202 the contemporary pacifi c • 21:1 (2009) until the end of the fi lm. Yes, these apples fi nally fi nd peace with each birthmarks are symbols of the scars other on a deserted island. that bind them together, but the moles’ This fi lm could be dismissed as a very presence also makes fun of the simple lighthearted comedy, but it characters’ mutual absurd decision to actually resonates on a much deeper ignore them. and universal level. In , Because Jarrod and Lily are con- adults struggle with learning to release tinuously unsuccessful in their earnest the past and grow beyond their teen- attempts to cover up their obvious age preoccupations with winning the vulnerabilities, ironic humor is often big race. In the end, more than a love the result. Jarrod wants to be the story, this is a story of self-acceptance. superhero warrior he plays in his The human condition dictates that we video-games. He wants to be the are all rotten apples—we are all dam- karate expert hero. Yet his quest is aged goods. Our challenge is to focus hopeless and absurd, because he’s a on what is good and leave the dam- twenty-fi ve-year-old nerd and his eagle aged part behind. costume for the animal party only joel moffett confi rms this. University of Hawai‘i, Mänoa Indeed, the age of our protagonists informs one of the most prominent *** motifs in this fi lm: adults acting like children. Jarrod’s big fi ght with Eric Resistance: An Indigenous Response literally takes place on the school to Neoliberalism, edited by Maria playground and his sacred art projects Bargh. , nz: Huia Publish- look like they were made in grade ers, 2007. isbn 978-1-86969-286-5; school. ’s 213 pages, illustrations, appendix, sweet melancholy acoustic music glossary, bibliography, index. Paper, further nourishes this childlike world us$28.00. Distributed by University of where adolescent obsessions drive the Hawai‘i Press. action forward with crank phone calls and backyard campouts. In this recent work (published by This innocent world is also organi- Huia, a Mäori press), editor Maria cally refl ected in the stop-motion Bargh, a lecturer of Mäori studies animation sequences that structurally at Victoria University at Wellington, ground the fi lm from beginning to elucidates the ways that neoliberal end. Masterfully designed by Francis policies espoused by the New Zea- Salole and Guy Capper, the animation land government since 1984 adversely parallels the journey of our protago- affect Mäori well-being and Mäori nists with a fable-like love story of pursuit of tino rangatiratanga, Mäori damaged goods, or in this case, fruit. self-determination and sovereignty. A rotten apple (discarded by Jarrod) Neoliberalism, the prevailing conven- and an apple core (discarded by Lily) tion that has been successively adopted come to life in a series of vignettes by most governing bodies around the that vaguely match the structure of the world since the 1980s, maintains that live-action story. The lonely, rejected the development of a place and people book and media reviews 203

“previously organized and governed in Property Rights Agreement (trips) of other ways” (1), is determined by the 1994, and Multilateral Agreement on growth and accumulation of capital Investment (mai) of 1997 and 1998— by the free market. The authorizes corporations to purchase government claims that neoliberalism and sell Mäori knowledge, cultural “is an opportunity for long term eco- production, resources, without sound nomic benefi ts for Mäori” (24). Mäori consultation. The contributors who assisted in These neoliberal policies have shaping Resistance are nine Mäori adverse effects on the majority of writers from various iwi (tribes), Mäori. Unemployment has increased, straddling varying professions that thus making it necessary for Mäori include academia, legal advocacy, families to depend on government health care, community organizing, benefi ts—a service that neoliberal and political activism. Resistance fuses proponents argue breeds indolence social science analysis with political and should be eradicated. This cycle interviews, literary critiques, memoir, produces racism and lays the blame indigenous knowledge, and statisti- for the instability of neoliberal econo- cal data to imagine multiple ways to mies on Mäori and indigenous Pacifi c pursue Mäori tino rangatiratanga. peoples. Neoliberal practice is not a new Bridget Robson, a health researcher, encounter for tangata whenua, “Mäori highlights the growing disparities people in their capacity as indigenous between Mäori and non-Mäori health people of New Zealand” (192). since the advent of neoliberalism in the Resistance locates the recent neoliberal 1980s. Using the same indicators that project within the continuing colonial global fi nancial institutions employ to project of the British Crown’s private demonstrate the benefi ts of privatizing ownership and redistribution of Mäori health care and pharmaceutical drugs lands and resources since Mäori (such as life expectancy and mortality colonization began in the 1800s. rates), Robson found increases in can- Mäori and the British Crown signed cer and cardiovascular morbidity and the Treaty of Waitangi and its Mäori mortality rates and decreases in life version, Te Tiriti o Waitangi, in 1840. expectancy rates of tangata whenua. In Te Tiriti o Waitangi, Mäori trans- For a people who have not been ferred protection rights (käwanatanga recognized as a sovereign nation since [government]), to the British Crown, the 1800s, resisting neoliberalism is but they never ceded their sovereignty an ongoing effort of Mäori decoloni- (tino rangatiratanga) to the Crown. zation. Resistance proclaims that the The British promised to recognize most signifi cant and enduring ways and protect the right of Mäori to be to resist neoliberalism are found in and remain Mäori. The New Zealand the exercise of indigenous power in government’s signing of bilateral and “everyday ordinary acts and ‘making trilateral trade agreements—such as do’ attempts” (18). the Trans-Pacifi c Strategic Economic Annette Sykes, a lawyer, tells a Partnership Agreement of 2005, compelling story about representing Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual twenty-nine Mäori claimant groups 204 the contemporary pacifi c • 21:1 (2009) before the Waitangi Tribunal and the In the 1980s, my family migrated government’s refusal to amend treaty to the United States from Tonga in breaches: “The process is doing enor- pursuit of Western education. My mous violence because of the hopes parents envisioned education as a tool that get shattered by the Crown’s of resistance against the colonizing contempt of the Tribunal’s decisions” and neoliberal forces that affl icted our (119). These setbacks forced her to development as Tongans in Tonga. reconsider the forms of resistance that I embody their vision in my studies she employed: “I pay allegiance to the and my participation in Tonga’s pro- Crown to practice as a lawyer. So why democracy movement, the indigenous do I do it? Inevitably I come back to Tongan peoples’ response to neoliber- the view because the system has got to alism in our homeland. be blunted against our people” (120). The year 2005 was one of extensive Alice Te Punga Somerville, a lec- protest in Tonga against the Tongan turer of indigenous literature, affi rms government’s embrace of neoliberal that truth telling and self-telling practices. This included the Public are Mäori and indigenous weapons Servant Strike, Tonga’s fi rst contem- against neoliberalism. Resistance, porary labor strike. The strike trans- through its writers and the people formed into a forum of resistance for it speaks for, is such a weapon. It diverse Tongans beyond the workers; confronts the most prodigious system the strike also included Tongans in the in the world today, the market mecha- diaspora, members of the monarchy, nism, and courageously claims that the the business elite, and subsistence settlement process of the 1840s must laborers. be done correctly, because, as Mäori On Saturday, 3 September 2005, at know from disadvantageous experi- the bottom of Queen Street in Auck- ences under neoliberal policies and land, Aotearoa, an estimated 3,000 practices, “The present and future are Tongans and non-Tongan New Zea- only the past revisited” (173). landers gathered to demonstrate their The acts of resistance documented support for the striking public servants in the book led me to long for concrete in Tonga. Members of the Tongan examples of how differences, such as Public Servant Association (psa) union gender, sexuality, mixed blood, class, joined New Zealand organizations to and age, are negotiated within Mäori construct this demonstration. Shortly communities, and affi rmed in build- after, the Tongan government agreed ing Mäori social movements despite to psa demands and the strike ended. the prevalence of neoliberalism. The The government, however, breached voices emerging from Resistance high- its agreement with the psa union and light the necessity for more indigenous the Tongan people. Like the Mäori Pacifi c writers to merge their scholar- people, Tonga’s Public Servant Asso- ship with the practices of political ciation and supporting organizations resistance, because no one book can continue the process of holding the “cover all aspects . . . of neoliberal Tongan government accountable policies and practices, or every angle to their promise in the strike agree- of Mäori resistance to them” (19). ment. Resistance offers the potential book and media reviews 205 of awakening indigenous people of Experiences of the Pacifi c War, by Lin the Pacifi c, like Tongans, to their own Poyer, Suzanne Falgout, and Laurence histories of colonization that have Carucci [2001]), and it represents the been misconstrued and denied. culmination of a project begun by the Annette Sykes proclaims, “I think it latter authors in 1990–1991. is going to be a really amazing time in The book’s focus is on Micronesian the next twenty years. . . . We will be cultural memories of the war as they required to look at the revival and the have been preserved in songs, dances, creation of collectives. . . . We’re going stories, and chants. Much of the text is to be supported by our relations from devoted to extensive quotations from Te Moana Nui a Kiwa, the Pacifi c interviews with individuals who lived Ocean, and they are going to need us through the war years and recounted as we need them to help preserve their their recollections for the authors. ways of life” (123). Resistance not Also provided are numerous song only resuscitates Mäori knowledges texts from different island areas, with and philosophies but it also affi rms a lengthy song from Fais (Yap, FSM) that our most powerful weapons occupying nearly nine pages of the against colonization and neoliberalism concluding chapter. Most of the cul- are our ongoing struggles and collabo- tural memories presented in the book rations for tino rangatiratanga. are of fear, suffering, and hardship, fuifuilupe niumeitolu but a few are of romance, sadness, University of California, and separation. World War II intruded Berkeley into the lives of Micronesians through no fault of their own; it was someone *** else’s fi ght in which they, unfortu- nately, happened to occupy a major Memories of War: Micronesians in battleground. While some Microne- the Pacifi c War, by Suzanne Falgout, sian islands were more or less razed Lin Poyer, and Laurence M Carucci. to the ground (eg, Enewetak, RMI; Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, and Peleliu, Republic of Palau), others 2008. isbn 978-0-8248-3130-1, x + were bombed and shelled but spared 275 pages, maps, photos, notes, bibli- an amphibious assault (eg, Chuuk and ography, index. Paper, us$25.00. Pohnpei, FSM). Still others, notably some of the smaller outer-island atolls, This welcome volume joins what is by were barely touched directly by com- now a venerable list of anthropologi- bat activities. But since many Micro- cal analyses of the effects of World nesians were located away from their War II on Pacifi c Islanders (The Pacifi c home islands at the war’s outbreak, Theater: Island Representations of cultural memories of separation and World War II, edited by Geoffrey hardship are widespread throughout M White and Lamont Lindstrom the region. [1989]; Island Encounters: Black and The book is divided into fi ve sec- White Memories of the Pacifi c War, tions. Part I begins with a chapter by Lindstrom and White [1990]; and outlining Micronesia as a region, after The Typhoon of War: Micronesian which the authors provide a succinct