No.229 Seminar ： Rising from the Ground: Exploration of Social and Political Change through the Restoration of Land-Human Relationships in French Polynesia
- Assistant Professor Mai Misaki (Hakubi 13th batch, Graduate School of Human and Environmental Studies)
- 2023/05/16 4:45pm
- Zoom and onsite at the Hakubi Center for Advanced Research (Research Administration Building B1F)
- English
- Hybrid manner
Summary
Colonialism has transformed traditional relationships between land and humans in many societies of the Global South, notably through the establishment of modern nation-states and their integration into the global economy. As humanity attempts to move forward to decolonisation and reevaluates indigenous knowledge systems to combat the ongoing environmental crisis, I explore the possibility of the creative regeneration of land-human relationships to undermine the current colonial socio-political structure. This study ethnographically investigates how the indigenous Maohi people of French Polynesia, an overseas collectivity of France, amend and reconstruct the traditional indigenous relationships to the land through a series of cultural revitalisation movements (foodways, traditional medicine, language revitalisation, etc.). In doing so, I explore how the renewed land-human relationship gets translated to broader sociopolitical ideologies such as indigenous sovereignty and decolonisation.