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Indigenous knowing: Decolonisation and the Pacific

Decolonisation and the Pacific: Indigenous Globalisation and the Ends of Empire, Tracey Banivanua Mar, Cambridge University Press, 2016.

Let justice roll was part of Martin Luther’s King I have a dream speech. It drew on Scripture, Amos 5:24. If King was dreaming of justice in the Pacific, he might have called for justice to roll like the sea. He would have been inspired by Tracey Banivanua Mar and her recent book, Decolonisation and the Pacific: Indigenous Globalisation and the Ends of Empire (Critical Perspectives on Empire). It is an examination of the search for justice, Pacific style, Melanesian made.

It is a unique book. First, it argues that decolonisation has been uniquely experienced in the Pacific. Unlike Asia or Africa, the Pacific experience needs to be appreciated as unique. Second, it takes a long historical lens. It begins not with the development of nation states in the independence movements of the 1960’s through to 1980’s. Rather it begins with first contact. Thus decolonisation is located with geography and history, from which it draws energy. Third, it foregrounds indigenous agency. It argues for networks of relationships among indigenous peoples. These have emerged from the oceanic geography that is Oceania, the mobility of networks, including those imposed by colonisation, like black-birding. Through them flowed information, consciousness raising and leadership development. This makes decolonisation the story not of Empire and of political upheaval, but of the practices of indigenous agency. The argument is that “Indigenous peoples from numerous angles established resistant, convergent and accommodating discourses with and within empire.” (51) The result is a celebration of resistance and creativity. The focus shifts from the upfront and legal, to the home and the every day.

It is a book, beautifully constructed. Each chapter begins with a story that draws in the reader. Each story locates us in another Pacific place: Fiji, New Zealand, Solomon Islands, Samoa, Australia, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea. Each chapter ends with a lengthy conclusion, in which the data is located in relation to the books’ overall themes. Chapter titles, with words like currents and churn, saltwater and flight – recall the oceanic geography essential to the exploration of justice rolling like a sea.

What Decolonisation and the Pacific lacks is a considered engagement with the religious dimensions of the Pacific context. For example Walter Lini, first Prime Minister of an independent Vanuatu, is described as a “formidable builder of networks” (198). These are listed as including the Western Pacific Students’ Association and founder of newspaper, Viewpoints. There is no mention of church linkages, so essential to the context of Vanuatu and the identity of Lini, as an Anglican priest. A set of important questions are thus left unanswered. How did faith help or hinder the processes of decolonisation?

Decolonisation and the Pacific is essential reading. It provides new ways to approach decolonisation, that celebrate indigenous agency and the practices of everyday life. It provides a thoughtful examination of the nature of justice rolling like a sea across the Pacific. This includes the telling of the Pacific story on a prestigious academic stage, with publication by Cambridge University Press. It also offers a way of telling a Pacific story that honours the Ocean that all peoples share, in ways that maintain the uniqueness of local cultures. As such, it offers windows into the future search for justice, including the nurturing of networks and education that shares Pacific style, Melanesian made indigenous creativity.