Europe’s First Settler Colonial Incursion into Africa: The Genocide of Aboriginal Canary Islanders

The annihilation of the aboriginal societies of the Canary archipelago, which consists of seven islands off the coast of southern Morocco and was populated by indigenes derived from Berber-speaking communities of north-west Africa, represents modern Europe’s first overseas settler colonial genocide. The process of social destruction, initiated by European slave raiders in the first half of the fourteenth century, was propelled to completion by mainly Iberian conquistadors and settlers towards the end of the fifteenth century. In addition to unrestrained mass violence against Canarians, European conquerors practised near-total confiscation of land and near-total enslavement and deportation of island populations. Enslavement and deportation, which went hand in hand, accounted for the largest number of victims and were central to the genocidal process. They were in effect as destructive as killing because the victims, generally the most productive members of their communities, were permanently lost to their societies. Child confiscation, sexual violence and the use of scorched earth tactics also contributed to the devastation suffered by Canarian peoples. After conquest, the remnants of indigenous Canarian societies were subjected to ongoing violence and cultural suppression, which ensured the extinction of their way of life. That the enslavement and deportation of entire island communities was the consciously articulated aim of conquerors establishes their “intent to destroy in whole,” which is the central criterion for meeting the United Nations Convention on Genocide’s definition of genocide. This article argues that individually and collectively all seven cases of social obliteration in the Canaries represent clear examples of genocide, and it is the first article to contend that the destruction of aboriginal Canarian societies constitutes genocide.     

Unmasking the Essential Realities of COVID-19: The Pasifika Community in the Salt Lake Valley

Pacific Islanders in diaspora are disproportionately contracting COVID-19, experience hospitalization and develop complications. In Utah, Pacific Islanders have the highest contraction rate in the state. Pacific Islanders constitute only 2% of the state's population, but represent 4% of the those infected with COVID-19, begging the question how we might explain the high rates of contraction? As community engaged scholars and practitioners, we offer discussion, insight, and commentary on the COVID-19 pandemic affecting Pacific Islanders in Utah. Grounding this discussion is a history of the Pacific Islander community as an essential workforce that dates back to the 1850s, before statehood. We argue that historical discrimination against these early Pacific Islanders shaped the way this group is racialized as essential laborers today. The authors offer this assertion along with practices and protocols that honour cultural norms of socialization, which we see is the pathway to provide safe measures that are relevant to the Utah Pasifika community.     

Australia’s Detention Centres on Manus Island and Nauru: An End of Constructive Pacific Engagement?

The ‘Pacific Solution’ of transporting asylum seekers who arrive by boat in Australian waters to detention centres on Nauru and on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea (PNG) has attracted considerable international attention. Most of this has focused on the treatment of those detained and the morality, practicality and sustainability of Australian refugee policy. In this issue of ‘Pacific Currents’, we focus on the consequences for the Island nations. This article sets the scene for articles on Nauru and Manus Island by: 1. outlining the policy debates that led to the two phases of the ‘Pacific Solution’; 2. assembling data covering the numbers and costs involved; and 3. exploring the policy options in the wake of the PNG Supreme Court’s April 2016 ruling that the Manus Island centre was in violation of the constitution. All three papers are particularly concerned to explore the domestic political and legal ramifications of the centres for Nauru and PNG, and to examine the impact on Australia’s reputation in the Pacific region.     

Sherds on the Edge: Characterization of 16th Century Colonial Spanish Pottery Recovered from the Solomon Islands

We present the results of instrumental neutron activation analysis of ceramics recovered from the Solomon Islands, associated with Alvaro de Mendaña y Neira's 16th century colonizing expedition to the region (c.1595–6). Based on the chemical and typological data and previously published petrological and geochronological research, this study assigns the provenance of the ceramics variously to Peru, Panama, Spain, China and Thailand. A comparison of the provenance results with historical records related to Mendaña's voyage also shows the value of the archaeological assemblage in providing a detailed picture of provisioned ceramic types and their provenance.     

West Papua,Indonesia and the Melanesian Spearhead Group: competing logics in regional and international politics

The idea of a shared Melanesian identity has been consolidated over the last three decades or so through the most important subregional organisation in the South-West Pacific—the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG). The solidarity of this group has been strained over various issues from time to time, but none is as fraught as the Indonesian occupation of what is commonly known as West Papua, whose indigenous Papuan people are ethnically Melanesian. In addition to recounting the Indonesian takeover of West Papua in the context of the dynamics of decolonisation, the Cold War and early regional development, the article examines the emergence of Melanesian identity and the MSG, before considering more recent developments. These focus on a recent bid by West Papuans for MSG membership, key aspects of Indonesia's role in the Melanesian subregion, and the extent to which these developments highlight competing logics in regional and international politics.     

A Colonial Shipwreck in Saipan,Northern Mariana Islands

Previous underwater cultural heritage investigations conducted in the western Pacific's Northern Mariana Islands largely focused on the submerged World War Two remains, despite the islands’ rich colonial history. The island chain was the setting of numerous historical occupations including indigenous Chamorro populations, Spain, Germany, Japan and the United States, all of which created a lasting maritime heritage legacy on land and under water. This paper presents the first colonial shipwreck investigation to be undertaken by archaeologists and fills a gap in our history and knowledge of the Mariana Islands’ pre‐World War Two era.     

Purposeful commingling of adult and child cranial elements from the Chelechol ra Orrak Cemetery,Palau

Continued excavation in 2007 of the early (ca. 2000–3000 calBP) cemetery at Chelechol ra Orrak in Palau, Micronesia revealed the remains of at least six individuals, adding to a minimum number of at least 25 other mostly fragmented individuals recovered in previous years. Of particular interest was the discovery of two isolated adult partial crania one of which, when emptied of sandy matrix, was found to contain a complete child's frontal bone. Here we explore the possibility that the placement of the skulls, particularly the commingling of the adult and child cranial elements, was done purposefully and discuss its significance for early Pacific mortuary behaviours. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Matter of Makira: Colonialism,Competition, and the Production of Gendered Peoples in Contemporary Solomon Islands and Medieval Britain

Since civil tension disrupted Solomon Islands between 1998 and 2003, the Arosi of Makira have elaborated discourses according to which their island contains a secret and preternaturally powerful subterranean army base. These discourses have clear antecedents in Maasina Rule, a post-World War II socio-political movement sometimes analysed as a “cargo cult”. Offering an alternative interpretation, I compare Arosi discourses about the Makiran underground to the Matter of Britain as represented in Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain (completed c. 1138). I argue that both sets of discourses arise from the dynamics of mutually precipitating communities mythologizing themselves and each other in terms of the analogous oppositions colonizer is to colonized as allochthon is to autochthon as male is to female. This comparison, I conclude, recommends the medieval European phenomenon of a “matter” as a productive model for understanding contemporary ethnogenetic myth-making in and beyond Melanesia.     

The ‘walking’ megalithic statues (moai) of Easter Island

Explaining how the monumental statues (moai) of Easter Island were transported has remained open to debate and speculation, including their resource expenditures and role in deforestation. Archaeological evidence including analysis of moai variability, particularly those abandoned along ancient roads, indicates transport was achieved in a vertical position. To test this proposition we constructed a precise three-dimensional 4.35 metric ton replica of an actual statue and demonstrate how positioning the center of mass allowed it to fall forward and rock from side to side causing it to ‘walk.’ Our experiments reveal how the statue form was engineered for efficient transport by a small number of individuals.     

Applied Anthropology and Interwar Internationalism: Felix and Marie Keesing and the (White) Future of the ‘Native’ Pan-Pacific

ABSTRACT

This paper concerns transnational and international debate about the function of education as a progressive force in modernising colonial and race relations. It focuses on aspects of the published work and careers of New Zealanders Felix and Marie Keesing in the interwar and early post-war years in order to investigate the role these debates played in imagining new processes of adaptation and cohabitation in the settler/colonial Pacific. The paper argues that transnational networks were crucial to that project: as internationally recognised anthropologists, during the interwar years the Keesings were involved in the Institute of Pacific Relations and the Pan-Pacific Women's Association, operating out of Honolulu. Through these communities of expertise, the couple sought to promote and ultimately popularise the contemporary idea that ‘applied anthropology’ would be essential to modernising the norms of governance between ‘native peoples’ and Western citizen-subjects.