Let’s start with the film we had the chance to watch last week, Kumu Hina. I was happy to see this film for a few reasons: it was nice to see a narrative rooted in the experiences of a non-cisgender person for once, and Hina has a rich and fascinating story to tell. Not only that, but it was an interesting lesson on the history of gender identity in non-European communities, and exactly how the actions of colonization affect not only our idea of ‘good’ people, but our idea of male and female.

Not only do we see a glimpse into the life of a transwoman living in Hawaii, we get a lot of focus on her relationship to her husband, and how complicated it became when attempting to migrate him from Fiji. While I was thankful for a realistic portrayal of trans people in romantic relationships, I felt that it was a bit too dramatic to really contribute much to the actual narrative or point of the film. Much more effective, in my mind, was Hina’s mentoring of the young girl who identified as being in the ‘middle’.

So rarely do we see LGBTQ+ people represented in our media, and when we do they’re overwhelmingly white or white-passing. This, in my mind, was a fantastic example of storytelling that revolves around tradition, identity and pride in a way that educates as much as it emotes. (Unrelated, but I remembered only after learning that Hina gave a speech at Evergreen that I DID in fact meet her – we both got caught in the same downpour one day!)

As informative as Kumu Hina was, what came after it was beyond anything we’ve experienced in our course thus far. A group of presenters, including members of our own class, schooled us on the experience of Pacific Islanders both now and throughout history. As a group of students, many of whom have no reference point for Oceania, it was enlightening to hear about the often ignored history of islands like Hawai’i, but also those lumped together as “the South Pacific”. Our culture engages in a shocking amount of cultural erasure in respect to Pacific Islanders, and that was made all the more clear by examples of media ‘attempts’ to feature such people (i.e. Moana). Even when given the center stage, the stories of these people are often smushed into one, amorphous blob of history rather than presented as the individual histories they are.