Kehau: Kaselehlie and Malo‘elelei. Welcome to season two of the Pacific Islands Studies podcast, Relations of Salt and Stars. My name is Kehaulani Folau, and one of the graduate fellows for the PI Studies Program. I’ll be your host for this season, with guest appearances from Dr. Maile Arvin and my fellow graduate fellow, Kinny Torre. Also, the sounds and background music you’ll hear throughout this season is provided by freemusicarchive.org and my almost ten-year old puppy, Havok.
First, I want to thank Dr. Arvin for giving me this opportunity to use this platform for my research. I’m so thankful for her leadership of the PI Studies Program here at the University of Utah, and even more so for her generosity and kind spirit that has been and continues to be regenerative in a place like this university. Also, a huge thank you to my dissertation chair and advisor, Dr. Kēhaulani Vaughn for her continued guidance on this journey! If you’re listening, thank you for birthing so many pathways for me to take. Thank you for sharing your light and encouraging me to do the same.
To begin, I want to play Drs. Angela Robinson and Maile Arvin’s introduction of Relations of Salt and Stars first season. I think it’s beautiful and I’m beginning with it, because I want to ground myself in it. So here it is:
Angela: Our ancestors traveled through salt and stars, and so do contemporary Pacific Islander communities today. In this podcast, we consider how to build good relations - with the communities we come from in Oceania, the communities we live with here in the Salt Lake City area, and especially the Indigenous communities whose lands we live on.
Maile: As Pacific Islander people who live in Utah, we are nourished by the lands of the Ute, Goshute, Shoshone, and Paiute peoples. We are far from the ocean, but close to the salt water of the Great Salt Lake. We are far from the night sky over our home islands, but can look up and see the same stars.
Angela: Join us as we explore and build Relations of Salt and Stars.
Kehau: My intentions for this season is to align with that purpose of exploring and considering how to build, and sustain good relations. And I also hear a call to remember our ancestors, including Salt and Stars, as our guides to better futures.
In this season of Relations of Salt and Stars, I highlight different parts of my dissertation journey. In this episode, I introduce myself, this season’s theme, which is also my dissertation project- A Madau-Moana Cosmopolitan Feminist R.I.P. to Deacademy, and wrap up with my shameless call for participants to join this study.
A little bit about myself- I’m the third daughter of ‘Oulono and Melsihna Ramon Folau. My father was born in Liahona, Tongatapu, Tonga and grew up in Fasi. My mother was born in Pingelap, Pohnpei, and moved between Pohnpei and Saipan as a child before moving to Virginia when she was fifteen to live with her brother. My parents met at BYU Hawaii and before having me, moved to Salt Lake City where I was born and raised. Currently, I’m in my fifth, and aiming to be my final, year of my Ph.D. program. I’m a candidate in the Department of Education, Culture and Society, with Dr. Kēhaulani Vaughn as my dissertation chair.
My overall project looks at the impact and influence of Oceanian feminist praxis, particularly within higher education. I agree with many scholars and activists who say the U.S. schooling project, which includes PreK to PhD, continues to be a tool to condition our minds and bodies to normalize colonialism, white supremacy, heteropatriarchy and the violence those systems produce. My project looks to the teachers and students of Oceanian feminisms, who work and/or study in the U.S., to understand how Oceanian feminisms reveal colonial regimes and create decolonial spaces within our school, to imagine, build, and sustain knew worlds (Meyer, 2013; Tecun, 2022).
My project also centers my own positionality as a Pohnpeian-Tongan cosmopolitan feminist in the academy. My use of Madau-Moana comes from how my parents refer to our Ocean - Madau is Pohnpeian for ocean, beyond the reef, and thought; and Moana is the Tongan word, and a word used throughout Polynesia, for ocean and deep blue. I use Madau-Moana to center my relations to the waters, lands, and peoples of these places, and to center the Indigenous languages and ethics of those places. I recognize there are problems with the term Madau-Moana and echo Dr. Lana Lopesi when she writes, “There would be problems with any term used to describe such a vast group of people. Specifically, Moana has been critiqued for its linguistic exclusion. However, despite these problems, it seems even worse to continue use of the term Pacific today and to perpetuate the violence of the colonial imaginary” (Lopesi, 2021, pp. 15-16). So, in the spirit of Epeli Hau‘ofa, Albert Wendt, Lana Lopesi, and the many scholars and artists who reorient us towards a new Oceania, I use Madau-Moana to reach for new and ancient ways of relating. Whether the term is Madau, Moana, Tassi, Wasawasa, Marawa or the many other names, let us remember they “carry a value for kinship, understanding, care, and stewardship” (Teaiwa, 2020).
And so here comes my shameless ask: If you have learned from Native daughters of the Ocean, whether in a formal classroom or not - the formal could be called a course/s of Oceanian feminisms, Oceanic feminisms, Moana feminisms, Pacific Indigenous feminisms, Indigenous Pacific feminisms or any of the iterations; and the informal could be around the kitchen table - if you have learned from Native daughters of the Ocean, and are now in the U.S. working or studying, will you talanoa (talkstory, dialogue) with me?
Our talanoa will be about how Indigenous feminisms of Oceania have impacted you and your work/studies. I anticipate the talanoa being around 60 - 90 minutes. Depending on proximity, our talanoa will be recorded in-person or over Zoom. And after, the transcription will be sent to you for your review and approval. If you’re a student and agree to be a part of this study, first - thank you! And, as a small token of my appreciation, you will be compensated with a $50 gift card. If you’re a teacher and agree to be a part of this study, I’ll be sending a small gift as a token of my appreciation. I’m still working to get funding, but for now due to budget restraints, I’m hoping to get 4-6 teachers and 4-6 students.
If you’re interested in participating and would like more information, please see the show notes and/or contact me at
[email protected].
Thank you for listening to this episode of our podcast, Relations of Salt and Stars. I end with a quote taken from our the first episode of our first season when Dr. Arvin shared, “May our stories we share with you here spark seeds of hope, patience, and regeneration. May we continue to learn how to be together in this world in ways that bring forth more life.”
This season’s theme song is “An Ocean in Outer Space” by HoliznaCC0.
Special thanks to the Mellon Foundation, the University of Utah’s School of Social and Cultural Transformation, the University of Utah’s College of Humanities, and the National Humanities Center, which hosted an intensive podcasting institute that Kinny and I attended and benefited from this past winter.
Kalahngan. Malo aupito and many thanks for listening. I hope you join us next time.
