Description/Abstract/Artist Statement
Fa’amatagi: From Whence the Wind Blows is a love letter to the people and culture of my parents. This is a documentary poetics project that draws upon research of the Mau Movement, archives from the New Zealand government, and personal ethnographies with my own parents who are both of Samoan descent. I curated several pieces of art from book collector Alexander Turnbull and photographer Alfred J. Tattersall. This project delves into the effects of colonialism on a previously isolated people. It explores the act of civil disobedience and what comes of it versus the long-lasting damage of compliance towards a more dominant society. The importance of women in society becomes a concern for the project as I reclaim and retell an absent center, an obscured archive of women’s lives in Samoan history. In the 1930’s, the tide of the Movement turned towards victory, in part, due to mothers, daughters, sisters and wives of the Mau and their efforts to aid the ones who defied and evaded capture of the New Zealand government. My project enters into dialogue with recent work on Caribbean and Pacific Island cultures. The use and preservation of native language is also examined and gives rise to my project’s engagement with linguistics and its relationship to the erasure of indigenous populations, one “yes” at a time.
Faculty Advisor/Mentor
Margaret Konkol
College Affiliation
College of Arts & Letters
Presentation Type
Oral Presentation
Disciplines
Arts and Humanities | Creative Writing | History | Nonfiction | Pacific Islands Languages and Societies | Poetry | Polynesian Studies | Race, Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Studies
Session Title
College of Arts & Letters UGR #1
Location
Zoom
Start Date
3-19-2022 3:30 PM
End Date
3-19-2022 4:30 PM
Upload File
wf_yes
Included in
History Commons, Nonfiction Commons, Poetry Commons, Polynesian Studies Commons, Race, Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Studies Commons
Fa'amatagi: From Whence the Wind Blows
Zoom
Fa’amatagi: From Whence the Wind Blows is a love letter to the people and culture of my parents. This is a documentary poetics project that draws upon research of the Mau Movement, archives from the New Zealand government, and personal ethnographies with my own parents who are both of Samoan descent. I curated several pieces of art from book collector Alexander Turnbull and photographer Alfred J. Tattersall. This project delves into the effects of colonialism on a previously isolated people. It explores the act of civil disobedience and what comes of it versus the long-lasting damage of compliance towards a more dominant society. The importance of women in society becomes a concern for the project as I reclaim and retell an absent center, an obscured archive of women’s lives in Samoan history. In the 1930’s, the tide of the Movement turned towards victory, in part, due to mothers, daughters, sisters and wives of the Mau and their efforts to aid the ones who defied and evaded capture of the New Zealand government. My project enters into dialogue with recent work on Caribbean and Pacific Island cultures. The use and preservation of native language is also examined and gives rise to my project’s engagement with linguistics and its relationship to the erasure of indigenous populations, one “yes” at a time.