Katerina Teaiwa (born Katerina Martina Teaiwa), is a Pacific scholar, artist and teacher of Banaban, I-Kiribati and African American heritage. [1] Teaiwa is well known for her scholarly and artistic work that focuses on the history of British Phosphate Commissioners mining activity in the Pacific during the 1900s and the consequent displacement of Banabans. In 2022, she became the first Indigenous woman from the Pacific to win the Australian University Teacher of the Year award and be promoted to full professor at the Australia National University. [2] [3]
Katerina Teaiwa has paternal links to Banaba and Tabiteuea in Kiribati and maternal links to Washington D.C in the United States. Teaiwa was born in Savusavu, Fiji and raised in Lautoka and Suva, Fiji. Her father, John Tabakitoa Teaiwa, is from Tabiang and Tabwewa villages on Banaba and Rabi in Fiji, and Eita and Utiroa villages on Tabiteuea. She has two sisters, Teresia Teaiwa and Maria Teaiwa-Rutherford. She attended St Joseph's Secondary School and Yat-Sen Primary School in Suva.
Teaiwa received a Bachelor of Science from Santa Clara University in California and a Master of Arts in Pacific Islands Studies from University of Hawaiʻi. She completed her PhD in anthropology from Australian National University [4]
Teaiwa spent three years at University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa as an assistant professor. Teaiwa then returned to Australian National University where she founded and was convenor of the Pacific Studies teaching program. [1] Furthermore, she was Head of Gender, Media and Cultural Studies program, School of Culture, History and Language, College of Asia and the Pacific at the Australian National University. [5] In 2008 she founded the Pasifika Australia Outreach Program. [6] Teaiwa was the president of the Australian Association for Pacific Studies 2012 - 2017 and is now the vice-president.
Through her background in contemporary Pacific dance, Teaiwa and the late Seiuli Allan Alo, co-founded the Oceania Dance Theatre at University of the South Pacific in Fiji, 1999. [1]
Following on from her research work for her book 'Consuming Ocean Island: Stories of People and Phosphate from Banaba' , Teaiwa presented a solo multimedia exhibition that commemorated the history of Banaba Island. [7] Project Banaba was commissioned by Carriageworks Cultural Precinct in Sydney and curated by internationally acclaimed Pacific artist Yuki Kihara. [7]
Project Banaba was then on show at MTG Hawke's Bay Tai Ahuriri in New Zealand in 2019. [8]
Kiribati, officially the Republic of Kiribati, is an island country in the Micronesia subregion of Oceania in the central Pacific Ocean. Its permanent population is over 119,000 as of the 2020 census, with more than half living on Tarawa atoll. The state comprises 32 atolls and one remote raised coral island, Banaba. Its total land area is 811 km2 (313 sq mi) dispersed over 3,441,810 km2 (1,328,890 sq mi) of ocean.
The islands which now form the Republic of Kiribati have been inhabited for at least seven hundred years, and possibly much longer. The initial Austronesian peoples’ population, which remains the overwhelming majority today, was visited by Polynesian and Melanesian invaders before the first European sailors visited the islands in the 17th century. For much of the subsequent period, the main island chain, the Gilbert Islands, was ruled as part of the British Empire. The country gained its independence in 1979 and has since been known as Kiribati.
The Gilbert Islands are a chain of sixteen atolls and coral islands in the Pacific Ocean, about halfway between Papua New Guinea and Hawaii. They constitute the main part of the nation of Kiribati.
The Gilbert and Ellice Islands in the Pacific Ocean were part of the British Empire from 1892 to 1976. They were a protectorate from 1892 to 12 January 1916, and then a colony until 1 January 1976. The history of the colony was mainly characterized by phosphate mining on Ocean Island. In October 1975, these islands were divided by force of law into two separate colonies, and they became independent nations shortly thereafter: the Ellice Islands became Tuvalu in 1978, and the Gilbert Islands became part of Kiribati in 1979.
Banaba is an island of Kiribati in the Pacific Ocean. A solitary raised coral island west of the Gilbert Island Chain, it is the westernmost point of Kiribati, lying 185 miles (298 km) east of Nauru, which is also its nearest neighbour. It has an area of six square kilometres (2.3 sq mi), and the highest point on the island is also the highest point in Kiribati, at 81 metres (266 ft) in height. Along with Nauru and Makatea, it is one of the important elevated phosphate-rich islands of the Pacific.
In Kiribati, there are no longer official administrative divisions but it is possible to divide Kiribati geographically into one isolated island and three archipelagos or island groups:
Gilbertese or taetae ni Kiribati, also Kiribati, is an Austronesian language spoken mainly in Kiribati. It belongs to the Micronesian branch of the Oceanic languages.
The Micronesians or Micronesian peoples are various closely related ethnic groups native to Micronesia, a region of Oceania in the Pacific Ocean. They are a part of the Austronesian ethnolinguistic group, which has an Urheimat in Taiwan.
UTC+12:00 is an identifier for a time offset from UTC of +12:00.
Rabi is a volcanic island in northern Fiji. It is an outlier to Taveuni, in the Vanua Levu Group. It covers an area of 66.3 square kilometers, reaching a maximum altitude of 463 meters and has a shoreline of 46.2 kilometers. With a population of around 5,000, Rabi is home to the Banabans who are the indigenous landowners of Ocean Island; the indigenous Fijian community that formerly lived on Rabi was moved to Taveuni after the island was purchased by the British government. The original inhabitants still maintain their links to the island, and still use the Rabi name in national competitions.
Sir Albert Fuller Ellis was a prospector in the Pacific. He discovered phosphate deposits on the Pacific islands of Nauru and Banaba in 1900. He was the British Phosphate Commissioner for New Zealand from 1921 to 1951.
Nikunau is a low coral atoll in the Gilbert Islands that forms a council district of the Republic of Kiribati. It consists of two parts, with the larger in the northwest, joined by an isthmus about 150 metres (490 ft) wide.
John T. Arundel was an English entrepreneur who was instrumental in the development of the mining of phosphate rock on the Pacific islands of Nauru and Banaba. Williams & Macdonald (1985) described J. T. Arundel as "a remarkable example of that mid-Victorian phenomenon, the upright, pious and adventurous Christian English businessman."
Teresia Teaiwa was a distinguished award winning I-Kiribati and African-American scholar, poet, activist and mentor. Teaiwa was well-regarded for her ground-breaking work in Pacific Studies. Her research interests in this area embraced her artistic and political nature, and included contemporary issues in Fiji, feminism and women's activism in the Pacific, contemporary Pacific culture and arts, and pedagogy in Pacific Studies. An "anti-nuclear activist, defender of West Papuan independence, and a critic of militarism", Teaiwa solidified many connections across the Pacific Ocean and was a hugely influential voice on Pacific affairs Her poetry remains widely published.
Yuki Kihara is an interdisciplinary artist of Japanese and Samoan descent. In 2008, her work was the subject of a solo exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; it was the first time a New Zealander and the first time a Pacific Islander had a solo show at the institution. Titled Shigeyuki Kihara: Living Photographs, the exhibition opened from 7 October 2008 to 1 February 2009. Kihara's self-portrait photographs in the exhibitions included nudes in poses that portrayed colonial images of Polynesian people as sexual objects. Her exhibition was followed by an acquisition of Kihara's work for the museum's collection.
The economy of Banaba and Nauru has been almost wholly dependent on phosphate, which has led to environmental disaster on these islands, with 80% of the islands’ surface having been strip-mined. The phosphate deposits were virtually exhausted by 2000, although some small-scale mining is still in progress on Nauru. Mining ended on Banaba in 1979.
Tito v Waddell [1977] Ch 106 is an English trusts law case, concerning what counts as a trust, and creates fiduciary duties, and when specific performance will be ordered. It is important as an historical case that forced the eviction of the people from the island of Banaba. On the points of specific performance, it has been superseded in the cases of Ruxley Electronics Ltd v Forsyth. It stands as an historical example of an indigenous community exploited and expropriated by the mercantile mining interests of the British Empire.
The Japanese occupation of the Gilbert Islands was the period in the history of Kiribati between 1941 and 1945 when Imperial Japanese forces occupied the Gilbert Islands during World War II, in the Pacific War theatre.
The Ocean Island massacre occurred on 20 August 1945 when between 150 and 200 civilians were killed in a mass execution by members of a Japanese naval garrison unit angry over Japan's surrender. The civilians, all originally inhabitants from other parts of the Gilbert Islands, had been brought to Ocean Island as slave labour. Perpetrated five days after the official Japanese announcement of surrender at the end of the Second World War, the nature of the massacre was only revealed four months later due to the emergence of a sole survivor, Kabunare Koura of Nikunau, who had remained in hiding until December 1945. Initially, the commander of the unit, Suzuki Naoomi, claimed that the civilian population had been killed during a rebellion, but the revelation of Kabunare's testimony and subsequent confessions from lower ranking participants led to war crimes prosecutions by the Australian military. In total, 21 Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) personnel were convicted, of whom eight, including Naoomi, were executed, for their roles in the mass atrocity.
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