The lack of knowledge that I (and I believe many others) have on Indigenous Pacific Islanders goes to show how their identities and overall cultural, historical, political and social histories have been erased from mainstream academia. In grouping Indigenous Pacific Islanders and their various identities into Asian/Asian American feminism, entire cultures and regions are disregarded and presumes that Pacific Islanders have some inherent connection to Asia when they do not. It is stated very early on that Pacific Islanders are not Asian/Pacific Islander. To group the two together and to assume they have the same suffer from the same issues is incorrect and stems from colonization of the Islands (the presumption that they are the same and thus can lumped into the same criteria/are of study). Furthermore, the reading makes a valid argument in pointing that Asian Americans are often complicit in this practice, as many tend to believe they have some connection to the Pacific Islands when they do not and use Indigenous Pacific Islander language/custom as some sort of safe haven and commodity. This connection reminded me of Latin America, in the sense that many Latinx people have internalized colonial mindsets (colorism, erasure of indigeneity, gender and sex dichotomy) and thus further the degradation of their respective nation’s cultures and peoples. It is important then, to recognize the differences between Indigenous Pacific Islanders and Asian/Asian American areas and acknowledge the non-settler/colonial history of the Pacific Islands.

Another interesting part of the reading to me was about how outsiders view Pacific women and reminded me of the “coloniality of gender” by Lugones and reminded me of the exoticized and sexualized women in art history, especially in Paul Gaugin’s art which displays hypersexualized nudes and whose art while in Tahiti portrayed it as a space fantasy and freedom with sexual access. I think an important point is when it is stated that this representation through European and American colonialism is different than the ways Asian women are figured as representative of sexual excess rooted in Orientalism, again, emphasizing that Asian and Pacific Islander colonialism and feminism are two separate entities and should be studied as such.