One of the things that stood out to me in this essay is the way Pacific Islanders were represented by early European travelers. When early European settlers came to Africa, they had two distinct narratives of Africans, the Jezebel and the Mammy; The Jezebel being hyper sexual and readily available and the Mammy, the de-sexualized worker. Pacific Islanders on the other hand, according to this article, seem to fit only one of these in a hyperactive way. All Pacific Islanders are the Jezebel and nothing else. “Pacific Islander women became conflated with mythologized women of antiquity as they had an untamable and alluring sexuality derived from their close proximity to the ocean… women were represented as ‘young, feminine, desirable, and vulnerable.'” This reputation of Pacific Islanders being only sexuality seductive and promiscuous erases their personhood and is extremely dangerous for women who do not wish to return sexual advances from those with a cis, white, European, colonizing mindset

Because of this historical narrative, the Pacific Islands and it’s indigenous people has become the subject of hyper sexual fantasies that are readily available for consumption and exploitation. Though this article stresses how Pacific Islanders and Asian Pacific Islanders are not the same, in which I would be a fool to disagree with, I cannot help but notice the similarities between the lenses through which people look at API and Pacific Islanders as being just the Jezebel. Vulnerable. Sexually available. Desirable. This has contributed to a rape culture that plagues indigenous peoples and Asian Pacific Islanders alike.

However, Pacific Islanders “are often linked with primitivist discourses and a perceived lack of civilization” which leaves them in an imaginary, static state which is dissimilar to the representation of API. This leaves the Pacific Islands and Pacific Islanders prone to “dispossession, exploitation, and settlement.” This critical difference marginalizes Pacific Islanders when grouped in with API and it must be recognized that the Pacific Islands is home to 2.3 million people with over 1,500 languages and is deserving of indigenous self-determination.

One of the problems with the term “API” serving as an umbrella for not only Asian but Pacific Islander women and feminisms is that the Pacific Islander women in this article reject the umbrella because in the pursuit of incorporating Islander women, the term actually only serves to erase them and their history, while indemnifying their colonizers. Appropriating aloha is also a problem; it takes advantage of the centuries of generosity of the Hawaiian people to immigrants while erasing a history of coloniality, violence, murder, oppression, and usurpation.

One of the things that stuck out most to me in this reading was the pair of powerfully worded quotations from Haunani-Kay Trask, but specifically one word that I will highlight later: “Hawai‘i is a society in which the indigenous culture and people have been murdered, suppressed or marginalized for the benefit of settlers who now dominate our islands” and that “[settler colonialism] has as one of its goals, the obliteration rather than the incorporation of indigenous peoples” (115). The latter quote strikes me as extremely powerful, the word “obliteration” so absolute it only ever seems to be utilized by writers as a last resort. We use the word “fuck” more than we use the word “obliteration.” “Obliteration” is a startling word, more startling and terrible than any expletive.

The other page that I dog-eared while reading this was the section where the authors discuss what hula actually is, deconstructing the reductionistic, exoticized, sexualized way it’s considered through an American lens. I thought it was beautiful how the authors articulated hula as exemplary of Hawaiian culture on many levels, encompassing all of their art, science, literature, and history (123).

I visited two of the Hawaiian Islands about 10 years ago, Kaua‘i and Oahu, when I was 18 (these photos are mine, that’s why I didn’t cite them). The difference between those two islands at the time was profound. Honolulu is way overdeveloped; being there is basically like not being in Hawai‘i. It’s a city, like a slightly cleaner New York. Public signage is written in English and Japanese. I remember our hotel room being like 50 stories up. After four days on pristine Kaua‘i, called the “Garden Isle,” I found all of this incredibly depressing, although we did stumble upon a very beautiful memorial to Queen Liliuokalani in Honolulu, and that’s when I learned about what happened to her during the overthrow of her kingdom.

On Kaua‘i, we met and befriended an indigenous musician named Mike Young. He gave me a copy of his CD. One of the songs is called “Kaua‘i, My Home” and it’s basically a highly descriptive lullaby (I would link it but the one YouTube account that posted it isn’t his, but feel free to look him up). Listening to it a few years later, I realized that the song has a lot more dire implications than I’d originally thought, that it’s likely an attempt at closure with a place that is still being ravaged and will likely eventually succumb to capitalist colonization, just like Oahu.

In “Decolonizing API: Centering Indigenous Pacific Islander Feminism,” Teves and Arvin share their critique of Asian American studies and their recommendations for decolonizing API. Like Asian Americans, we must remember that merely claiming allyship without recognizing Indigenous sovereignty is a “move to innocence.” In their argument, Teves and Arvin provide recommendations for building allyship that acknowledges differences between and among groups.

1. Acknowledge you are on Indigenous land

Teves and Arvin first recommend that there must be an acknowledgement that this is Indigenous lands and of Indigenous sovereignty. They encourage alliances between and among Pacific Islanders and Asian Americans that does not erase political and cultural differences but acknowledges the ongoing colonialism and racism imposed. They also explain different ways in which Asian Americans can analyze their political positions and aspirations for inclusion to help denaturalize settler colonialism (118).

2. Stop using terms like Asian Pacific Women

Teves and Arvin explain when Asian American studies attach Asian to Pacific Islander, it implies a connection that does not exist (119). They argue that lumping these groups together further marginalizes Pacific Islander. The use of the term API assimilates Indigenous sovereignty. Moreover, it equates Pacific Islanders to Asians Americans as immigrants who ignore that this is Indigenous land.

3. Recognize Hulu as revered knowledge, not exotic exercise

Teves and Arvin recommend that Asian Americans acknowledge how the colonial gaze of the hula exoticizes and belittles Hawaiian and Pacific cultures (122). Although the hula does not mean the same to everyone who practices it, they explain that when it is practiced it should be honored because it is a long-standing tradition of Hawaiian culture and ways of knowing.

4. Do not just invite us to dance

Teves and Arvin state that using the term API as a way of inclusion is not enough and that work must continue to create space for Pacific Islander culture, histories and concerns. This recommendation is meant to encourage responsible allyship that supports the growth of Pacific Islander studies (126).

5. Reconsider your use of Hapa

Teves and Arvin explain that Hapa is a Hawaiian word for “part” and that when Asian Americans misappropriate it they participate in the erasure of Native Hawaiians and the ongoing colonial impositions and exploitations (126). They shared the different ways the term hapa has been used to refer to different notions and racial blood percents of Hawaiianness. Hapa has been used against Native Hawaiians with blood quantum laws that limited and forced assimilation on to those deemed less Hawaiian. Thus, the use of hapa became a tool of settler colonialism (128). Moreover, Teves and Arvin argue that before using the term hapa, its history and cultural significance be taken into account.

6. Expand Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Curricula

Teves and Arvin explain the ways in which Asian American studies erases Native Hawaiians presence and does not place their teachings in wider contexts of Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander history and politics. They suggest that curricula should engage with contemporary scholarship and activism that recognizes the ongoing issues (129). They also explain the importance of making “connections across Pacific contexts” without equating their experiences. Meaning, that curriculum must acknowledge the different ways colonialism has affected communities.

Prior to reading this article I actually had a very weak grasp on Indigenous Pacific Islander Feminism.  Even the differentiation between the identities of Asian and Pacific Islander I was previously unclear on. Therefore I would like to discuss what I consider the most important point of this article. One of the primary issues with using a term like Asian Pacific Islander is that it has been so over used that it has started to homogenize the identities of both groups. The social location of identifying as Asian is not the same as one who  identifies as Pacific Islander.  The Asian Pacific Islander grouping has also been used as a tool of erasure by making it easy for non-informed scholars and others to glaze over the indigenous roots of Pacific Island people. In the idea of trying to groups Asians and Pacific islanders one with a decolonial standpoint will see that there is an over representation of Asian identities and a severely lack of representation for Pacific Island people. In reference to Haunani-Kay Trask, a vital scholar of Hawaii and its colonization,   Dr. Trask describes how the metaphorical and literal bloodshed of indigenous people in Hawaii has reinforced the goals of settler colonialism. In order to conquer settler colonialism requires the extraction of indigenous people, their culture, and their land. Further into the colonial mindset Asian Americans have been implicitly and explicitly assimilated to also take part in the erasure of indigenous groups. The tens of thousands of island in the Pacific ocean have been subject to the white gazes of colonial tourism.  Where people only come to said islands to enjoy the “culture” hula girls, and scenic beaches. This is where Pacific islander women are dehumanized, hyper-sexualized, and only free to express to express their bodies in means of serving a colonial white gaze. In order to embrace a decolonial mindset with in the Pacific Islands one must separate the grouping of Asian Pacific Islander so that the colonial matters of indigenous struggles can be examined in their own context.

Decolonizing API

With the advent of European colonialism brought to the Pacific Islanders, we see a perversion of traditional ideals to an over-sexualization of a “savage” peoples. The islands freedom for its individuals, especially women, was incorrectly seen as a weakness and a lack of control. As a result,  the Pacific Islanders have been wrongly viewed as over sexual or at least made to seem that way to justify the rape of their culture by the colonizers. Furthermore, not only has white heteronormative capitalist colonialism perverted Pacific Islander ideas but it has caused a conglomeration of cultures where Asians and Pacific Islander have been conglomerated together. This causes a slow but steady genocide of the culture and peoples of the Pacific Islands.  The way Pacific Islanders try to overcome the ignorance and “planned disappearance” of their peoples is acknowledging the illegalities of settler colonialists via criticism of appropriation of their culture. The appropriation of a culture and the silent erasing of the narratives of native people is a disgusting way of claiming someone’s lifestyle as your own. Another thing that I found horrible was the way that the “spirit of aloha”, a symbol of kindness was used to exploit the Hawaiian culture for their own benefit. Through the juxtaposition of good traits into weaknesses, colonialism has been able to flourish. Between misunderstanding freedom as a lack of control and then self-imposing their own control, and using kindness as a weakness, colonizers have taken good and wreaked havoc on indigenous narratives. Yet, what would happen if we took kindness at face value and didn’t take advantage of it? How would this affect the thoughts of coloniality? Would it cause a slow deconstruction of the colonial settler ideas and push us to a more indigenous like mindset of freedom? Or would it make way for repercussions for those indigenous lives loss?

The points of this essay that stuck out to me were mostly in regard to the blatant erasure and commodification of Pacific Islander identities. All too often it is the case that entire bodies of people are lumped together into categories into which they do not fit, or the activisms that they are “meant” to be a part of do not actually serve them in the ways they need them to. Feminisms fall short to fully represent the immense amount of people that fall into different cultural, gender, orientation (and so on) based categories and it leaves far too many groups without a clear representative voice to speak for their wants and needs. The erasure of Pacific Islanders as “Asian” puts them in the position of being a marginalized group within an identity that they never made the choice to claim or take refuge in, which is entirely unfair. Pacific Islanders have their own stories to tell and their own histories unique to their culture and their experiences with the world at large, but as the authors stated, it is often the case that all of the work they produce tends to be in response to works that have been produced by other bodies not of their culture. For a lot of different races and ethnic groups it is often the unfortunate case that individuals must serve as ambassadors for their people and educate the masses on what information is correct, and what has been tainted by the colonial and settler gaze. One other point that I thought was interesting about this piece was the discussion about how hula is not only a dance, but it is a mode of expressing knowledge. This is something I did not know before this point, and I’m glad I can change that perspective.

Mostly, I feel as if this piece was politely calling out my own ignorance to the term “Asian-Pacific Islanders,”  and the ways that we, as white settler colonialists (which most of us in this class  are), compartmentalize and categorize different groups of people to our own convenience. I did think it was interesting who the actual chapter addressed, because it often goes below mainstream radar when marginalized people(Asian Americans) use the structures of settler colonialism to marginalize others(Indigenous Pacific Islanders). I also thought this reading did a great job setting up the general colonial context of Pacific Islanders, and why it is important that they are addressed as they wish to be addressed, and not how they have been categorized by mainstream, white society. I found it particularly interesting around pages 110-111, the ways that Asian Americans further marginalize and oppress Pacific Islanders by claiming places like Hawai’i as their own and the internalized settler colonialism and violence that takes place through these claims.  For another class(Native American Feminisms), we did a couple readings about Hawai’i and Hawaiian sexualities in relation to the United States as w hole, but we never addressed marginalization/appropriation by Asian Americans in Hawai’i.  I really appreciate that this chapter opened up space to talk about some more diverse/specific feminisms; much of my education has been centered around the binary of white feminisms v. Black feminisms and the like. Here I was introduced to a couple feminisms/feminist perspectives that I have either only heard about vaguely, or have never heard about at all; Asian American Feminisms, Moana Feminisms.  While this reading made me feel quite ignorant as to the situations of Indigenous Pacific Islanders in the system of settler colonialism, I learned much about the ways coalition between these different types of feminisms can address how settler colonialism has manifested power structures within these colonized communities.

This Mexican-American’s Tweet Went Viral For Repping Their Culture And Non-Binary Gender Expression

From 2017 but still highly relevant and glamorous as heck