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Identity via Imperialism Goddamn it, that's the third time this thing ate my entry...grr... in brevity then...I am back on coffee but hopefully not for good. coffee=adult ritilin YAY!!!! and it works too, hence my dad feeding it to me at age 12. Can't fuck with what works, just got to avoid that addiction again though...don't want to get back into the pot-a-day crowd again. I am sore from hauling around equipment to do my Powerpoint presentation today. The prof liked it I think though. Hopefully she will like my proposal too, I forgot about it until half an hour before class in which time I was able to write and edit it. It sucks but I hope she gets it. She wants me to spend Friday at the library on my own though because I am so lost. With all of my work...we'll see. But I did DO SOMETHING TODAY!!! cum see the fruit of my labor below. My paper now kicks ass! whoo hoo!!! will post my thesis outline in a few days. I am formulating a whole new feminist theory for it so you should be VERY impressed, lol. give me feedback if you can! Daphne Identity via Imperialism I must admit that I have never thought of the issues surrounding Pacific Islanders. Sadly, I have never thought of Pacific Islanders at all. In that they have different cultural issues of identity and a different relationship with the United States was something that I never considered or thought through in any other class so I welcome the opportunity to address it in this one. After reading the material and attending lectures, I believe that a metaphor would best explain the fluid nature of Pacific Islander American identity. Sailing the ocean that separates the islands from the mainland, Pacific Islander Americans canoe between the mainland and their island traditions. Unable to fully revive the counter memory of one culture and not embraced by another, each person moves along a continuum between the two, negotiating the contradictions within themselves. Pacific Islanders� history has been subsumed by the dominant American version so their project to create a counter memory to white history is vital to regaining their traditions, which Diaz�s lectures on canoe building and his piece Hypo-modernity support. Voyaging canoes have been lost to the Chamorro people for some time and their attempts to revive this tradition work to reassert their identity as a traditional people who were intelligent enough to travel great distances long before Europeans conquered their shores. This assertion of a traditional identity becomes blended with a modern identity in Chamorro life where traditional cultural forms mix with Americanization to form what Diaz coins as Hypo-modernity. Hypo-modernity, like the Chamorros themselves, is a combination of traditional as well as modern elements to form an islander identity that both recognizes its place in the modern world but also incorporates the counter memories that the islanders are currently bringing to the surface to combat the dominant culture. Thus, the frustrations that the Chamorros face in building outrigger canoes become a core part of their identity in that they feel a need to provide this counter memory to further generations even though they cannot embrace it as the only facet of their identity. These frustrations extend to other cultural forms that the Chamorros are working to rebuild as counter memories to imperialism, one example being language. As Camacho notes in his speech on Imprisonment, America forced Guam to learn English as the language superior to their own by punishing anyone who chose to speak the Chamorro tongue in public. He states that all Chamorros are in some form of prison or another because even though some speak Chamorro fluently, some know and understand their culture, many others are lost due to Americanization and want to learn but face many hardships. He claims that everyone has a key or a crowbar to getting out of their prison and this relies upon sharing the culture with others in order to undo the process of Americanization by providing a counter memory to the dominant one. This memory in question again allows Chamorros to touch base with their island past but that alone cannot be their sole identity because Americanization has altered their identity beyond that counter memory so they must set sail to the mainland in order to come to terms with the country that integrally shaped their modern sense of who they are. America, although it has trained the islanders away from their pure islander identity, does not embrace them as modern American citizens either. Despite our need to depose the peaceful governments of the islands, as shown in Act of War, we still fail in granting them full status within the United States. Reduced to mere territories, Guam and Samoa cannot vote in Congress or participate in any of the electoral processes. Furthermore, America has attempted enforcements of laws that the citizens of Guam and Samoa do not approve of, namely the land grant laws that require owners to officially register their holdings that they see as communal. (Guam, 113-114; American Samoa, 90) This lack of establishing a real democracy, as the nation claimed it was planning to do when annexing the territories, clearly shows that, although we have replaced most of their past with our own, Pacific Islanders are not fully American either because they are politically seen as less than white Americans on the mainland even though many embrace the same ideals of equality and democracy that we do. This rejection of islander identity by imperialist America continues beyond the government and becomes very personal through the process of Americanization. The United States placed the island citizens into schools in order to change their ways from those of �savages� who need ��a knowledge of sanitation and hygiene, which will enable them to live in a correct manner,� (Readings: Three Images of Guam, 123) to the ideal of clean, hard-working Americans. This appears to be odd though because even with Americanization the islanders still do not run their own country and have never been given a chance to attempt such a task. (Guam, 114) Thus, the rejection of the entire population becomes personal in that Americanization rips away most of the culture and history of the Chamorros to replace it, not with the ideal democracy, but with imperialist rule that fails to recognize the gifts and memories of the native population unless it suits America�s needs. One case where our pride in Pacific Island Americans occurs is in the field of education. As the Daily Bruin notes, many Asian Americans suffer under the stereotype of the model minority, a minority that with diligent application to education and hard work appears to succeed on all fronts. Although Pacific Islanders differ from Asian Americans in their experiences, Planet Tonga, a Pacific Islander Internet community, supports this claim by stating that �Pacific Islander parents seem to be supportive of their children�s academic pursuits, but among peers this may be seen as �selling out� or becoming �too white�.� It is interesting to note that it isn�t parents who fear the loss of an islander identity for an American one, but the peers of islander college students. These tend to be the same people who are currently creating the counter memories to Americanization, which, as this quote seems illustrate, they do not see as compatible with a traditional identity. The peers in question seem to approach their identity as a unified whole, you can only be an islander or an American, and a college education pushes you towards the �white� side of the world and sends you permanently adrift from the islander identity. The United States, however, welcomes Pacific Islander students because they support the stereotype of the model minority and allows the dominant culture to question those other minorities who cannot educate themselves or work hard to get ahead. Thus, when Pacific Islanders fit into the American stereotypes set up for them they are embraced but when they seek anything outside of those parameters the mainland cannot fully embrace them. So the rough shove away from a country that conquered but cannot fully accept them, forces islanders to find themselves between the mainland and the islands on a continuum of identity. Although they have worked hard on creating counter memories for themselves, Pacific Islanders cannot return back to their pure islander status. They must face the changes wrought upon their landscape and themselves from imperialism. They cannot be entirely American either though because they need to recognize their ancestry, their particular heritage without which they would be truly lost. Thus, Chamorros and other islanders must embrace both the ancestral traditions as well as the modern nature of their nations. Chamorros need to work on their canoes, their language, their communal lifestyle but they also need to integrate these cultural forms into their modern states and solve their unique problems with a combination of modern and traditional modes. For example, American Samoa needs to move past the limited amount of income they receive via the Star Kist cannery and instead work on traditional fishing and hunting industries in order to break away from economic dependency on the United States. Guam needs to find a way to document communal lands and Hawaii needs to articulate its anger and teach the counter memory of imperialist theft of their government in order to fully reconcile the native islander with the modern citizen. Pacific Americans are not either islanders or Americans but a combination of both at once and as such they must negotiate their identity as a balance between the two while recognizing the costs of choosing one culture over the other. In summary, Pacific Islander identity is a complex phenomenon. They have created counter memories but they cannot cling to them. America only takes pride in islanders when they fit into our expectations but islanders need to integrate imperialism into their identities along with their traditional customs in order to truly find themselves between the island and the mainland, not at only one spot or the other. Canoes allow them to do this, to build up a counter memory and then find the right place to utilize it in relation to the dominant imperial culture. All of this discussion begs the question though of whether or not it is right for America to conquer and implement this confusion elsewhere, even when change is needed in places such as Iraq. |