The KVU Panpipe and Dance Company, from Santa Isabel, Solomon Islands, will perform at the Imin Center (Jefferson Hall) on 11 and 12 November 2006. Panpipe music and the dances associated with it have developed in amazing ways in the Solomon Islands. Although tuned sets of mouth-blown bamboo pipes are found in many Pacific Islands, and in numerous regions worldwide, Solomon Islanders have built a rich culture and repertoire around panpipes, featuring instruments small and large. The KVU Panpipe and Dance Company, which has toured internationally, is one of the finest in the country. The performers hail from the villages of Koviloko, Vavarenitu, and U‘uri, on the island of Santa Isabel.

The Hawai‘i tour, a presentation of the East-West Center Arts Program, is made possible by support from the UHM Center for Pacific Islands Studies. In addition to their two public performances on O‘ahu, the group will perform at the Society for Ethnomusicology meeting banquet, meet with the Study Group on Musics of Oceania, present two performance-demonstrations for O‘ahu school students, and perform on Maui and the Big Island for the public and school students.

Tickets for the O‘ahu performances, at 8:00 pm on 11 November and 4:00 pm on 12 November, are $15 for general admission and $10 for students and senior citizens. They are available at the UHM Campus Center Box Office or telephone 808-944-7341 for Charge-by-Phone. Any remaining tickets will be available at the door.

CPIS AWARDED TITLE VI GRANT

Center for Pacific Islands Studies Director David Hanlon is pleased to announce that the center has been awarded a Title VI National Resource Center Grant for the four-year period 2006–2010. National Resource Center grants, which the center has been awarded continuously from 1978, make possible many of the activities at the center, particularly in the area of outreach, such as visiting artists, international conferences, and teacher workshops. The grant also emphasizes foreign language development and has provided money for teaching, workshops, and conferences related to Māori , Samoan, Tahitian, and Tongan.

NEWS IN BRIEF

Stuart Dawrs Joins UH Library Pacific Collection Staff

UHM Pacific Curator Karen Peacock is delighted to announce that Stuart Dawrs has joined Special Collections as a Pacific specialist. Stu has been working part time with Hawaiian and Pacific reference for the past year and a half and has done collection development work for the Pacific Collection. While a graduate student in library studies at UHM, Stu served as an intern with Special Collections.

Stu is a former editor of the Honolulu Weekly and has recently been the editor of Hana Hou, the in-flight magazine of Hawaiian Airlines. In addition to his work in journalism, Stu has been updating Donald Mitchell’s Resource Units in Hawaiian Culture for Kamehameha Schools Press, and he contributed writing to the recently published Mo‘ili‘ili — The Life of a Community, an oral history of the local neighborhood of Mo‘illi‘ili, in Honolulu.

Topics in the Contemporary Pacific: A New Series

The University of Hawai‘i Press has announced a new series, Topics in the Contemporary Pacific. The general editor is historian Brij V Lal, of the Australian National University. The series addresses issues of pressing concern to the Pacific Islands region as a whole. Its thematic approach is informed by answers to the question “How did this come to be?” Volumes in preparation deal with HIV and AIDS, patterns of corruption, tax havens and sovereignty business, and the state of the state in the contemporary Pacific. Submissions are being invited. Copies should be sent to both the series editor, Brij V Lal, at brijlal@anu.edu.au, and the UH Press editor, Masako Ikeda, at masakoi@hawaii.edu.

PhD Program in Hawaiian Starts at UH Hilo

Hawaiian and Indigenous Language and Culture Revitalization. The PhD program is the first of its kind in several categories. It is the first PhD in Hawaiian, and it is the first PhD in the United States in any Native American language. It is also the first PhD offered at UH Hilo. The PhD program focuses on individuals who are actively involved in the revitalization of Hawaiian and other indigenous languages. The first group of students includes a Māori educator as well as four individuals active in teaching Hawaiian language. For more information on the program, contact the college, Ka Haka ‘Ula O Ke‘elikolani, at 808-974-7342 or see the Web site at http://www.olelo.hawaii.edu/dual/orgs/keelikolani.

New Task Force Formed on Ocean Acidification

Scientific data collected over many years show conclusively that oceanic absorption of atmospheric CO₂ is making seawater more acidic. The degree and rapidity of these changes in ocean chemistry have not occurred in millions of years. Early data strongly suggest that this acidification will have a negative impact on many important marine organisms. Given the critical ecological, economic, and cultural function of oceans in the Asia-Pacific region, nowhere is there a greater need for additional research.

In response to this growing threat, the Pacific Science Association has established the Task Force on Ocean Acidification in the Pacific. As part of the task force, an international network of geochemists, biologists, and social scientists will direct linked and coordinated projects in the region. The immediate goals of the task force are to identify knowledge gaps in the scientific understanding of the ocean acidification phenomenon, including an assessment of social and economic impacts. For more information on the task force, see the Pacific Science Association Web site at http://www.pacificscience.org/tfoceanacidification.html.

UH Awarded Grant to Train Health Workers in Pacific

The UH John A Burns School of Medicine has received a US Health Resources Service Administration grant of $400,000 to continue an interdisciplinary project aimed at improving the training of health-care workers in the Pacific Islands. A major partner in the project is PEACESAT, which enables the medical school to coordinate long-distance health training via satellite and other distance-education technologies. Dr Neal Palafox is the principal investigator on the project, which covers American Sāmoa, Guam, the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas, the Federated States of Micronesia, the Republic of Palau, and the Republic of the Marshall Islands.

STUDY GROUP ON MUSICS OF OCEANIA TO MEET AT UHM

The Study Group on the Musics of Oceania (SGMO) will meet 19–21 November at UH Mānoa in conjunction with the 2006 Society for Ethnomusicology Annual Meeting in Honolulu, 16–19 November. The SGMO, a subgroup of the International Council for Traditional Music (ICTM), consists of researchers specifically devoted to work in the Pacific Islands and Australia. The theme of the SGMO meeting (which Jane Moulin, UHM professor of ethnomusicology, and Barbara Smith, UHM professor emerita of music) are coordinating, is string bands in the Pacific. Little work has been done on the instruments, music, social context, and performers of string bands, and Moulin and Smith are hoping that the meeting will create a better understanding of how string instruments, particularly the guitar and ukulele, have moved around the Pacific and become such an important feature of Islander life and culture. For more information about the SGMO meeting, contact Jane Moulin at Moulin@hawaii.edu or see the ICTM Web site at http://www.ictmusic.org/ICTM. For more information on the ethnomusicology conference, see the Web site at http://www.indiana.edu/~semhome/2006/index.shtml.

SCHOLARSHIPS AT UH TARGET PACIFIC ISLANDERS

News that Pacific Islanders from seventeen Pacific Islands entities will face a tuition increase at the University of Hawai‘i beginning in August 2007 has focused attention on the availability of supplemental funding. At UH there are a number of scholarships that specifically target students of Pacific Islander heritage. These include, but are not necessarily limited to the following:

· UH Hilo–DXRX Viva Scholarship. Grantees must be students enrolled full time at UH Hilo. They must either have graduated from a Hawai‘i high school and reside in the state of Hawai‘i, or they must be citizens of the US-affiliated Pacific (American Sāmoa, Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Guam, Republic of the Marshall Islands, and Republic of Palau).

· Gladys Brandt/Bank of Hawai‘i Scholarship. Grantees must be from Hawai‘i, Guam, or American Samoa and must be enrolled full time at the upper division (junior, senior) or graduate level in a degree or teacher certification program in the UHM College of Education. For more information, e-mail osas@hawaii.edu or call 808-956-7849. (On the UH Foundation Web site, the scholarship is indexed under “Bank of Hawai‘i.”)

· Felix B Limtiaco Engineering Scholarship. Grantees must be enrolled full time in an undergraduate (sophomore, junior, or senior level) or graduate program in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at UH Mānoa, with preference given to students from Guam or Micronesia. For more information, e-mail engr@wiliki.eng.hawaii.edu or call 808-956-7727.

· Mary Patricia Kulesh Memorial Award. Grantee must be a full-time undergraduate or graduate student from Micronesia enrolled in the School of Nursing at UH Mānoa. For more information, e-mail nursing@hawaii.edu or call 808-956-8939.

· Virginia Pearson Ransburg Delta Kappa Gamma Scholarship. Grantees must be full-time students, either graduate or undergraduate, at any UH campus, and must be native to, or reside in, the former Trust Territory of the Pacific (Federated States of Micronesia, Republic of Palau, Republic of the Marshall Islands, and Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas). For more information, e-mail seed@hawaii.edu or call 808-956-4642.

· Alfred Capelle and Byron Bender Scholarship. Grantee must be a full-time undergraduate student from the Marshall Islands in any area of study at UH Mānoa. For more information, e-mail seed@hawaii.edu or call 808-956-4642.

· Heyum Endowment Fund Scholarship. Grantee must be indigenous to the islands of Melanesia, Micronesia, or Polynesia and enrolled for academic credit as an undergraduate or graduate student at a UH campus. A Pacific Islands student enrolled in a non-credit education and/or training program may also be considered. For more information, see the Web site at http://www.hawaii.edu/cpis or call 808-956-7700.

· D William Wood Endowed Scholarship for Pacific Island Health Administrators. Grantee must be from an independent country in the Pacific and enrolled full time in a UH master’s program leading to a degree in public administration. For further information, contact pubadmin@hawaii.edu, or call 808-956-8260.

For more information on eligibility requirements for these scholarships and information on other scholarships open to Pacific Islander students, see the UH Foundation Web site at http://www.uhf.hawaii.edu/scholarships/studentscholarships.aspx or the Web sites of the university departments associated with the scholarships above.

In addition to the scholarships above, the Hawai‘i Biodiversity and Mapping Program has announced the Ka ‘Imi ‘Ike scholarships, for Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander undergraduates at UH Mānoa with declared majors in one of the following disciplines: geography, geology, geology and geophysics, global environmental science, meteorology, or natural resources and environmental management. Awardees of these $1,000 scholarships are required to work up to 20 hours a semester with K–12 students interested in learning about the geosciences. For more information, see the Web site at http://hbmp.hawaii.edu/kaimiike or e-mail kaimiike@hawaii.edu.

Also, candidates from the Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Niue, Papua New Guinea, Sāmoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, and Vanuatu who meet selection criteria are eligible for the United States–South Pacific Scholarship Program, which is coordinated by the East-West Center. The program provides scholarships for degree study at the University of Hawai‘i and other US institutions of higher education. For information see the Web site at http://www.eastwestcenter.org/ann-cs.asp. Other scholarships offered by the East-West Center are listed on the same site.

On 14 November 2006, Pacific Magazine and Tihati Productions are sponsoring a Stars of Oceania Recognition Dinner and Scholarship Fundraiser at Hilton Hawaiian Village, to provide scholarship assistance to University of Hawai‘i students who are from the Pacific Islands or who are participating in work that benefits the Pacific Islands. Those to be honored at the dinner include Mau Piailug, Tulone Pulotu, Pulefano Galea‘i, Kupuna Auntie Malia Solomon Craver, Jack Tihati and Cha Thompson, Kalolaine Mataele Soukop, the Honorable Muliufi F Hannemann, Nainoa Thompson, and Lubuw Falanruw. For reservations or more information, contact the UHM Pacific Business Center Program at 808-956-2495.

CPIS AWARDS FOREIGN LANGUAGE FELLOWSHIPS

The UHM Center for Pacific Islands Studies has awarded two more Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) fellowships grants for the coming academic year, 2006–2007. The fellowships are made possible by a Title VI FLAS grant from the US Department of Education, which is designed to aid full-time graduate students at UH Mānoa who are involved in programs that combine area studies and foreign language training in Māori , Samoan, or Tahitian.

The center awarded six grants to students for this year, and the first four awardees were profiled in the previous issue of Pacific News from Manoa. The additional awardees, who will be studying Māori , are

· Judith Humbert, a second-year MA student in Pacific Islands studies, who is combining her study of Māori with research into indigenous cultural values and educational philosophy

· Chikako Yamauchi, a third-year MA student in Pacific Islands studies, who is exploring and writing about her relationship with the landscapes of Aotearoa/New Zealand

The fellowships are awarded based on merit and include a $15,000 student subsistence allowance for one year as well as an institutional payment to cover tuition and fees. For more information on FLAS fellowships, see the academic programs section on the center Web site at http://www.hawaii.edu/cpis.

JANET BELL LIBRARY RESEARCH PRIZE CONTEST

The Janet Bell Pacific Research Prize recognizes the best University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa graduate and undergraduate papers based on research in the Pacific Islands area (Hawai‘i, Micronesia, Melanesia, and Polynesia, including Aotearoa/New Zealand). The winning graduate and undergraduate scholars are each awarded $100, and their papers are added to the holdings of either the Hawaiian or the Pacific Collection, depending on the region of focus.

Deadline for submission is 5:00 pm on Thursday, 30 November 2006. Entry requirements are described on the Pacific Collection Web site at http://libweb.hawaii.edu/libdept/pacific/html/janetbell.htm. Inquiries may be directed to Karen Peacock, curator of the Pacific Collection, at 956-2851, or e-mailed to her at peacock@hawaii.edu.

“CHINA IN OCEANIA” CONFERENCE PLANNED

CPIS Associate Professor Terence Wesley-Smith was in Japan in early October to begin the planning for an international conference to be held at Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University, 26–27 March 2007, in Beppu, Japan. “China in Oceania: Towards a New Regional Order?” is the first conference in a series, Asia and Oceania, designed to encourage collaborative research and dialogue on the changing configurations of international power and influence in the Pacific Islands region. The series will consider the increasingly important political, economic, and social connections between Asia and the island states of Oceania. It is cosponsored by the Institute of International Strategic Studies, Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University, and the UHM Center for Pacific Islands Studies.

“China in Oceania” will focus on the emerging role of Beijing, which appears committed to becoming an important actor in the Pacific Islands region. This development is being closely watched by the Western powers most actively involved in Oceania—Australia, New Zealand, and members of the European Union—as well as by Japan, which has established a significant regional presence over the last two decades. Also paying close attention to China’s new assertiveness is Taiwan, which has attempted to further its quest for international recognition using high-stakes “dollar diplomacy” toward the Island nations.

These developments mark a shift in the regional balance of power, perhaps as significant as any since the establishment of European colonies two centuries ago. The conference will bring together researchers and graduate students to consider this shift in regional dynamics and to analyze its implications for the needs and aspirations of the twenty-two Pacific Island nations and territories that constitute the region.

“China in Oceania” is being convened by Edgar Porter, director, Institute of International Strategic Studies, Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University (porter@apu.ac.jp), and Terence Wesley-Smith, associate professor and graduate chair, Center for Pacific Islands Studies, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa (twsmith@hawaii.edu), with assistance from Palenitina Langa‘oi, doctoral candidate in the College of Asia Pacific Studies, Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University (palenitina@gmail.com).

VĀRUA TUPU LAUNCHED, WITH FANFARE, IN HONOLULU

Flora Devatine

Histories were bridged in Honolulu the first week of October, with the launching of Vārua Tupu: New Writing from French Polynesia, published by the University of Hawai‘i Press. The project, which has been five years in the making, is a symbolic joining, through language and literature, of Hawaiian and Tahitian heritages. It is also a tribute, and an introduction, to the blossoming of the Tahitian writing scene. Vārua Tupu, edited by Frank Stewart, Kareva Mateata-Allain, and Alexander Dale Mawyer (CPIS MA 1997), is volume 17:2 of Mānoa: A Pacific Journal of International Writing. Its contents include photographic essays, poems, an interview, memoirs, and short stories.

Rai a Mai

In Honolulu for the launching of Vārua Tupu were Tauhiti Nena, French Polynesian Minister of Culture; Unutea Hirshon, Member of the Assembly of French Polynesia; and Dorothy Levy; along with volume contributors Flora Devatine, Rai a Mai, Célestine Hitiura Vaite, Kareva Mateata-Allain, and Alexander Mawyer. Overflow crowds greeted the visitors at their various speaking venues. These included a reading and book signing by Devatine, Rai a Mai, Mateata-Allain, and Vaite at Native Books/Nā Mea Hawai‘i and a lively colloquium in which these writers discussed their work and its reception in Tahiti. The visitors were also feted at a gathering at Bishop Museum.

The beautifully produced volume includes brilliantly colored art (including the cover image above) by Hawaiian-born painter and musician Bobby Holcomb, an adopted son of Tahiti. Two essays in Varua Tupu describe his work and the impact it had in the Islands.

The Center for Pacific Islands Studies was a cosponsor of the launching. Others who contributed to the project included the Pacific Writers’ Connection, the UHM Research Council, and the UHM Department of English. For more on Varua Tupu, see the Manoa Web site at http://manoajournal.hawaii.edu/text/issues/descriptions/frenchpolynesia05.html and the UH Press Web site at http://www.uhpress.hawaii.edu/journals/manoa/MA172toc.html.

VISITORS TO THE CENTER

Among the visitors to the center during the period July through September 2006 were

· Alvin P. Adams, United States Ambassador (Ret), Honolulu

· Alifeleti ‘Atiola, Director, Tupou Tertiary Institute

· Keith Camacho, Research Fellow, Macmillan Brown Centre for Pacific Studies, University of Canterbury

· Anton Carter, Arts Advisor, Pacific Islands Art, Creative New Zealand

· Vince Kana‘i Dodge, Wai‘anae Community Re-Development Corporation

· Daniel R Foley, Associate Judge, Intermediate Court of Appeals, State of Hawai‘i Judiciary

· Grant McCall, Department of Anthropology, University of New South Wales

· Shunsuke Nagashima, Research Center for the Pacific Islands, Kagoshima University

· Max Quanchi, Department of History, Queensland University of Technology

· Summer Shimabukuro, Director of Education, Wai‘anae Community Re-Development Corporation

· Victor Uherbelau, Executive Director, Compact Review Commission, Republic of Palau

CENTER OCCASIONAL SEMINARS AND PRESENTATIONS

“Traditional Medicine of the Marshall Islands” was the topic for a seminar given on 29 August by Maria Kabua Fowler, cultural specialist and regent of the College of the Marshall Islands, and Irene J Taafaki, director of the University of the South Pacific Marshall Islands campus. Fowler and Taafaki have been involved in a five-year project in the Marshall Islands to ensure that some of the traditional medicinal knowledge, particularly medicinal plant knowledge, is preserved along with the plants and their ecosystems. Their recent, coauthored book, Traditional Medicine of the Marshall Islands, describes the results of their collaboration with nine expert Marshallese healers and others who are familiar with Marshallese general remedies. The EWC Pacific Islands Development Program, the Ethnobotany Track in the Department of Botany, and the Ethnobiology Society were cosponsors of the talk.

ALUMNI PROFILE: GREG DVORAK

Greg Dvorak

Greg Dvorak

From time to time, the center will profile former students to see where their interests in Pacific Islands studies have led them. In June we talked to recent graduate Greg Dvorak. Greg graduated with his MA in 2004 and immediately took up a position in a doctoral program at the Australian National University.

LH: Tell us what you are doing now, Greg.

Greg Dvorak

GD: Currently [June 2006] I am in Tokyo, at Tokyo University, but officially I am in the third year of my PhD at the Australian National University. My PhD will be in interdisciplinary cross-cultural research, which comprises cultural studies, anthropology, and history, as well as ethnographic filmmaking, political science, Japan/Pacific studies, and gender studies. I have dual affiliation at the ANU with the Centre for Cross-Cultural Research and the Gender Relations Centre and am supported partly by an Australian Research Council Grant called the Oceanic Encounters Project, which explores themes of gender and sexuality in the contemporary Pacific.

My project focuses on the history of Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands as a site of significance for Marshallese, Americans, and Japanese over the past century. Essentially, my project is about reconnecting and exploring multiple stories that have been severed, erased, or dislocated, thereby reinstating and empowering a Marshall Islander sense of place and relevance between the United States, Japan, and other countries. And since I grew up on Kwajalein in the 1970s and consider it to be my hometown, and spent my life growing up in both Japan and the continental United States, I am simultaneously exploring my own relationship to all these contexts.

My fieldwork has been extremely exciting, and I am currently in a phase of wrapping it up and heading back to Australia (via the Marshall Islands) to write the dissertation and edit a documentary film that will be part of my dissertation.

LH: How did you first get interested in Pacific Islands studies and doing an MA at UH Manoa?

GD: I was working in Japan at an advertising company in Tokyo and hating every second of it, while I had this very strong, burning desire to reconsider my childhood connections to Kwajalein in the Marshall Islands, and the implications and consequences of that American lifestyle for the Marshallese people. I was frustrated at how little awareness there was in Japan about the Marshalls and the Pacific in general, and I realized how little I even knew about what Japan was doing in Micronesia in the first place, or about the people who were actually involved — soldiers, colonists, etc.

LH: Can you tell us a little bit about your MA studies at the center, what you accomplished, and maybe what some of the challenges were?

GD: At the center, I feel I really satisfied that curiosity of mine and finally got the clarity, courage, and support to contemplate my childhood at Kwajalein and the multiple, complex, contradictory circumstances and contexts that spiraled out of that. I connected myself with a positive-minded, exciting, creative, unconventional family of scholars, and I feel like I got a much clearer sense of my own personal connection to the Pacific.

I felt challenged most by the personal emphasis on my own connections to the Pacific — by exploring my own personal connection to the legacies of colonialism and my “nonindigenous” past — and that really opened me up to hearing how other people, indigenous and nonindigenous, felt related to Oceania.

Returning to Epeli Hau‘ofa’s “Sea of Islands” notion of interconnectedness between islands, I feel like more than anything the center and its approach to learning Oceania helped me to see how I fit within the bigger genealogy. It empowered me to take responsibility and initiative and begin to think passion