THE JOURNAL OF THE POLYNESIAN SOCIETY VOLUME 123 No.2 JUNE 2014 THE JOURNAL OF THE POLYNESIAN SOCIETY Volume 123 JUNE 2014 Number 2 Special issue EXTRAORDINARY POLYNESIAN WOMEN: WRITING THEIR STORIES Guest Editor PHYLLIS HERDA Editors JUDITH HUNTSMAN MELINDA S. ALLEN Editorial Assistant DOROTHY BROWN Published quarterly by the Polynesian Society (Inc.), Auckland, New Zealand Published in New Zealand by the Polynesian Society (Inc.) Copyright © 2014 by the Polynesian Society (Inc.) Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criticism, or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part of this publication may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Inquiries should be made to: Hon. Secretary The Polynesian Society c/- Mäori Studies The University of Auckland Private Bag 92019, Auckland ISSN 0032-4000 (print) ISSN 2230-5955 (online) Indexed in CURRENT CONTENTS, Behavioural, Social and Managerial Sciences, in INDEX TO NEW ZEALAND PERIODICALS, and in ANTHROPOLOGICAL INDEX. AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND Volume 123 JUNE 2014 Number 2 CONTENTS Notes on the Authors ............................................................................. 105 Introduction by Phyllis Herda ........................................................... 107 CAROL S. IVORY Vaekehu, the Life of a 19th Century Marquesan “Queen” in Turbulent Times ..................................................................... 113 KAREN STEVENSON ‘Aimata, Queen Pomare IV: Thwarting Adversity in 19th Century Tahiti .................................................................... 129 TOESULUSULU DAMON SALESA Emma and Phebe: “Weavers of the Border” .................................... 145 ADRIENNE KAEPPLER Sister Malia Tu‘ifua: Descendant of Chiefs, Daughter of God ......... 169 JUDITH HUNTSMAN Kula the Nurse and Nua the Teacher: Tokelau’s Professional Pioneers ................................................................ 185 HELENE CONNOR Whäea Betty Wark: From Uncertain Beginnings to Honoured Community Worker .................................................... 209 References for all articles ..................................................................... 223 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS Helene Connor is of Mäori, Irish and English descent. She has whakapapa (genealogy) links to Te Atiawa and Ngäti Ruanui iwi (tribes) and Ngäti Rahiri and Ngäti Te Whiti hapü (sub-tribes). Helene is a Senior Lecturer and Programme Director for the Social Practice Postgraduate Programmes in the Department of Social Practice, Unitec, New Zealand. Her research interests are in developing feminist theoretical perspectives and research methodologies to research issues of relevance and interest to wahine Mäori; the exploration of constructions of Mäori and multi-ethnic identity; the intersections between gender and ethnicity, and aspects of gender and cultural representation; life histories, personal narratives and auto/biographical research. Phyllis Herda is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Auckland. She gained an MA degree in Anthropology at the University of Auckland and completed a PhD in Pacific History at the Australian National University. She continues to research and write on Tongan ethnography and history; gender, disease and colonialism in Polynesia; and is engaged in research writing on Polynesian textiles, ancient and modern. Judith Huntsman became Hon. Professorial Research Fellow in Anthropology at the University of Auckland upon her retirement in 2001, and continued as Hon. Editor of the Polynesian Society. She conducted field research in the Tokelau atolls between 1967 and 1997 and has had varied and continuing relationships with Tokelau people resident in New Zealand since the early 1970s. As well as numerous chapters and articles, she has been an author of several books about Tokelau’s history and ethnography, recent history and current affairs, migration and health, and narrative and song. Many of these works have been written in collaboration with other scholars, especially Antony Hooper, her long-time colleague in Tokelau studies. Carol Ivory is an art historian (PhD, University of Washington) and retired from Washington State University as Professor Emerita of Fine Arts. Carol’s research focuses on the art, history and culture of the Marquesas Islands. In addition to publishing numerous articles, she has been a co-curator or consultant for several exhibitions on the Marquesas and French Polynesia at venues including Mission Houses Museum, Honolulu, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the Seattle Art Museum. She served as President of the Pacific Arts Association, and is currently curating an exhibition on Marquesan art and culture planned for 2016 at the Musée du Quai Branly, Paris. She continues her research in the Marquesas, especially on Vaekehu and her family. Adrienne L. Kaeppler is Curator of Oceanic Ethnology at the National Museum of Natural History of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. She has carried out extended fieldwork in the Pacific and extensive research in museums, especially on collections from the voyages of Captain Cook. She has published widely on museum collections and on the visual and performing arts of the Pacific. Her research focuses on the interrelationships between social structure and the arts, especially dance, music and the visual arts. Toesulusulu Damon Salesa is Associate Professor of Pacific Studies at the University of Auckland. A graduate in History from the University of Auckland and Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar, he worked from 2002-11 at the University of Michigan. His recent book, Racial Crossings (Oxford University Press, 2011), won the Ernest Scott Prize in 2012. He is currently working on his Marsden (Royal Society of NZ) funded project, a history of “everyday Samoa” 1800-2000. Karen Stevenson is Adjunct Senior Fellow at the University of Canterbury. Her writings and research have focused on the politics and institutionalisation of culture, art and identity; the Pacific Arts Festival; and most recently on contemporary Pacific art in New Zealand. She is the author of The Frangipani is Dead, Contemporary Pacific Art in New Zealand, 1985-2000, co-editor for Pacific Arts: Persistence, Change and Meaning in Pacific Art and Re-presenting Pacific Art, and was the editor of Pacific Artists Navigating the Global Art World. Her most recent book, Hidden Treasures, highlights the art collection of the Oceania Centre at the University of the South Pacific. 106 INTRODUCTION: WRITING THE LIVES OF SOME EXTRAORDINARY POLYNESIAN WOMEN PHYLLIS S. HERDA University of Auckland Conversations in the 1990s between the late Elizabeth Wood Ellem and myself about the portrayal of Pacific Island women in historical texts led us to contact a number of scholars, some of whose writings have resulted in this “special issue” on the lives of some extraordinary Polynesian women. Those long ago conversations were prompted in particular by two volumes published in the 1970s and edited by historians at the Australian National University: Pacific Island Portraits (Davidson and Scarr 1970) and More Pacific Island Portraits (Scarr 1978). The 25 chapters in these two collections were equally balanced between indigenous and European subjects—including portraits of 24 significant individuals in the post-contact history of Oceania—but not a single woman. While the omission of women did not seem particularly notable in the 1970s, some 20 years later it was remarkable. In addition the inclusion of Europeans is representative of the approach often adopted at the time the volumes were produced. Elizabeth and I felt that a book focused on Pacific Island women was long overdue. In considering such a collection in light of our own research on Tongan historical women (Herda 1987 and Wood Ellem 1999), we decided that a geographical focus on Polynesia, rather than the wider Pacific, would both be more manageable and give greater coherence to the volume. Our intention was to represent a variety of notable women from Polynesia’s past; not necessarily just those who rose to prominence through high birth rank. With this in mind, scholars with expertise in Polynesian studies and a concomitant interest in gender were approached about contributing to the volume. There was strong support for the project and each author selected the woman, or in some cases women, whose portrait they would create. Traditional historical research into the lives and experiences of Polynesian women has been problematic owing to the absence or minimisation of women in the historical record. Early visiting Europeans, be they explorers, beachcombers, whalers or traders, were almost exclusively male. They expected to deal with male leaders and sought out contact with indigenous men. If contact was made with women, especially non-chiefly women, it was almost always sexual in nature. The journals and memoirs of these visitors reflect this androcentric bias. For example, the French expedition under the command of Bruni d’Entrecasteuax (Labillardiere 1800) which visited Journal of the Polynesian Society 123(2): 113-128; DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15286/jps.123.2.107-112 108 Introduction Tongatapu in 1793, met an influential woman whom they called “Queen Tineh” (probably Tu‘i Tonga Fefine Nanasipau‘u). Although they mention in passing her exalted rank and her undoubted authority, their substantive entries markedly focus on the exploits of male chiefs. While there are several named portrait sketches of Tongan men from