The Center for Pasifika Indigenous Knowledges, established in Spring 2024, is an interdisciplinary research center whose mission is to support ethical and critical scholarship by and for Pasifika Indigenous peoples, with a particular attention to scholarship by or about Pacific Islanders living away from their homelands. As Pacific Islanders living in Utah, for example, much of our academic and community-engaged work centers planting and cultivating good relations with other Indigenous peoples living in Salt Lake City and recognizing local Native American knowledge about this place we live in.
By “Pacific Islander,” we mean the Indigenous peoples of Micronesia, Melanesia and Polynesia (these regions include peoples identified as CHamoru, Chuukese, Palauan, Fijian, Papuan, Samoan, Tongan, Tokelauan and Native Hawaiian, among many others).
“Pasifika” is a term historically used by Pacific Islanders living in New Zealand to identify themselves and show solidarity across different Pacific Islander communities. We have borrowed it to highlight our local Pacific Islander communities living in Utah and operate in the same spirit of creating coalitions of support.
By “Indigenous,” we mean the broader, global category that refers to the first peoples of a place, who often have distinct, long-standing cultural and political relationships with their homeland’s lands and waters which predate colonial and imperial occupations. It is important to name Pasifika peoples as Indigenous because often in the U.S. context, Pacific Islanders are grouped with Asian Americans. This pairing can unjustly erase the specific needs and concerns of Pacific Islanders that are distinct from Asian Americans. Outside the U.S., in New Zealand and Australia, for example, Pacific Islanders are understood as a distinct demographic, not grouped with Asians.
This is not to say that we simply want a different pairing of disparate ethnic groups when we emphasize Pacific Islander and Native American solidarity under the term “Indigenous.” Rather, we recognize both significant differences in political and legal statuses between federally recognized tribes and Pacific Islanders peoples. We respect and support tribal sovereignty. “Indigenous” nonetheless remains an important term of solidarity which allows us to analyze settler colonialism and its impacts, both historically and continuing to shape our present. Our use of Indigenous is in line with the leading academic association in our fields, the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association, and is standard use in a number of academic and community contexts (see some examples of similarly named academic centers below).
The relationships between Indigenous peoples and their lands and cultures form the basis of what we are calling “Indigenous Knowledges.” This is a commonly used term in Indigenous Studies today which emphasizes the diverse expertise of traditional and contemporary Indigenous peoples. This expertise is multi-faceted and does not come from a single source, which is why the term is pluralized to “knowledges” instead of just “knowledge.” The emphasis on “knowledge” underscores that Indigenous practices and understandings of land and water have broad relevance to the world, not only to Indigenous communities.
