Waves of destruction: Nuclear imperialism and anti-nuclear protest in the indigenous literatures of the Pacific

ABSTRACT

This article explores the ways in which precolonial understandings of the Pacific as a cross-cultural space involving extensive interpelagic networks of trade and cultural exchange, notably elaborated in Tongan scholar Epeli Hauʻofa’s 1990s series of essays celebrating Oceania as a “sea of islands”, are evident in pan-Pacific indigenous protests against nuclear testing in the region. It explores indigenous literary and artistic condemnations of both French and US nuclear testing (which collectively spanned a 50-year period, 1946–96), touching on the work of a range of authors from Aotearoa New Zealand, Kanaky/New Caledonia and Tahiti/French Polynesia, before discussing a recent UK government-funded research project focused on the legacy of nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands. The project involved Marshallese poet and environmental activist Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner, and a range of her anti-nuclear poetry commissioned for the project (including “History Project”, “Monster” and “Anointed”) is analysed in the closing sections of this article.

KEYWORDS:

• Nuclear
• Oceania
• Marshall Islands
• US
• France
• Moruroa

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Original Treaty signatories included Australia, the Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, New Zealand, Niue, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu and Western Samoa.

2. The funding took the form of an Innovative Initiative Grant, and we are also very grateful to Edinburgh’s School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures (LLC) for further funding that enabled the translation of the comic into Marshallese, and to Island Research and Education Initiative (iREi) for bearing the costs of printing copies of “History Project” for distribution within the Marshall Islands. An electronic copy of the comic is also available at www.map.llc.ed.ac.uk.

3. The Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) award was provided by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). The Global Challenges Research Fund scheme forms part of the UK’s Official Development Assistance commitment to promote the long-term sustainable growth of countries eligible for support from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.

4. Fellow researchers and artists who worked on the Marshallese Arts Project include: Marcus Bennett (REACH-MI); Dr Polly Atatoa-Carr (University of Waikato); Olivia Ferguson (University of Edinburgh); Christine Germano (Constant Arts Society); Dustin Langidrik (Okeanos RMI); Sara Penrhyn Jones (Bath Spa University); Dr Alex Plows (Bangor University); Dr Shari Sabeti (University of Edinburgh); Aileen Sefeti (USP [The University of the South Pacific] Marshall Islands); and Dr Irene Taafaki (Director of USP Marshall Islands).

5. The video-poem can be viewed on Kathy’s blog (https://edin.ac/2ppLHI1) and various other Internet sites, including our GCRF-funded “Marshallese Arts Project” website (www.map.llc.ed.ac.uk).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) via the Global Challenges Research Fund [ES/P004725/1].

Notes on contributors

Michelle Keown

Michelle Keown is Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Edinburgh. She has published widely on Pacific and postcolonial literatures and theory, and is the author of Postcolonial Pacific Writing: Representations of the Body (2005) and Pacific Islands Writing: The Postcolonial Literatures of Aotearoa/New Zealand and Oceania (2007), and editor of Comparing Postcolonial Diasporas (2010) and Anglo-American Imperialism and the Pacific (2018).