1This special issue interrogates Indigenous sovereignties across Oceania and beyond the state. Addressing the topic in the plural, involves thinking about multiple kinds of self-determination, governance practices, and institutional bodies placed beyond—within and outside, above and below—the state, as well as through scalar motions from the local to the global and temporal orientations from the past to the future. In this diversity of contexts, the restitution of sovereignty has been one of the main political claims of Indigenous peoples at the centre of decolonisation processes, grounding present demands in historical realities and mobilising those towards new futures. By zooming across Oceania, including its nexus with the Americas (North and South), one can detect a particularly diverse and dynamic field in which different notions and practices of state and Indigenous sovereignties are (re)negotiated and (re)constituted.
2Oceania incorporates a range of political situations in a scenario of mostly unfinished decolonisation: independent settler states, decolonised independent states, decolonising territories, states in free association, annexed territories, and territories under tutelage. These situations call for interrogations of the ways and forms in which Indigenous sovereignties operate in the face of state interventions and vice versa. They also invite reflections on the histories and modalities of the loss and acquisition of sovereignty, as well as on Indigenous strategies of (re)creating sovereign logics, practices, and institutions. What insights can be gained when the experiences of Indigenous peoples, who have lost and regained sovereignty, are studied? What are the Indigenous philosophies, movements, and actions that forge different kinds of sovereignty? And how do notions and practices of sovereignty shape the future?
3This special issue addresses these and related questions. The authors set out to examine the articulations, performances, and enactments of sovereignty, not only in the formation of states across Oceania but also in the conceptualisations and practices that Indigenous peoples of the region have developed in relation to the state and beyond. In doing so, the contributors aim at inquiring into the competing, overlapping, and often paradoxical affiliations underpinning Indigenous sovereignties, and into the forms and ways that decolonial Indigenous futures have been imagined from the past to the present. In this Introduction, we first embed the special issue in the context of Indigenous sovereignties across Oceania and beyond the state. We then present two vignettes that encapsulate the topic under scrutiny and lend empirical weight to the conceptual framework. Lastly, we map out the individual contributions in relation to the overarching frame.
4Etymologically and historically, “sovereignty” refers to the absolute power of the sovereign (kings and queens). Throughout modernity, the place of this supreme power has, in the case of democratic nation states, been moved to its population through the paradoxical notion of “popular sovereignty”, which implies the delegation of power to a sector of the population: a political elite (Graeber & Sahlins, 2017). Today, sovereignty is associated with the capacity of one political entity (the state) to govern, to make decisions without interference from external sources (other states), and to exercise authority over the people living in a defined territory (Krasner, 1999; Onuf, 1991). It must be noted that this definition of sovereignty centred on the state, often referred to as the Westphalian system (Krasner, 1999, 2001), is a historical construct (Branch, 2012; Graeber, 2017). In this sense, sovereignty does not exist a priori; it is not naturally given. Furthermore, the Westphalian system has been subjected to contradictory political and economic forces, as Stephen Krasner explains (1999, 2001). Processes of globalisation, international organisations, and regional alliances can sometimes limit the absolute exercise of the state’s sovereignty, as it enter cooperative arrangements and shared governance on certain issues.
5The anthropological turn in the study of sovereignty involves extending the concept beyond (and below) its state-based definition (Hansen & Stepputat, 2006; Humphrey, 2004; Wachspress, 2009). In this way, sovereignty can be seen as intrinsic to (all) communities and peoples or as an extrinsic concept. Thus, sovereignty is described as the sovereign’s capacity to create exceptional states, suspend rules (Schmitt, 1985), and to impose these on persons and their bodies (Agamben, 1998). At the same time, it can also be found (and described) in the acts of people who claim, assert, and enact control over their lives (Bryant & Reeves, 2021; Humphrey, 2004). In this sense, sovereignty is not only the legal capacity to create states of exception suspending rules (Schmitt, 1985) but also the political ability to negotiate different kinds of authority and control over one’s life and territories.
6In the 1960s, the United Nations committed itself to ending colonialism, focusing on the recognition of sovereignty to colonised peoples and territories. The organisation adopted three important texts that continue to guide the process of decolonisation. The first was the Resolution 1514 (XV) concerning the granting of independence to colonial countries and peoples,1 the second was the Resolution 1541 (XV), that defined the obligation for the member states to transmit information about the non-self-governing territories over its control, and the third the Resolution 1654,2 which established the Special Committee on Decolonization.3 According to these instruments, decolonisation is achieved according to three models: becoming an independent state, acquiring the status of a free association with an independent state, or being incorporated into a state. Thus, the restoration of sovereignty and processes of decolonisation are interrelated scenarios in which the Westphalian model remains the main framework. According to that, in the multiple colonial and postcolonial contexts, sovereignty has been an arena of conflict between states, and between the state and the population that lives under and contests its rules. This is the case with almost all Indigenous peoples around the world.
7Some Indigenous scholars argue that the concept of sovereignty is inappropriate when referring to Indigenous forms of government, land relations, and justice systems (Alfred, 2005); others, on the contrary, attribute sovereign capacities to Indigenous peoples since times before European arrival and intervention (Deloria, 1999). Other scholars incorporate Indigenous forms and concepts into Western legal frameworks. By doing so, Indigenous legal sovereignties remain coherent to be recognised by state systems (Bens, 2020). Thus, the paradox of Indigenous sovereignty in settler (neo)colonial states lies in the contradictory relationship between the recognition of state authority and the attempted recovery of Indigenous forms of governance. In those cases, Indigenous sovereignties are recognised as ceded or “domesticated”, as Joanne Braker (2005) proposes, that is, incorporated into the nation-state framework (Bauder & Mueller, 2021; Lavinas Picq, 2018). In this context, Indigenous sovereignty supported by the un Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (adopted in 2007) but translated as the right to self-determination is exercised within the framework of the nation-state (Gagné et Salaün, 2010). Thus, Indigenous peoples have access to only a limited sovereignty that must be constantly negotiated with governments and in local and international arenas. For the editors of this special issue and authors of this Introduction, Indigenous sovereignties emerge in spaces of conflict and negotiation through localised yet globally embedded forms of control over Indigenous lives, territories, institutions, and histories. Thus, Indigenous sovereignty refers to a field of negotiation grounded in the defence of Indigenous interests.
- 4 The current situation in New Caledonia remains complex. After three independence referendums organi (...)
8In Oceania, the assertion of sovereignty knows different degrees and steps. After the 1960s, some societies gained the status of independent states: Sāmoa in 1962, Nauru in 1968, Tonga in 1970, Fiji in 1970, Papua New Guinea in 1975, Tuvalu in 1978, Solomon Islands in 1978, Kiribati in 1979, Vanuatu in 1980, and both the Marshall Islands and the Federated States of Micronesia in 1990. Bougainville could become independent by 2027. Two French territories –New Caledonia, and French Polynesia– are in the process of becoming decolonised, with yet unknown outcomes.4 Finally, other territories have not been recognised as non-self-governing by the un Decolonization Committee. Consequently, these territories have been excluded from the decolonisation process. This is the case of Rapa Nui (Easter Island), an island annexed by Chile, and the Hawai‘i archipelago, incorporated as one of the states of the USA. Nevertheless, Indigenous leaders and activists from these territories are endeavouring to have their territories included in the list of territories to be decolonised (Goodyear-Ka‘opua et al., 2014; Muñoz, 2023).
9The different structures of each independent state illustrate the diversity of sovereign models. While Sāmoa is a parliamentary republic in which the matai or traditional chiefs are the members of parliament (Tcherkézoff, 2003), Tonga is an Indigenous hereditary monarchy (Douaire-Marsaudon, 1998) and Vanuatu is a parliamentary republic with multi-party competition (Wittersheim, 2006). However, the “unfinished decolonisation process in Oceania” (Banivanua Mar, 2016) is currently shaped (held back or pushed forward) by scenarios of competition between powers (mainly Australia, the USA and China) that seek to increase their influence over the “micro” states of Oceania and the non-self-governing territories in the region (Al Wardi, Regnault et Sabouret, 2017). Thus, Oceania is a particularly diverse and dynamic context for analysing the various interactions that have taken place between state and Indigenous sovereignties.
10 Since the 1970s, Indigenous political actors and scholars have proposed different but complementary ways of understanding sovereignty with a present-future orientation. An example is the international call of Fiji’s Prime Minister Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara (between 1970 and 1992) to shape a “Pacific Way” through which Pacific Islanders might be able to control contemporary governance models and international relations while remaining true to their cultural heritage. The Pacific Way became a major political and educational programme at the University of the South Pacific in Suva, Fiji. The proposal was to build a common destiny shaped through a pan-Pacific regionalism looking at a rebalanced international relationship between Pacific countries and their former colonial states, between tradition and modernity, and between local and global influences (Crocombe, 1976; Ha’ofa, 1997; Lawson, 2010; Mara, 1997; Panoff, 1999; Tupouniua et al., 1975). This objective was central to the thinking of Jean-Marie Tjibaou, the independence activist and political leader in New Caledonia during the 1970s and 1980s, when he conceptualised sovereignty as
“le droit de pouvoir négocier les interdépendances. Pour un petit pays comme le nôtre, l’indépendance c’est de bien calculer les interdépendances [the right to negotiate interdependencies. For a small country like ours, independence means calculating interdependencies]” (Tjibaou, 1985: 1593).
- 5 Hamid Mokaddem (2010: 185) notes that for Tjibaou sovereignty is in a “permanent reformulation”. In (...)
11The recovery of sovereignty, which until then had been synonymous with independence, began to take on new meanings and involve new practices to negotiate spaces of self-determination.5
12The extensions of these ideas about Pacific regionalism can be found in the intellectual and political project of the Tongan scholar Epeli Hau‘ofa (1993, 1997). He wondered how the peoples of Oceania could free themselves from the prejudices inherited from the colonial era that described their territories as condemned to underdevelopment and dependence because of their small size. Taking seriously the long history of Indigenous migration, planned colonisation and settlement away from home, Hau‘ofa wanted to change this vision and give a new cultural and political content and orientation to Oceania. He described it as a “sea of islands” rather than “islands in the sea”. This shift in perspective made it possible to see, for once, how the societies of Oceania could take control of their own sovereign futures. Not because they are small and isolated, but because they are connected by links that transcend national boundaries. In this Pacific Way, the sea of islands metaphor mobilised a liberating potential that sought to balance the forces between Oceanic states and societies and their former metropolitan colonial centres and beyond.
13Mara’s and Hau‘ofa’s appeals were part of an intellectual movement that sought to rethink the categories of colonial domination, with the recovery of the past as a source for building a decolonial future. One such category was that of sovereignty. In the Hawaiian context, for example, Indigenous scholars and activists have mobilised the notion of ea, an ancient concept that in contemporary usage connotes as notions of life, breath and sovereignty, and “can be seen as both a concept and a diverse set of practices that make land primary over government, while not dismissing the importance of autonomous governing structures to a people’s health and well-being” (Goodyear-Ka‘ōpua, 2014: 3). In this sense, ea mobilises a present-future orientation for Hawaiian purposes.
14In other Oceanic cases, sovereignty has been translated into Indigenous terms, but not without difficulties. In the famous Treaty of Waitangi, signed in 1840 by more than 500 Māori rangatira (chiefs) and agents of the British Crown, two words were employed to assimilate the Western notion of sovereignty into Māori concepts: kawanatanga and rangatiratanga (Orange, 1987). Ever since the signing, there has been debate and contestation regarding the pertinence, good faith and misunderstandings associated with and emerging through the exercises of translation (Kawhaharu, 1989; Tomas, 2013). Recognition of the political value of the Māori text and its interpretation was key in the construction of New Zealand as a so-called bicultural state, now known as Aotearoa New Zealand.
15Ancient Oceanic concepts such as mana, tapu and rāhui have acquired new sovereign qualities and efficacies, as Pierre-Yves Le Mur and Alexander Mayer (2022) have pointed out. According to Nin Tomas, who analyses mana and tapu from a Māori perspective, mana is a:
“[…] principle articulating the power, prestige, and authority held in individuals and groups via their genealogical links to the various deities (mana atua), associations with their leaders (mana tangata), and associations with their traditional lands (mana whenua). Expressions of mana are an articulation of the sources of authority known to Maori. It is a much broader concept than a sovereignty that is derived only from human sources.” (Tomas, 2013: 226)
16Furthermore, the principle of tapu
“[…] recognizes the value attributed by Maori to various objects, people, and relationships. Maori perceive all things to possess inherent tapu, and therefore inherent value. Practical application of this principle meant that property-type relationships could be established using the institution of tapu to place restrictions on access to people, places, and objects.” (Tomas, 2013: 226).
17Tamatoa Bambridge explains that rāhui are prohibitions “controlled by strategies related to political and sacred power [but] have less to do with a mystical abstract power than with the manifestation of efficiency in such domains as success, health, food and fertility” (Bambridge, 2016: 2-3). By recalibrating ancient notions, practices of “vernacular sovereignties” (Lavinas Picq, 2018) involve relationships between humans and communities, political institutions and other-than-human entities, and multilayered forms of control of lives and territories. Thus, by (re)using mana and establishing tapu and rāhui new spaces of “localized forms of sovereignty” (Humphrey, 2004) are created.
18Indigenous sovereignties, by being multifaceted and paradoxical, create spaces for other, non-Westphalian sovereignties to shape models for probable and negotiable futures (Appadurai, 2013). In this present-and-future orientation, we set out to analyse two interrelated levels of Indigenous sovereignties. On the one hand, we look at sovereignty from above, that is, in its institutionalised and organised form in which authority and power are unequally distributed among the various sectors of the societies in question. In these top-down sovereignties, Oceanic states are the main actors, with issues of territorial control (land, air, and sea), population management (Indigenous and non-Indigenous), international relations, and environmental issues being central aspects. On the other hand, sovereignty can be analysed from below, from the daily lives of individuals and social groups who yearn for control over their lives. These desires extend to the territories in which they live or feel bound to (when living in diaspora), as well as to the cultures they consider their own.
19These attempts at sovereign control are not necessarily inscribed in processes of national liberation; nor do they necessarily aim at independence or territorial separation, nor involve only punitive capacities and states of exception. On the contrary, they comprise emotional and aspirational dimensions that are present in people’s everyday lives (Bryant & Reeves 2021; Humphrey, 2004) and are geared towards forging new non-colonial relationships within and beyond states. As Frances Negrón-Muntaner proposes, these sovereign acts need to be understood through “the triple sense of action (agential capacity), performance (staging), and law (order). Sovereign acts can thus be used to demonstrate agency, to stage legitimacy, and/or to constitute a social order” (Negró-Muntaner, 2017: 23). By offering two vignettes focusing on sovereign acts, we clarify the associated scalar movements of Indigenous sovereignties.
- 6 We utilise the nomenclature proposed by the Comisión de Restructuración de la Lengua Rapanui, CRLRN (...)
20Taura is the Rapanui word for rope (Englert, 1948: 501). Since 2015, however, the term has come to refer to events that restructured parts of the relationship between the Rapanui people and the state of Chile.6 Taura describes the closure of the archaeological and tourist sites, coordinated by the organisation Parlamento Rapa Nui, and applied by several members of the island community. These sites were listed as national heritage and part of a national park in 1935, two years after the state declared itself the owner of the whole island in 1933. Subsequently the national park came to be managed by the public institution Corporación Forestal (Forestry Corporation). The blockade, together with the constant threat of the airport’s lock down, further fuelled an already conflicted environment. There was widespread feeling that the Rapanui people were becoming a demographic minority due to the increasing immigration of continental Chileans, and the demand for the return of lands that the Chilean state considered their own property. The taura, as an action of blockade, reminded many inhabitants of the land recovery movement of 2010, which culminated in many evictions and injuries against Rapanui activists after police intervention (Observatorio Ciudadano and iwgia, 2012). It is important to note that archaeological sites are the main economic resource in the island due to their tourism value, and, according to some actors, the revenues from tourism could finance independence (Muñoz, 2023). Taura thus acted as a marker of a new tapu, which prohibited all non-Rapanui people from accessing the archaeological sites.
- 7 For more details, see the local journal El Correo del Moai: https://www.elcorreodelmoai.com/?p=1046
- 8 In Chile, Indigenous peoples are legally recognised by Law 19.253. This law, dating from the 1990s, (...)
- 9 For more details on the negotiation process, see Concha Mathiesen (2020).
21 The state of siege in the national park revealed an organisational capacity of the Rapanui community that had not been taken seriously by the Chilean government, and that could create “states of exception”. In fact, through umanga—or community work—the families maintained a constant supply of food and information to those who controlled access. They also ensured the relief of the people directly involved, allowing for a continuous presence twenty-four hours a day. Gradually, a new rule of access to the sites began to take shape. Any non-Rapanui person (who, at that time, represented 50 per cent of the island’s population) could only enter the sites if accompanied by a native. The taura lasted five months, from March to August 2015, and culminated in the government’s agreement to transfer the park’s management to a Rapanui entity created exclusively for this task:7 the Comunidad Indígena Polinésica Ma‘u Henua [Indigenous Polynesian Community Ma‘u Henua].8 After three years of co-administration between the Forest Corporation and Ma‘u Henua, the administration was fully transferred to this latter entity in August 2018, in the presence of then Chilean president Michelle Bachelet Jeria. For several Indigenous leaders, the handover of the administration was seen as the recovery of the land. However, the agreement was not about ownership, but of a 50-year management concession.9
22During the taura and at each checkpoint, the Rapanui flag was flown. This flag, named Reva Reimiro, consists of white cloth with a red reimiro (pectoral ornament) in the centre (photo 1). Little is known about its original meaning, but the Rapanui who informed ethnologists in the early twentieth century stated that the reimiro was used by the ariki (a term often translated as king) and was associated with fertility (Métraux, 1940). According to a version that Diego Muñoz collected during his most recent field work (between September 2022 and April 2023), the flag was made in Tahiti in 1888 by exiled Rapanui and transported by one of them on the same ship in which the Chilean Captain Policarpo Toro Hurtado was travelling to take over the island. This version also noted that the Chilean ship could not dock on the afternoon of 8 September, the day scheduled for the annexation ceremony, due to bad weather, and that the ceremony had to be postponed until the following day. A treaty of cession would be signed, and the Chilean flag would be raised to mark the transfer of sovereignty.
Photo 1. ─ The Reva Reimiro flag in the gate access of a plot of land reclaimed by a Rapanui family
(cliché Muñoz, 2023)
- 10 For a detailed analysis of the history of the Rapanui flag and its role in the Chilean annexation, (...)
23According to the same story, Lataro Matahamene, one of the Rapanui returning from Tahiti, jumped into the sea and swam ashore, bringing along the Reva Reimiro that was raised sometime during the night. Thus, on 9 September, when Captain Toro was finally able to disembark, together with his men-at-arms and a small group of foreign witnesses to observe the cession of sovereignty (as the Chilean state called the event), he found that the Rapanui people had their own flag and that their ariki presided over a council of chiefs. These chiefs were willing to talk to the kape (captain) about a possible agreement with Chile. The ariki then allegedly told the kape that he could place the Chilean flag under the Rapanui flag on the same pole. While for Chile, this was a cession of sovereignty, for the Rapanui chiefs, it was an agreement between new allies in which the chiefs retained their authority.10 Since then, the presence of the Rapanui flag at each site of conflict is a reminder that sovereignty has not been ceded and that the agreement written in 1888 has not been respected by the Chilean state. In this sense, the taura and the flag mark these acts and spaces of Indigenous sovereignty as interjections against state norms. These markers of Indigenous sovereignty later became formalised as demonstrated by the wave of legal reforms that followed the taura.
- 11 For an analysis in depth, see Muñoz “A land in the middle of the Pacific: Issues of volumetric sove (...)
24 During the taura, other Rapanui organisations reactivated a second demand: to control the settlement of non-Rapanui people on the island. Arguing for the preservation of the island’s archaeological and natural heritage, which was threatened by demographic growth caused by the arrival of Chileans from the continent, and after heated negotiations between local leaders and the legislature, a new residency regulation came into force also in 2018 (the year of the handover of the national park). Since then, Rapa Nui has had a special migration regime, creating a kind of “anomaly within the Chilean Republic”, as described elsewhere.11 An anomaly because, although the Chilean constitution guarantees every citizen the right of free movement and residence throughout the national territory, residence in Rapa Nui today is subject to special rules and depends, in addition to technical analysis, on the demographic burden (an equation that defines the relationship between resources and population) and the will of the members of a commission created exclusively to study residence applications: the Consejo de Carga Demográfica (Council of Demographic Burden). In this context, every Chilean, except for the Rapanui and their legal spouses, has the right to stay for only 30 days. This means that de facto, every non-Rapanui Chilean is considered a tourist, if not a foreigner. In addition, the Council of Demographic Burden is formed exclusively of Rapanui people, who decide on residence permits based on various criteria.
25As with the taura, potential residency of non-Indigenous people undergoes a kind of “checkpoint” that issues permit. In other words, Rapanui people, through hybrid institutions such as the Council of Demographic Burden, control the island’s borders and decide on the settlement of non-Rapanui Chileans on the island. Somehow, state sovereignty begins to be reconfigured. In Rapa Nui, Indigenous sovereignty is exercised through local institutions created by national laws (such as Ma‘u Henua and the Council of Demographic Burden), by Indigenous political bodies (such as the Consejo de Jefes in the 1980s or the Parlamento Rapa Nui in the 2000s), as well as through sovereign acts (such as the taura). These examples show that Indigenous forms of sovereignty can emanate from below and be transferred into sovereignty from above when they are incorporated into the legal apparatus of state institutions. Thus, scalar movements between above and below, within and outside are multidirectional, resulting from a field of negotiation and conflict resolution.
26When one enters the “Samoa” section in the Polynesian Cultural Center (pcc) on O‘ahu, one of the top tourist attractions on the Hawaiian Islands, a particular actor—the coconut—assumes centre stage during the performance. The coconut is harvested from a tree, husked in a fale (house), cooked in a kitchen, and offered as a drink. At the same time, however, a warning sign prominently set up on the lawn asks visitors to “keep away” from the stars of the show—coconut trees (photo 2). While the pcc certainly wishes to avoid any kind of damage to its clients, as well as the resulting legal proceedings and financial compensations, it is not far-fetched to claim that, in the spirit of theatrical performance, an ironic and burlesque inflection, a particular kind of mimicry, is going on, too. In his book Pacific Performances: Theatricality and Cross-Cultural Encounter in the South Seas (2007), Christopher Balme convincingly argues that the performative mimicry observed at the pcc corresponds—in contrast to Frantz Fanon and Homi Bhabha’s definitions—to a “reverse colonial mimicry”. Balme explains:
“Instead of imitating the colonizer and developing forms of subversion by holding up a distorted image of the European, the Samoans and Tongans appear to be mimicking European projections of themselves… This ironic use of parody depends on the performers’ awareness of European and Euro-American projections and is evident in various subtle and not so subtle allusions.” (Balme, 2007: 182)
Photo 2. ─ Sign warning against coconuts at the “Samoa section” of the Polynesian Cultural Centre (Note that no macron used at pcc)
(cliché Schorch, 2022)
- 12 For more details see Schorch et al. (2020 : chapter 6).
27In the related context of contemporary Indigenous art, Philipp Schorch has argued elsewhere that the artwork of Yuki Kihara, Rosanna Raymond, and Leafa Wilson aka Olga Krause (who all identify as Sāmoan in particular ways) expresses and enacts a “reverse anthropological mimicry”. This entails the parody of anthropological imaginations through the counter-appropriation of ethnographic tools as artistic strategy and intervention aimed not so much at ironical play, seen in the acts of resistance toward the tourist gaze at the pcc, as at articulating fierce critique, turning the vantage point—in this case, from a colonial German-Sāmoan to a (post)colonial and utopian Sāmoan-German—and engaging with the politics of representation that embraces multiple perspectives on a common history. These artists actively add to and reshape this history by circulating images and allowing photographs and sites to resurface and be reinscribed into collective memory. Mimicry is here used not as a way of adapting and surviving, as it has been historically promoted, but as a strategy of resistance in artistic practice geared towards rewriting anthropological perspectives (Kihara), reactivating museum spaces (Raymond), and recolonising a Sāmoan-German name and body (Wilson aka Krause). In other words, in these instances, art becomes much more than a purely aesthetic exercise, amounting to a political act aimed at carving out sovereign spaces, departing from below and directed at above.12
28Let us divert back to the coconut at pcc and beyond, through the warning sign (see photo 2), to trace a similar route to artistic expression as sovereign action. According to various Oceanic mythologies, in places such as Sāmoa and Rotuma, niu (the Indigenous name for “coconut” or “coconut tree” in many corresponding Oceanic languages) was a gift of unconditional love by an eel to a young woman to sustain her and her people for the rest of their lives. And yet, in contemporary Honolulu, and much of wider Hawai‘i, around hotels, urban high rises and shopping centres, the coconut tree is reduced to being merely decorative, and has its life-sustaining properties in the form of coconuts removed (which is not the case at pcc). The reason? Coconuts could fall on unsuspecting humans below and kill them, thus morphing from gift into threat (which is the case at pcc, too). A film project led by Vilsoni Hereniko, which forms part of a research group on “Indigeneities in the 21st Century”,13 explores the multi-faceted nature of niu: from its origins to its many kinds of uses and abuses in the present and into the future. The intention is to shed light on a tree that is referred to by many islanders as the “tree of life” (Hereniko, 2024). What happened then in Hawaiʻi? How did niu become an ornamental liability for the tourist industry and urban development, both of which are more concerned with profit than with Indigenous world views and environmental sustainability? By addressing these questions, a series of short films approaches niu for what it is, an environmental portal into a cosmological universe, thus resurrecting the “tree of life” from the taken-for-granted to the sublime.14
29Two aspects are of vital importance for the present discussion. First, artistic expression, here through film as a specific type of contemporary art, is itself a political action aimed at delineating a sovereign terrain. Second, niu itself, as food sovereign, prompts a range of artistic-political activities to be launched. The NiU NOW! movement, emanating from Hawaiʻi and radiating beyond its shores, is a case in point. Provoked by contemporary Hawaiʻi’s overwhelming food dependency and intensified by the COVID-19 crisis and its devastating impact on supply chains, this movement has set out to re-establish the coconut, or rather niu, as the prime food source that has enabled human settlement across Oceania for centuries, back into the Hawaiian Islands by pursuing the interrelated priorities of cultural revitalisation, ecological conservation, as well as food security and healing.15 Niu, then, spurs on human action that is simultaneously cultural, ecological, political, and spiritual. Once again, it is artistic, too, and a short documentary about the movement, Kumu Niu, has been produced.16 Tellingly, Manulani Aluli Meyer, a well-known Hawaiian scholar and activist, stresses in the opening scene of the film that “the coconut tree, or niu, is a fundamental practice of food sovereignty, or food security”. Niu becomes human practice (not vice versa). Niu, as food sovereign, directs human action, simultaneously geared towards food, artistic and Indigenous sovereignty.17
- 18 Being attuned to this historical dimension of cultural life enables scholarship to move beyond the (...)
30The summing up of this vignette alludes to two dimensions. Firstly, NiU NOW! is not simply a contemporary “invention of tradition”,18 as has often been claimed in cases of Indigenous (re-)emergences, but rather a rediscovery grounded in a longue durée of niu cultures across Oceania. In the case of Sāmoa, among Hawaiʻi’s “Polynesian cousins”, the English missionary George Turner wrote, in 1884, about Ga‘e fefe:
“a war-god in some of the villages, and seen in a cocoa-nut-leaf basket. It is said that during a battle between the gods of Samoa and those of Tonga the former crouched about the trunks of the cocoa-nut trees; but Ga‘e fefe hid in a cocoa-nut-leaf basket, and escaped while many others were killed. Hence the basket became the sign of the god.” (Turner, 1884: 32)
31A few years later, in 1899, the German author Carl Reinecke wrote about Die Samoaner und die Kokospalme [The Samoans and the coconut palm], referring, quite remarkably, to the creation story of “Sina and the eel”, sketched out above, in poetic and scholarly depth. Finally, Tui Atua Tupua Tamasese Ta‘isi Efi, Sāmoa’s former prime minister (1976-82) and head of state (2007-17) as well as an esteemed scholar, elaborates how in the past, “to maximise the supply of water during long voyages, Polynesian navigators used natural containers, i.e. the coconut shells provided by Tuna (the eel). But these were not just any coconut shells. Tuna provided a special nut perfect for use as a water container for long voyages, what Samoans call niuvai containers” (Suaalii-Sauni et al., 2018: 268). After relating to the Sāmoan version of niu’s creation story, Tui Atua Tupua goes on to say that
“associated with these long voyages are a number of tapu. During these voyages water was critical to human survival. The tapu qualities of water are linked to the tapu of the water container (the niuvai), the elements and the people. There is a spiritual connection between the life of the water and the life of the coconut; between the life of a coconut and the life of a people; between the life of people and the life of the sea.” (Suaalii-Sauni et al., 2018: 269)
32Ultimately, then, the “niuvai coconut is a gift from the gods” (ibid.), which the NiU NOW! movement across “the sea of islands” treasures once again.
33Secondly, the film initiatives spurred on by NiU NOW! are intimately linked to other artistic-political actions aimed at demarcating and defending sovereign territories, again emanating from below but certainly aimed at above. During the Hawai‘i Triennial in 2022, devoted to the “Pacific Century E Ho‘omau No Moananuiākea”, an “Aboriginal Embassy” (photo 3) was set up on the lawn of ‘Iolani Palace, the former seat of the Hawaiian monarchy that was overthrown in 1893 (Forbes, 2013). This initiative built on the “Aboriginal Tent Embassy” established in front of Parliament House in Canberra, Australia, in 1972.19 While now the context was a festival of contemporary art, the action was no less political. ‘Iolani Palace is one of four sites in Hawai‘i where the Hawaiian flag is allowed to fly without the United States flag (apart from the Royal Mausoleum at Manua ‘Ala, Thomas Square in Honolulu and Pu‘uhonua o Hōnaunau National Historical Park). The embassy on the palace grounds facilitated trans-Indigenous engagements in front of, and dialogue with, wider audiences on sovereign Indigenous territories. As Drew Kahuʻāina Broderick, one of the curators of the triennial, writes: “To inhabit the margins is to embrace radical possibilities: these ‘space[s] of refusal, where one can say no to the colonizer, no to the downpressor’, are vital, for they nourish a capacity to resist” (Broderick, 2022: 56). Indigenous art, curatorship and film are profound expressions and enactments of ea, the Hawaiian concept and practice (Goodyear-Ka‘ōpua et al., 2014), alluded to above, which, in its multiple meanings, equates life with breath and sovereignty across the spheres above and below as well as within and beyond the state.
Photo 3. ─ “Aboriginal Embassy” set up on the lawn of ‘Iolani Palace during Hawai‘i Triennial devoted to the Pacific Century E Ho‘omau No Moananuiākea
(cliché Schorch, 2022)
34The articles included in this special issue explore manifestations of Indigenous sovereignties across Oceania and beyond the state. Nicola Manghi shows how sovereignty over the Tuvalu archipelago is affected by an existential paradox: the risk of the territory disappearing due to sea level rise, and the daily tension over land ownership between Indigenous communities and state institutions. By doing so, the author explores the local speculations on the future of the country as well as the complex architecture of its sovereignty configured by internal and external pressures. Another series of paradoxes between the inhabitants of a territory and the institutions of government are examined by Valelia Muni Toke. This contribution addresses the political and institutional power of the Indigenous monarchies of Uvea (Wallis) and Futuna in the presence of the French metropolitan préfet. Despite the inhabitants of these islands perceiving their societies as not having been colonised, due to their monarchs and the coutumier (traditional) control over the land, political and institutional life is often constrained by the metropolitan authority of the préfet. Both authors explore the fundamental paradoxes of sovereignties from above, namely, the ways in which institutions succeed (or fail) in regulating and overseeing the relationships between people, territories, and their resources.
- 20 For Tahitian words, Misaki uses the spelling systematised by this church, which differs from the or (...)
35These dilemmas of Indigenous sovereignties are not only a matter of island monarchies or nation-states in the region, but they also cross over to other scenarios. The defence of Indigenous ways of life and territories represents emblematic examples of sovereignties from below, that is, those that emerge through sovereign acts and aspirations from beyond the state. In this context, Gaia Cottino examines—in the same way that we explain in the second vignette above—how Indigenous artists criticise the deep dependence on foreign food resources and the lack of food sovereignty in Tonga. She shows the contradictory experiences of this Indigenous monarchy which is the only historically non-colonised country in the Pacific but is now subject to a strong food dependency. Anthony Tutugoro analyses the discourses of various Kanak independence leaders on the institutional future of New Caledonia. He traces the post-referendum dilemmas in which potential models for the effective decolonisation of New Caledonia from France are being sought. In dialogue with Tutugoro, Clemence Maillochon analyses the history and contemporary legacy of the political movement Ia Mana te Nuna‘a (the power of the people) in French Polynesia. Founded in the 1970s by young Tahitian students returning to Tahiti from metropolitan France, the movement was inspired by socialist ideology, the spirit of May ‘68 and international decolonisation struggles. Furthermore, she explains that Ia Mana te Nun‘a laid the foundations for the political and cultural revival of the Mā‘ohi people. Also writing about French Polynesia, Mai Misaki takes us into other realms in which the defence of ways of life and territories acquires spiritual dimensions. She explains the Tahitian concept of tiàmāraa faaroo mobilised by the Māòhi Protestant Church as a kind of religious sovereignty which promoted the re-establishment of the (mystical) link with the land and cultural practices.20 Nicolas Delaire focuses on the emergence, discourses, and actions of the local group Parlamento Rapa Nui. His contribution is situated in media res of the cases analysed in French Polynesia by Maillochon and Misaki, as well as by Tutugoro for New Caledonia. The Parlamento Rapa Nui, despite lacking a systematic and structured ideological discourse, succeeded in questioning the legitimacy of Chilean sovereignty through contesting actions. In another context, Nathanaëlle Soler shows that the medical knowledge of Kanak people in New Caledonia is not merely a domain of individual practices and transcends the aspect of health to incorporate both corporeal and political dimensions. Thus, the controls and transmission of this knowledge perpetuate the link between individuals and their communities and territories, acting as connectors to other forms of societal organisation.
36Some material entities preserved in museum collections also become connectors when their status of objects is transformed. The articles by Marion Bertin and Garance Nyssen challenge the notion of “ambassador objects”, a concept recently employed by cultural institutions in New Caledonia and French Polynesia. Bertin suggests that these Kanak collections dispersed in France hold significant political potential, which could mark the emergence (or consolidation) of cultural sovereignty, not only Kanak but also New Caledonian, in the event of a rise to independence of the territory. Nyssen, in turn, employs an ethnographic approach to examine the administrative circulation of collections and objects, as well as their controversial legal status (French national or Tahitian Indigenous heritage). In both articles, “ambassador objects” become political actors when facilitating the strengthening of institutional cooperation links beyond the issue of restitution.
37 If ambassadorial objects communicate other forms of sovereignty, then individuals themselves, with free will, also possesses a form of sovereignty to decide their lives and futures. Claudia Lederucci addresses the voluntary enlistment of young Mā‘ohi in the French army. Her analysis of the life trajectories of recruits reveals how individual sovereignty (and control over one’s body) mobilises personal notions of the future and challenges experienced bonds of citizenship.
38 Together, the authors of this special issue approach and examine sovereignty, not only in relation to the state, but also by shedding light on the ways and forms in which it has been mobilised by Indigenous actors, in different contexts across Oceania and at different scales beyond the state.
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