Unfreedom, Voices, Redress – Plantation Cultures of the Western Pacific

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Team panels at the 26th Pacific History Association conference on the theme of ‘Le Solosoloū: Resilience in the Face of Adversity’, National University of Samoa

Samoa Conference opening event with people in traditional costume

In December team members presented two panels at the 26th Pacific History Association conference on the theme of ‘Le Solosoloū: Resilience in the Face of Adversity’ hosted by the National University of Samoa, Apia. Panel 1 addressed the topic of ‘Creative Art Practice, Archives, and Museums: Resilience in the Wake of Slavery and Unfreedom in the Western Pacific’.

Panel 1: The multidisciplinary artist Jasmine Togo-Brisby led the discussion by speaking on the topic of ‘Making South Sea Space’. Adopting an Australian-Pacific slave diaspora perspective, she spoke to the challenge of contextualising Australian South Sea Islander (ASSI) identity within global and Pacific dialogues. Lead CI Penny Edmonds followed with her paper ‘Whispers in the Archive? Resilience, Refusal, Redress and South Sea Islander Women’s Voices’. Here she described her archival search for the ni-Vanuatuan woman named Nie, who walked off a Queensland plantation in a deliberate act of refusal. Imelda Miller, Curator of First Nations Cultures at Queensland Museum, concluded the panel by presenting a visual capture of her landmark 2024 exhibition, Say Our Name: Australian South Sea Islanders. 2024 marked the 30th anniversary of Australia’s recognition of ASSI as a cultural and community group with a unique history, heritage and identity, whose free and unfree labour was the backbone to the establishment of the Australian sugar industry.

Panel 2: entitled ‘Reclamation and Resistance: Speculative Fiction and Oceanic Feminism’. CI Deirdre Coleman presented a paper on ‘Fast Talking PIs’ examining the different kinds of women’s ‘talk’ currently underway across the Pacific. Using the methodologies of ‘oceanic feminism’ she focussed on three women writers of the Samoan diaspora: Selina Tusitala Marsh, Sia Figiel, and Tusiata Avia. Kirsten McGavin, ARC postdoctoral research fellow in creative writing at Flinders University, concluded the panel with a paper entitled ‘Resistance is Not Futile: Reclaiming Our History Through Speculative Fiction’. Here she showed how speculative fiction, powered by anthropological research methods and the privileging of emic perspectives, was well placed to explore and nurture Pacific Islander power.

Text by Prof. Deirdre Coleman

ARC FUNDING
This research was funded by the Australian Government through the Australian Research Council (ARC). Title: ‘Unfreedom, Voices, Redress: Plantation Cultures of the Western Pacific’. July 2025 – July 2029. DP250100584.

PARTNER ORGANISATIONS
Flinders University – lead organisation
The University of Melbourne
Queensland Museum Kurilpa
University of the South Pacific
University of Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies
Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum, Cologne

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF COUNTRY
Flinders University acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the lands on which its campuses are located. These are the Traditional Lands of the Arrernte, Dagoman, First Nations of the South East, First Peoples of the River Murray & Mallee region, Jawoyn, Kaurna, Larrakia, Ngadjuri, Ngarrindjeri, Ramindjeri, Warumungu, Wardaman and Yolngu people. We honour their Elders and Custodians past, present and emerging.

Queensland Museum Kurilpa acknowledges the First Peoples – the Traditional Custodians of the lands, waters and sky where we live and work.

Unfreedom, Voices, Redress – Plantation Cultures of the Western Pacific