A Brief Overview of History
Though the common image of Hawaii or other Pacific islands is of a tropical paradise, pristine nature untouched by our modern world, nothing could be further from the truth. Humans have inhabited the South Pacific for untold millenium. From battles next to an erupting volcano to human sacrifices to an entire people sailing across the Pacific Ocean to the most isolated island chain in the world with only the stars to guide them, the Pacific islands hold thousands of years of history before contact with the European powers during the 1700s. We had complex political struggles more akin to Game of Thrones than to Moana or other popular depictions of Pacific Islander culture.
Then everything changed when the European explorers made contact with the South Pacific Islanders. The Major Expeditions were lead by the famous Captain Cook, who mapped most of the South Pacific from New Zealand to Hawaii. Captain Cook eventually lost his life after a dispute with the Kanaka Oiwi, the Native Hawaiians, where he tried to kidnap a chief. What followed was a mass colonization of the South Pacific by the European Powers.
Image of the Pacific Islander Slave Trade. Credit: Samuel Calvert and Oswald Rose Campbell – National Library of Australia
Within the first couple of decades of colonization, more than a million Pacific Islanders died from disease and from colonization. Over the next couple of centuries, the Pacific Islanders were subject to an immense exploitation and destruction by the European Powers, ranging from slavery to nuclear bomb testing on our islands. In Hawaii, Kanaka Oiwi culture and language were banned for almost a hundred years. The list of atrocities goes on and on but is never truly discussed due to the perception of paradise in the tropics. You can find more information through links like this at Cultural Survival.
Current Day
Now, however, things are looking to change. A Cultural Revival is currently sweeping through the Pacific Islands. Pacific Islanders have rediscovered the art of navigating across the ocean using the stars with the Hokule’a and the traditional languages are being taught at immersion schools across the Pacific.
Still Polynesians and Pacific Islanders face many different challenges in our modern day. The most obvious concern is Climate Change and the rising sea levels that will consume the Pacific Islands. This problem is multiplied by the poverty, pollution and marginalization that Pacific Islander communities face, restricting our opportunities and ability to adapt to our modern world. These, of course, are just a couple of the problems that Pacific Islander need to overcome.
To push Polynesian and Pacific Islander to the next stage, we need to create a movement around imagining the Future. Though there are many different schools of thought on how to advance Polynesian and Pacific Islander culture, I believe that Polynesian Futurism is one of the best ways to harness our collective history and cultural backgrounds to help our people.
Polynesian Futurism 