Pasifika Black: Oceania, anti-colonialism, and the African world

Abstract

Weatherill reviews Pasifika Black: Oceania, anti-colonialism, and the African world by Quito Swan.

Quito Swan (2022). Pasifika Black: Oceania, anti-colonialism, and the African world. 352pp. New York University Press. ISBN: 9781479885084. US$49.00.

Pasifika Black, the third book by Quito Swan, is an excellent and empirically dazzling book that should be of great interest and importance to many different disciplines, including island studies. Pasifika Black explores the relationships between Black internationalism, Oceania, and decolonisation. It focuses on the 20th century anticolonial movements of the 'Black Pacific', conceptualised as including Melanesia and Australia. This is an historical analysis based on archival work which moves between time periods and islands, stretching temporally from the first violent moments of European imperialism to the independence struggles of the 1960s-1980s, a fact which is also captured in the book.

The Introduction does most of the theoretical work of the book, drawing out both the colonial racialization of the region and how this process involved a gendered 'othering'. Acknowledging that 'Melanesians' have been racialized as Black, Swan is asking: 'What does Black internationalism look like if viewed from the Pacific rather than the Atlantic?" This is not to compare or measure experiences, but to ask how Blackness was conceived in the Pacific and what it enabled in terms of imperialism and also in terms of Black international solidarities. The period of time covered by the book means that there is theoretical engagement with the anti-colonial movements of Black Power, Négritude and Pan-Africanism. Swan also makes a methodological commitment to the inclusion of women, with a broad and deliberate focus on women and women's groups. As well as being an accurate representation of activism in the region, this focus on women helps to counter the feminized and sexualized discourses of islanders. The history of sexual exploitation of Oceanic women is included, but not left unanswered by the women of the region. That being said, there is a notable absence of some literature on Blackness written by Pacific scholars, such as Teresia Teaiwa, that would have further enriched this chapter.

The ten main chapters are heavily empirical. Each chapter focuses on a different context, geographically covering West Papua, Australia, Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu and New Caledonia but effectively demonstrating both the regional and global connections these independence movements had. Pasifika Black engages with a variety of archives, drawing on an impressive and fascinating amount of material. While not theoretically heavy, the empirical chapters are full of connections that are made sufficiently explicit for an exciting and inspiring read. This space also allows the records to speak, with the inclusion of many powerful quotes. For example, excerpts from Leo Hannett's speech 'Niugini Black power':

By exchanging the White political actors with Black ones and letting them play the same game within unchanged political machinery [...] would only bring about quantitative change but no qualitative change whatsoever. A guillotine is always a guillotine no matter what color is the person who controls it (p. 101).

and Oodgeroo Noonuccal's essay 'White Racism and White Violence':

Racism is a complex state of mind. Racists believe that schools must be segregated, not to keep Blacks separate but to preserve the superior child [...] Housing integration is not opposed because White people dont want to live next door to boongs but because Black people lower property value (p. 83).

Oceanic activists are shown to have travelled widely to raise awareness of their own struggles, and learn from the Black movements in the US, UK, and newly independent states in Africa. These organized visits, correspondences and conferences enabled the formation of reciprocal solidarities.

Pasifika Black is of huge importance for island studies scholars who are interested in decolonizing the discipline. Firstly, it serves as a reminder that whilst decolonizing island studies is a relatively new development, there is a huge body of decolonial island literature that exists to be drawn on, beyond the work that is currently cited in the discipline. Secondly, this book shows that solidarity in the Pacific is not just oceanic, regional or global; it is also Black and anti-colonial. In other words, solidarity forms not only through islandness. Finally, this book is important in showing that environmental justice has long been sought in Oceania as part of a decolonial framework. It is not a separate issue, or a new issue, but the same issue of fighting for full control and sovereignty of land which has been stolen twice over, through colonial claiming and capitalist exploitation. Together these insights work to push back against narratives of island isolation or insularity, and the objectification of islanders as passive and weak. The real depth and breadth of research and evidence available in this book will be invaluable in seeking to address how these myths continue to circulate and challenging them where they appear.

Pasifika Black provides rich historical evidence for internationalizing and thereby demystifying Oceania through a decolonial framework. The solidarities and specificities of island anti-colonialism outlined in this book historicize the ongoing justification of neo-colonialism as reliant on the specific racialization of Oceanic people. The chapter where this comes through clearest is perhaps Chapter 8, 1878: Black liberation in Kanaky which focuses on French colonialism in so-called New Caledonia and Kanak resistance. As in many places in the book, the detailing of the violence is a tough read. It is an explicitly racist violence, where the Black features of Melanesians and the racist interpretation of them as savage and devil worshipping leads to a justification in the minds of the French for a genocide, working to disappear an entire people in order to access the nickel and copper of their islands. The 1917 offer of fifty francs for a dead Kanak and twenty-five for a live prisoner (p. 197) is evidence that islanders whose lands were stolen were worth more to the colonisers dead than alive. Swan dedicates his book to the freedom struggles of Oceania; the book is a call for solidarity as well as a history of one.

Whilst fascinating, sometimes the pace of the information becomes a bit difficult to absorb. Lists of names, affiliations, conferences and acronyms, in paragraphs that move from one person to another without any signposting, can seem quite disjointed. Additionally, following the Introduction, Swan's voice is largely absent, which feels like a missed opportunity at times. One of the only insertions of Swan into the text is a photograph on the final page, which is also the most contemporary piece of text: a photograph of activists taken in Vanuatu by Swan in 2014. With no conclusion to the book, a reflection on this photograph as a final section could have been interesting, drawing the contemporary moment into all the histories told in the book.

Overall, Pasifika Black has a lot to bring to island studies, such as turning scholars' attention to Black geographies. Concurrently, it will hopefully bring renewed global attention to ongoing colonialism in Oceania. This history is not a happy one; reading in 2022, many of the independence movements that are discussed have not yet been successful, hence Swan's dedication. The violence described is viciously racist, and the echoes in present-day discourses are disturbing. However, this makes it an even more important book, because to understand Oceania means understanding anti-colonialism in the region. It means understanding it as regional and Oceanic, yes, but also as Black internationalist.

Charlotte Kate Weatherill

University of Manchester

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