The Pacific’s ‘Indigenous times’ are not just smaller sections of larger histories, but dimensions of their own.
Histories of our Pacific world are richly rendered in these essays by Damon Salesa. From the first Indigenous civilisations that flourished in Oceania to the colonial encounters of the nineteenth century, and on to the complex contemporary relationships between New Zealand and the Pacific, Salesa offers new perspectives on this vast ocean – its people, its cultures, its pasts and its future.
Spanning a wide range of topics, from race and migration to Pacific studies and empire, these essays demonstrate Salesa’s remarkable scholarship. Bridging the gap between academic disciplines and cultural traditions, Salesa locates Pacific peoples always at the centre of their stories. An Indigenous Ocean is a pivotal contribution to understanding the history and culture of Oceania.
Table of Contents
Introduction: Alāva‘a: Seaways across an Indigenous Ocean
Chapter 1: The Pacific World
1. The Pacific in Indigenous Time
2. The World from Oceania
3. Opposite Footers
4. Finding and Forgetting the Way: Navigation and Knowledge in Sāmoa and Polynesia
Chapter 2: New Zealand and the Pacific
5. A Pacific Destiny: New Zealand's Overseas Empire, 1840–1945
6. New Zealand's Pacific
7. Native Seas and Native Seaways: The Pacific Ocean and New Zealand
Chapter 3: Race and Colonisation
8. Race and Empire
9. Half-Castes between the Wars: Colonial Categories in New Zealand and Sāmoa
10. Sāmoa's Half-Castes and Some Frontiers of Comparison
11. Emma and Phebe: 'Weavers of the Border'
Chapter 4: Sāmoa's Colonial Encounters
12. Remembering Samoan History
13. When the Waters Met: Some Shared Histories of Christianity and Ancestral Samoan Spirituality
14. 'Travel-Happy' Sāmoa: Colonialism, Samoan Migration and a 'Brown Pacific'
15. Cowboys in the House of Polynesia
Acknowledgements
Notes
Editorial Note
Chapter Credits
Index
Photo credit: Rebecca McMillan Photography