Visualizing te kainga, dancing te kainga : history and culture between Rabi, Banaba and beyond

Abstract

Visualising te kaingal, Dancing te Kainga, is an exploration of Banaban and Gilbertese history and culture through archival texts and photographs, writing in history and anthropology, film, music and dance, and fieldwork or what I call "homework" The form of the thesis resonates with its content as I explore these sites of knowledge production through analysis, narrative, poetry, memory, image, and video. Banaban history and politics has been mainly defined with respect to the British colonial and phosphate mining experiences between 1900 and 1980. Banaban or Ocean Island is viewed as the essential "homeland" while Rabi is still seen as a new and disconcerting place of exile. I go beyond this two-island frame of reference by arguing for Rabi as "home" and including Australia, New Zealand and Kiribati as valid sites for exploring Banaban and Gilbertese identities. Focusing on kainga, or home, is a tool that allows us to connect these places. Like aba, or land, kainga has multiple meanings including people (and their specific relationships), land, residence and genealogy. Banabans are connected genealogically and culturally to specific islands in Kiribati and more broadly to land, history, politics and economics in Australia and New Zealand through phosphate mining and phosphate fertiliser. Both Banaban lands and bodies have been moved over the last 100 years and "movement" is a crucial aesthetic for dealing with Banaban survival as they create their own brand of culture through song and dance on Rabi. Like dance, film contains an excess of meaning and the overall thesis is associative as well as expository inviting the reader to make meaning, along with the author, between text, image and video. Show more