More than 2,000 people are gathering in Hawaii this week and next week for the 13th Festival of Pacific Island Arts and Culture. It is the largest gathering of indigenous Pacific peoples in the world. And it comes at a critical time for the island region known as Oceania as sea levels, storms and other climate effects threaten traditional ways of life and connections to land and sea.
Normally, the festival takes place every four years and rotates between the three regions of the Pacific Ocean: Polynesia, Micronesia and Melanesia. But due to the pandemic, the event did not take place for eight years. It was last held on Guam, and this is the first time since it was established in 1972 that it has taken place in Hawaii. From now until June 16, indigenous peoples from more than two dozen Pacific nations and territories will share their weavings, tattoo creations, films, visual arts, wood carvings, dances, songs, literature, music, food and other expressions of indigenous culture.
Tarcisius Kabutaulaka, a professor at the University of Hawaii in the Solomon Islands and former director of the university’s Center for Pacific Island Studies, said that while the focus of the festival is on performing arts, Pacific cultures run deep intertwined with the environment.
“We produce and carry out our culture towards the environment,” Kabutaulaka said. “The baskets we weave, the dances we dance, are often about the environment. We use materials around us to create material culture.”
That interdependence makes climate change an existential threat. In Kiribati, Kabutaulaka said, taro is a key source of food and cultural celebrations, but sea level rise and resulting saltwater intrusion into the islands’ freshwater lens is making it harder to grow the starch. Forced displacement is another ongoing problem. Just two weeks ago, Papua New Guinea was the site of a deadly landslide that buried a village. Climate change will make such extreme weather events more common, forcing villages to relocate and severing indigenous Pacific peoples’ connection to their ancestral lands.
The festival also takes place while island nations are still dealing with the ongoing effects of colonialism. New Caledonia’s delegation pulled out at the last minute after France’s efforts to push through a referendum that would dilute indigenous voting power causing protests and violence.
On Friday, the festival will feature a roundtable discussion on climate change with political leaders from Palau and the Federated States of Micronesia. On Sunday are local activists talk about militarization and environmental justice, and the connections between Hawaiʻi and Palestine.
Kabutaulaka also helps organize an academic event called Protect Oceania which will include discussions of climate change, deep sea mining, mental health and other issues. “It wrestles with the idea of protection, what we’re trying to protect and how we protect it,” he said.
But the heart of the festival is still the arts. Vilsoni Hereniko was a student in Fiji in 1972 when the first Festival of Pacific Island Arts and Culture was held. He is now a weaver, playwright, scholar and a professor of film at the University of Hawaiʻi.
“There will always be academic conferences,” says Hereniko, who is a native of Rotuma, a Polynesian island in Fiji. “But you won’t always have a hundred people from Fiji come to Hawaii to dance the old dances and sing and sing in the ways of ancestors.”
He plans to show two of his films on the coconut tree in Hawaiʻi, where the tree, surrounded by invasive beetles, is often reduced to an ornament for tourists, instead of a critical source of food and nutrition. “In a way, the coconut tree without its coconut symbolizes colonization and what it did to the indigenous people,” said Hereniko.
The festival officially kicked off with an opening ceremony on Thursday evening. But the day before, it began with a private event on the windward side of Oʻahu, where thousands gathered to welcome crew members of sailing canoes. Among them was the canoe Marumaru Atua, which arrived in Honolulu last weekend after sailing for 23 days from Rarotonga in the Cook Islands. The Crew of 16 embarked for Hawaiʻi using traditional knowledge of the stars and sea.
Teina Ranga is a Māori Cook Islander who is part of the Cook Islands Travel Association but flew separately to Honolulu at the last minute to join the delegation. He runs a non-governmental organization that helps young islanders reconnect with their culture through fishing and farming, and hopes the festival will continue to focus more on environmental issues moving forward.
“When do we ever have an opportunity to bring Pasifika together?” he said. “We have to push the idea of appreciating who we are. The world cannot just continue (on this path). I don’t want the Cook Islands to look like this conquering city.”
