress  – Congress, the courts – were coopted by the dictatorship, the only avenue of dissent left are the streets and the underground. Pepe confronts the state in the politics of the streets. He experiences suppression in state prisons that try to break his spirit. When he himself is detained and tortured by the military, the forces of hegemony invade his body. The methodical torture and humiliation attack the body to destroy the spirit. His sexual organs are electrocuted, symbolically destroying the source of pleasure and procreation. His torturers are workers of the state, punishing dissenters – yet they have been sworn to protect the people, but are now utilized by the state to maintain order by keeping the nation submissive and fearful. The most hellish torture, though, is his rape by jail inmates. That it happened in a state institution indicates the depravity and perversion which accompanies repression. Moreover, that the act is committed not by soldiers but by men whom he would have called brothers underscores the warped results of oppressed lives and misdirected anger. Pepe in a flash of insight connects the despair and violence of that prison cell with those of another prison called the Barrio. These experiences galvanize Pepe into a self-transcendent epiphany. Hence, when he decides to kill Puneta, it is not out of revenge. To Pepe, it is a revolutionary act. Later, his decision to join the underground is almost inevitable since no state apparatus, he discovers, permits change. The political and the personal merge as Pepe performs an act of liberation, an act of class commitment. It is an act of nationalism.

Configuring nation: Edwin Thumboo’s A Third Map1 Not all processes of nation formation are as confrontational as the Philippine example. When Singapore separated from Malaysia, the forced statehood had to contend with an inchoate nation, a people divided by communal concerns, a people who saw Singapore more as a commercial entrepot than a national entity deserving of one’s allegiance. Lee Kuan Yew, out of political will, forged a nation from a discourse of survival and pragmatism. No revolution preceded Singaporean statehood. Statehood was foisted on an unprepared, still dispersed, nation. According to Willmott (1989), Singapore in 1965 did not have nationalism or national identity. The state had preceded development of nationalism, had become the first major symbol of identity and had since set out to create others. Thus, it is the state which has nurtured the young republic into the robust entity that it is now. What is believed to be typically Singaporean is state-induced, formed not so much by inter-racial encounters as by the various national campaigns sponsored by government as well as a well-guided civics curriculum. A clean, green, safe and affluent nation is what the state would like the community to give allegiance to. But does the

78  Lily Rose Tope

community share this vision of nation? As the state permeates both public and private spheres, is there a Singaporean nation independent of the state? If there is, what is its vision of itself? To answer this question, I will examine Edwin Thumboo’s collection of poems titled A Third Map (1993). The collection includes selected poems from previous collections Gods Can Die (1977) and Ulysses by the Merlion (1979). Here, I  will focus on his public poetry. A keen sense of history distinguishes Edwin Thumboo’s public poetry, perhaps as a result of his being both a participant of and spectator to Singapore’s national development. His poems impress upon the reader a consciousness which had lived through the birthing of his nation, as well as through its metamorphosis into a thriving international center. The rapidity of the changes stresses the urgency for a sense of history, as sense of the past, even as it creates an anticipation of the benefits of progress. A knowledge of history, Thumboo (1987) explains, forms a compelling hope that is part of the understanding of self, of community, of nation-to-be. A historical sense is ‘an internal sensor’ (Thumboo 1987: 232) against which concepts, assumptions and analytical methods for other cultures and societies are referenced and validated. In contrast to Mass’ confident appellation of its nationalism, A Third Map’s portrayal of its own seems more thoughtful than polemical, more tentative than assured. There is also more introspective examination of the self in regard to state and nation, suggesting some kind of spiritual pursuit that will help define an elusive sense of nation. Thumboo’s historical poems are renditions of Singaporean history in a local voice. They serve as narratives of nation upon which is inscribed the poet’s vision of nation. They are a ‘native worlding’ (to borrow Spivak’s term) (Spivak, 1985) where the ‘native subject is revealed, not only in the denuded informational context of the colonialist narrative but in experiential terms’ (Chin 1991: 276). The caesarian birth of Singapore forms what is probably the earliest memory of nation. What marks the event is not euphoria but trauma whose phantom shadows have remained entrenched in the national subconscious. The poems ‘9th of August – I’ and ’9th of August – II’ capture the moment of independence, when Singapore was separated from Malaysia and catapulted into forced nationhood. The poems reflect the anxiety and vulnerability of an unprepared people. The poem ‘9th of August – I’ is saddened and resigned. The country had a relatively ‘gentle’ colonial experience, but events have pitted it against stronger forces of racial and religious expediencies. A leader tries to negotiate ‘but failed against those minds’. The acerbic but firm defender of Singapore’s interests is punished for his zeal. Accepting fate with grim resignation, the persona foretells of a people ‘more silent/Harder on ourselves’. The poem‘9th of August – II’, almost a simultaneous reaction, reflects the anger and bitterness of the persona (‘They kicked us out . . .’). The persona bristles at the apathy and derision leveled at the tearful leader who is announcing the news (‘One laughed, and called for coffee/Another didn’t turn a hair/Forgetting his crying eyes meant much’). For Singapore, independence has not meant liberation, as it has for

Finding nation  79

many nations; it meant surviving without natural resources, without a cohesive society, without protection against aggression (‘For us what then?’). The two poems personify the confused moment of statehood and all the uncertainties which that moment signifies. However, it also is a national moment, Singapore’s first, for the survival of each individual was then dependent on the strength of the state. The nation has been formed out of untimely rejection but out of that moment has emerged the staunch resolution to survive. The poems therefore articulate Singapore’s vulnerable beginnings and at the same time contextualize the country’s compulsion toward self-sufficiency and competitiveness. This compulsion has taken the road of economics and technology. Singapore’s achievements are acknowledged by the poet through his occasional poems. These poems are not mere poetic tributes to institutions; they are homages to national intellectual monuments. These institutions are cultural fountainheads and are therefore foundations of community formation. Moreover, they are markers of history, of nation-building, serving the function of national symbols in a country which hardly has any. Thumboo extols the forces of industrialization and technology, the prime movers of development, in ‘NTI’ (the Nanyang Technological Institute). Being the supplier of skilled officers and new technology, NTI provides ‘swift coordinates, cutting edges to economy’. As the course taken by the state to address the vulnerability of the young republic, rapid industrialization can only be achieved by the systematic programming of educational policies, making sure they worked in tandem with the needs of the various economic sectors. The establishment of NTI assures the continued availability of manpower to sustain economic development. Hence, NTI is a soldier of Singapore’s economic nationalism, tasked with providing Singapore with value-added technology and trained manpower to achieve economic success. Here is science that engineers The bold coherence of our lives Transformers, semi-conductors, microchips Every control, hydrolation, automation A rainbow’s spectrum, the sun’s secret core Instill patterns of skills as midmorning winds Assert the day’s rhythm, the new learning. All feeding this mortal, invented island Held about the foam, the world’s fever. There is much quiet celebration in Thumboo’s poems when he writes about the achievements of Singapore. The country has acquitted itself well before the world and has overcome the uncertainties of the 9th of August. The objects of celebration, however, are clearly the achievements of the state, and secondarily, those of

80  Lily Rose Tope

the community. The locus of community does not arise from grassroots impetus, but is a product of state enterprise. Expectedly, the poet remains sympathetic to state enterprise. He concurs with the state vision of progress and revels in the sight and sound of its machines. He believes, as he has said in ‘NTI’, in the ability of science to change frontiers. Nation-building has become the initiative of the state, and the state, in turn, has emerged as the center which dictates the form the nation must take. In this process of inventing or framing nation, the poet has aligned himself with the state’s vision. To achieve the goal of nation-building without the benefit of centuries of growth and evolution, the state pragmatically curtails freedoms that will slow down or serve as obstacles to Singapore’s aim of economic self-sufficiency. Some aspects of national life must be sacrificed for the greater good. ‘Catering for the People’ begins with the early state assumption and fear of civil disorder. It refers to a scenario of violence and discord common to contemporary times, both as a reminder of Singapore’s susceptibilities as well as a rationale for the nation’s concerted effort to ‘work at a destiny’. Citing the national ideology of survival and the indelible sense of vulnerability – stemming from being geographically and demographically small, from being dependent on others for resources, from being at the mercy of bigger, stronger nations (‘We are flexible, small, a boil/On the Melanesian face/ If it grin or growl, we move  – /To corresponding places’) – and the lack of a viable alternative (‘There is little choice  –  ’), the poem exhorts the community ‘to make a people’. The means enumerated, however, hew closely to government policies, prompting John Kwan-Terry (1991) to observe that Thumboo’s discourse is subsumed under a larger cultural discourse which includes many ministerial pronouncements on the subject. We strive to find our history Break racial stubbornness Educate the mass and educated – Evacuate the disagreeable Bring the hill to valley, level the place and build And generally cater for the people Set all neatly down into Economy The lines speak frankly of a deliberate channeling of history into a preferred direction. They also indicate the steps taken by the state to establish hegemony. The breaking of racial stubbornness reveals the state’s distrust of communal sentiments inasmuch as they endanger the stability of the state. Unable to wait for the gradual welding of cultures, the state resorts to state powers to maintain communal order. Provocation of racial resentments is punishable by law, proving that the state will protect itself at all cost. Using the full power of the state, government can mold through state-regulated education. Educating ‘the mass and the Educated’ requires not only mass literacy, but also conditioning the educated so that they may become partners of the state. Dissent is not taken lightly, for it is a threat against

Finding nation  81

the hegemony. It seems that the state is capable of enforcing draconian measures (‘Evacuate the disagreeable’) against belligerent though not necessarily traitorous elements whose idea of nationhood may differ from that of the state. The rearrangement of terrain through leveling and building, as well as the transmutation of the population, are done in conjunction with the setting up of a strong economy. While the imposing presence of the state is somewhat muted by an approval of cultural pluralism, the nation being a promising amalgam that could ‘Eat, bat, chateaubriand/Sing old songs that have the rhythm of the sun/Beatlise the stage, turn traditional’, its indispensability to nation formation is asserted once more in the last lines, where a vigilant state continues to follow its plans for development – ‘sensitive to trends, adapting/To these delinquent days’. Thumboo performs the role of spokesperson for the state, not as a paid public relations man or a ministerial official, but as a citizen convinced of the state’s framing of nation. While the idea of a poet supporting the achievements of the state may cause derision, there is an element of sincerity in the poems of Thumboo. His gentle polemics reveals a citizen’s appreciation of state efforts in improving the nation’s quality of life, but this is only one stream of his vision of nation. He can show disenchantment with the political/bureaucratic world. He distinguishes between state and politicians, between the abstraction and the human form. When he speaks for the community, he ironically subverts his support of the state, creating an ambivalence or ambiguity characteristic of the postcolonial narrative of nation. The admiration for a strong efficient state is sometimes bothered by the knowledge of what the citizen gives up and what he becomes when the state becomes prescriptive and intrusive. Thumboo’s ‘community’ poems demonstrate the recursive concern of an individual chafing against state impositions and expectations, and are therefore a manifestation of Bhabha’s performative nationhood. By narrativizing issues, Thumboo establishes an immediacy and intimacy potent in generating community identification. ‘The Sneeze’, for instance, satirizes state regulations toward cleanliness. A food hawker blows his nose and wipes his hand on his apron, unwilling to ‘dirty the drains/Clutter the spittoons’, obeying the injunctions to ‘Keep Singapore clean – Keep Singapore germ free’. The poem suggests a great divide between the discourse of the state and that of the community. The state discourse mandates cleanliness and sanitation to the level of law and elevates them to the level of national ideology. As far as the community is concerned, however, hygiene is purely personal and the social implications of the injunctions are somewhat lost on its members. At best, the laws are regarded as whims of the state. Thus, the hawker’s actions disclose the absence of the kind of civic mindedness encouraged by the state. Obeying the law becomes a knee-jerk reaction, done more to stay out of trouble than for any social purpose. Hence, there has been a failure, not only of communication (as suggested by the elevated language used by the poet to describe the hawker’s motions) but also of national purpose. In sincerely trying to uphold the law, the hawker commits a more serious violation. The poem can be read as a subversion of the state’s desire for nation. The state’s incursion into the realm of personal hygiene has been a violation of privacy and

82  Lily Rose Tope

individuality. Hygiene is a matter of culture and personal habit, but the obsession with cleanliness is often equated with modernity and progress, which are the kernel of nation-building goals. The hawker’s ignorance of the hygienic assumptions of the cleanliness law highlights the cultural disjuncture between the desire of the state and that of the community. A slogan is memorized and obeyed, but not necessarily understood or internalized, and the state injunction is just that – a slogan. Thus, the hawker remains in ignorant bliss, symbolic in his unhygienic crimes against the state. Mass and A Third Map are both responses to state efforts in determining what the nation should be. In both Singapore and the Philippines, the young state has had to contend with difference in social class, ethnicity and ideology, and this has been seen as inimical to national stability. The state pursues its national development goals by dealing with difference, minimizing it or even suppressing it, and by creating a social and political homogeneity which facilitates acceptance of state policies. This homogeneity unfortunately hurts the community, and these two Southeast Asian works express the nation’s wounds. The presence of tension between nation and state seems to be an implicit similarity not only between Singapore and the Philippines, but perhaps even among the other nations of post-independence Southeast Asia. The nature and response to this tension mark the boundaries that divide them. Jose’s Philippines is a divided nation, wracked by social contradictions and beleaguered by a repressive state. Such radical state of things has brought about equally radical solutions. The narrative of Jose leads toward the inevitability of revolution. Thumboo only hints at such radical moments in Singapore – they belong more to the past than to the present. If he does speak of anything radical in his poetry, it is in the rapid changes in Singapore which have created upheavals, not only in the external terrain but also in the psychical one, often creating ambiguous feelings toward the convenience of technology and the loss of the old ways. Thumboo’s state may have authoritarian features, as Jose’s undeniably does, but it elicits respect and admiration. While the element of protest in Mass is strong, explicit and unequivocal, that in A Third Map is more muted, subtle and ambivalent. The former’s nationalism is the raised-fist variety, spawned by the iniquitous conditions during the Marcos years. Jose does not see the problems as endemic to one time (the late 1960s and early 1970s) or one place (Manila). The fact that such conditions have existed since the colonial period makes the anger in the novel credible. As the last of the Rosales men, Pepe is the product of generations of oppression and a symbol of the struggle against class subjugation. Compared to Mass and its explosive discontent, A  Third Map is more subdued, its resistance expressed in rumblings of ‘dis-ease’. If Mass rests on the evils of social inequality, A Third Map rests on political pragmatism. While the Singapore state deals with opposition harshly, it justifies its actions by citing its constraints. Thumboo begins his narrative from the period of vulnerability, inching toward the economic miracle. This narrative has none of the anger and despair of Jose’s.

Finding nation  83

In fact, despite existing social control, Thumboo’s nationalism maintains an element of faith in the state. Finally, early efforts at nation formation can be seen as arduous and conflicted. These texts suggest that finding and founding a nation is a process of negotiation that can either be joyful or hurtful, but never smooth. Exclusion or deprivation is always a danger for a community. In contemporary times, finding a nation is an act of recuperation and agency for a community in search of national belonging.

Note 1 I thank Edwin Thumboo for granting the permission to use the extracts from his poems from A Third Map included in this chapter.

References Anderson, Benedict. 1983. Imagined Communities. London: Verso. Ben-Israel, Hedva. 2011. ‘The Nation-State: Durability Through Change,’ International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society. The End of the Nation State 24(1/2): 65–74. Bernard, Anna. 2013. ‘Reading the Nation’ in Rhetorics of Belonging: Nation, Narration and Israel/Palestine. Pp. 17–41. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. Chan Heng Chee. 1991. ‘Political Developments 1965–1979’ in A History of Singapore. Ernest C.T. Chew and Edwin Lee (eds). Pp.  157–81. Singapore: Oxford University Press. Chin Holaday, Woon Ping. 1991. ‘A Native Worlding: Decolonization and “Race” in the Poetry of Edwin Thumboo’ in Perceiving Other Worlds. Edwin Thumboo (ed). Pp. 269–82. Singapore: Times Academic Press. Fanon, Frantz. 1965. The Wretched of the Earth. London: MacGibbon and Kee. Gikandi, Simon. 1992. ‘The Politics and Poetics of National Formation: Recent African Writing’ in From Commonwealth to Postcolonial. Anna Rutherford (ed). Pp. 377–89. Australia: Dangaroo Press. Heidt, Erhardt. 1987. Mass Media, Cultural Tradition and National Identity: A Case of Singapore and Its Television Programs. Germany: Breitenbach. Jose, F. Sionil. 1979. Mass. Manila: Solidaridad Publishing House. ———. 1988. ‘Literature and Liberation: Art, Life and the Filipino Soul’ in Literature and Liberation: Five Essays from Southeast Asia. Edwin Thumboo (ed). Pp.  43–70. Manila: Solidaridad Publishing House. Joseph, Cynthia and Julie Matthews. 2014. ‘Understanding the Cultural Politics of Southeast Asian Education through Postcolonial Theory’ in Equity, Opportunity and Education in Postcolonial Southeast Asia. Cynthia Joseph and Julie Matthews (eds). Pp. 12–31. London and New York: Routledge. Kwan-Terry, John. 1991. ‘Ulysses Circling the Merlion: The Invention of Identity in Singapore Poetry in English and Chinese’ in Perceiving Other Worlds. Edwin Thumboo (ed). Pp 115–38. Singapore: Times Academic Press. Lim, Geok Lin. 1993. Nationalism and Literature: English Language Writing from the Philippines and Singapore. Quezon City: New Day Publishers. Rutherford, Anna. 1992. ‘The Essential Heterogeneity of Being’ in From Commonwealth to Postcolonial. Anna Rutherford (ed). Pp. 30–38. Australia: Dangaroo Press. Said, Edward. 1978. Orientalism. London: Routledge, Kegan and Paul.

84  Lily Rose Tope

Sicat, Maria Teresa. 1994. Imagining the Nation in Four Philippine Novels. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. October 1985. ‘The Rani of Sirmur: An Essay on Reading the Archives,’ History and Theory 24(3): 247–272. Thumboo, Edwin. 1993. A Third Map: New and Selected Poems. Singapore: Unipress. ———. 1987. ‘Notes on a Sense of History’ in The Writer’s Sense of Place. Kirpal Singh (ed). Pp. 223–33. Singapore: National University of Singapore Press. Tope, Lily Rose. 2018a. ‘Reclaiming Southeast Asia: Cultural Engagements in the Philippine Tertiary Classroom’ in Literature Education in the Asia Pacific. Policies, Practices and Perspectives in Global Times. Chin Ee Loh, Suzanne Choo and Catherine Beavis (eds). Pp. 167–80. London and New York: Routledge. ———. 2018b. ‘Women and the Authoritarian State: The Southeast Asian Experience’ in The Southeast Asian Woman Writes Back: Gender, Identity and Nation in the Literatures of Brunei Darrusalam, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines. Grace Chin and Kathrian Mohd Daud (eds). Pp. 71–88. Singapore: Springer Nature. ———. 1998. (Un)Framing Southeast Asia: Nationalism and the Postcolonial Text in English in Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Office of Research Coordination. Willmott, W.E. 1989. ‘Emergence of Nationalism’ in Management of Success: The Molding of Singapore. Kernial Singh Sandhu and Paul Wheatley (eds). Pp. 578–98. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asia Studies. Wimmer, Andreas and Yuval Feinstein. 2010. ‘The Rise of the Nation-State Across the World, 1816–2001,’ American Sociological Review 75(5): 764–90.

5 INDIGENOUS PEOPLES AND NATION INTERFACE IN INDIA Virginius Xaxa and Roluah Puia

India is a multi-lingual, multi-religious and multi-cultural country. Until the arrival of the British, it was divided into empires, kingdoms and principalities. There were still others who were outside of such political configurations. They came to be known as tribes under the British rule and administration. It was the British who brought all such groups and communities spread over different political entities under one single centralized authority. They all were brought under colonial rules, regulations and administration. The different regions and people came to be linked not only by roads, railways and other means of communication, but also by commodity, credit, land and labour markets. India, under the British, was marked not only by political integration, but also economic integration – but it was far from uniform. It was these developments that eventually led to emergence of Indian national consciousness and rise of the freedom struggle movement in India. After a long and protracted struggle, India gained freedom in August 1947 and a new nation was born. Although India has emerged as a nation, it was faced with many challenges. In fact, the division of the country into India and Pakistan on the eve of independence was a result of such challenges and contradictions. Those challenges continue to plague India even today and pose questions about its identity as a nation. In this chapter, an attempt has been made to take the idea of the nation and engage with it in the context of the indigenous people of India. The dominant conception of nation prevailing in India is that India is a nation or nation-state. This view prevails even in social science literature. Hence, the focus on literature on nation in India is more to do with nation-building than on the way people think of themselves and articulate their interests and aspirations. This chapter attempts to portray and discuss how tribes/indigenous peoples have thought, articulated and acted, or are still thinking.

86  Virginius Xaxa and Roluah Puia

Demographic and territorial distribution It is with the people described as tribes that the term indigenous peoples have come to be associated with in India. It is assumed that they were the original settlers of India, or at least people who inhabited the region before the Aryans arrived. They are said to belong to linguistic stocks other than Aryan and speak a variety of dialects belonging presumably to three main linguistic families: the Dravidian, the Austro-Asiatic and the Tibeto-Burman languages (Ray 1973, 124–25). Since the idea of indigenous peoples is closely linked with the question of tribal or semitribal people, it would be appropriate to provide a brief outline of the tribal people in India. Groups and communities described as tribes – more specifically, scheduled tribes – are enumerated as per the Census of India 2011 (https://censusindia. gov.in/Census_Data_2001/India_at_glance/scst.aspx, accessed January 6, 2020) at 10,42,81,034, constituting 8.6 per cent of the population of the country. Although they form small minority numerically, the tribal communities in India are enormously diverse and heterogeneous. There are wide-ranging diversities among them in respect of languages spoken, size of population and mode of livelihood. This is evident from the fact that as per the Constitution Order (Scheduled Tribes) 1950, as many as 212 tribal communities in as many as 14 states were declared to be scheduled tribes. As per the Scheduled Tribes Order (Amendment 1976), nearly 300 tribal communities were listed in the constitution (Xaxa 2008, 226). The number of communities that find their place in the list of the schedule of the Indian constitution is reflective of this diversity. As per the Census of India 2011 (https:// censusindia.gov.in/Census_Data_2001/India_at_glance/scst.aspx, accessed January 6, 2020), the number of individual groups notified as scheduled tribes is 705. This figure is total of tribal communities listed as scheduled tribes in different states and Union territories of India. It is important to note that a large chunk of tribes in India are spread over different states and Union territories, and hence, the figure of 705 is not a correct mark of tribal communities in the sense of belongingness to a distinct linguistic and socio-cultural group. The proximate figure of tribal communities in this sense is 461, as per the People of India Project of the Anthropological Survey of India undertaken in 1980s (Singh 1993, 12). While it is not possible to provide detailed descriptions of the demographic features and socio-economic status of each of these tribal groups, this section attempts to map out the broad contours of the scheduled tribes of the country in terms of their demography and geography. Tribal regions in India can be divided into six broad categories: The Himalayan Region consisting of the northwestern region consisting of Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh; the northeastern region consisting of Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram, Tripura, Meghalaya and Assam; the central Indian region consisting of Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Odisha and West Bengal; the western region consisting of Rajasthan, Gujarat, Daman and Diu, Dadra and Nagar Haveli, Maharashtra and Goa; the south Indian region consisting of Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu; and finally the

Indigenous peoples in India  87

island region consisting of Andaman and Nicobar Islands, and Lakshadweep. The northwestern region and northeastern region comprise 2.03 and 12.41 per cent, respectively, of the total tribal population in the country. A very large chunk lives in the central India region (52.51 per cent) and western India (27.64 per cent). The southern and island region represent 5.31 and 0.11 per cent of tribal population in the country, respectively (Xaxa 2014, 36–37).

Delineation of tribes The people who are identified and described as indigenous people in India today have been historically approached from the category of tribe. The enumeration and classification of population was an integral feature of the colonial administration under the British. Accordingly, population was decennially enumerated and classified into varied categories with a view to effectively administer the colony. Thus, populations from the early stage of census enumeration were being classified into tribes and castes, and within each into other subcategories. The category of tribe in the era of colonization and colonialism has come to be associated with the idea of primitive or being uncivilized. Hence, the idea of uncivilized or primitive may have been assumption underlying the category of tribes in the census enumeration. However, though this seemed to be the undercurrent idea in the use of category of tribe in the census, this was not the criterion in use when the British colonial administrators/scholars began to develop criteria to distinguish tribes from the other social groups. This may have been the case as the larger Indian population living on the fringe were not very much different from tribes in the modes of their living and livelihood. Rather, they introduced the criterion of religion and not primitivism in delineating tribes. Thus, tribes came to be defined as those who practised animism/tribal religion, which meant belief in and worship of spirits. In short, the population not falling into the category of major religions such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism, Islam and Christianity were delineated as tribes. Later, other criteria  – such as geographical isolation and social backwardness  – were added into the category of tribes. After India attained independence, special provisions were enshrined in the constitution for the welfare and protection of the tribal people. Following this, the schedule of tribes requiring such provisions were made. The schedule initially comprised mainly of tribes enumerated in the 1931 census. The constitution as per Article 342 had provided for listing of tribes in the schedule so that certain administrative and political concessions could be extended to them. In the process, a distinction was drawn; that is, tribe as a social and cultural entity and the other as a politico-administrative category. One may belong to the same social and cultural entity, but may not necessarily be listed for the purpose of politico-administrative benefits – as to who would constitute the latter, that is a politico-administrative decision. Indeed, there are cases when groups treated as scheduled tribes in one state or states are not treated so in another state or states. No wonder that there has been increasing demand by groups and communities in different parts of the

88  Virginius Xaxa and Roluah Puia

country for their inclusion in the scheduled tribe category. Thus, the category ‘scheduled tribe’ has become an important mark of identity and identity articulation of tribes (social and cultural sense) in relation to the state. However, the constitution made no provision for definition of tribes. With increased demand for inclusion in the list of the schedule tribes, the development of criteria had become an inevitable necessity. Accordingly, the government of India constituted a Lokur Committee in 1953 which laid down five criteria for delineation of groups/communities as scheduled tribes. These were: (1) distinctive culture, (2) primitive traits, (3) geographical isolation, (4) shyness of contact with the community at large and (5) backwardness (Govt. of India 1965, 1–2). Backwardness had been unspecified, but it had been elsewhere in the report used to mean social, educational and economic backwardness. These remain the criteria on which the schedule tribe status is legally established.

Tribe, ethnicity and nation Tribes in India have undergone considerable change following decades of state-led planned economic development. Indeed, the idea associated with the term tribe or the use of category tribe is no valid in case of a large number of tribes. Even the criteria on which scheduled tribe status is granted have outlived their utility today. The term and category tribe is much discredited term the world over today. Hardly is this used in academic discourse. Yet in India, the use of the term continues, as it is a legal and constitutional category with which various kinds of legal and administrative and political concessions are intertwined. In the process, the idea underlying the category tribe for tribal communities is no longer one traditionally and historically associated with it. Rather, it is associated with the idea of ethnicity that is not only economically, socially and educationally less advanced, but also disadvantaged that still requires benefits and entitlements under the policy of the affirmative action. Thus, although the category of tribes is maintained, tribes in the way and form they have been acting, regulating and asserting are like ethnicity at certain times and place, and like nation at other times and place. After all, so-called tribes have been articulating beyond their bounded entity and primarily have been thinking, organizing and asserting in reference to other groups. In this sense, tribes share many things with ethnicity such as the collective name, common myth of descent, a shared history, distinctive shared culture, an association with specific territory and sense of solidarity, which may stem from all of these. Other times and places tribes have shown assertions and emotional attachment to territory for regulation of their lives and destiny. The nation is a territorial entity to which people have an emotional attachment and in which they invest moral meaning. It is a homeland, ancestral and adopted. Nationality is a collective identity which the people of the nation acquire by identifying with the nation. For a nation, the people should be in position to communicate with one another; that, is should have a common language. All those who communicate in the same language may make or may not make the nation. It is a combination, the fusion of territory and

Indigenous peoples in India  89

language which makes a nation; a nation is a community in communication. Territory is common to the nation and state, but there is crucial difference between national territory and state territory. The former is a moral entity, and the latter a legal entity (Oommen 1997, 19–20). From the previous discussion, it is clear that tribes do share the features that make up the nation. However, their nationhood is yet to materialize in the form of distinct politico-administrative arrangement, except in case of the few tribes in northeast India. In a way, the autonomy movement has been in a sense an expression of the larger question of the national identity articulation of tribes. In this sense, the assertion of national identity by tribes goes as far back as the early encounters with the British. The tribes resisted the entry of the British and the extension of their rule and administration from the very beginning. This was evident in revolts and rebellions that the tribes waged against the British and other outsiders that came along with them.

Tribal peoples’ struggle for self-rule under the British Prior to the arrival of the British, tribes enjoyed autonomy of governance over the territory they occupied. They held control over the land, forest and other resources. The advent of British rule, however, drew and incorporated them into the larger economic, political and social framework. It is not that tribes did not have such encounters earlier. Many tribes in different parts lived under alien political suzerainty at some point or other. The suzerainty ranged from symbolic gestures of loyalty to the payment of tributes and taxes to the political authority. The extension of the British rule was different, however. It introduced new laws and regulations – civil as well as criminal. It set up an administrative structure that was alien. Like in many other parts of India, the British imposed upon the tribes the notions of private property and landlordism, in place of lineage- or communitybased ownership of land. The revenue collectors/administrative officials were converted into owners and landlords, which they were not. This led to large-scale eviction of tribes from their land and installation of non-tribes in their place. In places where tribes had still control over land, massive transfer of land took place from tribes to non-tribes through such measures as fraud, deceit, mortgages, etc. Since tribes had no practice of record keeping, as they did not have the knowledge of reading and writing, non-tribes took advantage of forging evidence and documents in their favour. The local administration, which was manned by the non-tribes, worked hand in hand with their ethnic kinder men to ensure smooth transfer of land from tribes to non-tribes. The court language was alien to tribes, and they had absolutely no idea of what was happening in the court. Over and above, the colonial state took upon itself the right over the forest, thereby denying tribes the right to collect fuel and other daily necessities of life for which they were so heavily dependent on forest (Singh 2002; Bosu Mullick 1993). These processes at work caused havoc in tribal society. Tribes lost autonomy over their control over land and forest. They lost autonomy over the way they governed and

90  Virginius Xaxa and Roluah Puia

regulated themselves as a society. In short, they lost all autonomy or self-rule they had enjoyed so far for centuries. The response of the tribes to this loss of self-rule or autonomy invariably took the form of armed struggle. In fact, all though the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, early encounters of the British with groups/communities (which later came to be described as tribes) were characterized by a series of revolts and rebellions. Prominent among the revolts at this early phase were the revolt of Pahariya Sirdars (1778), Tamar Revolt (1789, 1794–1795), tribal revolt (1807–1808) and agrarian tribal revolts (1811, 1817, 1820). However, it was revolts that took place after the Great Kol Insurrection of 1831–1832 that has received wide attention. Prominent among these revolts were the Bhumij revolt (1832–1833), the Santhal rebellion (1855–1857), the kherwar/sardari movement (1858–1895), the Birsa Munda movement (1895–1990), etc. (Raghavaiah 1979; Bosu Mullick 1993). Birsa Munda, Sidhu and Kanu were heroic leaders of some of these movements. The history of the northeastern region was no different. Here, too, the encounters between the tribes and the colonial power was a violent one, which led, however, to the victory of the latter due to its superior military might. Yet, the expansion of colonial empire was rather uneven and met with stiff resistance from the tribes. Different tribes put up staunch resistance against the British expansion and control of their neighbouring areas, particularly the hunting grounds lying the in the plains or in the foothills upon which the tribes claimed authority. Central to this is the idea of territory and rule in this clash between colonial empire and the tribes. While tribes are more or less seen as mobile, with fluid attachments to the territory they inhabit, the resistance against the British is significant in that it evokes the existence of a notion about control and rule of a territory among the tribes. Also, tribes have more or less lived in independence from external rule, and hence, the expansion of colonial rule was considered as an intrusion and infringement of their independence. For about two centuries, the British were engaged in trying to contain and control tribes of the northeast. It was only in the end of the nineteenth century that most tribes in the northeast were brought under colonial suzerainty. These early struggles of tribes had primarily to do with overthrowing the colonial rule and administration, thereby recovering the territory and control over land and forest that they had enjoyed. Hence, it would not be altogether out of place to describe these early struggles as a kind of national struggle for self-rule. Of course, self-rule as it has come to be articulated in the post-independence era has been different in a very substantive sense from the ones under the British rule. And yet there has been much overlapping – at least in spirit, if not in letter. With the momentum of freedom struggle movement since the 1920s, the struggle of tribes moved beyond the narrow confines of tribe and ethnicity to freedom struggle movement of people at large against British rule in India. Thus, unlike in the past, this time, the movements were parts of the larger mobilization process of civil disobedience or non-cooperation movements launched by the congress or the other nationalist leadership. However, even in this movement, agrarian and forest issues were not absent. Rather, they were integrated into the form of non-cooperation

Indigenous peoples in India  91

and civil disobedience against the colonial state which was also marked by struggle and resistance against the exploitation and oppression of the landlords and money lenders Xaxa 2016, 230). The latter were mobilized primarily by the left-wing political parties, both in the colonial and post-colonial periods. Such struggles were aimed broadly at security of tenure, reduction of rent, increased share of produce, etc. In these struggles, tribals aligned with other exploited classes of the agrarian society. The struggles were directed at the colonial rule, as well as the exploited section of the India society (Iyer and Mahajan 1986; Singh 1986, 1983). Autonomy envisaged was one which provided tribes freedom from oppression by the state and exploitation by the landlords. Indeed, the idea of autonomy from state oppression and zamindari exploitation was so strong that other forms of domination exercised by non-tribals over tribals was glossed over. That explains why these movements never articulated the demand for greater autonomy for tribals. Even in the postindependence period, this remained unarticulated for a long period of time. The problem with these movements was that they treated the movements primarily seen as land- and forest-based movements. Hence, tribes were treated as not more than peasants and forest dwellers; and hence, the concerns came to be exclusively addressed in terms of economic livelihood. Where such movements did take place, they were invariably led by outside agencies such as political parties, activists, social workers, etc. Where tribals on their own have taken to such issues, they have invariably been part of the wider issues such as demand for political autonomy or general control over land, forest and other resources by the tribals. This has been the case with movements both in pre-independence and post-independence India.

Autonomy movements as national struggle Central India The national identity in the modern form – that is, articulation of distinct politicaladministrative in the form of separate states, either within Indian Union or outside of it  – was a later phenomenon. This came with the emergence a of tiny educated class and its members’ exposure to the wider world. This kind of movement was widespread in the northeastern region, and they have also been more intensely mobilized in the region. In other areas, such movements had been confined to certain pockets of eastern, central and western India. In Gujarat, there was a stir for autonomy among tribes living in the southern part of the state, but it never acquired a mass character. Similarly, in Madhya Pradesh, there was a demand for a separate state by the Gonds from the Gondwana raj during the 1950s, yet it could not be translated into an organized movement. The movement has been one of longest-fought struggles and has passed through many ups and downs. In the process, it has undergone considerable change in its character, organization, strategy, mobilization, etc., since its inception during the 1930s. Indeed, the change is such that the movement is of late said to have shifted from an ethnic character to a regional character. The cases of autonomy

92  Virginius Xaxa and Roluah Puia

movements among tribes in mainland India have thus been few. With the exception of Jharkhand, the demand for autonomy in the form of separate state has been short lived in mainland India. The demand for a separate state for Gonds came to be more sharply articulated after independence, although the echo was there even before independence. In a memorandum submitted to the States Reorganization Commission in May 1963, the Gond leaders demanded the formation of a separate state for the Adivasis to be carved out of tribal areas of Chhattisgarh and contiguous districts of the Rewa region and Vidarbh (Singh 1983). A number of organizations had reiterated the demand. However, this demand remained merely at the level of articulation. It failed to translate itself into sustained and organized movement. The same could be said about of the demand for an autonomous Adivasi state in South Gujarat, which was voiced for the first time by an Adivasi MLA (Member of the Legislative Assembly) in the State Legislative Assembly in 1969. A conference was held and a demand was made, but no organized movement followed (Desai 1983). In fact, the only autonomy movement worth the name in tribal regions other than the northeast has been the Jharkhand movement. It has been one of the longest struggles of autonomy movement in India. The echo of separate state for the tribals was already in the air by the early 1930s. By the end of that decade, an organization by name of the Adivasi Mahasabha was already formed to spearhead the movement for a separate state. Rai Saheb Bandiram Uraon, Theodore Surin and Paul Dayal played key roles in the formation of the sabha. Jaipal Singh Munda became the prominent leader of the movement. Other important leaders of the time were Julius Tigga, Ignace Beck, etc. (Tirkey 2002, 62–63). There was intense mobilization for the demand in the years after independence. In fact, in the first legislative assembly election held after independence, the Jharkhand Party bagged 32 seats in the Bihar assembly; it was the major opposition party. Now the spectacular success of the Jharkhand Party in the assembly election was because of nothing else, but due to their demand and articulation of the separate state for the tribals. There was also massive participation of the people at the visit of the States Reorganization Committee to Ranchi (Tirkey 2002, 80–83). The committee, however, found the demand untenable, and the demand was rejected. This not only demoralized the leadership but also dampened the spirit and enthusiasm of the people. Although the demand continued to be made, there was a lull in the movement. In fact, the party itself disintegrated into a number of splinter groups. However, other organizations soon emerged and began to aggressively articulate the demand for separate state of Jharkhand. Prominent among these organizations were the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha ( JMM) and All Jharkhand Students Union (AJSU). Eventually, the demand was partly conceded in the sense that Jharkhand was given an autonomous regional council with some legislative – as well as executive – powers. However, by this time, a separate state of Jharkhand had become an important electoral issue and national political parties just could not set it aside. In a sense, it was the constraints of electoral politics which set the way for the formation of the separate state of Jharkhand (Bosu Mullick 2003). However, these constraints were the result of

Indigenous peoples in India  93

a long, drawn-out struggle carried out by the tribals and at a later phase also supported by Jharkhandi non-tribals.

Northeast India In the context of nationalist articulation, tribes in the northeast are fertile areas for exploration and discussion. Such articulation was part of the ongoing nationalist movements in India and abroad. Tribes such as Khasis, Bodos, Nagas and Mizos have constructed their own imaginations of national identity, which intensified in the early years of independent India. The areas which are now predominantly inhabited by tribes in the northeast were administratively isolated during the colonial period. Separate governance mechanism which came to be known as partially excluded and excluded areas was instituted in majority of tribal areas. This was more pronounced for the tribes in present day states of Nagaland, Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh, where the system of inner line regulation was put in place. Historically, most tribes in the northeast region have a semblance of autonomy under independent chiefs. In such cases, the chiefs were the highest structure of political authority. The chief ’s authority was limited to the village, or at the most to its associated clans. There was no form of socio-political organization to unite them. Villages were more or less set up on clan and kinship lines, and were the main unit of socio-economic and political life. Feuds were common and intertribal warfare was predominant throughout until the coming of the British. While solidarity between chiefs of similar lineage was there, the question of identity and belonging did not necessarily go beyond clan or tribes. Colonialism brought about significant change in tribal society through various interventions. The first intervention of colonial rule was in the area of administration, where the territories inhabited by the tribes were marked out separately. However, their different form of socio-political organization made it difficult to fix them within such territories. This is primarily because tribes are spread across administrative boundaries. Without much success, different administrative areas were created such as Naga Hills, North East Frontier Tract (NEFT) and Lushai Hills, among others. The expansion of the colonial empire into tribal inhabited areas was also accompanied by the entry of different colonial agents. Among them, the missionaries were the one whose footprint continues to remain significant even today. Proselytization, of course, is one of the most commonly discussed and visible ones. Another area that requires mention is the introduction of modern education. The need of the colonial state and the missionaries to govern and proselytize was behind its introduction. However, the intervention of the missionaries remains prominent, as they are responsible for providing script to these societies which hitherto have largely remained oral. There are then three broad impacts important for our discussion. First is the introduction of a writing system. Oral culture as it is known is one significant marker of tribal society across India. There is a strong link between orality and

94  Virginius Xaxa and Roluah Puia

tribal culture. The second is on the changes in lifestyle brought about my education. The introduction of schooling also introduces new needs and routines in the everyday life of the people. A significant portion of everyday time goes into attending schools resulting into re-ordering of everyday life. The third and most important is the emergence of new educated class. Tribal societies are less stratified on class lines. Except for the chief and his functionaries, such as the priest and village elders, there was not much stratification worthy of mention. This saw a gradual change with the emergence of new class that gradually seeped in after the introduction of education. This was also the time when Indian nationalism was gradually sweeping across the sub-continent. While the entire Indian populace was up against colonial rule, the tribes more or less were left out of the movement. In fact, there was no impact or influence of the nationalist movements among the tribes in the northeast. This is often attributed to the colonial isolationist policy that prevented the penetration of Indian national movement. In the northeast, except for Assam, the other parts of the region that were predominantly tribal areas did not witness or participate in the Indian national movement. However, a political mobilization with a strong nationalistic fervour was taking shape among the tribal communities. Equally important was the anti-colonial sentiments that grew during the period. For instance, tribal communities confronted and challenged the British against their denial of any political representation. Most tribes were barred from having any political representation during the colonial period. By the 1930s, various tribal communities began to demand political representation in the Assam Legislature. Furthermore, the British proposal of establishing a Crown Colony to retain their rule among the tribes was strongly opposed (Syiemlieh 2014). This was enabled with the emergence of an educated class and the rise of political consciousness beyond clan and tribal lines. These were also responsible for the formation of organizations that demand political rights and representation. In 1929, the Nagas under the Naga Club submitted a memorandum to the then Simon Commission, demanding their desire for self-rule. This expression as it stands today was not directed against India or Burma or the British, but merely signalled the aspiration of Nagas regarding their political future. As stated by the representatives in their memorandum, the Nagas expressed their desire to be left alone after British departure. While such aspiration could be clearly seen as a product of colonial rule, what made such articulation possible is also the emergence of new class within Naga society. The majority of the signatories of the memorandum by the Naga Club were all employed under colonial government and also belonged to the first educated class in Naga society. The memorandum of the Naga Club today is considered to be a historic one in the history of the Naga struggle for self-rule. Different organizations also sprouted up among the tribes in different parts of the region. Mention can be made of the All Assam Tribal League (1938), Mizo Union (1946), etc., which were the most notable of the time. In the Mizo case, the emergence of the MU marked a new political beginning in Mizo history.

Indigenous peoples in India  95

Established by the newly educated class, they began to articulate political aspirations of the Mizo. The MU revolted against the colonial state that protected the chiefsm thereby putting them at loggerheads with them. At the same time, the MU also tried to advance the political rights of the Mizo by demanding autonomy prior to merging under Indian Union. The use of Mizo against the restrictive Lusei (Lushai) identity by the Mizo Union was pivotal in the consolidation of Mizo identity in post-independent India. Mizo identity then became the unifying thread of the different clans and tribes, at least for the inhabitants of the then Lushai Hills, now Mizoram. In the present Meghalaya state, the dominant tribes such as Khasi, Jaintia and the Garos have also articulated their own form of autonomy under both colonial and post-colonial states. At the dawn of India’s independence, the Federation of Khasi state and the Garo and Jaintia tribes were made to sign the Instrument of Accession under coercion. Pressured by the government to complete its annexation, 19 out of the 25 Khasi states under the Federation signed. However, Khasi chiefs such as Wickliffe Syiem refused to accede and fled to East Pakistan when denied the right to self-determination (Nongbri 2003, 101–2). There were parallel struggles for tribal autonomy under Indian Union led by leaders such as J.J.M. Nichols Roy. The demand for tribal autonomy was made on the basis of distinct tradition and culture, to safeguard their rights over land and identity. In this context, tribal leaders such as J.J.M. Nichols Roy were instrumental in the incorporation of Sixth Schedule in the constitution under independent India that granted special constitutional rights for the tribals. In post-independent India, the quest for self-rule continued to be the focal point of tribal struggles. The tribal question, as a result, was largely posited in terms of their status within the Indian nation-state. In other words, tribes and their relationship with the nation-state predominates the concern of the leaders of early independent India. It was this that led to the establishment of the Bordoloi committee which proposed the Sixth Schedule for the various tribal majority districts of Assam. This, however, failed to meet tribal aspirations as demand for self-rule continued. The following section will look into nationality formation and its articulation by the tribes, with a special focus on northeast India.

Features of nationality formation There are three important features that mark nationality formation among the tribes: language, religion and identity (Xaxa 2005). While these are not necessarily the precursor to nationalist movements, they occupy centre stage in the articulation of national identity. The northeast region alone has witnessed numerous nationalist struggles since India’s independence. Such struggles range from the demand for complete independence or secessionism to autonomy in the form of statehood or autonomous councils under the Sixth Schedule. Tribal nationalist articulation needs to be understood within their social formations. Tribes, as it is known, are heterogeneous groups with persistent variations

96  Virginius Xaxa and Roluah Puia

within them. Dialectical differences or variations are common across tribes. This is much pronounced in the case of tribes such as the Nagas, Mizos, etc. The projections of a unified national identity are mostly done on specific tribal identity. In the case of the Nagas, it is clearly not language that is behind the nationality formation. What seems to unify the Nagas is their attachment to land, herein the territory among others including common economic pattern, common descent, common social and political life, customs and traditions (Misra 1978, 622). The belief in common descent has been one of the key features and the basis on which modern national communities construct national identities (Smith 2009). Even in the context of Naga, despite their diversity, there is a shared idea of origin and relatedness that bind them as a national community. The Naga struggle, as it is known, remains the first nationalist struggle in northeast India. The Naga National Council (NNC) led by Angami Zapu Phizo, commonly known as AZ Phizo, was pivotal in consolidating Naga identity. The NNC was constituted of 29 members bringing together the different tribal groups under a single political organization. The Naga national struggle, therefore, received mass support from the traditional tribal leaders who were the backbone of the movement. Naga nationalism was therefore clearly exalted upon distinct Naga identity. In the case of other tribes such as the Mizo, we can see the interplay of identity, religion and language. The adoption of the dominant Duhlian language as the lingua franca made possible the emergence of common language among the Mizos. Its adoption by the colonial state for administrative purpose and by the missionary to conduct various mission activities aided its popularity. Duhlian language became the core on which Mizo identity was defined. In the late 1960s, the Mizo Hills and its adjoining areas were hit by famine caused by bamboo flowering which happens at a cycle of every 50 years. While the Mizo populace were apprehensive about its arrival, the Assam government preferred to ignore it as mere tribal superstition. As the famine occurred, thousands of Mizo lives were lost, which resulted into mass disenchantment. Sections of the Mizos in the past, too, were apprehensive about merging with Indian Union. This neglect of the Assam government only adds to this. In the words of Sajal Nag (2001) ‘the sense of alienation and marginalisation of the Mizo people was complete and ideas of separatism and secessionism began to emerge’ (2001, 1030). There was a pent-up anger against the Assam government, which was further escalated by the attempt to impose Assamese as the official language in the 1960s. The issue of language has always been a volatile one in the context of northeast India. Language is one of the core elements of nationality formation for communities such as Assamese, Bengalis and Meiteis. In fact, in most cases, it is the literary bodies that were pioneers in articulating nationalist ideas which later gave impetus to full-grown nationalist movements. At the same time, language can also result into domination and subordination, which was the case in Assam in the 1960. This, in fact, is more pronounced in the case of states where tribes are minorities such as in the states of Manipur, Assam and Tripura. With tribals speaking variety

Indigenous peoples in India  97

of languages, the promotion of tribal language hardly takes place. The dominant languages become the lingua franca, often resulting in the decline of tribal language (Shimray 2000). The 1960s up to the 1970s saw intense mobilization of the tribal communities in the northeast. The attempt to impose Assamese unified the tribals to demand a separate hill state. This was conceded with the upgrading of Meghalaya to a fullfledged state in the year 1972. The other hill districts, such as Mizo Hills, not only seek separation from Assam, but from the Indian Union. The Mizo in the mid1960s launched an armed struggle for independence from the Indian Union. As such, the Mizo began to contrast themselves from the dominant nationality groups. The claim of being a separate nationality was made on the basis of distinct Mizo identity, culture and past. There was therefore a persistent attempt to define Mizo nationality in socio-cultural and linguistic terms. The purpose of this was to legitimate their ethnic distinctiveness from the dominant nationality groups and hence legitimate their demand for separation from Indian Union. Among the tribes, it is common to see the articulation of nationalism on the basis of a tribal identity. Most tribal identities are not homogenous wholes or categories. Also, new identities are constructed as a mechanism of inclusion, giving them a sense of unity. The best-known example of this is Jharkhandi identity. The movement for separate tribal state crystallized into the emergence of a separate Jharkhandi identity among disparate tribal groups such as Santhal, Munda, Oraon and Ho. At the heart of the struggle was a separate tribal state that encompasses tribal inhabited areas of Bihar, Bengal, Orissa and Madya Pradesh. The struggle for separate Jharkhand state was both a struggle for recognition of the tribal rights and protection against dikus (outsiders). Hence, there was a claim for a ‘subnational’ of a separate Jharkhandi identity which was premised on tribal culture and heritage (Prakash 1999). Similar form of articulation can be seen among the indigenous communities of Bangladesh in their projection of Jumma identity (van Schendel 1992). Parallel to such struggles are movements that seek some form of recognition and autonomy. Such movements often take a cultural turn despite their strong political overtones. This is more visible in states with large tribal concentration. The case of Manipur, Tripura and Assam continue to witness different forms of tribal struggles. The difference is that these struggles are not necessarily directed against the central state, but remain more or less confined to their respective states. Such assertions have a strong co-relation to the idea of being indigenous to the land they inhabit. In Tripura, for instance, tribal self-assertion from the early years of independent India was mostly articulated against non-tribal domination. In more recent times, this has taken recourse towards the question of being indigenous. Demographic change has resulted in the socio-economic and political marginalization of the indigenous Tripuri tribals under the hands of the Bengalis. This paved the way to the emergence of a Tripuri national identity, and later on to Tripuri nationalism among the indigenous tribals of Tripura (Bhattarcharya 1989). In the contemporary context, there is an increasing usage of ‘Borok’ as a form of self-identification

98  Virginius Xaxa and Roluah Puia

and an overarching identity for the tribes, with the language and culture of the dominant Tripuri tribe as its cultural base (Bhaumik and Bhattarcharya 2005, 217). A similar form of struggle can be seen in the context of tribes in present-day Assam. The case of the Bodos in Assam provides an interesting reference point in the context of nationality formation. There are two broad patterns visible in the Bodo case. First, there is an increasing dissonance from the broader Assamese identity, which in turn leads to assertion of a separate Bodo identity. Second, the assertion of separate identity flows in tandem with the aspiration for autonomy. The struggle of the Bodos dates back to the 1930s with Bodo leaders submitting a memorandum for separation from the mainstream Assamese society. It became more formalized after the emergence in 1952 of Bodo Sahitya Sabha (BSS), whose primary motive was to protect as well as promote Bodo language. Language was central to the construction and consciousness of Bodo identity. The Bodo, like their other tribal counterparts, were put in a disadvantageous position on the language issue with the use of Assamese as the official language. The BSS then intensified their struggle to introduce Bodo as a medium of teaching which was granted in 1963 (Dasgupta 1997, 358). The Bodos are also a major player in the All Assam Tribal League established in 1933 as one of the first organizations established that advanced the tribal cause in Assam. Subsequent to this was the formation of Plain Tribal Council of Assam (PTCA) in 1967, seeking autonomy for plain tribes of Assam. The tribes in general were gradually pushed to the margins of the dominant Assamese society due to increased land alienation, poverty, indebtedness, severe unemployment, economic exploitation and cultural and political oppression (Hussain 1992, 1049). The resultant outcome of this is the increasing dissonance from the mainstream Assamese society. As for the Bodos, the tipping point came with the demand for a separate Bodo state or separation from Assam. There was then a shift of demand from tribal homeland, as in the case of PTCA, to a separate Bodoland by the late 1980s. The All Bodo Student Union (ABSU) became the forerunner in this leading the movement under the leadership of Upendra Brahma. Since then, both land and identity are becoming pivotal to the Bodo struggle (Misra 1989, 1149). Similar forms of articulation are seen among the tribes of Manipur, as well. While a unified nationality formation has not taken place among the tribes in the state, there are elements of such attempts in the past example that demand political autonomy from the dominant non-tribal communities. The response of the Indian state to these nationalist mobilizations has varied significantly. In most cases, it has resulted in the granting of statehood (as is the case of Mizoram and Jharkhand), while other in others, certain forms of autonomy are granted, as is the case with the Bodos in Assam. However, the fact remains that the nationality formation process among the tribes is marked by a long, drawn-out historical process. Over time, there has been also a paradigmatic shift in the nature of the movement and the struggle, as is evident in the case of the Naga struggle. For instance, there has been a gradual shift of discourse from

Indigenous peoples in India  99

independence to integration of all Naga inhabited areas or, at times, alternative arrangement for the Nagas. Some tribes such as the Mizo have conceded to a statehood status, while others, such as in the case of the Bodo, continue to pursue statehood status.

Conclusion In this chapter, an attempt is made to give an overview of indigenous communities’ engagement with the nation-state in India. Nationality formation and national consciousness has been quite uneven among the tribes, most commonly known as tribal communities. It has been more pronounced in the northeast compared to the other regions of India. Tribes in mainland India faced different challenges. Development projects of different kinds such as dam construction, other industrial projects and resource extraction such as mining, etc., have put them in direct confrontation with the state. Over the years, resistance against such developmental projects is increasingly on the rise and often takes cultural turn. Such resistance is becoming rooted in the question of survival of tribes as a community. The loss of control of resources also resulted in a cultural loss and the breakdown of community. As such, tribal identity or the idea of being tribe as a distinct community are now becoming at the forefront of such struggles (Xaxa 2008). In the context of nationality formation, while language or religion does define and contribute to the emergence of national consciousness, it is tribal identity that is the most apparent marker in the context of nationality formation among the tribes. This is partly because the tribal identity such as the Nagas, Mizos or Bodos, or the more collective identity such as Jharkhandi identity, are the integrative forces that unite the tribes as a nation. Often than not, the ideas of nation and state are often considered to be synonymous and used interchangeably. This has been the case with India, as well. It is often easy to think of state and nation synonymous in India, too. This thinking has caused more problems than it solved, as it privileges a unitary definition of nationhood. The idea of nationhood and nationality definition remain state-centred in the context of India. Despite this, the Indian state is unable to subsume different forms of national imaginings. In the context of tribal communities, nationalist assertions are also largely an assertion of rights and identity which are subdued by dominant nationality.

References Bhattarcharya, H. 1989. “The Emergence of Tripuri Nationalism, 1948–1950.” South Asia Research 9 (1): 54–71. Bhaumik, S. and Bhattarcharya, J. 2005. “Autonomy in the Northeast: The Hills of Tripura and Mizoram.” In The Politics of Autonomy: Indian Experiences, edited by Ranabir Sammadar, 216–41. New Delhi: Sage Publications. Bosu Mullick, S. 1993. “Jharkhand Movement: A  Historical Analysis.” In Continuity and Change in Tribal Society, edited by Mrinal Miri. Shimla: IIAS

100  Virginius Xaxa and Roluah Puia

———. 2003. “Introduction.” In The Jharkhand Movement – Indigenous Peoples’ Struggle for Autonomy in India, edited by Ram Dayal Munda and S. Bosu Mullick, iv–xvii. Copenhagen: IWGIA. Dasgupta, J. 1997. “Community, Authenticity and Autonomy: Insurgence and Institutional Development in India’s northeast.” The Journal of Asian Studies 56 (2): 345–70. Desai, I.P. 1983. “The Tribal Autonomy Movement in South Gujarat.” In Tribal Movements in India-Vol. 2, edited by I.K.S. Singh, 243–59. New Delhi: Manohar. Govt. of India (Dept. of Social Security). 1965. Report of the Advisory Committee on the ‘Revision of the List of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes’ (known as Lokur Committee). New Delhi: Govt. of India. Hussain, M. 1992. “Tribal Question in Assam.” Economic and Political Weekly 27 (20/21): 1047–50. Iyer, Gopal K. and Maharaj R.N. 1986. “Agrarian Movements in Tribal Bihar (Dhanbad) 1972–80.” In Agrarian Struggles in India after Independence, edited by A.R. Desai, 330–61. New Delhi: OUP. Misra, U. 1978. “The Naga National Question.” Economic and Political Weekly 13 (14): 618–24. ———. 1989. “Bodo Stir: Complex Issues, Unattainable Demands.” Economic and Political Weekly 24 (21): 1146–49. Nag, Sajal. 2001. “Tribals, Rats, Famine, State and the Nation.” Economic and Political Weekly 36 (12): 1029–33. Nongbri, Tiplut. 2003. Development, Ethnicity and Gender: Select Essays on Tribes in India. Jaipur: Rawat Publications. Oommen, T.K. 1997. “Introduction.” In Citizenship and National Identity: From colonialism to globalism, edited by T.K. Oommen, 13–51. New Delhi: Sage Publications. Prakash, A. 1999. “Decolonisation and Tribal Policy in Jharkhand: Continuities with Colonial Discourse.” Social Scientist 27 (7/8): 113–39. Raghavaiah, V.R. 1979. “Tribal Revolts in Chronological Order: 1778–1971.” In Peasant Struggles in India, edited by A.R. Desai. Bombay: OUP. Ray, N. 1973. Nationalism in India. Aligarh: Aligarh Muslim University. Shimray, U.A. 2000. “Linguistic Matrix in Manipur.” Economic and Political Weekly XXXV (34): 3007–8. Singh, K.S. 2002. Birsa Munda and His Movement 1872–1901. A Study of a Millenarian Movement in Chotanagpur. Kolkata: Seagull Books. ———. 1986. “Agrarian Dimension in Tribal Movements.” In Agrarian Struggles in India after Independence, edited by A.R. Desai, 145–67. New Delhi: OUP. ———. 1983. “Tribal Autonomy Movements in Chotanagpur.” In Tribal Movements in India, edited by K.S. Singh, 14–21. New Delhi: Manohar. ———. 1993. “The Problem, Marginalised Tribals.” Seminar No. 412: 12–18. Smith, A. 2009. Ethno-symbolism and Nationalism: A cultural Approach. Oxon: Routledge. Syiemlieh, D. 2014. On the Edge of Empire: Four British Plans for North East India, 1941–1947. New Delhi: Sage Publications. Tirkey, A. 2002. Jharkhand Movement. A  Study of its Dynamics. New Delhi: Other Media Communications. van Schendel, W. 1992. “The Invention of the ‘Jummas’: State Formation and Ethnicity in Southeastern Bangladesh.” Modern Asian Studies 26 (1): 95–128. Xaxa, V. 2005. Politics of Language, Religion and Identity: Tribes in India. Economic and Political Weekly 40 (13): 1363–70.

Indigenous peoples in India  101

———. 2008. “The Concept of Indigenous Peoples in India.” In The Concept of Indigenous Peoples in India. A Resource Book, edited by Christian Erni, 223–40. Copenhagen/Chiangmai: IWGIA. ——— (Chairman). 2014. Report of the High Level Committee to Study the Socio-Economic, Health and Educational Status of Tribal Communities of India. New Delhi: Ministry of Tribal Affairs, Govt. of India. ———. 2016. “Tribes and Indian National Identity: Location of Exclusion and Marginality.” Brown Journal of World Affairs XXIII (1): 223–37.

6 AFRICAN INDIGENEITY The Southern African challenge Yvette Hutchison

The issues related to indigeneity are complex and fraught because the implications of how indigeneity is defined extend beyond identity politics to encompass legal and political rights, which in turn affect duties of justice, the basis of political organization, and access to and control of resources in a country. In this chapter, I will consider the specific problems associated with discussing indigeneity in the African context, beginning with definitions and taxonomies. I then shift to considering representation and the role performance has in the ways in which indigenous peoples, particularly in South Africa, are negotiating these issues. The definition of indigeneity in Africa has been highly contentious, since the UN General Assembly raised and passed the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples on 13 September 2007.1 At this meeting, the African Group raised objections to the Declaration’s definition of indigenous peoples in the African context, the concept of self-determination, issues related to land ownership, the exploitation of resources, the establishment of distinct political and economic institutions, and how these would affect national and territorial integrity.2 Vincent Nmehielle, Associate Professor of Law at the University of the Witwatersrand, in his introduction to the 30th volume of Cultural Survival3 Quarterly, points out a central issue with how some African nations approach indigeneity: ‘While all Africans are indigenous in the sense that their ancestors were there before European colonists, most of them would not fit the broader definitions of the term’,4 where they: are characterized less by their mode of production than by their small numbers, remote locale, lack of representation in political structures, and the extreme threat to their lands and lifestyles from governmental and international interests that have failed to consult them or involve them in decisions concerning their fate. (Nmehielle 2006)

African indigeneity  103

The International Work Group for Indigenous People (IWGIP) suggests that there are ‘around 50  million indigenous people in Africa, mostly nomadic and seminomadic pastoralists and hunter/gatherers who live in situations of marginalization and discrimination’ in 22 African countries.5 The indigenous peoples of southern Africa comprise mainly peoples known collectively as the San, as well as the Khoi Koi peoples. In southern Angola, they comprise 0.1% of the population and they are mainly located in remote and inaccessible areas. In Botswana, 3.3% of the population (https://www.iwgia.org/en/botswana/244-indigenous-peoples-in-bot swana.html, accessed January 6, 2020) considers itself to be indigenous, and they are often referred to as the Basarwa, and comprise of the u/’hoansi, Bugakhwe, // Anikhwe, Tsexakhwe, !Xoo, Naro, G/wi, G//ana, Kua, Tshwa, Deti, ≠Khomani, ≠Hoa, //’Xau‡esi, Balala, Shua, Danisi, /Xaisa. In southern Botswana, the Balala and Nama indigenous peoples extend into South Africa and Namibia. South Africa’s indigenous peoples comprised approximately 1% of the population, with the San groups including the ≠Khomani San, residing mainly in the Kalahari region, the Khwe (residing mainly in Platfontein, Kimberley) and the !Xun; and the Khoekhoe, who include the Nama (Northern Cape Province), Griqua (Western Cape, Eastern Cape, Northern Cape, Free State and Kwa-Zulu-Natal provinces) and Cape Khoekhoe (Western Cape and Eastern Cape, with growing pockets in Gauteng and Free State provinces). The Koranna (Kimberley and Free State Province) are grouped with the Khoekhoe by the IWGIP, but this designation is contested by some. The indigenous peoples of Namibia comprise approximately 8% of the population and include the San (Khwe, Hai||om, Ju|’hoansi!Xun, Naro, !Xoo), Nama, Himba, Zemba, Twa. In Zimbabwe, the two peoples who self-identify as indigenous are the Tshwa (Tyua, Cuaa) San, who are found in the Tsholotsho District of Matabeleland North Province and the Bulalima-Mangwe District of Matabeleland South Province in western Zimbabwe, and the Doma (Wadoma, Vadema) of Chapoto Ward in Guruve District and Mbire District of Mashonaland Central Province and Karoi District of Mashonaland West Province in the Zambezi Valley, making up 0.03% of the country’s population.

Issues regarding colonial taxonomies and representations Taxonomies are key to this analysis. In most parts of Africa, colonially defined racial and ethnic classifications continue to dominate people’s thinking and speech. The processes of dismantling these terms are complex and fraught with conflict, because they have become primary markers of how people define their identities, with their and other peoples’ attendant values and hierarchies. Ugandan academic and political commentator Mahmood Mamdani suggests why critical engagement with these taxonomies is so important. In analyzing the intersection between politics and culture in the context of civil war and genocide in Africa and the Balkans, he has argued that we need ‘to understand the extent to which colonial institutions . . . shape[d] the agency of the colonized’ (2001: 652) by the ways in which they ‘legally inscribed [peoples] identities’, which were then ‘enforced by the state, and then . . . reproduced by institutions that structure[d]

104  Yvette Hutchison

citizen participation within the state’ (Ibid.: 654). Here he distinguishes between the way in which colonial states used the terms ‘race’ and ‘ethnicity’: non-natives were identified racially and hierarchically, with Europeans – meaning whites – at the top, followed by ‘Coloureds’, Asians, Arabs and then Hamites; natives were said to belong to ‘ethnic groups’, who were considered to be in dire need of being civilized. Such classification was not limited to Africa, but also manifest in other colonies. Mamdani has analyzed the impact of colonial historians and cultural policy makers like M.G. Smith and Sir Henry Maine, tracing both the legal and social implications of their proposals which aimed ‘to rethink and reconstitute the colonial project on a more durable basis’ (2013: 6). This involved defining a bifurcation between civil and customary law centred around tribalism as a reified form of ethnicity. He argues that ‘the native was classified and reclassified, each time in response to political necessity, but always in the language of cultural difference and cosmopolitan tolerance’ (Ibid.: 30). A particularly pernicious aspect of this process was the definition of two kinds of natives – the ‘aboriginal and civilized’ (Ibid.: 31), based on location, language and in the case of Asians, religion, with non-Muslim peoples living in Malaysia being described as ‘aboriginal’. Here the term ‘aboriginal’ is used pejoratively in terms of cultural judgement, and explains the later complexities involved in unpacking indigeneity, when often these terms are conflated. In Africa, classification involved resolving the fact that in colonies, not all nonnatives were colonizers. This is where the definitions of race and tribe became affective – according to Mamdani, Non-natives were tagged as races, whereas natives were said to belong to tribes. Races were said to comprise all those officially categorized as not indigenous to Africa, whether they were indisputably foreign (Europeans, Asians) or whether their foreignness was the result of an official designation (Arabs, Colored, Tutsi). Tribes, in contrast, were all those defined as indigenous in origin. (2013: 47, emphasis in original) These definitions addressed the fact that both subject races and subject ethnicities were colonized. However, these classifications have cast long shadows for people classified racially as ‘non-native’, as they were extended certain privileges by colonial governments that provoked further resentment by those defined as ‘native’ by the colonizers. Examples include the ‘coloured’ people of South Africa (Gqola 2010: 13) and the Tutsi of Rwanda and Burundi. These divisions between peoples defined as ‘strangers’ in relation to ‘natives’ (Mamdani 2013: 71) continue, or remain emotionally ‘sticky’ (Ahmed [2004] 2014: 16) in post-colonial Africa and beyond because these colonially enforced terms and relationships have not been challenged to any great degree. In consequence, perceived degrees of belonging are defined by ethnicity and race, whose terms have not been renegotiated, even though many people have interacted with one another in the interim, creating

African indigeneity  105

complex multi- and intercultural societies. These taxonomies have also obfuscated the ways in which people have redefined their own sense of group identity and belonging. For example, Usman has traced how the Hausa-speaking Habe and Fulfulde-speaking Fulani living in the area of Central Sudan had ‘no tradition of originating from a common ancestor’ (2006: 28). In the seventeenth century, they had an identity based on linguistic commonality, but by the nineteenth century, this definition had shifted from a linguistic definition to a political estate or occupational group (Ibid.: 153). In the post-colonial context, many African nations have obliterated indigenous populations either by overstating assertions of ethnic homogeneity, as in Botswana, or subsuming these groups into a generic group, like the use of the terms coloured, San or Khoisan in South Africa. This has led to the marginalization of minority populations that comprise of unique linguistic and cultural groups who have occupied areas of southern Africa for millennia. According to Cook and Sarkin, there are: an estimated 95,000 San living in communities across Southern Africa, with the greatest number (45,000–60,000) in Botswana. . . . However, Botswana’s government does not recognize within its borders the intrinsic quality of ‘indigeneity’ to any specific group, but rather claims that all Batswana are indigenous  – and therefore ineligible for additional protections under the law, international or otherwise. (2006: 96–97) These struggles are most evident in the terminology used to refer to the peoples concerned. Hitchcock and Biesele (2002) have traced ‘the complex and problematic history’ of using the terms ‘San’, ‘Bushmen’, or ‘Basarwa’ as ‘possible appellations for the general group’, because they have different meanings for different cultural and linguistic groups. ‘Basarwa’, used in Botswana, is viewed by some as a pejorative because it suggests a non-person. In South Africa, Khoe-Khoe or Khoisan is another contested term, often used to refer to peoples previously and disparagingly termed ‘Hottentots’. These peoples are culturally and linguistically different from the San, making these terms problematic. However, Hitchcock and Biesele suggest: In late 1996 representatives of various San groups met in Namibia, where they agreed to allow the general term ‘San’ to designate them externally. This decision was reaffirmed at a meeting on ‘Khoisan Identities and Cultural Heritage’ held in Cape Town, South Africa in July, 1997. It was also agreed at the Cape Town meeting that specific group names should be employed for the various individual social units. Adopting terms of self-appellation acknowledges the new sense of empowerment of indigenous southern Africans. (Ibid.)

106  Yvette Hutchison

In view of the complexities of terminologies, I will follow the pattern set out by these agreements, unless the groups I refer to self-designate differently.

Indigeneity in South Africa I turn to consider South Africa as an example of how these discourses are constituted, and the complexities involved in ‘inventing’ new approaches to the discourses and ‘practices of self ’ (Foucault 1997). Officially, the San are cited in the coat of arms launched on Freedom Day, 27 April 2000, which the government official site suggests is ‘traditionally considered to be the highest emblem of the State’.6 The government website site explains that: The shape of the shield makes reference to the drum, and contains two human figures from Khoisan rock art. The figures are depicted facing one another in greeting and in unity. . . . The motto is: !ke e: /xarra //ke, written in the Khoisan language of the /Xam people, literally meaning diverse people unite. It addresses each individual effort to harness the unity between thought and action. On a collective scale it calls for the nation to unite in a common sense of belonging and national pride – unity in diversity. (www.gov.za/about-sa/national-coat-arms, accessed January 6, 2016) The symbolic reference to ‘the Khoisan’ in relation to South Africa is significant insofar as it erroneously suggests that this is a particular group of people who speak a single language, but no such people or language exists. The reference to ‘the Linton Stone, a world-famous example of South African rock art’ hints that this icon is not depicting contemporary indigenous peoples of South Africa so much as the idea of the mythic, ‘oldest known inhabitants of our land and most probably of the Earth’ (Ibid.). This reference is a way of suggesting equality in diversity without foregrounding any one ethnic or cultural group in South Africa. In effect, this representation renders South Africa’s indigenous populations even more invisible. Having said this, it is worth noting that South Africa has evidenced a level of commitment to indigenous people not seen elsewhere in Africa. For example, the 1999 government out-of-court settlement of 250 square miles of land in the Kalahari to the ≠Khomani San, which also gave them extensive land-use rights to Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park, is thus far the sole successful land claim by an indigenous group in southern Africa. Yet, the activist land struggles go on, especially for the Khoisan who have been designated as ‘coloured’, as Laura Secorun noted in 2018. This is because, as United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms of Indigenous People, Rodolfo Stavenhagen pointed out in his visit to South Africa in August 2005, South Africa has not constitutionally recognize the country’s six self-identified indigenous groups by placing their languages alongside the country’s 11 nationally recognized languages, nor has it

African indigeneity  107

established a national registry for officially recognized indigenous groups. Stavenhagen’s report recommended an acceleration in South Africa’s land restitution process for other indigenous communities in South Africa, and the provision of the necessary resources and support the San need to convert their farms into successful enterprises (in Goodman 2006). One of the central strategies to address these issues has been to foreground the preservation of indigenous culture through tourism, which has raised issues regarding representation and how cultures are performed. There is a real tension between the need to acknowledge and deconstruct colonial stereotypical representations of indigenous peoples and their need to perform these representations to ensure their economic survival. Neville Alexander has suggested that we need to ‘invent a new set of concepts that are more appropriate to the peculiarities of South African history, seen in the context of world history’ (2001: 83); perhaps through challenging ‘practices of self ’, whereby indigenous populations as socio-cultural subjects are actively involved in constituting themselves by engaging with discourse, rather than simply being ‘acted upon’ by it (Foucault 1997: 291). I thus turn to considering how indigenous African oral cultures, including those of the San, have been represented by European cultures whereby the archive has dominated as a repository of hegemonic power, the role performance has played in the circulation of these representations both locally and globally, and the ways in which performance is being mobilized by indigenous peoples to survive now.

Re-engaging colonial representations of indigeneity in South Africa Representations of the San peoples as ‘Bushmen’, ‘the missing link’ between animals and people, were circulated widely in Africa and Europe via natural history museums, which included diorama depictions of indigenous peoples, and the travelling exotic human zoos that displayed figures like Saartjie Baartman, the Hottentot Venus and Franz Taibosh, known as ‘the wild dancing Bushman’ (see Parsons 2009) in Britain, Europe and America. Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century drawings by naturalists like Samuel Daniell (1775–1811), William Daniell (1784–1837) and Francois Le Vaillant (1753–1824), whose writing and drawing of his encounters with ‘Hottentot’ peoples during his travels in southern Africa, that were translated from French into German and English, played a major role in establishing how Europe saw southern Africa. The portrait photography of Gustav Theodor Fritsch, Peter Kolb, G.A. Farini and W.T. Makin in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (see Landau 1996; Dietrich and Bank 2008), and the fantastic descriptions in literature communicated a sense of indigenous people as being ‘Other’, having exaggerated physical features or behaviour. They highlighted these cultures as being fixed, not allowing for change or response to the impact of modernity or post-modernity. Examples in early Dutch-Afrikaans drama include Boniface’s De Temperantisten, A.G. Bain’s Kaatjie Kekkelbek, some of Melt Brink’s plays and S.J. du Toit’s Magrita Prinslo, which depict the indigenous peoples of South Africa as

108  Yvette Hutchison

being limited to the subservient role of servants and outside the white community, being morally inferior or used as comic relief in the plays (see Keuris 2010). In twentieth-century South African literature, Stephen Black used the Kaatje character in various ways to depict mixed Cape society in Cape Town, and in the 1930s, the Afrikaans writer Mikro included a sympathetic ‘hottentot’ character called Toiings (English, ‘tatters’) in a trilogy of novels by that name, which were turned into a play by Andre Brink in the 1970s. This representation of indigenous people as comic continued most notably with Jamie Uys’ film The Gods Must Be Crazy (1980), which is set in Botswana and follows the story of Xi, a San of the Kalahari Desert, played by Namibian San farmer N!xau ǂToma, whose people are presented as having no knowledge of the world beyond their own. However, ethnographer John Marshall’s shifts this pattern with his film N!ai, the Story of a !Kung Woman (1980), in which N!ai tells her own story, and the story of Juǀ'hoan life over a 30-year period, alongside the voice of the filmmaker. This film exemplifies an awareness of new approaches to ethnographic material evidenced from the 1970s under the influence of socio-linguist/anthropologist scholars like Dell Hymes and Johannes Fabian, and discourses of ‘new museulogy’. Many anthropologists and museums began revising their modes of research and curation, particularly when reinterpreting imperial histories, regarding the acknowledegment of the observer’s perspective and positionality in terms of cultural frame and to facilitate coevalness in terms of time. However, millions of people have viewed the plaster casts of 13 /Xam, men and women in dioramas like that of the South African Natural History Museum, which sat alongside exhibits of giant skeletons of whales, dinosaurs and other exotic specimens that have been professionally stuffed and mounted. The human casts were taken off people living near Prieska in 1912 to preserve an exact physical record of them as a people. Patricia Davidson convincingly argues that although by the time these people were cast, they ‘no longer wore the traditional clothing made from animal skins and had long since been dispossessed of their hunting grounds, their history of resistance and subordination was not presented in the museum’ (1998: 143–44). In fact, it was not until 2001 that the ‘Bushmen Diorama’ was closed to allow for a process of consultation with descendant communities – which Iziko7 refers to as ‘Khoe-San’ communities – ‘regarding the ways Iziko presents their cultural heritage’.8 From 1996–1998, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) began engaging South Africans with their disavowed stories, and as a consequence various institutions, including national museums and galleries began to reconsider their approaches to representations of the past (Hutchison 2013) and how these could interface with local communities (Marilyn Martyn in Skotnes 1996: 9–10). The rediscovery of the Bleek and Lloyd archive,9 housed at the University of Cape Town, was of enormous significance at this time, as it re-engaged scholars and artists with a primary material regarding peoples who were all but extinct. Between 1870 and 1884, German philologist Wilhelm Heinrich Immanuel Bleek and his

African indigeneity  109

sister-in-law Lucy Catherine Lloyd had organized for /Xam and !Kung informants, who had been convicted to imprisonment in the Cape Breakwater prison for various offences, to live with them at their home on Mowbray and share their stories, drawings and cultural worldviews. Five men – A!kungta, //Kabbo, Diä!kwain, #Kasin and //Kabbo’s son-in-law, /Han#kass’o  – and a woman, !Kweiten-ta-// ken, contributed significantly to this project, which resulted in more than 13,000 pages that are now available online as part of the Lucy Lloyd Archive.10 One of the first exhibitions to critically engage with the ways in which indigenous peoples of Southern African had been depicted was Pippa Skotnes’ Miscast: Negotiating the Presence of the Bushmen, which opened on 14 April 1996 at the South African National Gallery, near the South African Natural History Museum. This exhibition was staged a year after the Griqua National Conference which had culminated in Cecil le Fleur petitioning Parliament to request the return of Saartjie Baartman’s preserved brain and genitals from the Musée de l’Homme in Paris. In this exhibition, Skotnes collated images of ‘Bushmen’ from various museums in South Africa and Europe, except for the British Museum (Natural History), which had decided ‘to withhold images of human remains in its collection’ (Skotnes 1996: 19). The exhibition included photographs, live casts, bones, body parts (including hair, tissue, nails, and fluids), verbal accounts, travel ethnographies, field work, movies, voice recordings, fingerprints, transcribed life histories, poetry and fables that formed part of the popular dioramas of museums from all over the world. It sought to critique the implications of the fact that ‘a special emphasis of interest in these exhibits was on the Bushman body and its perceived peculiarities’, which were ‘further exploited by advertisers and popular film-makers, who perpetuate the image of the Bushman as cast out of time, out of politics, and out of history’ (Ibid.: 17). Carmel Schrire, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology, reported that this exhibition, ‘attracted more interest, outrage, and passion than any other exhibit in the Gallery’s history, as well as in the history of the people it portrays’ (‘Miscast: Three Views’, 1996). She suggests that this is because the exhibition: bypasses the academic minuet danced to limited audiences. . . , by stepping right out of the mould of mannered dioramas and curated collections by exhibiting these same objects in an utterly different way. It does all this by dint of artistic creativity and sheer bravado, offering a series of images that catapult right into the darkest heart of the anthropological venture, to conflate science and sorrow, archives and agony, and to invest museums and their tidy displays with the cold, sour stench of the mortuary. (Ibid.) Right from the outset, form was an issue. It juxtaposed academic discourse with sensitive images – both visual and corporeal in the masks and body casts – for its audiences, which included invited members of communities still affected by the

110  Yvette Hutchison

histories on display. It highlighted not only aesthetic and ethical issues of representation and curation, but also problems involving the ownership of this material, and to what extent such exhibitions in state-funded venues can destabilize systems of power, given that they remain state apparatus (Althusser 1993) and part of the processes of inventing traditions that ‘seek to inculcate certain values and norms of behaviour by repetition, which automatically implies continuity with the past’ (Hobsbawm 1983: 1f). If some thought the form went too far, others thought that it did not go far enough. Rustum Kozain, then a tutor and prospective PhD student in the Dept. of English at the University of Cape Town, asked: If these photographs alert us to, ironise and thematise the fact of representation, why not use them too as a site where the history of the present exhibitors’ power to represent may be displayed. All the variables: childhood, hard work, education, funding, artistic vision, collaboration, friendships. How, in other words, does a particular contemporary face come to be there, on the wall, mediating to us? How, I want to know, does Miscast otherwise challenge past and (its own) present representations of the Khoisan? (‘Miscast: Three Views’, 1996) Here Kozain echoes Taylor’s challenge regarding the invisible hegemony of archival curation, where curators do not acknowledge their involvement in the hegemonic processes of ‘selection, memorization or internalization, and transmission’ (Taylor 2007: 21) of material, nor how these processes effect the material being explored. Kozain asks: ‘Why not facial masks cast from the exhibitors’ faces? Or the exhibitors’ names placed under the existing masks? Or would that be misrepresentation?’ (‘Miscast: Three Views’, 1996) This exhibition highlighted the issues of taxonomies raised by Mamdani, particularly for those who do not fall into the easy categories of race or ethnicity that mark them as insiders. Kozain is categorized as being ‘coloured’, he says: my parents trace lines to exotic origins: Turkey, Indonesia, Wales. They never mention the kink in our hair. In age though, their cheekbones speak silenced lineages. But I am not Khoisan. I know not the ways of Karretjiemense. Nor do I speak the Afrikaans of the Northern Cape, or in clicks. Similarly am I not Turkish, Welsh, Indonesian. Nor white – not semiotically, not economically. Neither am I black, unless intentionally, rhetorically. But the whips of language have left their weals on me: hotnot, kaffer, kerrienaat (curry-arse); traces of who I could/ should have been. And I view the first chamber of Miscast more and more now in agreement with Khoisan activists; more and more as the exhibited. How the structures remain intact. (Ibid.)

African indigeneity  111

And the ongoing effects of inadvertently replicating images as we try to deconstruct them is suggested in Kozain’s description of an experience he had on the way home from this exhibition at the Off Moroka Cafe Africaine on Adderley Street: A white woman serves me. The wall to my left sports a naive watercolour of a Bushman hunter. In the kitchen, black women. . . . A woman appears from the kitchen, Khoisan cheekbones. Her name tag reads ‘Catherine’. Our eyes meet momentarily. I feel like a voyeur who has seen Catherine’s genitals. I want to drink myself to death. (Ibid.) This exhibition went beyond the ‘naive watercolours’ of the naturalist painters to include body casts, which were visceral reminders of the humiliation of indigenous peoples in the past. As we looked at the casts and walked over images pasted to the floor, it felt to me as if the colonial project continued to resonate in the present, and the abjection of every indigenous person cited was being perpetuated as we continued to gaze at them, without taking our places in this archive. It highlights the very real problems linked to trying to deconstruct hegemonies and representations, the issues of appropriate aesthetics and forms,11 and the potential somatic effects these images and objects might have on members of the public who remain implicated as silent/silenced colonized subjects. After viewing the exhibited casts, family members of the original models suggested that, ‘What Skotnes had done was to renew that dishonour in the present’. When asked to remove the casts, Skotnes said she could not, but instead ‘offered to add the recording of our protests to the exhibition as they were part of the history, the critique” (Yvette Abrahams in ‘Miscast: Three Views’, 1996). This again suggests the tension between academic discourse, archival procedures and engaging with members of the public. It raised questions regarding the ownership of the material, images and narratives, while highlighting that the powers inherent in curation and historic representation had not really shifted much at all. This exhibition reminded me of Mexican/Chicano performance artist Gomez Pena and Cuban-American interdisciplinary artist, writer and curator Coco Fusco’s The Couple in the Cage (1992–1993) and Two Undiscovered Amerindians Visit the West (1992–1994). In these performances, the artists exhibited themselves in a cage as ‘authentic’ Amerindians from a previously undiscovered island off the Mexican coast in and outside museums in North America and at arts festivals, ‘staging the lack of reciprocity and mutual understanding inherent in “discovery” ’ (Taylor 1998: 163). These performances and the Miscast exhibition both critiqued and replicated this lack of reciprocity. One of the reasons for the protests may have been the performance sites themselves, which created confusion between experiencing the event as a traditional exhibition and a critiquing thereof. When performance moves out of a fictional space that is clearly outside reality, to one that purports to be scientific, offering an objective reality that can be verified, it is harder to ask

112  Yvette Hutchison

questions. Instead, the ‘iterative and citational practice by which discourse produces the effects that it names’ (Butler 1993: 2) is replicated, and thus the discourses on indigenous subjects are more easily reinforced than deconstructed.

Performing indigeneity, heritage and ‘cultural tourism’ Similar issues have arisen around cultural tourism, which is an important way in which many indigenous peoples in southern Africa are making a living. Examples include the 5,640-hectare privately owned Kagga Kamma (Place of the Bushman) Game Reserve, some 250 km from Cape Town in the Cedarberg Mountains, where one of the main attractions of the reserve is to meet ‘authentic Bushmen’, the ≠Khomani people of the Kruiper family (see Buntman 1996; Sehune 2012); and the O’Kiep, Nama Khoi Local Municipality, Northern Cape Province, which hosts Crafters, Arts Practitioners and organizations who work with local people in the Namakwa region to address challenges faced by indigenous peoples in the region. These include access to information, viable markets and reasonably priced raw materials for craft production, as well as access to funding and finance. In his Rethinking Indigeneity Project, Keyan Tomaselli and his team set out to consider the issues arising from cultural tourism which involves ‘canned anthropology’, whereby ‘Western tourists go to exotic lands to discover how “different” people live’ on the one hand, and ‘for the Other, there is the appeal of cash and sometimes this odd process is cloaked in what is labelled “development” which holds the promise of a better material life so they are tempted to participate as well’ (Tomaselli 2012: Preface). In relation to the representations of the Bushmen and Zulu peoples, the project sought to consider, ‘How such performative communities are constituted by the state, tourism ventures and researchers’; and ‘How these communities interact with tourism ventures and researchers’ (Ibid.: iii). Simultaneously, it sought to challenge the muted nature of the encounter between the researcher and their subjects (Ibid.: xv), an issue raised by Kozain in relation to Skotnes’ exhibition. One of the projects they analyzed was !Xaus Lodge, which was built in part to alleviate poverty connected to the !Ae!Hai Kalahari Heritage Park in the early 2000s. It was a central part of the establishment of the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park, mentioned earlier, that amalgamated The Gemsbok National Park in South Africa and Botswana under the management of SANParks, comprising over 3.6 million hectares. In May 2002 the SA government and SANParks transferred ownership of 50,000 hectares of land within the boundaries of the park to the ≠Khomani San and Mier communities that had once roamed or farmed this area. The communities then leased the land back to SANParks and was allocated funds to construct a tourism facility referred to as a Co-operation Lodge, to be jointly owned by the communities. Members of the ≠Khomani community also act as trackers, guides, makers and sellers of crafts to tourists, whom they sometimes teach to shoot a bow and arrow. They offer their understanding and knowledge of the area, and

African indigeneity  113

explain folklore. During the project, they articulated their sense that their direct interaction with tourists, which is not always part of these cultural venues, enabled them to feel more empowered, to be viewed ‘as a trained or educated person who has the knowledge and who carries the history’ (Isak Kruiper, interview, qtd. in Dyll-Myklebust and Finlay 2012: 126). However, despite the fact that ≠Khomani community members undergo hotel management training courses and perform various roles, they still perform what is perceived as an ‘authentic’ articulation of themselves, according to tourist expectations, particularly regarding their tracking skills, their ability to survive in the desert and their culture as being spiritual, noted for its ancient knowledge of nature and ‘traditional’ storytelling. This project has highlighted two aspects of such ventures: first, how the ways in which indigenous people like the ≠Khomani choose to define themselves and actively participate in the preservation project allows them to benefit economically from the venture; and secondly, the ongoing potential for cultural misunderstandings such as different expectations regarding contractual work expectations, or the willingness of corporations like SANParks to listen to advice given by employees, based on local knowledge (Ibid.: 127). This project has worked better than most because it has authorized dialogue and negotiation. Other examples, like the Ostri-San traditional cultural village and ostrich farm in the Hartebeespoort Dam area in the North West Province, which is no longer operational, and the Sîsen Craft Project based in the northern Cape, which has struggled to survive since it began in 2000, suggest the problems that arise when the ‘development’s priorities lie somewhere other than with disempowered people’ (McLennan-Dodd and Barnabas 2012: 139). A more recent example of a cultural tourist project run by a local San community is !Khwa ttu, which means ‘water pan’ in the extinct /Xam language, while also referring to healing. This site was officially opened in spring 2006. The project was established through the Working Group for Indigenous Minorities in Southern Africa (WIMSA), with Irene Staehelin, a Swiss anthropologist and former Cultural Survival board member, who set up the Swiss Ubuntu Foundation to support the project. The South African government provided funds to clear away the invasive non-native plants from the grounds. The project narrates itself as run jointly by the ‘San’ and the Ubuntu Foundation. It articulates the centre as an educational facility that aims to help San people acquire general life skills and learn more about their own history, culture, and language; and as a tourist facility, which over the past six years has supported San people from the local area and other parts of southern Africa in taking courses on entrepreneurship, tourism, health, community development and craft production and marketing. It reciprocally invites tourists ‘to spend time with the San’ and thereby ‘learn how we can live more happily in the world in ways that have minimal impact on our earth. At !Kwa ttu we learn with the San for a better future’.12 The project overtly discourages any researchers seeking to do anthropological research. In choosing to use the general term ‘San’, this project includes indigenous peoples from Namibia, South Africa, Botswana and Angola, rather than advocating

114  Yvette Hutchison

specific indigenous communities, cultures or languages. This stands in strong contrast to, for example, the !Xuu and Khwe Cultural Project in Schmidtsdrift, where the peoples distinguish between themselves, even on the level of styles of clapping, as Riccio notes, ‘[w]hile the Khwe considered themselves Bushmen, the !Xuu considered the Khwe to be blacks or Bantus’ (2007: 106). These examples suggest that there is thus merit in acknowledging cultural specificity and difference, but also the need to engage with the unconscious internalization of the taxonomies of colonialism and/or apartheid to facilitate potential cultural collaboration and economic self-determination for indigenous peoples.

The stories of this land The emphasis in these projects on folklore and crafts is significant, given that one of the most significant markers of indigeneity, cited by indigenous peoples, is the claim to belong to the land as evidenced by one’s ability to narrate oneself in relation to the land. For example, Chamberlin reports that when a group of government foresters claimed land on behalf of the state in the northwest of Canada, members of the Native Canadian society asked them, ‘If this is your land, where are your stories?’ (1998: 13). Storytelling is a central mode of indigenous knowledge and cultural transmission and preservation. It is significant that this was one of the motivations for //Kabbo to remain with Lucy Lloyd after his sentence had ended and continue to relate the tales of his people. In Book II of Lucy Lloyd’s notes, which were transcribed between 23 July and 2 August 1873, //Kabbo explains that ‘a story is like the wind’ (p. 2875v), and that ‘stories follow one along a road one has travelled (p. 2885v). However, these transcriptions remained largely unregarded in the archives until the mid-twentieth century. when scholars ‘rediscovered’ them. Theatre director Mark Fleishman sought an ethical way to reanimate these stories, suggesting that, ‘For the stories told by these /Xam informants at Mowbray to be written down in books and never performed again, however, is surely another kind of death’ (2005: 44). Fleishman co-founded Magnet Theatre Company with Jennie Reznek in 1987, and they engaged with ‘remembering in the postcolony’ (Fleishman 2012) through various projects from 2001. They explored the records of the Bleek and Lloyd collections, stories of Robben Island, District Six and the archives associated with slavery in the Cape to engage audiences with various disavowed aspects of South Africa’s past, asking how these continued to resonate on present realities. The company works both as a professional theatre company, creating new works, and with local communities to explore and reconnect them with their own stories through theatre projects and productions. I will consider how they have engaged with indigeneity in both aspects of their work. One of Magnet’s most significant community involvements have been in the Clanwilliam Arts Project (CAP), which is focussed in an area of the Western Cape

African indigeneity  115

about 200 km (120 miles) north of Cape Town. In 2001, Pippa Skotnes, then part of UCT’s School of Fine Art, and John Parkington of the Department of Archaeology approached Mark Fleishman as the Artistic Director of Magnet to request that his company add a performance element to CAP. Since then, a group of 35 researchers and practitioners have worked with local communities in the rediscovery and preservation of cultural material related to the San peoples who lived in the area for thousands of years, conveying a sense of the relevance of this research and cultural material to the local inhabitants. Each year, CAP runs an eight-day workshop with between five and 700 students, aged between 5–18 years, from diverse communities in Clanwilliam and Okiep, Namaqualand. They explore stories from the Bleek-Lloyd collection as a way to reconnect the people with the stories and landscape. The project culminates in story-telling events and an annual spring lantern parade involving the whole community. They also work with theatre practitioners to create new works that explore contemporary issues and identities.13 It is important when considering both CAP and Magnet’s theatre productions to understand that their approach to San ‘heritage’ is not as a ‘fetishization of “authentic . . . physical relics and remains” ’, but rather: It is something we do in the present with the past for our present purposes. It is an active, participatory and performative process or perhaps a set of such processes and involves an embodied engagement with what remains from the past in order to make meaning in the present. It is, therefore, never inert, always contestable, open to engagement and constant re-working. 2 It is, in Alain Badiou’s terms, something that has the capacity to change the situation; to bring something new into being, a new way of seeing the world (Badiou 2001, 41). In this sense, heritage as an event is aligned to the development of subaltern communities particularly in the context of the postcolony. (Fleishman 2011: 237) 1

Magnet Theatre first engaged with San narratives in The Sun, the Moon and the Knife (1995), drawing on Stephen Watson’s (1991) poetic adaptations of the Bleek and Lloyd stories. Almost a decade later, Fleishman re-engaged with these stories in his collaboration with Jazzart in creating Rain in a Dead Man’s Footprints (2004/2005),14 which takes as its starting point stories told primarily by /Xam elder //Kabbo. In the article ‘ “Stories like the wind”: Recontextualising /Xam Narratives for Contemporary Audiences’ (2005), Fleishman traces his work with Skotnes and the processes involved in his negotiating and translating for performance an already transcribed version of a culture and people that has all but disappeared under the brutalities of colonialism and apartheid. Fleishman was particularly concerned with how to accurately represent particular /Xam approaches to time, space, landscape, narrative and cosmology, without speaking for or about absent people. One of the ways in which he achieves this is by facilitating an intersubjective experience through layering times and narratives.

116  Yvette Hutchison

Fleishman sought a dramaturgy that broke with the linear, consequential western form, to suggest San ways of knowing and telling tales whereby ‘the sense of consequence is unexpected; the past is brought into the present unproblematically; there are no distinctions between the magical and the banal; linear, chronological development is replaced by an almost perpetual present’, as ‘for the San multiple time-bands coexist in space rather than following one after another’ (Fleishman 2005: 51–52). He thus interwove Early Time, when there was no difference between humans and animals; After Time, when animals became wild and lost their humanity and humans developed laws, beliefs and their human form; Colonial Time, the vantage from which we perceive the San and their stories; and [Fleishman adds] Contemporary Time, from which we perceive the performance. He achieved this sense of coevalness by having Lucy Lloyd ( Jennie Reznek) narrating her experiences and struggles when attempting to transcribe the stories, while simultaneously //Kabbo, Diä!kwain and /Han#kass’o physically tell their stories. Contemporary Jazzart dancers and University of Cape Town drama students move alongside women bound in nineteenth century corsets and crinolines, hinting at a parallel system of subjugation, as therianthropes come and go. Composer Neo Muyanga juxtaposes Bach to contemporary jazz and traditional Khoisan musical instruments. And thereby, the audience is left with a sense of traces of the past layered like a palimpsest over the present, of stories that blow on the wind: of ‘that place, far off, where //Kabbo once lived’, where ‘sorcerers, dancing, would fall into trance and become birds’ (Rain, 12:33–13:00); of the ‘Queen of the earth’ who brings rain, the story of a falling star that came to tell of a death, and ‘that as we stand at the water’s edge, we see all things. The things in the sky we see in the water’ (46:22–46:34); and finally, we hear how when someone dies, the rain comes and ‘washes away traces, the hollows of a dead man’s footsteps, even before we have settled in our graves’ (48:54–49:50). The performance culminates in a ritual involving all the performers from all times, simultaneously. Finally, the song invites //Kabbo to ‘dream of home’, thereby acknowledging that in San cosmology, ‘you still can change the world by dreaming the world’ (57:50–59:56). //Kabbo watches as a contemporary South African girl dances alone to this refrain, a cameraman circling them, filming, and visually reminding us of the role framing and perspective play in the reception of any narrative.15 This piece allows us to experience a world view rather than try to understand it through a foreign cultural frame. A very real issue for post-1994 South Africa is analyzing who are defined as indigenous, and by whom. How do we evaluate white practitioners like Fleishman, who engage with these archives, or Athol Fugard’s first Afrikaans play Die Laaste Karretjiegraf (The Last Cart Grave), which engages with the ‘karretjiemense’ (cart people), nomadic descendants of the San and Khoi who still inhabit the Karoo byways? Or how coloured people are negotiating their previously disavowed Khoisan ancestry? To what extent are these explorations opening out colonial discourses, or being co-opted again?

African indigeneity  117

An example of a contemporary negotiation of these issues is coloured youth dance project the Garage Dance Ensemble, in part funded by the National Arts Council, established as a viable, full-time dance company in O’Kiep, Western Cape. It is producing internationally competitive work with performing artists from the region, under the direction of Alfred Hinkel, former director of the Jazzart Dance Company in Cape Town, and his partner, John Linden. The success of this work is evidenced in the development of a student from the local community, Byron Klassen, who is not only performing but now also choreographing new work; for example, Elk-Een (Everyone) performed at the 2015 Baxter Dance Festival.16 Bruin (Brown), which was choreographed by Alfred Hinkel and performed at the 2012 Baxter Theatre Dance Festival,17 demonstrates how this company is engaging with experiences of mixed race South Africans, many of whom are acknowledging their ‘San’ ancestry, often evidenced in their physique or facial features, but somehow remembered as ‘shameful’, a constitutive aspect of coloured identity, according to Zoȅ Wicomb (1998) and Pumla Gqola (2010). The piece uses music to cite various experiences specific to the youth in the area, while referencing the role music plays in the construction and performance of their identities. As Denis-Constant Martin (2013) has argued, music is a way of knowing, thinking and being, of representing a society and group and allowing it to (re) shape, make and imagine itself as a collective. This piece begins with Roberta Flack’s ‘Killing Me Softly’, hinting at the conflict central to the telling of the stories to follow. The music shifts to a song played on a traditional San mouth bow, which plays for the first quarter of the piece. According to the !Xun Traditional Council, the songs played on this instrument are particularly characterized as ‘ “ostinati”, with variations, meaning that all the musical material displayed within a certain period is reiterated in a different way, as long as the musicians wish it to’ (!Xun Traditional Council 2004: 23). Here the music references a changing heritage that these youths are negotiating, albeit with some discomfort and ambivalence. The three dancers, two men and a woman, combine what we may imagine to be San ritual dance gesture with urban gangster gestures as they stand with heads bent and hands in the front pockets of their hoodies, or forming their hands into the shape of guns, we are struck by their anxiety and the stereotypical associations of coloured youths with gangs. As the music shifts in and out of rap and jazz in Afrikaans, with references to their ‘lewe in die stryd’ (‘life in the struggle’), and highlighting their ability to ‘poesa’ (dance), as they struggle with one another and resist accusations of being ‘a coward’, ‘rowdy’, insisting that they are ‘nie swart nie’ (‘not black’); then moving back to a classical waltz before ending with Tom Waits’ ‘Jesus Gonna Be Here’, the message is that they must ‘endure’. This piece explores the complex hybridity of this youth group, with its religious, social and cultural complexities, negotiated symbolically in gesture and behaviour, but  – above all  – in and through music. Again, however, the engagement with ‘San’ culture is vague and generic, rather than specific Nama culture, which replicates the generalities regarding indigenous representations in much of South Africa.

118  Yvette Hutchison

Their most recent production, The Keeper of the Kumm, performed at the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown in 2016, was based on Sylvia Vollenhoven’s novel (2016),18 in which she relates how an ongoing sickness led to her reaching back through time via //Kabbo’s stories. She says, ‘Until we see ourselves in //Kabbo and engage with the //Kabbos in our own histories, we continue to flounder in a sea of social problems’ (Ibid.: 3). ‘Kumm’ is a /Xam word for story or account, anything told and retold. Through dance performed by Byron Klassen, Adelaide Majoor, Farrol Coetzee and Dustin Jannetjies, Hinkel translates Elizabeth ‘Betjie’ Petersen’s re-encounters with //Kabbo and the tales of the wrongs done to the bodies and souls of the San peoples over the centuries, people she claims as her ancestors. Like Rain, this piece creates a sense of coevalness by moving the audience through time and space, weaving our connections with the stories and each other through physical images, music and dance, which evoke a somatic effect that allows the audience to imagine these experiences for themselves. The images also suggest how these stories and experiences continue to resonate in the contemporary world, through the psyches of //Kabbo’s ancestors, and so we are all asked to take our place in relation to the stories on the wind, and see the past in the present. These projects – alongside the KhoeKoe language lessons at The Castle of Good Hope; the annual traditional Rieldans Competition, held at the Afrikaanse Taalmonument (language monument) in Paarl; the Nama language broadcasts on Namakwa FM to Namaqualand and parts of the Richtersveld; and the formation of the Khoisan Revolution party – suggest the different approaches Khoisan activists are taking to reclaim their place in South Africa. But these movements also highlight the complexities that these indigenous activists face: the pressure to perform stereotypical, ‘authentic’ representations of indigeneity, defined by outsiders, which at the same time allows them some degree of economic viability. The problems of each group need to remain specifically defined and separate so as not to be subsumed into larger groups, while at the same time allowing enough space so that peoples who have been previously dispossessed, or removed from their heritage, like coloured South Africans, can find their way forward. There is also always the danger of a fixed notion of what constitutes an indigenous African that does not allow for complexity – for a person who claims indigenous status in southern Africa to wear Nike shoes, a digital watch, speak Afrikaans and still be able to define themselves as indigenous as they retell, re-enact or invent anew stories and practices that speak of this land and their own belonging on it.

Notes 1 International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs [IWGIA], Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, www.iwgia.org/sw248.asp. 2 See Cook and Sarkin (2006), and the African Group, Draft Aide Memoire, United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples § 2.1. & § 3.2., (2006), available at www.ipacc.org.za/uploads/docs/Africanaidememoire.pdf. 3 Cultural Survival has advocated for Indigenous Peoples rights and supported Indigenous communities’ self-determination, cultures and political resilience since 1972.

African indigeneity  119

4 See www.culturalsurvival.org/who-are-indigenous-peoples. 5 See www.iwgia.org/regions/africa. 6 See www.gov.za/about-sa/national-coat-arms for statement and image. 7 ‘Iziko’ is an isiXhosa word, meaning ‘a hearth’. The name was coined to reference the collective of museums under this organisation, ‘Since the hearth of a typical African homestead usually occupies the central space, Iziko symbolises both a hub of cultural activity, and a central place for gathering together South Africa’s diverse heritage’. (www.iziko.org.za) 8 Information board at entrance of South African Museum, Message from Jatti Bredenkamp, CEO of Iziko. 9 It had ‘more or less disappeared from view’ (Hewitt 2008: 3) between 1936 and 1973. 10 When Wilhelm Bleek died in 1875, his work on ‘Bushman’ [San] folklore and language was incomplete, so Lloyd continued for another 36 years and published their joint research, Specimens of Bushman Folklore in 1911 (Loos 1997: n.p.), available at http:// lloydbleekcollection.cs.uct.ac.za/. 11 Similar issues arose in response to Brett Bailey’s installations on colonial histories in Africa, Exhibits A & B, 2010–2016, see http://thirdworldbunfight.co.za/exhibit-b/. 12 See www.khwattu.org. 13 For details on this project and its affects, see Lavona de Bruyn 2016. 14 Hereafter referred to as Rain. 15 For a detailed analysis of this play and Fleishman’s dramaturgy, see Hutchison 2016. 16 See www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRqubu2fe4U. 17 See www.youtube.com/watch?v=wG6cfJCnVLA for performance (12:37), and Alfred Hinkel on the company as he discussed rehearsals for ’n Dans met die more (A Dance with the Morning, 2014), www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6KMJfSojMY. 18 Which is being made into a film as an offshoot of the Human Bondage project (stories of slavery told from a uniquely African perspective), supported by the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) and launched by Harry Belafonte at the International Public Television (INPUT) annual screening conference in 2008.

References Ahmed, S. (2004) 2014. The Cultural Politics of Emotion. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Alexander, Neville. 2001. ‘Language Politics in South Africa’, in Bekker, Simon, Martine Dodds and Meshack Khosa (eds.), Shifting African Identities, pp. 141–52. Pretoria: Human Sciences Research Council. Althusser, Louis. 1993. ‘Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes towards an Investigation)’, in Essays on Ideology, pp. 1–60. London and New York: Verso. Badiou, Alain. 2001. Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil. Translated and Introduced by Peter Hallward. London: Verson. Bleek & Lloyd Archive, The Centre for Curating, University of Cape-Town digital archive, http://lloydbleekcollection.cs.uct.ac.za/ Buntman, Barbara. 1996. ‘Bushman Images in South African Tourist Advertising: The Case of Kagga Kamma’, in Skotnes, Pippa (ed.), Miscast: Negotiating the Presence of the Bushmen, pp. 271–79. Cape Town: University of Cape Town Press. Butler, Judith. 1993. Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “sex”. New York and London: Routledge. Chamberlin, J. Edward. 1998. ‘Doing Things With Words: Putting Performance on the Page’, Voices, 1: 5–27. Cook, Amelia and Jeremy Sarkin. 2006. ‘Who is Indigenous? Indigenous Rights Globally, in Africa, and Among the San in Botswana’, Cultural Survival Quarterly, 30 (2): 93–130,

120  Yvette Hutchison

www.culturalsurvival.org/publications/cultural-survival-quarterly/south-africa/indige neity-africa, accessed 16/09/13. Davison, Patricia. 1998. ‘Museums and the Reshaping of Memory’, in Nuttall, Sarah and Carli Coetzee (eds.), Negotiating the Past – The Making of Memory in South Africa, pp. 143–60. Cape Town: Oxford University Press. De Bruyn, Lavona. 2016. ‘Catalysing a Community: Magnet’s Clanwilliam Community Intervention project’, in Lewis, Megan and Anton Krueger (eds.), Magnet Theatre: Three Decades of Making Space, pp. 253–64. Bristol and Chicago: Intellect, Pretoria: UNISA Press. Dietrich, Keith and Andrew Bank (eds.) 2008. An Eloquent Picture Gallery – the South African Portrait Photography of Gustav Theodor Fritsch, 1863–1865. Sunnyside: Jacana Media. Dyll-Myklebust and Kate Finlay. 2012. ‘Action (Marketing) Research and Paradigms in Partnership: A  Critical Analysis of !Xaus Lodge’, in Tomaselli, Keyan (ed.), Cultural Tourism and Identity: Rethinking Indigeneity, pp. 119–36. Leiden and Boston: Koninklijke Brill NV. Fleishman, Mark. 2005. ‘ “Stories like the Wind”: Recontextualising /Xam Narratives for Contemporary Audience’, South African Theatre Journal, 19: 1, 43–57. Fleishman, Mark. 2011. ‘ “For a little road it is not. For it is a great road; it is long”: Performing Heritage for Development in the Cape’, in Jackson, Anthony and Jenny Kidd (eds.), Performing Heritage – Research, Practice and Innovation in Museum Theatre and Live Interpretation, pp. 234–48. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press. Fleishman, Mark. 2012. Remembering in the Postcolony: Refiguring the Past with Theatre, Drama Department, University of Cape Town, unpublished PhD. Foucault, M. 1997. ‘ “The Ethics of the Concern for Self as a Practice of Freedom’, in Rabinow, P. (ed.), Michel Foucault: Ethics, Subjectivity and Truth. The Essential Works of Foucault, Vol. 1, pp. 281–301. New York: The New Press. The Gods Must be Crazy. 1980. Directed and written by Jamie Uys, Ster Kinekor. Released in 1986 on videocassette in the U.S. by CBS/Fox. Goodman, Jenn. 2006. U.N. Special Rapporteur Reports on South Africa, New Zealand’, Cultural Survival Quarterly, 30 (2), www.culturalsurvival.org/publications/cultural-sur vival-quarterly/new-zealand/un-special-rapporteur-reports-south-africa-new-, accessed 02/08/16. Gqola, Pumla. 2010. What is Slave Memory to Me? Johannesburg: Wits University Press. Hewitt, Roger. 2008. Structure, Meaning & Ritual in the Narratives of the Southern San. Johannesburg: Wits University Press. Hitchcock, Robert H. and Megan Biesele. 2002 ‘San, Khwe, Basarwa, or Bushmen? Terminology, Identity, and Empowerment in Southern Africa’, www.khoisanpeoples.org/ indepth/ind-identity.htm, accessed 1/10/2010 Hobsbawm, Eric, 1983. ‘Introduction’, in Hobsbawm, Eric and Terence Ranger (eds.), Inventing Tradition, pp. 1–14. Cambridge: Cambridge University press. Hutchison, Yvette. 2013. South African Performance and Archives of Memory. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press. Hutchison, Yvette. 2016. ‘Embodied Practice that Troubles Fixed Narratives of Identity, History and Memory’, in Lewis, Megan and Anton Krueger (eds.), Making Space for Creativity in Collaboration & Cultural Interventions: 25 Years of Magnet Theatre, pp. 175–96. Bristol, UK and Chicago, USA and Unisa, SA: Intellect. The Keeper of the Kumm, www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KKkcBJE_8c, published on May 7, 2014.

African indigeneity  121

Keuris, Marisa. 2010. ‘The Representation of Koisan Characters in Early Dutch-Afrikaans Dramas in South Africa’, in Hutchison, Yvette (ed.), African Theatre: Histories 1850– 1950, pp. 107–21. Suffolk and New York: James Currey. Landau, Paul. 1996. ‘With Camera and Gun in Southern Africa: Inventing the Image of Bushmen c.1880 to 1935’, in Skotnes, Pippa (ed.), Miscast: Negotiating the Presence of the Bushmen, pp. 129–41. Cape Town: University of Cape Town Press. Le Vaillant, François. 1790. Travels into Interior Parts of Africa by Way of the Cape of Good Hope in the Years 1780, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, Vols. 1 & 2, London: printed for G.G. and J. Robinson. Loos, Jackie. 1997. ‘Portraits in Specimens of Bushman Folklore by Bleek and Lloyd’, Quarterly Bulletin of the South African Library (September), 52 (1): 13. Mamdani, Mahmood. 2001. ‘Beyond Settler and Native as Political Identities: Overcoming the Political Legacy of Colonialism’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 43 (4): 651–64. Mamdani, Mahmood. 2013. Define and Rule: Native as Political identity. Johannesburg: Wits University Press. Martin, Denis-Constant. 2013. Sounding the Cape: Music, Identity and Politics in South Africa. Somerset West: African Minds. McLennan-Dodd, Vanessa and Shanade Barnabas. 2012. ‘Why is Our Voice Not Being Heard by Developers? Development as Empowerment’, in Tomaselli, Keyan (ed.), Cultural Tourism and identity: Rethinking Indigeneity, pp. 137–46. Leiden and Boston: Koninklijke Brill NV. ‘Miscast: Three Views on the Exhibition curated by Pippa Skotnes with Jos Thorne in the South African National Gallery (14 April–14 September 1996)’, 1996, http://web.uct. ac.za/depts/sarb/X0034_Miscast.html, accessed 27/06/2015. Nǃai, the Story of a ǃKung Woman (1980). Directed by John Marshall, PBS. Remastered 2009, http://der.org/films/nai-kung-woman.html Nmehielle, Vincent. 2006. ‘Indigeneity in Africa’, www.culturalsurvival.org/publications/ cultural-survival-quarterly/south-africa/indigeneity-africa, accessed 16/09/13. Parsons, Neil. 2009. Clicko – The Wild Dancing Bushman. Sunnyside: Jacana Media. Rain in a Dead Man’s Footprints DVD (Performance at Oude Libertas Amphitheatre, Stellenbosch, March  2004). Magnet Theatre  & Jazzart Dance Companies. Accessed from Mark Fleishman. Riccio, Thomas. 2007. Performing Africa. New York, Washington, DC/ Baltimore, Bern, Frankfurt am Main, Berlin, Brussels, Vienna, Oxford: Peter Lang. Secoran, Laura. 2018. ‘South Africa’s First Nations Have Been Forgotten’, https://foreign policy.com/2018/10/19/south-africas-first-nations-have-been-forgotten-apartheidkhoisan-indigenous-rights-land-reform/, accessed 05/03/2020. Sehune, Jeffrey. 2012. ‘Staging Authenticity Via Cultural Tourism: A Visitiation of Spirits’, in Tomaselli, Keyan (ed.), Cultural Tourism and Identity: Rethinking Indigeneity, pp. 99–117. Leiden and Boston: Koninklijke Brill NV. Skotnes, Pippa. 1996. ‘Introduction’, in Skotnes, Pippa (ed.), Miscast: Negotiating the Presence of the Bushmen, pp. 15–39. Cape Town: University of Cape Town Press. Taylor, Diana. 1998. ‘A Savage Performance, Guillermo Gomez-Penia and Coco Fusco’s “Couple in the Cage” ’, The Drama Review, 42 (2): 160–80. Taylor, Diana. 2007. The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Tomaselli, Keyan (ed.) 2012. Cultural Tourism and Identity: Rethinking Indigeneity. Leiden and Boston: Koninklijke Brill NV.

122  Yvette Hutchison

Usman, Yusufu Bala. 2006. Beyond Fairy Tales: Selected Historical Writing of Yusufu Bala Usman. Zaria, Nigeria: Abdullahi Smith Centre for Historical Research. Vollenhoven, Sylvia. 2016. The Keeper of the Kumm. Cape Town: Tafelberg. Watson, Stephen. 1991. Return of the Moon: Versions from the /Xam. Wicomb, Zoȅ. 1998. ‘Shame and Identity: The Case of the Coloured in South Africa’, in Attridge, Derek and Rosemary Jolly (eds.), Writing South Africa: Literature, Apartheid and Democracy, 1970–1995, pp. 91–107. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. !Xun Traditional Council. 2004. We Tell Our Old Stories with Music- Kulimatji nge. Cape Town: Double Storey Books.

7 TWO POETS OF THE PACIFIC Hone Tuwhare and Haunani-Kay Trask Robert Sullivan1

This chapter engages with indigenous interpretations and dreams of past, present, and future native lives. These texts both consciously and subconsciously reveal and harbour indigenous life-worlds in their complex and culturally beautiful conventions of language and being. Throughout this chapter, I  use the term Moanan derived from the Malayo-Polynesian term for the ocean, Moana, which I mean to indicate indigenous frames of reference. In order to chart the texts by two senior indigenous poets of the region, using the term for ocean beyond the reef (Pollex Online), this close reading method articulates a wayfinding kaupapa or purpose. Wayfinding is used to identify/chart the identity assertions, cultural signs, re-told narratives, and linguistic and social references in the poetry of these writers, as well as the principal relationships deduced from published interviews and recordings, and unpublished layers within available archives. Wayfinding enables a Pacific-centric navigation through these Moanan worlds. Recognising an indigenous poetics belongs to the kaupapa2 of this chapter in that it asserts a Moanan “discursive space” (Hoskins and Jones 1). I use the term ‘kaupapa’ here to indicate commonly practised grounds or basic values and intentional principles. The English word ‘Moanan’3 meaning ‘person belonging to the Moana’ is used by Tevita O’Ka’ili to emphasize sociospatial connections, the multiple interconnections of the Pacific Islands, derived from the indigenous Polynesian term for deep ocean, ‘moana’ (Pollex Online) with the English suffix ‘-an’ meaning ‘belonging to a place’ (Oxford English Dictionary [OED]). This sense of interconnectedness, or relationality, is expressed by Albert Wendt as ‘teu le vā’ or the care required for maintaining relationships (Hereniko and Wilson 402). To be Moanan, then, is to occupy and maintain the connections between such transnational and indigenous spaces of relationship, also formulated as the ‘vā’ (Ka’ili 89, 92).

124  Robert Sullivan

Hone Tuwhare, 1922–2008 Hone Tuwhare was the first New Zealand Māori writer to have a poetry collection published, No Ordinary Sun, in 1964. The title of Hone Tuwhare’s collected works, Small Holes in the Silence, comes from “Rain” which is one of his best-known poems, featuring for instance on the New Zealand Arts Laureates website. The first thing to notice about the 2011 collection, which brings together his 13 volumes of poetry, is that a large number of the poems have been translated into Māori by prominent language experts: the artist and broadcaster Selwyn Muru, former Māori language commissioner Patu Hohepa, and a former member of the commission who was also a broadcaster, Waihoroi Shortland. It is tempting to speculate on reasons for the translations. Perhaps the poems spoke to a core Māori set of values that were readily translatable. Perhaps they were great material to bring into the Māori language so that they would provide language learner resources just as there were earlier translations of Shakespeare by other leading language proponents. Tuwhare’s first language was Māori, although he lost his fluency still in childhood. He has composed a little in Māori, but no more than one or two poems. To return to the poem “Rain” (CW 88) perhaps it would be useful to begin with its five-senses aesthetic. It is a useful text to teach writing students about the difference between concrete and abstract, ‘show don’t tell’ modes of writing. This concentration on organic senses in the poem, auditory, tactile, olfactory, taste, but not visual (“if I were blind”, line 12) points to a being in the world that relies on intimate evidence – one can be far sighted, but not far-tactile; unlike sight, the other senses have closer limits such as the direction of the breeze for smell, while the sounds evoked rely on a sound-scape of silence so they are intimate sounds, “small holes”. This kind of revealing of the poem’s world draws us close to the poet’s or speaker’s own body. Embodied presence here refers to the relationship between the narrator and the literal world. Cultural references are slender in the text: the personification of rain, in that it is an entity which is able to be addressed by the poet and assigned the pronoun ‘you’, suggests a sentience enlarged by its relationship to the sun and the earth – “the something/ special smell of you/ when the sun cakes/ the ground” – yet downplayed by the accessible register nevertheless given cadence by the brief line-lengths and micro-pauses at the ends of lines resembling ‘drum-rolls’. The accessibility, or quietude, is intimate. The sensory data brings us into the atmospheric psychology of the speaker’s humanity. The poem reveals a momentary state of a mind in reverie about rain. The final stanza focuses on the poem’s uttered ontology: “you would still/ define me/ disperse me/ wash over me/ rain”. That is, rain would perform these functions for the poet/narrator (“me” repeated three times) even if no senses were available. The rain is interior: in Māori terms, this interior rain belongs to the kare-a-roto, or literally in translation, “the waves within”. Kare-a-roto is the Māori term for emotion. It suggests a relationship with a Māori epistemology whereby the entire world – objects, natural features, flora, fauna – is imbued with life essences, and experienced through the senses, and that very sensory data are seen as projections of inner states. Weather

Two poets of the Pacific  125

features in Romantic poetry generally when the weather conditions reflect the range of the poet’s emotional dispositions. “Small holes in the silence”, taken as a title, might refer to the minor revival (still framed as negative spaces, as gaps or “small holes”) from the general silencing of a Māori worldview. The small holes, or rain drops, are poems that are likened to rain which like poems makes sounds. These sound-makers (rain, poems) imply a past worldview where silence was not the norm – where the whole apparatus of senses was once fully engaged in a world that was alive with resonant meaning, and not void of sensations akin to a vacuum. What caused the silence? Ngũgĩ wa Thiong‘o’s well-known comparison of colonisation as a cultural bomb is a potential candidate. Of course, the silence is unspoken by the poem. The endurance is the speaker’s presence, their ‘being-there’, and the narrator’s fragmentary memories of rain. The whakapapa (genealogy) of this English language poem is connected through the poet to Māori language poetry which richly references the natural world. Certain poems, and even poets, may mark horizons or landmarks within these worlds. Naturally, the poet’s genealogy informs this, but also a critical practice which seeks to understand a body of poetry that represents indigeneity in its polyvocal and polysemous being. The first poem in Tuwhare’s collected works, “Time and the Child” (33) from No Ordinary Sun (1964), enfolds a human being into an image encompassing the external world (lines 1–4): “Tree earth and sky/ reel to the noontide beat/ of sun and the old man/ hobbling down the road”. The old man has passed his peak, contrasted with the presence of a child who calls after him: “funny man funny man// funny old man funny/” (lines 18–19). The old man is a figure of time which is indicated by the title, and the association with the sun: “His eyes burn to a distant point/ where all roads converge” (lines 14–15). It is not the only Tuwhare poem featuring the sun. The 1992 poem “Grand Daughter Polly Peaches” has a grandfather with grand daughter and the orb, while “Sun O (1)” and “Sun O (2)” are obvious references. The poem “With all things and with all beings we are as relative”, also from the 1992 collection Short, Back and Sideways, encourages an enlarged worldview precisely because of the simplified, globalised set of references in a context of self-deprecatory humour turning on the poet’s mortality and the eternal subject of cyclic existence: I will sing to it – chat it up. I will give it porridge-water to drink thin and cloudy. And today I might even celebrate its birth with an aria flamboyant and breathy. If I am as constant as the sun the moon and tide, the flower will die and I shall will it to bud again.

126  Robert Sullivan

Ten thousand times live to die; die and live again. And this is normal, quite acceptable; timely. The term ‘relative’ sets up a comparative relationship perhaps, and also a familial one. In the Māori cosmogonic cycle of many tribes, Māori are descendants of the deity Tāne and Hineahuone. Tāne is a child of Ranginui and Papatūānuku, that is, the heavens and the earth. Hineahuone was the first woman, formed by Tāne from earth or sand (Orbell, Encyclopedia 54). There are strong celestial and earth elements in the poem reflecting the relative familial position of the narrator in this nexus. Yet personal, emotional existence trumps here the macro, cosmic scale: But who accepts as easily his own brief life as ebb and flow? As part of waxing and waning? As part of the coming and going away Of sun and flower, moon and tide? This turn in the argument for recurrent cyclical existence is also evident in “Grand Daughter Polly Peaches”, which is another poem in a family context (of grandfather and grand daughter) – the poem has a reassuring, jolly tone, as if it is speaking to a mokopuna (grandchild) and showing that mokopuna how it is done – but undercutting the tone with the message that one need not age gracefully, as there remains a lot of living to do. No need to be a role model. No need for Polly Peaches to sit on the grandfather’s knees (lines 13–17): “you may NOT sit on my knees./ You don’t know how swiftly/ they grow numb when blood/ flow is cut off”.

Affective significance and socialist politics in the Moana Michelle Keown’s4 discussion of Tuwhare’s Marxist aesthetics through his deep reading of Christopher Caudwell’s 1937 work, Illusion and Reality, deals with the concept of ‘affective significance’ in his poetry. According to his biography, Tuwhare was introduced to Caudwell’s work sometime between 1950 and 1952 when he lived in Wellington (Hunt 58). Keown’s essay is the first sustained inquiry into that aspect of Tuwhare’s writing, emphasising the political aspects of the poetics: Tuwhare’s identity as Māori is indeed central to his poetics, but a reading of his political poetry can be enriched through an awareness of the degree to which his writing was also informed by his lifelong engagement with the ethics of socialism. Throughout his career as a writer, Tuwhare returns again and again to the political.

Two poets of the Pacific  127

He foregrounded working class consciousness: Blue hiss and crackle of the welding rod, compressed sigh of air and the whump and whoof fuse to the rising clamour of the rivet gun. (“The Sea, To the Mountains, To the River” CW 30)

I like working near a door. I like to have my work-bench close by, with a locker handy. (“Monologue” CW 54) This emphasis on the worker’s tools, and the smoko-time camaraderie behind the term ‘locker door’, appeals to working class sensibilities of an existence grounded in the breathy joy of work, ‘rising clamour’, ‘whump and whoof ’, ‘compressed sigh’, and of the shared understanding that workers have in literal collaborations of making something bigger than the individual. During the memorial reading for Tuwhare at the 2012 Auckland Writers and Readers Festival, poet laureate Ian Wedde read “Monologue” as his example of essential Tuwhare: I am the first to greet strangers who drift in through the open doors looking for work. I give them as much information as they require, direct them to the offices, and acknowledge the casual recognition that one worker signs to another. (“Monologue” CW 54) It is a compassionate poem written from the point of view of a “lucky” (line 33) worker who feels for those out of work looking for employment. In an early 1970s recording, Tuwhare performs the poem with a Scottish accent. Yet the inflection does not, in my opinion, alter the Māori nature of the working-class references, given that Māori were in the main, working class (Schwimmer 288–310). In a mid1990s Going West Writers Festival Sound Archive recording, the Scottish accent is still there as if to emphasise this connection with the common man, in that it is a persona poem. Janet Hunt’s biography reveals that the Scotsman is a workmate, Tommy Knapman, who read aloud the first draft of the poem behind one of the welding screens at their workplace: “From that moment Tommy’s accent became part of the poem: in performance” (35). In the Collected Works (55), there is a mid1950s photograph of the Mangakino plant repair depot where Tuwhare worked as

128  Robert Sullivan

a boilermaker from 1953–1961 (Hunt 61). The depot serviced the hydroelectric dams on the Waikato. Tuwhare wears a broad-brimmed hat and checked workingman’s shirt with about 70 other men ranging from workers to managers. There is one woman in the shot. While mainly a Pākehā group, there appears to be a significant number of Māori in the photo. The voice in “Monologue” suggests concerns from a workmate’s point of view – worries about tenure, cheaper immigrant labourers, even health and safety. That Tuwhare chooses to voice it in a Scottish accent suggests it belongs to a set of concerns that crosses ethnic boundaries. To return to an earlier point, this does not exclude Māori from the frame. It was about this time that Tuwhare renounced his membership in the Communist Party due to the 1956 Hungarian uprising and subsequent Soviet military oppression, although he maintained his membership of the New Zealand Workers’ Union (Hunt 62). The concern for the working man remained with Tuwhare throughout his career. In the previously uncollected poem “Song 2” (CW 322–23), he calls on the collective ethos of workers to overthrow a world of limousines, factory owners and bank managers. Here is an extract from the last stanza of the two-page poem: We will turn the arc-light of Leninism on the darkness we call ignorance The sound is deafening. But listen again. Can you make out? It’s your voice mate – and my voice – and It’s Our Voice! This class consciousness is also influenced by harsh experience in youth, but the poet is never self-pitying, and rather looks to these experiences as lessons in “Never Look Back”, also from No Ordinary Sun like the previous two poems, even though the final stanza frames it with a self-deprecating summing up: Tastes were sharper then; sandwhich spread was dripping fat on a dry old crust saliva’d exaltation . . . . . . and blessed hot the soup from Salvation’s army-kitchen. Of those lean days I cannot rouse myself to rave

Two poets of the Pacific  129

with equal heat nor filch from Time a morsel of hard wisdom knowing already and too late Time’s answer shall be final, sure, and just. (“Never Look Back” CW 56) He was a friend of the poet and publisher of In Print and People’s Voice, R.A.K. Mason, who mentored Tuwhare from the mid-1940s in poetry. Tuwhare’s father wrote the column in Māori for In Print (Barrowman 284) from September 1942. Mason’s biographer, Rachel Barrowman, says the younger Tuwhare took a few years to discover that Mason was himself a poet too, “and in time became his literary mentor as well as a good friend” (284). As well as Marxist writers, In Print featured work by Lenin for which Mason wrote the introduction. Barrowman notes the involvement of Mason and other New Zealand poets such as Robin Hyde and A.R.D. Fairburn in resisting the Orakei land clearances of the 1940s that culminated in the destruction of the marae at Okahu Bay, the last Māori village in central Auckland. Tuwhare’s relationship with Mason stretches to the publication of No Ordinary Sun published by Blackwood and Janet Paul: For the past several years Mason had been reading and commenting on the poems Tuwhare sent him from Mangakino, and had insisted that it was ‘quite time you started to publish’ when the Pauls approached Tuwhare, who had demurred. (Barrowman 375, emphasis in the original) Indeed, there are features of R.A.K. Mason’s poetry that occur in Tuwhare’s, which I will discuss later in this chapter. The political poems were overt. His tribute poem to “Martin Luther King” (CW 116) brings it to the man: Let’s face it King: when news of your death came through, lovers all over the World turned each other on, rolled over, and turned the radio off. But you were hip. And you never did fancy fancy-names like, Uncle Tom, or Handkerchief-head. You really dug the scene, man. From Birmingham on you stuck your neck out: opened your big black beautiful mouth to protest about the high cost of dying in Vietnam.

130  Robert Sullivan

His poem “Rain-maker’s Song for Whina” (CW 180), one of three he wrote for the Māori leader Dame Whina Cooper, reveals his own involvement in the landrights movements which culminated in the 1975 Land March to Parliament: I’ll not forget your joints creaking as you climbed into the bus at Victoria Park to bless the journey. When you broke down in the middle of the Lord’s Prayer, I thought that what you left unsaid hung more tangibly uncertain above us all than some intangible certainty that we would all get a comfortable berth in the hereafter. It is a humorous piece, though. The narrator quotes Cooper’s statement in Māori that the land march was not about massaging the balls of Bill Rowling, who was the Prime Minister in 1975. The testicle imagery is present throughout the text as various types of baubles, and even “grenades” which Cooper has thrown. The humour in the poems is designed to move readers rather than confront them with their or their forbears’ shortcomings, and yet voices what needs to be politically said. Michelle Keown (Ka Mate Ka Ora 6) reminds us that Tuwhare was deeply political. He was uniquely placed, due to his career as a boilermaker, to observe the workings of capitalism in the wider Pacific such as Bougainville, and Samoa, as well as New Zealand. Keown says Tuwhare was troubled that his wages were higher than local Bougainville and Sāmoan workers, and also disturbed by the environmental damage wrought by large hydroelectric schemes at Mangakino and the Bay of Plenty.

Anti-nuclear politics Wider human and ecological devastation in the Pacific also ought to be noted here as a notable concern. The anti-nuclear stance he adopted must have been influenced by his tour of duty in post-war Japan; Tuwhare travelled through Hiroshima in 1946 (Hunt 49), although literary critic Elizabeth DeLoughrey’s article (Ka Mate Ka Ora 6) more accurately pinpoints the source material for the poem in H-Bomb testing in the 1950s. DeLoughrey says that by 1959, when “No Ordinary Sun” first appeared in print in Northland magazine and later that year in Te Ao Hou, over 250 atomic weapons had been detonated in and around the Pacific. The poem opposes a discourse of naturalisation of nuclear weaponry, where the weapons are likened to natural cosmic features such as the sun, or to religious events – the first atomic bomb was called ‘Trinity’. DeLoughrey goes on to discuss the word ‘Ordinary’, which invites a comparison with what might be termed extraordinary, in the context of the sun, and of other comparable or ordinary stars; the poem introduces an extraordinary star, “the monstrous sun”, in its third stanza: This key figure of alterity is placed in the center of the poem, deemed ‘monstrous’, a word closely associated with irregularity of form, with the

Two poets of the Pacific  131

unnatural, and often with the unacceptable product of the merger between humans and nature. To return to the cover portrait, Tuwhare says this to his biographer Janet Hunt about his time in Hiroshima (Hunt 49): I wandered around there, quite innocently. This was ’46, a year or so after the bomb, so there must have been some damage [to the New Zealanders] . . . I get these damn things on my eyebrow, you know – it breaks out now and again, this damn thing just on here. . . . Never had it before, eh. I raise this point because Hiroshima clearly had a physical personal impact on the poet (the growths on his eyebrow), and not just an emotional one. If we look at the physicality of the poem “No Ordinary Sun”, the call is to surrender – “let your arms fall” – in lines 1, and 17. “Let your arms lack toughness and/ resilience for this is no mere axe/ to blunt” (lines 4–5) also suggests a lowering of resistance. At least on a subconscious level, the idea of surrender in a context of struggle is embedded in the text. The tree itself is a figure of humanity, in that it represents the tree of life, a family tree, so that it is not only its own end that is written (line 29), but also that of life, and of humankind in that we are dependent on an ordinary sun, to return to DeLoughrey’s point, and not a ‘monstrous’ (line 16) one. I could be allowing the biographical data to project here, but I do believe that Japan is present in this text that speaks of surrender, even if it was published some 13 years after Tuwhare visited Hiroshima. I entirely agree with DeLoughrey that the H-Bomb was most likely to the fore of the 1950s poem. I am suggesting that there is an additional layer of ash in the text. In the light of that addition, lines 21–24 take on a new significance, in that the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki ushered in a new era: The fading green of your magic emanations shall not make pure again these polluted skies . . . for this is no ordinary sun The word ‘emanations’, as well as a synonym for radiation, invokes the homonym ‘son’. Here is the OED definition: The process of flowing forth, issuing, or proceeding from anything as a source. lit.and fig. Often applied to the origination of created beings from God; chiefly with reference to the theories that regard either the universe as a whole, or the spiritual part of it, as deriving its existence from the essence of God, and not from an act of creation out of nothing. Also, in Theology, used to denote the ‘generation’ of the Son, and the ‘procession’ of the Holy Ghost, as distinguished from the origination of merely created beings.

132  Robert Sullivan

This harking back to origins through the term ‘magic emanations’, the punning of sun with a messianic son, and the end-world biblical revelation of the ultimate line, “your end at last is written” confronts the immediacy, the no-time left in the use of the word ‘no’, and the absolute rejection this poem has for nuclear weaponry even as it is couched in the language, symbolism and revelatory cadences of the Judaeo-Christian God. I say absolute rejection, and disavowal of the bomb, because the word ‘no’ is repeated five times in its 29 lines, coupled with ‘nor’ four times, and ‘not’ four times. The last stanza is after the event. It is a description after apocalypse, which Tuwhare himself witnessed a year after the detonation at Hiroshima. O tree in the shadowless mountains the white plains and the drab sea-floor your end at last is written. There are unfortunate new resonances within this reading of the poem, given the 2009 earthquake and tsunami, resulting in the Fukushima atomic powerplant disaster and its continuous spilling of radioactive coolant into the Pacific. To continue with the religious aspects of the poem, or the divine aspects of mana, the tree’s supplication, raising its arms, recalls the tree of the cross, arbor infelix, or ‘unhappy tree’, which was an early form of crucifixion according to The Catholic Encyclopedia. The tree was known as a crux or cross. I say that the tree’s arms are raised because the instruction is to “let your arms fall”. The sacrificial element is, of course, accompanied by punishment, as that was the purpose of the cross. Perhaps the sun, in this alternate reading of punishment, symbolises a monstrous god who will not yield to any amount of supplication. In any case, the tree is the crux of the poem, symbolising, among an array of signifiers, nature, sentient creation, the glorious mystery of life, victimhood, and the punished. I note that the term “entreaties” is a synonym for supplication: “A humble plea; an earnest request or entreaty, esp. one made deferentially to a person in a position of power or authority” (OED). In that sense, there is a faint trace of the Treaty of Waitangi here in the word “entreat” which has implications for an alternative reading of the poem based on an imperial and British sun. I am more convinced, though, by the associations with atomic testing, and so the trace of the Treaty in “entreaties” is a resonance reserved for either a New Zealand or a Māori audience. A further direct reference is the verb ‘entreat’ in New Zealand’s national anthem. The poem’s word-selection is of interest. For example, the lines: “Tree let your naked arms fall/ nor extend vain entreaties to the radiant ball” could also be phrased, “Tree let your naked arms fall/ and do not extend vain entreaties to the radiant ball”. But the substitution of “do not” for “nor” removes the religious cadence. The term “neither” is possibly elided from some of the sentences where “nor” ’ occurs. I  raise this possibility given the regular occurrence in English of “neither . . . nor” correlative conjunctions – the “nor” usage will bear this trace of

Two poets of the Pacific  133

the other, unvoiced “neither”, whether the usage is correct or not.5 This grammatically incorrect possibility of twisting, eliding, and restructuring of syntax is also in line with a tree, and indeed an entire world, undergoing the effects of radiation. The last line of the poem, referencing a written end, in this context of irradiated language has a supreme irony. “Your end at last is written” might also refer to Christ’s last words on the cross, “consummatum est”/“it is finished”. There is an additional point about whakapapa. If we read into the pun of sun/ son, and extend our interpretation to the genetic alterations, as well as the fatalities caused by nuclear weaponry, then the poem’s title has a chilling effect, “No Ordinary Sun” (read son) will emerge from the family tree. The tree possesses other universal life-symbolism worth referencing here, such as Genesis 2:9 with its trees of life and knowledge of good and evil. This point about trees and whakapapa is a reminder that the author’s iwi (tribe), Ngāpuhi, still has extraordinary forests within its territory with massive kauri bearing names such as Tāne Mahuta and Te Matua o te Ngahere. This tree comes from within our tribal memories and knowledge. Its divine aspects, expressed in the religious tone, reflect its mana.

“We, Who Live in Darkness” and mythology The poem “We, Who Live in Darkness” was first published in the 1987 Penguin collection Mihi: Collected Poems (57). At the end of the second stanza, there is a face image: “forcing me to hide my face in the earth”. It is a son’s response to the appearance of light which symbolises the father deity, or sky, by hiding the face in the mother deity, or earth. A  footnote informs us, “This poem refers to the rebellion by the children of Rangi and Papa”. The interpellation hence removes a potent political reading which would refer to a patriarchal hegemony or even a violent souring of race relations between dominant and dominated groups. The last line reads, “Brothers, let us kill him – push him off”. That the reference to Māori mythology is clarified suggests that there is at least one alternative interpretation present in the text. There is also a sun image, but it is diffuse: “It was light, my brothers. Light./ A most beautiful sight infiltered past/ the armpit hairs of the father”. Like the tree in “No Ordinary Sun”, there are roots here, as well. Among the children of Rangi and Papa, skyfather and earthmother, is Tāne Te Toko o Te Rangi (Tāne the prop of the sky), also known as Tāne Mahuta, the deity responsible for the forests and related creatures. This deity separated his parents by thrusting his legs up against the sky (Orbell, Encyclopedia 179–81). He is also the progenitor deity of human beings. I  suggest that the imperial interpretation is softened or decoyed by the footnote, but that it is still present. The sun is also commonly associated with Victorian accounts of the British Empire on which the sun never sets. It is similar to the occurrence of the word “entreat” in “No Ordinary Sun”, in that there is a resonance with the idea of sovereignty. In the 2011 Collected Works, which also has a translation into Māori by the former Māori Language Commissioner Patu Hohepa, “We, Who Live in Darkness”

134  Robert Sullivan

does not have the authorial footnote from the 1987 version directing a mythological interpretation. This opens up the possible interpretation of a political hegemony mentioned earlier. In the translated version, however, the mythological interpretation is enriched. There are some resonant terms in the translation which closely connect the poem in the Māori language to the Māori cosmogonic cycle (CW 215). The first term is “Pō” and its variants “pōuriuri”, “pō tangotango”, “pō kerekere”, which refers to the nights listed in the creation chants. In the English version, the word “black” is used, but in the Māori version, the variant terms indicating gradients of darkness during the nights are used. In Hohepa’s translation, he used the relational term “tēina” indicating that the sibling who is speaking to his siblings is the older one. This indicates that it is likely to be Tāne Mahuta who is the narrator, as he is the oldest of the siblings who are named in the handed down accounts (Paraone 109). Yet that cannot be correct since in the standardised myth by Te Rangikāheke, it is the war god Tūmatauenga who wishes to kill the parents (Curnow 126) and it is Tāne who opposes the plan. In terms of the characterisation of Tū as the most aggressive sibling, then the word “tēina” could be interpreted as a put-down of the other siblings which would be in keeping with his character traits of aggressive assertiveness (Orbell, Encyclopedia 221–22). Finally, it is worth noting that if it is the warlike Tūmatauenga who is narrating the poem in both the English and te reo Māori versions, then this also strengthens the hegemonic interpretation. “Brothers, let us kill him – push him off” is indeed a call for rebellion against higher authority. The deities referenced are themselves aspects of the natural world. Among many things, they represent a connectedness to the ecosphere. Mason Durie (265) makes the following point in regard to the Moanan ethics of eco-connectedness: In a Māori world view it is not possible to understand the human situation without recourse to the wider ecological environment. The impacts of research on humans cannot be considered in isolation of intended or unintended consequential impacts on the environment. Durie also relates human encounters in a context of the environment, where the land “provides a basis for protocols which guide relationships between groups” (264) through the powhiri process. Similar to Albert Wendt’s spirals in the Book of the Black Star, and Tuwhare’s multiple nature references, Durie makes the following powerful claim: Underlying the world view of indigenous peoples and at the heart of indigeneity, is an ‘ecological synergy spiral’. Basically about connecting relationships that are complementary and mutually reinforcing, the spiral moves from the small to the large, from individuals to groups, and from people, plants, fish and animals to the earth and the sky. It is based on an outward flow of energy, away from microscopic minutia, and towards an ever-expanding environment. Ultimately the spiral moves towards the cosmos so that all

Two poets of the Pacific  135

objects, species, planets and stars can be incorporated in an interacting system that gives meaning and insight to existence. (263) Tuwhare’s oeuvre-long impulse to include natural referents in his poetry, then, can be seen to stem from this Moanan frame of reference.

Poetry of resistance Additionally, poetry of resistance contributes to the Moanan frame. “O Africa” is a shorter poem in the 1965 reprint of No Ordinary Sun. This poem is also republished in the 1978 collection Making a Fist of It. Janet Hunt’s biography (143) notes that the poem takes an anti-apartheid stance, which is not apparent without knowing the context of its making. Her book also shows an image of the artist Ralph Hotere’s painting “O Africa” (93) which incorporates the entire text stencilled onto a South African flag while the title is spray-painted. The artwork was created during the Springbok Tour of 1981, according to Philippa Hobbs and Elizabeth Rankin (23), which they describe as a form of anti-apartheid desecration of the flag. Similar to Hotere’s multiple takes on the issue, there is another anti-apartheid poem, called “New Zealand Rugby Union” (CW 113): What’s in a game? Apartheid would smell as sweet If Rugby be thy name. This poem from Sap-wood and Milk (1972) is a humorous rewrite of famous lines from the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet (II, ii, lines 45–46) and of course very prescient given the sectarian violence of the 1981 Springbok Tour. To briefly return to our previous close reading of “No Ordinary Sun”, Shakespeare’s balcony scene also features the word ‘nor’ (II, ii, 42–44): What’s Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot, Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part Belonging to a man. O, be some other name! I raise Shakespeare’s usage to enrich, lengthen, and shift Tuwhare’s literary or imaginative whakapapa to remind that it is not solely confined to the indigenous frame of reference, but rather that his writing is informed by multiple frames, including globalised as well as local referents. Some of these global concerns manifest in poems focused on anti-nuclear issues, or socialist/labour issues, or human rights. After Tuwhare’s death, his biographer Janet Hunt presented a eulogy traversing the eight decades of Tuwhare’s life, “His Own True Voice”, first delivered to a meeting of the Auckland Labour Historians Group in 2008 (Ka Mate Ka Ora 6). The essay devotes considerable attention to the anti-apartheid poem, “Making a

136  Robert Sullivan

Fist of It” (CW 174–75), the title poem of the 1978 collection. It is set in 1976 Soweto, Alice, and Alexandra townships, as well as Johannesburg, in the minutes after a police shooting. A  black baby girl is looking to “lock onto a nose-cone nipple” (line 8), but “untidily, and in abandonment her mother lies in the dusty/ sealed street, a police-bullet buried hungrily/ between her breasts” (lines 10–12). Yet the outrage expressed in the poem is by diamond mine owners who use one of the harshest swear words in the Dutch language, “Godverdomme!” in lines 27 and 30 because of their workers’ absence and the effect on profits. This was a period of great unrest within South Africa, underlined by the 1977 death of Stephen Biko, the liberation political organiser, at the hands of South African police. “Making a Fist of It” combines Tuwhare’s Marxist class consciousness as well as his own liberation politics. This highly politicised material is deftly handled. Tuwhare does not make any gestures towards a New Zealand context, except that the following poem in the collection is “The New Zealand Land March on Wellington, Hepetema 14 – Oketopa 17, 1975” (27–28). The nine pages following that poem are devoted to protests mostly about Māori land rights (29–35), a street march (36), and the 1951 water-side workers strike (37). How does this South African material filter through a Māori lens? On the surface, the connecting currents are not obvious. If one examines the historical connections of the former British Empire, then one can claim an association as one of the four self-governing Dominions: South Africa, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. New Zealanders also fought in the Boer War of 1899–1902. The contemporaneous currents of 1970s televised news perhaps brought an immediacy that called for action. There was other activity caused by the anti-Vietnam War movements, Ngā Tama Toa sovereignty action, the Polynesian Panthers, and associated counter-cultural empowerment. The roots and routes of such poetry are multifarious. A possible connection is through the poet’s friend, James K. Baxter, who had founded a contemplative community at Jerusalem on the Whanganui River in 1970. Its roots were grounded in Catholic and Māori values, and its concerns, driven by young hippies mentored by Ngāti Hau kuia and kaumatua, included social justice for the destitute and the mentally ill, as well as biculturalism. This direct knowledge of poetic action, and social intervention, might have influenced Tuwhare’s poetry written in the 1970s. His 1974 collection Something Nothing includes the poem “Heemi” dedicated to Baxter after his death; the poem was first published in the NZ Listener in early 1973 (Hunt 105). Through a juxtaposition of subject material in the collection, Making a Fist of It perhaps associates the anti-apartheid struggles of the 1970s with the Māori landrights struggles of the same era. This could constitute a mis-reading, of course, in that the material was precisely in the same era so the poems could have serendipitously been arranged, but this is unlikely to be a coincidence since Tuwhare had written other political poems partly informed by the Marxist critic Christopher Caudwell, and other socialist writers since the 1950s: “I thought it was great. I was much influenced at the time by people like Pablo Neruda and Louis Aragon, the

Two poets of the Pacific  137

poets that the left sort of claimed” (Hunt 58). It is clear that Tuwhare regarded himself as a poet of the left. Indeed, the first two poems in the 1978 collection Making a Fist of It reference taniwha, or guardian creatures (9) and the sand of Karirikura (10) at the southern end of Ninety Mile Beach, which is part of the spirits pathway to Cape Reinga. Other poems featuring Māori language and culture can be found on pages 13, 14, 15, 19, and 20. “Lament” on page 14 is a creative translation of a waiata tangi, or lament, by Tamati Hone. An author’s note on page 15, accompanied by the first stanzas of the tangi in Māori, says it is intended as a salute to a fine poet and to the Taranaki people in their struggles. The original tangi is about the attack on Sentry Hill during the Taranaki Wars. Among the list of people killed were two sons of the Ngāti Ruanui poet Tamati Hone, Tiopira and Hapeta (Cowan 26). The tangi was a lament for these sons and the many others lost. I am indeed ascribing a cultural value to the text by highlighting its Māori-centred heritage, yet Tuwhare could be referencing the poem because it has tremendous poetic value, except to say that the Taranaki Wars were a huge part of the Māori struggle for human rights in Aotearoa.

Māori roots and routes The 1970s was a groundbreaking period in Tuwhare’s oeuvre, in that it marks the rise of his Māori rights-centred poetry. His socialism and human-rights politics were always a part of his poetry, but Tuwhare’s Māori land-rights– and Treatycentred work did not appear in his poems so readily until the 1970s collections published after his second book, Come Rain Hail. For instance, the political poem “O Africa” appears in 1964’s No Ordinary Sun (25); “Monologue”, which is narrated by the Scottish boilermaker who Tuwhare worked with at Mangakino (Hunt 35); and “Lament”, in the same collection (13), references a moteatea (traditional poetic chant) about a battle but focuses on personal rather than collective or political loss, but there are no poems centred on Māori politics in the 1964 collection. An additional point here is that the moteatea reference reveals the world of the poet as being Māori: the subject matter has a Māori focus, and the literary poetic precedents are established in the Māori oral tradition in addition to other literary influences. “Letter /poem to Josephine Cooper” (later Dame Whina Cooper) in the 1964 collection does not refer to political struggle, yet Cooper had by then become known nationally as President of the Māori Women’s Welfare League and had long been associated with political leaders such as Sir Apirana Ngata, Princess Te Puea Herangi, and Prime Minister Walter Nash (King 2003, 148–87), while later poems published in the 1970s about her are undoubtedly political. To calibrate the term ‘political’ in Tuwhare’s context, I mean it to refer to human rights, Māori social and economic rights and aspirations, labour rights, anti-colonialism, and biculturalism in Aotearoa. To reiterate, it is the second kind of politics, that concerning Māori rights and aspirations, which emerges fully in the 1970s. The other kinds of politics are present throughout his oeuvre.

138  Robert Sullivan

Haunani-Kay Trask Kanaka Maoli (native Hawaiian) poet Haunani-Kay Trask derives her poetics from another kind of liquid, lava, through the mythology of the Pele clan deities. On the island of Hawai’i, lava flows like a river to the ocean, where the contact slows and solidifies it, accompanied by boiling saltwater and massive plumes of steam. Until recently, before the 2018 eruptions, tourists watched the plumes and the glowing river at night, roped off about a kilometre away for safety. For Trask, Pele is ever-present in her poetry. At times, the narration of her poems appears to posit the narrator as the goddess, accompanied by Pele’s favoured younger sister, Hiʽiakaikapoliopele, just as Trask and her younger sister Mililani are very publicly visible political figures in the sovereignty movement. These mythological and sibling relationships represent key driving forces in this poetics of empowerment. The kaona (hidden meanings) of place-names and their locations historically and culturally provide depths to this poet’s work, as well as the symbols of sovereignty. These references exist within the physical frame of the islands, and the subaqueous connections between them through lava plumes travelling upward through the volcano’s depths to the surface. I say that Trask is publicly visible due to her immense political activism on behalf of Kanaka Maoli, or native Hawaiians. Now retired from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, where for a time she led the Center for Hawaiian Studies, Trask’s two collections of poems were written within a busy life of political and academic leadership – she also has two scholarly book publications, From a Native Daughter, and Eros and Power – and to signal that this tremendous amount of work informs her deceptively layered poetic. Trask’s first collection, Light in the Crevice Never Seen, is divided into three sections: “Chant of Lamentation” (3–40), “Raw, Swift and Deadly” (43–68), and “Light in the Crevice Never Seen” (71–96). The first poetry section laments external encroachment on the mana and self-determination of Hawaiians (37): E Pele e, fire-eater from Kahiki. Breath of Papa’s life miraculously becomes Energy, stink with sulfurous sores. Hi‘iaka wilting in her wild home: black lehua, shriveled pūkiawe, unborn aʽaliʽi. The author’s note explains the significance of geothermal development on the island of Hawai‘i, as this is the home of the Hawaiian goddess Pele who continues to be venerated and ceremonially worshipped by some Hawaiians. In 1991, the

Two poets of the Pacific  139

Puna Geothermal Venture Company suffered two well blowouts which gave off poisonous effluent (April 1998 screening of First Friday). According to the company website, the facility is located on 30 acres along the Lower East Rift Zone of Kilauea Volcano in the Puna district of Hawai‘i Island. The company website admits the following in regard to an experimental well that preceded the current commercial facility: The project revealed that geothermal resources on Hawai‘i Island are robust, reliable and sustainable. It also showed that the byproducts – excess fluids and gas – needed to be better handled and disposed. The company does not mention any blowout, which indicates the importance of Trask’s exposing critique of corporate environmental mismanagement. In a brief item on June 15, 1991, the Los Angeles Times reported the following: Hawai‘i state officials ordered a geothermal company to halt all drilling Friday after a well blowout spewed toxic gas and routed 75 people from their homes on the island of Hawai‘i. Opponents of geothermal drilling near the nation’s last remaining tropical rain forest claimed the accident shows Hawai‘i’s volcanic resource may be unmanageable. White sulfuric steam roared uncontrolled for more than 30 hours from the Puna Geothermal Venture well before the company managed to cap it at shortly after dawn Friday. The accident took place in rural Pohoiki, about 10 miles from the Wao Keleo Puna rain forest, where drilling by another firm has triggered an international outcry from environmentalists. There is a major disconnection between the idealised presentation of the ‘āina (glossed as land, earth) in Trask’s texts, or aloha ‘āina (which is glossed as love of the land, patriotism), and the actual despoliation of the land captured in the company’s own representative photograph of its venture. Apparently the situation has improved since 1994 when the poem was published. The last stanza ends: And what do we know of them, these foreigners these Americans? Nothing. We know nothing. Except a foul stench among our children

140  Robert Sullivan

and a long hollow of mourning in our ma’i. The last comment refers to genitalia, and reminds us of the sexual potency of the term “crevice”. The cover of Light in the Crevice Never Seen features a lava flow emerging from the earth’s crust, possibly just as it hits the sea as there are plumes of steam nearby. Marsh notes that “the creviced cliff face also possesses distinctively female sexual characteristics – resembling the clitoris” (346). The “hollow” could refer to the borehole, and of course the stench refers to the sulfur dioxide emanating from the venture. By juxtaposing the geothermal well next to children, and the sexual reproductive organs, the poem sees a future terribly altered by abuses of the land and power. To the poet and many of her people, the goddess Pele is a sacred embodied representation of “the volcano itself ” (105). The company borehole into the Kilauea caldera is a violation of the goddess. Davianna Pōmaika‘i McGregor describes the significance of the Puna district on several fronts in her major work Nā Kua’āina: Living Hawaiian Culture: Throughout all of the folklore for Puna, Pelehonuamea and her family of deities emerge as the natural primal elements that dominate and shape the lives of the chiefs and people of Puna. (147) McGregor also notes (145) that Puna is the site in the Pele and Hi‘iaka mo‘olelo where the first hula is performed. It is performed by Hi‘iaka “to please her older sister, Pelehonuamea. The hula was performed at Ha‘ena and represented the birth of the hula sacred to Pele”. Its name is “Ke Ha‘a La Puna”. I believe that Trask’s reiterative referencing of the Pele narratives leads her to the sites important to the deity. The importance of the area’s natural elements in the traditional chant translated by Pualani Kanahele underscores the devastation that the poet must feel about geothermal development and other ecological scarring in the area: I kai o Nanahuki Hula le’a wale I kai o Nanahuki ‘O Puna kai kuwa i ka hala Pae i ka leo o ke kai Ke lu la, i na pua lehua At the sea of Nanahuki The voice of Puna resounds The voice of the sea is carried While the lehua blossoms are being scattered

Two poets of the Pacific  141

Marsh also makes this point: Pele provides a foundational myth from which Trask’s poetry stems. It assumes knowledge of the narratives and legends surrounding Pele, and of the folklore, religion and the awesome geographical landscape that bears witness to her fearsome power and beauty. Pele is an intensely political and highly poetic symbol. (349) Trask’s poem moves on to another deity (37): “Far down her eastern flank/the gourd of Lono dries/broken on the temple wall”. Here the island of Hawai‘i is depicted as the goddess herself. The deified chief Lono’s remains, also known as Lonoikamakahiki, were also located there, in the ka‘ai or woven sennit casket that used to be in the great heiau or temple called Pakaalana within the Hale o Liloa inner sanctum (McGregor 51, 55–56). The remains of this deity were relocated in 1829, with those of five other deities, by Queen Ka‘ahumanu to stop their use in worship and to encourage Christianity. The Queen was acting regent for King Kamehameha III. So, this reference to Lono in Trask’s poem speaks of the processes of colonisation and how they are internalised. The gourd is used to satisfy the god and the people. Because the gourd contains liquid, it represents internal sustenance to quench the thirst, so to speak; it additionally represents ceremonies in that the gourd was also used as a drum, so it has a celebratory aspect, and yet the ceremonial gourd is broken. “Makua Kāne” (4–7) is written for the poet’s father who died in 1977. Some of the poems in the collection have brief contextualising notes written by the poet. For example, “He, like his father and grandfather before him, lived in a white world that controlled our Native land, Hawai‘i. Both were long-time fighters for our people” (7): for a month I wake to find you in the stomach of my sleep shark’s tooth overhead turtle guarding out at sea I bring you pa‘akai, lū‘au leaves a bowl of sour poi the wind blows cool from Ko‘olau

142  Robert Sullivan

The stomach is close to the na‘au, or seat of emotions in Hawaiian conceptions of the self. The turtle is an ancestor god or ‘aumakua. Trask’s uses of the pa‘akai or sea-salt, and the lu‘au leaves, according to her explanation, “denote ritual substances at the time of death” (7). Without the explanation, I doubt if a person unfamiliar with the details of Hawaiian culture would be able to work out the symbolism. The author very generously reveals these significances in order to communicate in a deeper way with readers. The sourness of the mashed taro dish called poi takes away the affirming sweetness of life. Similarly, the winds have cooled. The shark’s tooth could also have a significance belonging to ‘aumakua. The month of dreams brings back her father and the need to lay him to rest through ritual offerings, with this poem constituting part of the ritual meditations. The poem speaks of the need for her father’s care, and that the political life is perhaps taking a great toll on the poet. Imbued within the objects are ever-present relationships. In the fourth section of the poem, Trask writes, “me, I fight/for the land but/we feel there is/no hope” (5). The explanatory note highlights the portentous nature of dream visitations by ancestors as being “in need of careful attention” (7). The father’s presence in the daughter’s stomach is a kind of reversal of parenthood where the daughter also wears the father’s “oldness/as a cloak” (6). Here the cultural references make more specific the grief that the poet must feel for her father; this grief is also connected to the struggle for Hawaiian sovereignty. Her leadership role and its accompanying burden is not directly referenced in the poem, but her role does provide a backdrop. The injustices are overtly referenced in the third section: in town, politicians carve up land: shoreline for hotels, valleys for houses, underground for bunkers, sewers miles of wire (5) The very brief description illustrates the all-reaching arms of the industrial-military colonial complex and the hopelessness that the poet and leader must feel. Perhaps the birds are similes for her feelings, or symbols of the smallness she and her people must feel in the wake of such gigantic changes: little doves dart in and out startled from their banyan by screeching cars people throw cans cigarette butts plastic (5)

Two poets of the Pacific  143

At the end of section IV, instead of a bird chorus, “no hope/only sounds/ diminishing/at dawn” (5). There are other voices, though. The book features praise from a number of prominent native writers, including Linda Hogan and Joy Harjo. Trask’s poem “Sisters” is anthologised in the collection of native women’s writing from North America, Reinventing the Enemy’s Language, coedited by Harjo. The poem is dedicated to her sister Mililani. There appears to be a connection between the poem for their father Bernard and this one in the doves: doves in the rain mornings above Kāne‘ohe Bay blue sheen stillness across long waters gliding to Coconut Island The island is the largest of five in the Bay, which is also a suburb of Honolulu on the northeast coast of the city. Ironically, the poem speaks of ecological catastrophe in the second section: “smell of dead/fish dead/limu dead/ reef ”. The environmental mess is juxtaposed next to real estate and townhouse prices. I say this is ironic because Coconut Island is the site of a marine research facility operated by the University of Hawai‘i. The lyrical elements of the poem seem to be suspended here for the directly polemical statement (59): “clever/haole culture/ killing as it goes”. The polemic seems to anthropomorphise American culture into an undescribed creature that has “destruction as a way/of life” (59). Mililani and Haunani-Kay are described in the last stanza as “defending life/with the spear/of memory” (59). It is telling that the author’s autobiographical account of the sisters places the environment to the fore. The destruction is caused by “greedy foreigners” and real estate speculators. The sisters are “driven by the sound/of doves”. This desire for peace, which comes from respect for environmental concerns, is also strongly connected to anti-colonialism: to remove the sources of pollution requires the removal of the colonial culture that pollutes. Memory is the weapon that defends life. This life is a qualitative one filled with flora and fauna rather than geothermal wells, golf courses, freeways, tourism, and sewerage. It gets quite racialised. In “A Day at the Beach” Trask says she wants to write about the land, “but all the haole/drifted out/clotted on the beach/in tourist shirts/and white pants” (45). The poet’s memory asserts another way of being at the end of the poem: in the distance mountains float dark and hot women carry baskets of shrimp upland to the moon

144  Robert Sullivan

These stanzas could describe a setting in a utopia with floating mountains and ascendant working people. Trask often juxtaposes the brute ugliness of colonialism with the terrible beauty of Moanan pasts. The collection never yields to the sovereign assertions of the United States, and constantly enlivens the text with Hawaiian ways of being. For instance, the poet re-reads the idealised social space of the cemetery in the poem “Missionary Graveyard”, dedicated to the poet’s father, Bernard Trask. Like another cemetery poem dedicated to her father, “Pu‘owaina Flag Day”, it addresses sovereignty: IV No Hawaiian Homes here just barren earth blowing dust, dry muliwai and in Lili‘u’s house a smiling Hawaiian shaking hands with money-men, eating rice and drinking sake (14) At the time of writing, John Waihe‘e was the state Governor. He was the first native Hawaiian to hold the office since statehood. The governor’s official residence is the former home of the deposed monarch Queen Lili‘uokalani. Trask clearly sees him as complicit with the ruling Democratic Party elites. The Office of Hawaiian Affairs (OHA) is the official body set up by the state to advocate broadly for Hawaiians, especially on legislative matters. It has nine elected trustees through a state-wide vote. Mililani Trask succeeded in being elected for one term from 1998–2000. An editorial note about the line “no Hawaiian homes here” (16) makes sure that we understand this to refer to the Department of Hawaiian Homelands, which administers the allotment of former Crown lands as Hawaiian homesteads. From 2003–2010, when I lived in Hawai‘i, about once a year there would be a television news item about some Hawaiians being given their homesteads, which they could lease at a reduced rate. It was a propaganda exercise, staged to maximise the media impact of the homesteads to a few Kanaka Maoli families. “Of the two hundred thousand acres available”, says Trask’s note (16), “less than sixty thousand are presently used by native Hawaiians. The remainder is controlled by non-Natives, including the US military” (16). The Hawaiian Homes Commission Act (1921) is still in force. Trask’s claim is substantiated by the 1991 Hawaiian advisory committee report to the United States Commission on Civil Rights, A Broken Trust: The Hawaiian Homelands Program. Seventy Years of Failure of the Federal and State Governments to Protect the Civil Rights of Native Hawaiians. The report estimates that the amount of land was originally 203,500 acres, but that this was not properly mapped and that it is more likely to be 187,561 acres (Tatibouet 32).

Two poets of the Pacific  145

The tone of Trask’s (1999: 8−9) poem “Missionary Graveyard” highlights corruption, cheap constructions, and disease: II. graveyard Hawai‘i Nei: coffin buildings, concrete parking lots, maggot freeways smell of death smeared across the land killing in the heart The H-3 controversy had been raging throughout the 1980s, and into the 1990s. It was a freeway that provided easy access to Pearl Harbor from the marine base at Kane‘ohe on the northwest side of the island. The main controversy was not its military purpose, but rather that it bulldozed through a number of sacred sites and ancestral burials. The last stanza masterfully sums up the intensity of feeling: at 40, it’s the hopelessness. how did you live till nearly 70? (50) Even though it is a question that despairs, there is a sense of gathering strength from her father’s experiences as a Hawaiian. These simple, non-materialistic things brought joy to the poet. This is not characteristic of the collection itself, however, as there is much despondency, which, it must be surmised, is caused by the political situation of Kanaka Maoli. The poem “Refusal”, dedicated to a Kamehameha Schools classmate, is written on a personal rather than public level, and concerns his drug-related homicide. The opening lines begin with his shooting through the chest as he opened his front door and held his young son’s hand: didn’t you stop, dear one just a second in time holding sweet life in your eager young hands and wonder: why our men beautiful and strong on their running feet, sun in their earth-dark eyes why these lean, soft-lined men

146  Robert Sullivan

go carelessly down to nothingness one after another, a whole nation of men, Hawaiian brothers? (26) The beautiful description of the men, and the words “dear” and “sweet” in the above passage speak of the care needed for these “brothers” in contrast to their carelessness in the face of life itself. I can’t believe a nation of men, a whole nation of Hawaiian men, lean, handsome and dead (28) Trask cites the influence on her work of the philosopher and psychologist Franz Fanon, whose work is centred on colonised conceptions of identity, and the psychological as well as physical oppression by colonisers: The evolution of my thinking owes a great debt to some of the most creative intellectuals and revolutionaries of the twentieth century: Frantz Fanon, Malcolm X, and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o. (From a Native Daughter x) Trask’s book of essays From a Native Daughter: Colonialism and Sovereignty in Hawai‘i in many respects mirrors Fanon’s thinking about colonial subjects and the psychological damage caused by colonial processes that are imbued in all spheres of everyday and official life. The ideology of the colonial state is expressed through the state apparatuses of the media, educational institutions, the health system, and churches, to name just a few. These combine, to continue following Althusserian terms, the repressive state apparatuses of the prison system, law enforcement, and the military, to create in a colonised person a sense of inadequacy in the face of the state. Fanon’s analysis goes deeper, as this inadequacy of the individual is internalised. Without saying it, the poem “Refusal” in a sense, then, refuses to accept the messages of the state and its colonial society that are internalised by indigenous men, not only in a public sense, but also out of a sense of self-preservation. To acquiesce to such ways of thinking, where indigeneity is not seen for its inherent mana and beauty, means death. The text does not say this, but the implied message is there for all to see in the use of the word “nation”. The poem does assert a kind of necessary activism. The man concerned needs to stop and think about it: didn’t you pause, my honey on that threshold of death

Two poets of the Pacific  147

glance back at your child hesitate for life before flinging it away? (27) Again, it is only implied, but the deep message is to decolonise the mind. The child in the poem represents the generations, and also something greater than the individual. This poem is moving precisely because the need for decolonisation provides a backdrop – there are no hectoring loud-hailer assertions about oppression. The responsibility lies with the young man who has been shot in the chest, and who dealt in drugs. The poem’s simplicity is its complexity. In the title chapter of From a Native Daughter, Trask relates her time on a conference panel where another panellist was a historian who refused to accept the evidence Trask cited about widespread opposition to annexation by Hawaiians. I am not so much interested in the facts as these have been indisputably revealed by historian Noenoe Silva’s research in the Library of Congress, which holds the 1897 Petition signed by 21,269 people, according to the United States National Archives website. That, at the time, is more than half of the entire native population opposing the illegal annexation. Noenoe Silva adds more numbers to that already impressive statistic: When all the work was done, there was a total of over 21,000 signatures – men’s and women’s in about equal numbers. The Hui Kālaiʿāina also had a substantial membership, and they conducted their own petition drive at the same time, collecting over 17,000 signatures. Together, the two groups collected over 38,000 signatures. Even considering the likelihood that some people signed both petitions, the total number of signatures is impressive given that the population of Kanaka Maoli at the time was around 40,000. (151) My focus here is not the actual resistance by Kanaka Maoli. Rather, I am interested in the nature of the evidence Trask used to refute the unnamed historian’s claim, which occurred before Silva’s unearthing of the petition as crucial proof of widespread opposition. Trask cites the song “Kaulana na pua o Hawai‘i” written in 1893 directly after the overthrow. She also cites a story handed down from her grandmother to her mother and then to Trask: “a great wailing went up throughout the islands, a wailing of weeks, a wailing of impenetrable grief, a wailing of death” (120). The nature of the refutation then rests in oral literature, the song-poem which continues to be performed at political gatherings “with great dignity” (119), and in the oral account of the aftermath of the overthrow. Trask’s point of view is located entirely within a worldview centred on the land in that the song-poem features the regions of the Hawaiian lands and the people who are embodiments of the land and their opposition: Kaulana na pua a’o Hawai‘i

148  Robert Sullivan

Kupa’a mahope o ka ‘āina Famous are the children of Hawai‘i who cling steadfastly to the land The song-poem speaks of children as flowers, na pua, reminding me of the multiple flower references in Trask’s work. It also reminds me that there are many hidden referents within traditional Hawaiian poetics, many which are not accessible to non-Hawaiians. The obvious referents in this song-poem are to places and leading ancestors: “Hawai‘i, island of Keawe,/answers. The bays of Pi‘ilani help./Kaua‘i of Mano assists/Firmly together with the sands of/ Kakuhihewa” (119). Later in the poem, the Queen is crowned again. Trask uses the song in her poem “Kaulana Na Pua”. In her poem, three young Hawaiian children are out surfing. A “passing tourist/florid in his prints” asks them for directions but the children “little fists/ raised in a mimic of power” slash his eye with a blade (48). As the tourist bleeds on the beach, the children sing “Kaulana Na Pua”: “a tune/out of time, time past // when their tribe/was a nation/and their nation, the great/lava mother, Hawai‘i”. The lava may be a reference to the goddess Pele. Poet and scholar Brandy Nālani McDougall discusses kaona in her 2011 doctoral dissertation. She devotes a chapter to the kaona involving Haunani-Kay Trask’s poetry and the mo‘olelo (literature and histories) and mo‘okuauhau (genealogies) relating to Pele and Hi‘iaka. As a non-Hawaiian, I do not have comfortable access to this knowledge. I might have worked this out with patient genealogical explication, but it would have been intellectual, not the embodied knowledge that belongs to everyday existence. McDougall reveals the kaona reference through her passionate knowledge of the Pele and Hi‘iaka mo‘olelo which is handed down to her, and, as well, has been explored with academic research methods. “Writing in Captivity: Poetry in a Time of De-Colonisation” describes Trask’s approach to poetry. She chooses to emphasise the political, and cites a number of authors who inspire her politically motivated poetry. I suggest also that the poems are not solely political. They speak of the “cruel truths”, and so the emotions generated by these insights are actually quite personal, private, and not necessarily conducted on a public or political level. Clearly, the private and the public intersect in the poems, but I suggest that it is too easy to dismiss Trask as just a political poet, even though political literature is not inferior to other literary labels. She is a human being who has seen her family stories re-written or erased and replaced by versions that are comfortable for government or corporate ears, ones that fulfil the desires of master narrators. She makes the point herself: “In my work, writing is both de-colonisation and recreation. It is creativity against the American grain and in the Hawaiian grain” (47, emphasis added). By political, I mean the poetry of resistance to American military-industrial hegemony inflected for wide consumption. By private, I mean those poems whose essence is the emotional support system for the writer that also provides the psychic,

Two poets of the Pacific  149

familial, social, environmental, and spiritual necessities for the poet’s wellbeing. These aspects are not entirely distinct. They are degrees of emphasis. Trask’s second collection of poetry, Night is a Sharkskin Drum, was published by the University of Hawai‘i Press in 2002, some eight years after Light in the Crevice Never Seen. Both titles reference the ocean. The sharkskin is sourced from the sea creature, while the crevice is submerged by ocean where the chain of seamounts rises. There are eight pages in its Hawaiian glossary, compared to six for the earlier book. The number of Hawaiian terms is noteworthy because the first collection is 35 pages longer, and so the density of linguistic Hawaiian referents has increased markedly in the new work. In “Writing in Captivity”, the author promises this renewed emphasis on Hawaiian language: And this leads me to a last, personal evolution: the growing determination to write in my Native language, to use our names and our sounds and our cadences to translate the metaphors of our land and its beauty into the printed word. (47) The inset or foregrounded cover image is a photograph of what is presumably a sharkskin drum on a shoreline at night. The photo is by Kapulani Landgraf and Mark Hamasaki, the photographers who recorded the environmental devastation of the H-3 Freeway construction. The drum is foregrounded and lit. A full moon is half suspended on the horizon, so that it appears that the moon lights the drum. It is the Pō Mahina, the night of the full moon, glossed by Trask as a “night for lovers” (69), and of course, it is a tidal event. There is also a kaona reference to Pele in the cover image as the title-poem ends with a chant, “E, Pele e,/E, Pele e,/E Pele, e” (5). Note how “E” is conventionally italicised, perhaps to emphasise the Hawaiianness of the chant, its ritualistic worshipful nature. Another kaona reference to Pele is the background image of the cover. To my eye, the grey imagery appears to be billowing smoke from a volcanic eruption. It could also be a black and white photo of treetops taken from above. The only unnatural element on the cover is the drum itself, even though it is a composite of natural elements: shark skin stretched over carved wood. It appears to be a pahu heiau or temple drum (Te Rangihiroa 396) made for religious ceremonies as its height suggests a standing drummer. The pahu or drums used in hula were designed for seated drummers and were much shorter in height than the one depicted on the cover. This may have significance for Pele, but that is speculation. There is another kaona reference to Pele. Herb Kawainui Kane notes that the goddess was guided from Tahiti to Hawaiʿi “by her elder brother Kamohoaliʿi in the form of a great shark” (71). As well as being a reference to Pele, the drum is most certainly a reference to Hawaiian sovereignty. Stacy Kamehiro’s (2009) The Arts of Kingship: Hawaiian Art and National Culture of the Kalakāua Era describes the Bishop Museum’s pahu heiau named Naniuaola: Pahu heiau are traditionally associated with religious practices and chiefly power. They signaled major events in temple rites (e.g., the beginning and

150  Robert Sullivan

end of a kapu period and rituals of human sacrifice) and in the lives of the chiefs (e.g., birth, cutting the umbilical cord, circumcision, marriage, death, the return of a long absent chiefly relative). Naniuaola’s possession of a personal name suggests it enjoyed an elevated status; this name likely signaled its sacred purpose and association with chiefly genealogies. When played, the drum called the gods to enter the temple complex and to speak through the drum; sounds emanating from the instrument issued divine mana into the human realm. (115) Divine heritage and chiefly mana (or sovereignty) are key themes within Trask’s poetics. The cover image is particularly attuned to these resonances. The drum was lent to the photographers by renowned Hawaiian musician Robert Cazimero. I  have been unable to find a subsequent image of this particular drum, as I  am interested in its original dimensions and hence its role, so my discussion is speculative. Like the book cover image of Tuwhare in Small Holes in the Silence, there is a headland or landform to the upper right of the photo, yet this one is silhouetted in the night. To the left of the drum, lit by the moon, there is a section of surf hitting the coastline. This could easily have been arranged as a romantic image, but the use of darkness, and the phallic or assertive drum (it is, after all, upright), prevents such a reading. The energy of this cover has latency, a power yet to be released by the summoning of gods through the drumming hands of an-as-yet invisible drummer. Perhaps this drummer is the poet herself, using her poetic and worldly knowledge to slap out rhythms and to chant? The title, of course, spreads the shark skin across dark horizons, for it is night that is a sharkskin drum, as if some larger entity is beating an immense pahu, one which has an overview on the scale of the night sky (comparable to an oceanic scale which bears its celestial reflection) or of sovereign justice. The title might also mean each night there is a sharkskin drum to play. It might also refer to the ferocity of sharks, and of course their aumakua or guardian status. The sharkskin here then would represent the extended family protected by the shark, and the drum would poetically represent the voice of the family god. The other thing to notice about the title is the encultured nature of its night, which cords it to the series of nights listed in the Kumulipo, and hence genealogically to the great pan-Moanan nights of creation. There is a further kaona reference to sovereignty in the term shark. Pukui and Korn (4–8) describe the significance of the “Shark Hula for Kalani’ōpu’u”. The high born chief Kalani’ōpu’u was the uncle of the first Hawaiian king, Kamehameha I, who was called “Lion of the Pacific”: A more apt emblem for him and for his uncle and other warrior-relatives would be the shark, as in this sacred chant naming various ancestors of Kalani’ōpu’u who had acquired authority over shark-gods, or over other chiefs who could claim the gods’ magical services. Not only the shark but also the cowry, squid, eel, wild goose, and the frigate bird (‘iwa) were sometimes regarded by the early Hawaiians as ‘aumakua, beings half human and

Two poets of the Pacific  151

half divine who were bound by obedience to their keepers. Their assistance could become a precious family possession of a line of ruling chiefs, a restrictive right dependent on supernatural agency and power, a kapu. (4) It is worth noting that the shark hula refers to the Puna district of Hawai‘i, which is the site of the geothermal venture discussed earlier in this chapter: Kepanilā is the shark-god of Puna (7), constituting a kaona Moanan reference. Elsewhere in Pukui and Korn (26), the authors describe the night and the moment when the moon shines its brightest as a metaphor for the moment an aliʽi is born in the birth chant composed for King Kamehameha III. Clearly then, the cover imagery is associative, and well within the bounds of multi-valent kaona referencing. The multiple kaona references in the cover imagery pile waves on waves pointing to sovereignty. “Hi‘iaka Chanting” builds on the natural references as signs of the goddess. Birds, blossoms, mist, wind, tree snails, moss, are seen as “Hi‘iaka chanting// on the wind” (6). The dancer in the last tercets is urged twice to “look up”, as if one look is not enough, and as if there is another meaning here. The dance is most likely a hula, since the goddess is chanting “in Pele’s uplands”. Pukui and Korn describe Hi‘iaka as “a seer gifted with powers of prophecy” (57) and so the emphasis on higher thought as well as vision is appropriate here. The reference to “Elegant hāpu’u” (line 5) might be a kaona reference to “Hi‘iaka’s Song at Waialua” (Pukui and Korn 62–63) which is set on the northeast coast of ‘Oahu. The translation of this five-line chant also uses the word “upland”. Marsh notes that Trask was raised in this area, “on the Koʿolau side of the island of Oʿahu in Kaneohe which foreground the Koʿolau mountains and ridges” (317). My purpose in revealing these kaona references is to underscore the sovereign importance of Hawaiian and Moanan culture, and Hawaiian justice, for this poet. The divinities represented do not merely stand in for natural elements. They are at the apex of a justice system whose first human representative is the Hawaiian monarch. Marsh is far more direct in her powerful summation of a series of politicised and racialised responses to Trask’s poetry by a range of Americans from the Mainland and Hawaiʿi: In exploring the question of what happens when poetry is written by a powerful, influential, and politically uncompromising Native woman in a predominantly colonised and colonial public space, I see Crowell and supporters of his argument against Trask, as representative of mainstream colonial America. Their refusal to read Trask’s poetry in the context of native dispossession is an act of ethnocentric arrogance, and possibly racism. (330) Marsh argues for a reading within a socio-political context (331), rather than just a purely emotional context. I  wish to contribute to this argument for holistic contextualisation by adding the multi-referential kaona as forms of culturally safe

152  Robert Sullivan

messaging within Trask’s poems, away from fast-reflex critiques by critics who lack distance from and who even privilege colonial ideologies. Trask’s poem ‘Returning to Waimānalo’ has only appeared in the anthology Mālama: Hawaiian Land and Water, edited by Hawaiian poet and environmental activist Dana Naone Hall. It is an early poem, written before both collections, and so it does not feature the poet’s characteristic indented tercets, but more regular stanzas: between two worlds shorelines of meaning form edging closer, farther marking the one space where all my selves cease transforming (142) The poem marks a pause in possibly the poet’s own life, expressed here as the shorelines of Waimānalo beach. Note the plural shorelines: one is the visible, while the other is the invisible shoreline, the tua-uri referred to by Māori Marsden as the deeper reality. The poet speaks of the world wars, and also two worlds in the second stanza. Consciously the poet makes a statement about this indigenous space, Waimānalo, in the third stanza: but here, there is a moment a fall of light along the shore, gleaming a changing shoreline this is not peace, or solitude. i am too unseasoned for that This between-ness is ‘told’ to us by the narrator. Trask is quite bold in her assertions about space, quite conscious in the fourth stanza: it is something strange: intelligible space in a bitter universe rhythm amidst terrifying noise human need that does not suffer it is my experience when struggle wanes

Two poets of the Pacific  153

The poet reaches into creative energies beyond the darkness, into te tua-uri, through her lived experience of the aronui, the world of perception: myself, and my people absorbing sounds near a silent sea forming ancient contours of meaning It is a highly philosophical poem that grounds itself in place, rather than the struggles of transformation. It recognises “human need” beyond the “terrifying noise” most likely rendered by weapons or immense machinery. In contrast to the noise, Hawaiians are represented as “absorbing sounds” so that they have insights into realities beyond the world of sense-perception. In this representation, the kīpuka6 or haven is the shoreline. It is meaningful to the poet, but it is also a vulnerable space, not fertile, in between the nourishment of the land and the fecundity of the ocean, yet it is “the one space/ where all my selves/ cease transforming”. Poetry is a kīpuka, a cultural haven. In a sense, the ocean itself is an enlarged kīpuka with enormous folding and unfolding waves and currents of influence that connect over vast distances and at many levels. In that sense, the kīpuka does not represent confinement of cultural activity and expression, but rather highlights the ongoing discursive forces of tidalectics through, for example, Trask’s powerful Pele referencing as the goddess and her accompanying moʽolelo or stories emerge from the waves. In her poems, the discourse ranges in scale from a flower up to confronting the American military-industrial complex. In summary, to make an overt connection to this volume, two indigenous poets of the Moanan Pacific region confront issues of environmental, cultural, and military devastation, while maintaining their lives and native wellbeing through the artistic freedom and humanity of poetry.

Notes 1 This chapter is part of my doctoral thesis, ‘Mana Moana: Wayfinding and Five Indigenous Poets’ (University of Auckland, 2016). All verses are reproduced here with permissions of Hone Tuwhare’s estate and Haunani-Kay Trask’s legal representative. 2 Additional to the usage of the term ‘kaupapa’ in this sentence, a summary of Kaupapa Māori Theory is on page 2 of Fiona Cram, Linda Tuhiwai Smith and Wayne Johnstone’s research report, “Mapping the Themes of Māori Talk About Health”. A  special issue of the New Zealand Journal of Educational Studies, entitled He Aha Te Kaupapa? explores Kaupapa Māori Theory (Hoskins and Jones). 3 The New Zealand sociolinguist Alan Bell noted ‘Moanan’ is an English term in a seminar I gave at the University of Hong Kong in February 2015. It is not in common use, so it is not a loanword. 4 Keown’s article appears in the Tuwhare tribute issue of Ka Mate, Ka Ora 6. It was a collection of critical explorations, biographical essays, poems, and photographic portraits.

154  Robert Sullivan

It reflected Tuwhare’s mana within New Zealand’s literary and artistic circles, or in other words, it reflected well on the healthiness of his relationships in the vā. 5 Virginia Tufte makes the point that correlative sentence structures have the effect of suspending an idea until it is resolved by the conjunction (132). 6 Davianna Pōmaika‘i McGregor (2007) describes a cultural kīpuka as an area of undamaged native culture, similar to a kīpuka, which is an untouched stand of forest between lava flows.

References Barrowman, Rachel. Mason: The Life of R.A.K. Mason. Wellington: Victoria UP, 2003. Cowan, James. The New Zealand Wars: A History of the Māori Campaigns and the Pioneering Period. Volume 2. Wellington: R E Owen, 1956. Print. Cram, F., McCreanor, T., Smith, L., Nairn, R. & Johnstone, W. (2006). “Kaupapa Māori research and Pākehā social science: Epistemological tensions in a study of Māori health.” Hūlili 3: 41–68. Cram, F., Smith, L. & Johnstone, W. “Mapping the themes of Maori talk about health.’’ The New Zealand Medical Journal 116.1170 (2003). Web. Curnow, Jenifer. “Wiremu Maihi Te Rangikāheke: His Life and Work.” Journal of the Polynesian Society 94.2 (1985): 97–148. n.d. Web. 13 Jan. 2014. DeLoughrey, Elizabeth. Routes and Roots: Navigating Pacific Island and Caribbean Literatures. Honolulu: U of Hawai‘i P, 2007. Print. Durie, Mason. Ngā Tini Whetū: Navigating Māori Futures. Wellington: Huia Publishers, 2011. Print. First Friday Television Recording. ATTN Television. Series held in Sinclair Audiovisual Library, University of Hawai‘i, 2007–2009. Videocassette. Going West Festival Sound Archive. West Auckland Research Centre. Henderson Central Library. Hall, Dana Naone. Mālama: Hawaiian Land and Water. Honolulu: Bamboo Ridge Press, 1985. Hereniko, Vilsoni, and Rob Wilson, eds. Inside Out: Literature, Cultural Politics and Identity in the New Pacific. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1994. Print. Hobbs, Philippa and Elizabeth Rankin. 2003. Rorke’s Drift: Empowering Prints. Capetown: Double Storey Books. Hoskins, Te Kawehau Clea, and Alison Jones. He Aha Te Kaupapa? Critical Conversations in Kaupapa. Wellington: New Zealand Association for Research in Education, 2012. NZ Journal of Educational Studies 47.2 (2012). Informit, n.d. Web. 19 June 2014. Hunt, Janet. Hone Tuwhare: A Biography. Auckland: Godwit, 1998. Print. Kamehiro, Stacy. 2009. The Arts of Kingship: Hawaiian Art and National Culture of the Kalakāua Era. The University of Hawai‘i Press. O’Ka‘ili, Tevita. “Tauhi vā: Nurturing Tongan Sociospatial Ties in Maui and Beyond.” The Contemporary Pacific: A Journal of Pacific Island Affairs 17.1 (2005): 83–117. Print. ———. “ ‘Art for me is not a hothouse flower’: Hone Tuwhare’s Socialist Poetics.” Ka Mate Ka Ora 6. New Zealand Electronic Poetry Centre, Sept. 2008. Web. Apr. 2012. Marsden, Maori. The Woven Universe: Selected Writings. Otaki: Estate of Maori Marsden, 2003. Print. Marsh, Selina Tusitala. “Ancient Banyans, Flying Foxes and White Ginger: Five Pacific Women Writers.” PhD Thesis. U of Auckland, 2004. Print. McDougall, Brandy Nālani. “ʿO ka lipo o ka lā, ʿo ka lipo o ka pō: Cosmogonic Kaona in Contemporary Kanaka Maoli Literature.” PhD Diss. U of Hawaiʿi at Mānoa, 2011. Print.

Two poets of the Pacific  155

McGregor, Davianna Pōmaika‘i. Nā Kua’āina: Living Hawaiian Culture. Honolulu: U of Hawaii Press, 2007. Print. Orbell, Margaret. The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Māori Myth and Legend. Christchurch: Canterbury UP, 1995. Print. Paraone, Tiwai. “A Maori Cosmogony.” Journal of the Polynesian Society 16.3 (1907): 109–19. n.d. Web. 13 Jan. 2014. Pollex Online: The Polynesian Lexicon Project. Online database. Pukui, and Alfons L. Korn, trans. and eds. The Echo of Our Song: Chants and Poems of the Hawaiians. Honolulu: U of Hawaiʿi P, 1973. Print. Puna Geothermal Venture. www.punageothermalventure.com/ 2009. Web. July 2012. Schwimmer, Eric, ed. The Māori People in the Nineteen-Sixties: A Symposium. London: C. Hurst, 1968. Print. Silva, Noenoe K. Aloha Betrayed: Native Hawaiian Resistance to American Colonialism. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2004, 123–63. Print. Tatibouet, Andre S. A Broken Trust: The Hawaiian Homelands Program: Seventy Years of Failure of the Federal and State Governments to Protect the Civil Rights of Native Hawaiians. Honolulu: Hawai‘i Advisory Committee to the United States Commission on Civil Rights, 1991. Print. Te Rangihiroa (Sir Peter Buck). Vikings of the Pacific. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1959. Print. Trask, Haunani-Kay. Eros and Power: The Promise of Feminist Theory. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1986. Print. ———. From a Native Daughter: Colonialism and Sovereignty in Hawai‘i. Monroe: Common Courage P, 1993. Print. ———. Light in the Crevice Never Seen. Corvallis, OR: Calyx Books, 1998. Print. ———. Light in the Crevice Never Seen. St. Paul: Corvallis, 1999. Print. ———. Night is a Sharkskin Drum. Honolulu: U of Hawai‘i P, 2002. Print. ———. “Writing in Captivity: Poetry in a Time of De-colonisation.” Wasafiri 12.25 (1997): 42–43. Print. Tufte, Virginia. Artful Sentences: Syntax as Style. Cheshire, CT: Graphics P, 2006. Print. Tuwhare, Hone. Come Rain Hail: Poems. Dunedin: Bibliography Room Press of the University of Otago Library, 1970. Print. ———. Making A Fist of It: Poems And Short Stories. Dunedin: Jackstraw Press, 1978. Print. ———. Mihi: Collected Poems. Auckland: Penguin, 1987. Print. ———. No Ordinary Sun. Auckland: Blackwood and Janet Paul, 1964. Print. ———. No Ordinary Sun. 1964. Auckland: Longman Paul, 1969. Print. ———. No Ordinary Sun. 1964. Dunedin: McIndoe, 1977. Print. ———. No Ordinary Sun. 1964. Auckland: Random House, 1998. Print. ———. Sap-Wood and Milk: Poems. Dunedin: Caveman Press, 1972. Print. ———. Short Back & Sideways: Poems and Prose. Auckland: Godwit, 1992. Print. ———. Small Holes in the Silence: Collected Works. Auckland: Godwit, 2011. Print. ———. Something Nothing: Poems. Dunedin: Caveman P, 1974. Print. Wendt, Albert, Reina Whaitiri, and Robert Sullivan, eds. Mauri Ola: Contemporary Polynesian Poems in English. Auckland: Auckland UP, 2010. ———. Whetu Moana: Contemporary Polynesian Poems in English. Auckland: Auckland UP, 2003. Print.

Bibliography Keown, Michelle. Pacific Islands Writing. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2008. Print. King, Michael. The Penguin History of New Zealand. Auckland: Penguin, 2003. Print.

156  Robert Sullivan

———. Whina: A Biography of Whina Cooper. Auckland: Penguin, 1991. Print. ———. Waiata: Māori Songs in History. Auckland: Reed, 1991. Sullivan, Robert, guest ed. “The English Moko: Exploring a Literary Spiral.” Figuring the Pacific. Ed. Howard McNaughton. Christchurch: Canterbury UP, 2006. Print. ———. “A Poetics of Culture: Others and Ours, Separate and Commingled.” Landfall 211. May 2006. Print. ———. Hone Tuwhare special issue. Ka mate ka ora: A New Zealand Journal of Poetry and Poetics 6 Sept. 2008. Web. 31 Mar. 2009. www.nzepc.auckland.ac.nz/kmko/index.asp ———. “Mana Moana: Wayfinding and Five indigenous Poets.” PhD Thesis. U of Auckland, 2015. ———. “Polynesian Poetry” and “Māori Poetry.” Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics. Ed. Roland Greene. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 2012. Print. ———. “Savaiki Regained: Alistair Te Ariki Campbell’s Poetics.” M.A. Hons. Thesis. U of Auckland, 2006. Print. Sullivan, Robert, and Reina Whaitiri, eds. Puna Wai Kōrero: An Anthology of Māori Poetry in English. Auckland: Auckland UP, 2014. Print. Trask, Haunani-Kay. Fighting the Battle of Double Colonisation: The View of a Hawaiian Feminist. East Lansing: Office of Women in International Development, 1984. Print. ———. Poet’s Insurrection. NEH Summer Institute, 2003. Videocassette. ———. “Stop H-3 Freeway Sit-down Protest, 1990s.” www.haunani-kaytrask.com/gal lery/H3/index.htm. n.d. Web. July 2012. ———. Deep River Talk: Collected Poems. Auckland: Godwit, 1993. Print. Tuwhare, Hone. Oooooo. . . . . .!!! Wellington: Steele Roberts, 2005. Print. ———. Piggy-Back Moon. Auckland: Godwit, 2001. Print. ———. Selected Poems. Dunedin: McIndoe Publishers, 1980. Print. ———. Shape-Shifter. Auckland: Godwit, 1997. Print. ———. Year of the Dog: Poems New and Selected. Dunedin: McIndoe Publishers, 1982. Print.

INDEX

Adivasi Mahasabha 92 Adivasis of India 7, 92 – 3; see also tribes in India African indigeneity see indigeneity in Southern Africa ‘aina 139 Alfred, Taiaiake 46 All Jharkhand Students Union (AJSU) 92 aloha ‘aina 139 American Indian Literary Nationalism (Warrior, Weaver, and Womack) 50, 60 American Samoa 29 Anderson, Benedict 24, 32, 49, 69 anti-nuclear politics of Tuwhare 130 – 3 Aotearoa New Zealand 6, 24 – 40; biculturalism 27; British imperialism and 25 – 6; egalitarianism 25; multiculturalism 27 – 8; nationalism 24, 25 – 8; as a nation of two peoples 27; Treaty of Waitangi 26, 27; see also Pacific Islands Appiah, Kwame Anthony 60, 61 Aragon, Louis 136 archipelagraphy 36 Armstrong, Jeannette 50 The Arts of Kingship (Kamehiro) 149 – 50 Aryans 86 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) 33 Australia 3, 4, 28, 29, 30 – 1, 32, 34, 37 authoritarianism 71 autonomy 89 – 90; demand for separate state as 92 – 3; movement/struggle 91 – 5

Banivanua Mar, Tracey 32 Bantu-speaking communities 19 Barclay, Barry 9 Bawaajimo. A Dialect of Dreams in Anishinaabe Language and Literature (Noodin) 51 Baxter, James K. 136 Baxter Theatre Dance Festival 117 Beck, Ignace 92 Belich, James 25 Better Britonism 25 Bhabha, Homi 48 Biafra/Biafran war 10, 11 Biesele, Megan 105 Biko, Stephen 136 Binder, Guyora 55 Birsa Munda movement 90 Black Saturday 28 Bleek, Wilhelm 15, 108 – 9, 114, 115 Bleek-Lloyd archive 15, 108 – 9, 114, 115 Bodos 98 Boer War 16, 136 Book of the Black Star (Wendt) 134 Border War 17 Borrows, John 48 Boungainville 29 British rule: Aotearoa New Zealand and 25 – 6; Indirect Rule 11; tribal peoples’ struggle under 89 – 91, 94 – 5 Brooks, Lisa 58, 60 Bruin (Brown) 117 Buck, Peter 26 Bushmen see San (‘Bushmen’)

158 Index

Cadle, Ernest C. 17 cargo cults 31 Carlson, David 47 Caudwell, Christopher 126, 136 Cazimero, Robert 150 Celia’s Song (Maracle) 50, 51 – 2, 54 Chamberlin, J. Edward 114 “Chant of Lamentation” (Trask) 138 – 40 Chavafambira, John 16 Chavis, Ben 48 Cherokee: constitutions 55; literature 49 Cherokee nation 45 – 6 Cherokee Nation v. Georgia 46 citizenship 54, 55, 58 – 9 Clanwilliam Arts Project (CAP) 114 – 15 Clifford, James 28 climate change 34 Coconut Island 143 Coetzee, Farrol 118 Coetzee, J. M. 13 – 14 colonialism 5, 14 – 15; neo-colonialism 28 – 32; representations of African indigeneity 107 – 11; Southeast Asia 70; taxonomies 103 – 6 colonial taxonomies 103 – 6 Come Rain Hail (Tuwhare) 137 communitism 51 Community Councils 57 Constitution of the White Earth Nation (CWEN) 56 – 8 Cook-Lynn, Elizabeth 48, 50, 54 Cooper, Whina 27, 130, 137 Co-operation Lodge 112 cosmopolitanism 59 – 61 cosmopolitan patriotism 61 Council of Elders 57 The Couple in the Cage 111 cultural tourism 112 – 14 cultural tourist co-operative model 19 Dart, Raymond 17 Dayal, Paul 92 “A Day at the Beach” (Trask) 143 – 4 Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People (UN) 2; Article 25 2; Article 26 2 – 3; Article 27 3 decolonisation: African indigeneity and 10 – 11; Pacific Islands 30 – 2 Decolonisation in the Pacific (Mar) 32 DeLoughrey, Elizabeth 130 – 1 Denver African Expedition 17 Department of Hawaiian Homelands 144 Diaz, Vicente 36 Die Laaste Karretjiegraf (The Last Cart Grave) 116

Doerfler, Jill 49, 58 Drowning By Fire (Womack) 50 Duiker, K. Sello 19 Durie, Mason 134 – 5 Eros and Power (Trask) 138 ESRC (Economic and Social Research Council) 4 Fairburn, A. R. D. 129 False Divides (Lopesi) 37 Fanon, Frantz 70, 72, 74, 76, 146 Feinstein, Yuval 69 feminism 30 Fiji 29, 33, 37; interethnic conflicts 29; post-independence history 29 First World War 25, 28 Flack, Roberta 117 Fleishman, Mark 114, 115 – 16 Fools Crow (Welch) 50 From a Native Daughter (Trask) 30, 138, 146, 147 Fugard, Athol 116 Fusco, Coco 111 Garage Dance Ensemble 117 Gardens in the Dunes (Silko) 50 Gellner, Ernest 47 Gemsbok National Park 112 Gikandi, Simon 70 Gods Can Die (Thumboo) 78 The Gods Must Be Crazy (film) 18 The Gods Must Be Crazy II (film) 18 Gonds 91 – 2 Gordon, Robert J. 12, 17 Gqola, Pumla 117 “Grand Daughter Polly Peaches” (Tuwhare) 125, 126 Great Kol Insurrection of 1831 – 1832 90 Guam 29 Hall, Dana Naone 152 Hamasaki, Mark 149 Harjo, Joy 143 Hartebeespoort Dam 113 Hau’ofa, Epeli 30 – 1, 33, 35 – 6, 37, 39 Hawai‘i 138 – 53; geothermal development 138 – 40; as the goddess 141; Puna district 139, 140; sovereignty movement in 30 The Heart of Redness (Mda) 19 “Heemi” (Tuwhare) 136 ‘He iwi tahi tatou’ 26 Herangi, Te Puea 137 “Hi‘iaka Chanting” 151 “Hi‘iaka’s Song at Waialua” 151

Index  159

Hinkel, Alfred 117, 118 “His Own True Voice” (Hunt) 135 – 6 histouricism 31 – 2 Hitchcock, Robert H. 105 Hobson, William 26 Hohepa, Patu 124 Holm, Tom 48 Hone, Tamati 137 Hoodia gordonii 20 Hotere, Ralph 135 Hottentot 9, 14, 16, 105, 107 ‘The Hottentot’ (Pringle and Ritchie) 14 Hunt, Janet 131, 135 Hutchison, Yvette 7 Hyde, Robin 129 ‘I Am an African’ (Mbeki) 18 identities 34 – 7; regionalism/regional 32 – 4 Illusion and Reality (Caudwell) 126 The Incredible Human Journey: Out of Africa (documentary) 21n5 India 4, 5; British rule 85; demography 86 – 7; division of 85; linguistic families 86; northeast region 93 – 9; territorial distribution 86 – 7; tribes 86 – 99; Union territories 86 Indian Act in Canada 47 Indian Civil Rights Act of 1969 57 Indian Reorganization Act (IRA) 55, 56, 57 indigeneity in Southern Africa 5, 9 – 20, 102 – 18; activism 20; agrarian production 9; Bleek-Lloyd archive 15; colonial representations 107 – 11; colonial taxonomies 103 – 6; colonisation 14 – 15; cultural tourism 112 – 14; decolonisation and 10 – 11; literary texts 19; media imaging of 11 – 13; minority status 9 – 10; politics 19 – 20; population 103; post-independence cultural politics and 10; storytelling/narratives 114 – 18; urbanisation and 16 – 17 indigenous 1 – 2; denial of rights 4; exploitation of natural resources in habitats of 4 – 5; land ownership 3; languages 3; as a minority 3; population 3 Indigenous Fijians 29 Indigenous literatures 49 – 54 Indigenous North America 45 – 61; citizenship 54, 55, 58 – 9; constitution 55 – 9; cosmopolitanism 59 – 61; literatures as national literatures 49 – 54; social polity 49 indigenous perspective 7

Indirect Rule, British colonial policy of 11 Indo-Fijians 29 In Print 129 International Work Group for Indigenous People (IWGIP) 103 Iroquois Confederacy passport 49 Iroquois National Lacrosse Team 49 Jazzart Dance Company 117 ‘Jesus Gonna Be Here’ (Waits) 117 Jharkhand 92 – 3 Jharkhand Mukti Morcha ( JMM) 92 Justice, Daniel Heath 49, 51 Kamehameha Schools 145 Kamehiro, Stacy 149 – 50 Kanahele, Pualani 140 kare-a-roto 124 “Kaulana Na Pua” (Trask) 148 “Kaulana na pua o Hawai’i” 147 The Keeper of the Kumm 118 Keown, Michelle 126, 130 Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park 106 KhoeKoe language 118 Khoi 9, 16, 17, 18, 103, 116 Khoisan communities 14, 19, 105, 106, 110 – 11, 116 ≠Khomani community 112 – 13 ‘Killing Me Softly’ (Flack) 117 kipuka 153 Klassen, Byron 117, 118 Korn, Alfons L. 150 – 1 Kozain, Rustum 110 – 11 Krupat, Arnold 59 – 60 Kwan-Terry, John 80 Landgraf, Kapulani 149 land rights movements 130 language 96 – 7 Lawrence, Bonita 48 Lee Kuan Yew 71 Library of Congress 147 Light in the Crevice Never Seen (Trask) 138 – 40 Linden, John 117 Linnekin, Jocelyn 24 literary nationalism 50 – 1, 59 – 60, 62n14 literature of curiosity 5 Lloyd, Lucy 15, 108 – 9, 114, 115, 116 Lokur Committee 88 Lonoikamakahiki 141 Looking at the Words of Our People (Armstrong) 50 Lopesi, Lana 37 Los Angeles Times 139

160 Index

Lyons, Paul 31 – 2 Lyons, Scott 45, 47 Ma’asina Rule movement 31 Mackay, James 55, 59 Magnet Theatre Company 114 – 15 Maine, Henry 104 Making a Fist of It (Tuwhare) 137 “Making a Fist of It” (Tuwhare) 135 – 6 “Makua Kane” 140 “Makua Kane” (Trask) 141 – 3 Malama: Hawaiian Land and Water (Hall) 152 Mallon, Sean 40 Mamdani, Mahmood 103 – 4, 110 Maori: Indigenous status 27; nationalism 25, 26 – 7; Pakeha and 26, 27, 28; protest movement 27; soldiers 26; Treaty of Waitangi 26, 27; urbanisation of 27; women’s movement 30 Maori Affairs Amendment Act 27 Maori Organisation for Human Rights and Nga Tamatoa 27 Mara, Kamisese 33 Maracle, Lee 47, 50, 51, 54, 55, 58 Marsh, Selina Tusitala 30 Marshall, John 17 Marshall, Justice 46 Martin, Denis-Constant 117 “Martin Luther King” (Tuwhare) 129 Mason, R. A. K. 129 Mass (Jose) 68, 71 – 2, 73 – 7, 78, 82 Mbeki, Thabo 18, 20n2 McDougall, Brandy Nalani 148 McGregor, Davianna Pomaika‘i 140, 154n6 Mda, Zakes 19 Melanesia 31 ‘Melanesian Way’ 33 Melanesia Spearhead Group (MSG) 33 Micronesian territories 31 militourism 31 millennialist movements 31 Minnesota Chippewa Tribe (MCT) 58 MIRAB (migration, remittances, foreign aid and bureaucracy) 30 Miscast exhibition 111 “Missionary Graveyard” (Trask) 144 – 5 Mizo 94 – 5, 96 Moana 123 Moanan 123 “Monologue” (Tuwhare) 127 – 8, 137 Morris, Rosalind C. 20n2 Muru, Selwyn 124

Na Kua’aina: Living Hawaiian Culture (McGregor) 140 Namibia 17 Nanyang Technological Institute (NTI) 79, 80 Narokobi, Bernard 33 Nash, Walter 137 nationalism 6, 45; New Zealand 25 – 8; non-coercive, non-essentialist 60 – 1; Pacific Islands region 24 – 40 nationality formation 95 – 9 nation and state 69 – 70 nationhood 45 – 61; citizenship 54, 55, 58 – 9; constitutions 55 – 9; cosmopolitanism 59 – 61; essentializing tendencies 70; Indigenous literatures 49 – 54; sovereignty and 47 nation-state 6, 9, 36, 37, 40, 56, 60, 69, 85, 95 Navajo Nation 55 – 6 negotiations 34, 51, 68, 83, 113, 117 neo-colonialism 28 – 32 Neruda, Pablo 136 “Never Look Back” (Tuwhare) 128 – 9 New Zealand see Aotearoa New Zealand “The New Zealand Land March on Wellington, Hepetema 14 – Oketopa 17, 1975” (Tuwhare) 136 “New Zealand Rugby Union” (Tuwhare) 135 Ngata, Apirana 26, 137 Nigeria 10 – 11 Night is a Sharkskin Drum (Trask) 149 Niue 29 noble savage 5 Noodin, Margaret 51, 62n13 No Ordinary Sun (Tuwhare) 125, 129, 137 “No Ordinary Sun” (Tuwhare) 130 – 3, 135 North America see Indigenous North America northeast region of India 93 – 9 Northern Mariana Islands 29 NZ Listener 136 “O Africa” (Hotere’s painting) 135 “O Africa” (Tuwhare) 135, 137 Oceania 25, 34 – 7 ‘The Ocean in Us’ (Hau’ofa) 35 Office of Hawaiian Affairs (OHA) 144 Ogoni people in Nigeria 4, 9, 10 – 11 O’Ka’ili, Tevita 123 ‘O Le Mau’ Movement 28 Once Were Pacific (Somerville) 40

Index  161

Osage 55 ‘Our Sea of Islands’ (Hau’ofa) 35 Pacific diaspora 37 – 40 Pacific Islands: decolonisation/ neocolonisation 30 – 2; independence 28 – 30; MIRAB 30; nationalism and (sub)regionalism 32 – 4; oceanic identities 34 – 7; urban centres 30; US military imperialism 31 Pacific Islands Development Forum (PIDF) 34 Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) 31 Pacific Rim 32 – 3 Pacific Small Islands Developing States (PISDS) 34 ‘Pacific Way’ 33 Pahariya Sirdars 90 Pakaalana 141 Pakeha: Maori and 26, 27, 28; nationalism 25 – 6; Treaty of Waitangi 26, 27 PAP (People’s Action Party) 71 Papua New Guinea 29 Parkington, John 115 Parties to the Nauru Agreement (PNA) 34 Paul, Janet 129 Pearson, Diane 48 Pele (deity) 138, 140 Pena, Gomez 111 People’s Voice 129 Perera, Suvendrini 36 – 7 Perez, Craig Santos 36 The Philippines 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73 – 7, 82 poetry of resistance 135 – 7 political activism 138 Polynesian Leaders Group (PLG) 34 ‘Polynesian other’ 33 Pomare, Maui 26 post-settler Pakeha nationalism see Pakeha Pringle, Thomas 14 – 16 Puia, Rolua 7 Pukui 150 – 1 Puna Geothermal Venture Company 139 “Rain” (Tuwhare) 124 – 5 Rain in a Dead Man’s Footprints 115 “Rain-maker’s Song for Whina” (Tuwhare) 130 Red on Red (Womack) 50 – 1 referendum 29 “Refusal” (Trask) 145 – 7 regionalism/regional identity 32 – 4

‘Returning to Waimanalo’ (Trask) 152 – 3 Reznek, Jennie 114, 116 Roberts, Alice 21n5 Roy, J. J. M. Nichols 95 Rutherford, Anna 70 Sachs, Wulf 16 Said, Edward 60, 70 Salesa, Damon 33, 36, 40 Samoan people 28 – 9 San (‘Bushmen’) 9; activism 20; Apartheid government and 17 – 18; assimilation 15 – 16; Bleek-Lloyd archive 15; colonial representations 107 – 12; cultural tourist project 112 – 14; as disappearing figures 18; displacement 14 – 16; farm labourer 16; genocide 14; militarisation of 18; national self-imaging 18 – 20; politics 19 – 20; post-Apartheid era 18 – 20; storytelling/narratives 114 – 18; theatre productions 115 – 18; urbanisation and 16 – 17 SANParks 112 – 13 San trance dance 19 Sap-wood and Milk (Tuwhare) 135 Sarkowsky, Katja 6 Saro-Wiwa, Ken 10 – 11, 13 savage 5 Second World War 17, 25, 28, 31 Shakespeare, William 5, 135 Short, Back and Sideways (Tuwhare) 125 Shrouds of White Earth (Vizenor) 59 Silko, Leslie Marmon 50 Silva, Noenoe 147 Singapore 68, 70, 71, 72, 77 – 82 “Sisters” (Trask) 143 Skotnes, Pippa 115 Small Holes in the Silence: Collected Works (Tuwhare) 124, 127 – 8, 133 – 4, 150 Smith, Anthony 47 Smith, M. G. 104 socialism, Tuwhare and 126 – 30 Solomon Islands 29 Somerville, Alice Te Punga 40 Something Nothing (Tuwhare) 136 “Song 2” (Tuwhare) 128 ‘Song of the Wild Bushman’ (Pringle and Ritchie) 15 – 16 South Africa see indigeneity in Southern Africa; San (‘Bushmen’) South African Council for Scientific and Industrial Research 20 Southeast Asia 68, 70 – 3; authoritarianism 70 – 1; class privileges 72; colonialism

162 Index

70; modern democracies 71; nationalism 71 – 3 South Pacific Forum 31 South West African People’s Organisation (SWAPO) 17 sovereignty movement 30 Staehelin, Irene 113 state and nation 69 – 70 States Reorganization Commission 92 Stavenhagen, Rodolfo 106 Sto:lo 51 – 2, 54 Subramani 37 Surin, Theodore 92 survivance 48, 49, 56, 57 Swiss Ubuntu Foundation 113 Tamar Revolt 90 taxonomies 103 – 6 Teaiwa, Teresia 31, 40 The Tempest (Shakespeare) 5 terripelago 36 That the People Might Live (Weaver) 50 theatre productions 115 – 18 A Third Map (Thumboo) 68, 72, 77 – 83 Thirteen Cents (Duiker) 19 Thomas, David 54 Thomas v. Norris 54, 55 tidalectics 36 Tigga, Julius 92 “Time and the Child” (Tuwhare) 125 Tokelau 29 Tomaselli, Keyan 12, 13 Tonga 29 ‘Towards a New Oceania’ (Wendt) 34 – 5 Trask, Haunani-Kay 138 – 53; “Chant of Lamentation” 138 – 40; “A Day at the Beach” 143 – 4; Eros and Power 138; “Kaulana Na Pua” 148; Light in the Crevice Never Seen 138 – 40; “Makua Kane” 141 – 3; “Missionary Graveyard” 144 – 5; From a Native Daughter 30, 138, 146, 147; Night is a Sharkskin Drum 149; political activism 138; “Refusal” 145 – 7; ‘Returning to Waimanalo’ 152 – 3; “Sisters” 143; “Writing in Captivity” 148 – 9 Trask, Mililani 138, 143, 144 Treaty of Rarotonga 31 Treaty of Waitangi 26, 27, 132 Treaty Shirts (Vizenor) 59 trekboer farmers 15, 16 tribal constitution 55 – 9 tribalism 104 tribals 3 Tribal Secrets (Warrior) 50

tribes in India 86 – 99; autonomy movements 91 – 5; Bodos 98; British rule and 89 – 91, 94 – 5; delineation 87 – 8; dialectical differences 96; as heterogeneous groups 95 – 6; language 96 – 7; Mizo 94 – 5, 96; Nagas 96, 98 – 9; nationality formation 95 – 9; nation and 88 – 9; northeast region 93 – 9; Tripuri 97 – 8 ‘Trinity’ 130 Tripuri tribes 97 – 8 Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) 108 Tsamkxao =Oma 12 “tuakana/teina” 40 Tuwhare, Hone 124 – 37; anti-nuclear politics 130 – 3; Come Rain Hail 137; “Grand Daughter Polly Peaches” 125, 126; “Heemi” 136; “Lament” 137; Making a Fist of It 135, 136 – 7; “Making a Fist of It” 135 – 6; Maori rights and 137; “Martin Luther King” 129; “Monologue” 127 – 8, 137; “Never Look Back” 128 – 9; “The New Zealand Land March on Wellington, Hepetema 14 – Oketopa 17, 1975” 136; “New Zealand Rugby Union” 135; No Ordinary Sun 125, 129, 137; “No Ordinary Sun” 130 – 3, 135; “O Africa” 135, 137; poetry of resistance 135 – 7; “Rain” 124 – 5; “Rain-maker’s Song for Whina” 130; Sap-wood and Milk 135; Short, Back and Sideways 125; Small Holes in the Silence: Collected Works 124, 127 – 8, 133 – 4, 150; socialism 126 – 30; Something Nothing 136; “Song 2” 128; “Time and the Child” 125; “We, Who Live in Darkness” 133 – 5; “With all things and with all beings we are as relative” 125 – 6; working class consciousness 127 Two Undiscovered Amerindians Visit the West 111 Ubuntu Foundation 113 Ulysses by the Merlion (Thumboo) 78 United States: as an imperial archipielago 36; Cold War 31; military imperialism 31; unincorporated territories 29 United States Commission on Civil Rights 144 United States National Archives 147 University of the South Pacific 33 UPA (United Progressive Alliance) 7 Uraon, Rai Saheb Bandiram 92 Uys, Jamie 18

Index  163

Vizenor, Gerald 48, 50, 56, 57, 59, 60, 61n10, 62 – 3n24, 63n30 Vollenhoven, Sylvia 118 Waihe’e, John 144 Waitangi Tribunal 27 Waits, Tom 117 Walker, Ranginui 26 Warrior, Robert 50, 51, 56, 60 Watson, Stephen 115 wayfinding 7, 123 “We, Who Live in Darkness” (Tuwhare) 133 – 5 Weaver, Jace 50, 51, 60 Weaver, Tony 13 Weisberg, Robert 55 Welch, James 50 Wendt, Albert 33, 34 – 5, 37, 123, 134 Western Samoa 28 White Writing: On the Culture of Letters in South Africa (Coetzee) 13 – 14 Why I Can’t Read Wallace Stegner and Other Essays (Cook-Lynn) 50

Wicomb, Zoe 117 Williams, Mark 25 Willmott, W. E. 77 Wimmer, Andrea 69 “With all things and with all beings we are as relative” (Tuwhare) 125 – 6 Womack, Craig 47, 50 – 1, 54, 63n31 ‘Women’s Mau’ 28 – 9 Worcester v. Georgia 46 Working Group for Indigenous Minorities in Southern Africa (WIMSA) 113 “Writing in Captivity” (Trask) 148 – 9 Writing Indian Nations (Konkle) 49 – 50 Xaxa, Virginius 7 !Xun Traditional Council 117 Year of the Indigenous Languages (2019) 3 Youth Council 57 Zulus 19