The Restorying Pasifika Histories project centers and uplifts the vibrant histories of Pasifika, our great ocean with many Indigenous names. As Pasifika Peoples living in many diasporas across the U.S. continent, our origins and histories are ignored in school or are taught to us from the limited perspective of western people, descendants of European lands.
This series is rooted in the space that holds many of our Pasifika ancestor’s pieces, the Pacific Island Ethnic Art Museum in Long Beach, California. It is history from Pasifika perspectives shaped by our own stories, our own historians and philosophers, and in kinship with the lands of Tongvaar, Kumeyaay, and Luiseño.
The first two RPH sessions were generously supported in part by the Center for Cultural Power, Constellations Folk Arts and Cultural Stewardship Grant in partnership with the California Arts Council.
We have been Disempowered – When we do examine our history, we see it as a tale of winners and losers and we are always losing…We fail to be actors in our own history and, as a consequence, we hand down the lesson that we cannot be actors in our future. History becomes painful not because there was pain and loss, but because our agency as a people has been denied…When inaccurate history goes unchallenged and a lack of critical thinking occurs, others are allowed to tell us which parts of history are important and which are not.
– Robert Underwood (CHamoru)