microwomen everywhere

i’ve just come back from a 48 hour academic writing retreat with some colleagues and students. before i unplugged and re-oriented myself towards long overdue and neglected projects, i was excited by some of the stuff that was coming through my social media feeds, which made me think that this might just be the year it rained microwomen!

the first micronesian item to come through my feed earlier this week was this interview with milañ loeak, a young woman from the marshall islands who was one of 30 activists from the pacific who this past october raised a significant amount of international awareness about climate change by paddling canoes out into a major australian port to blockade the huge ships that export coal from there. this was part of a campaign organized by the international NGO 350.org :

the next micronesian item to come through my feed was a notice about a documentary that had won a special prize from connect4climate, a group funded by the world bank and the italian ministry of environment. the film was made by victoria burns, a young woman of i-kiribati and british heritage living in england. you can read the story here. watch the film titled “tinau* (my mother)” here:

what immediately struck me about milañ, victoria and her mother, was the quiet gentleness of their voices. but there was also no mistaking their strength.

as a feminist i’m interested in all kinds of voices–not just the loud ones, or the eloquent ones. in her signature essay “situated knowledges”, donna haraway helped name this interest for me when she described feminism’s love of “the sciences and politics of interpretation, translation, stuttering, and the partly understood.” (1988:589) you can get a pdf of the article here.

while milañ never missed a beat in her interview, what was unusual was her pacing. this was not going to be one of those rapid fire angry activist interviews–and the interviewer has to be commended, too. he seemed at ease with the pace and tone that milañ was setting. it was slow and fluid, almost underwater-like.

the documentary by victoria burns, however, really captured for me some of the issues of “interpretation, translation, stuttering and the partly understood” that haraway believes feminism loves. and victoria explored these issues with such tenderness and self-reflexivity. i wept. i wept for victoria’s mother. i wept for kiribati. i wept for climate change. i wept for the stuttering, for the misunderstanding. at first the contrast between victoria’s polished english accent and her mother’s halting cobbling together of kiribati and english is painfully poignant. but finally i wept at the amazing possibilities of interpretation and translation that victoria had on the tip of her own tongue. ko rangi ni bati, neiko! e rarabwa te tamnei ae ko raweia!

victoria’s and milañ’s work, of course, remind me of the work of their respective compatriots pelenise alofa pilitati (from kiribati) and kathy jet nil-kijiner (from the marshall islands), both of whom i have blogged about: giving thanks for microwomen  and giving thanks for microwomen 2 (or, hey, that climate warrior is my grandmother!)

but wouldn’t you know? there are even more microwomen out there! check out “the little island that could”, which is a blog i’ve started following by a young woman of i-kiribati and australian heritage named marita.

so you see why i was excited before going on my retreat on monday. i could not wait to come back, plug in and write up this blog. but when i returned, the next micronesian item that came through my feed took the shine off my microwomen euphoria: on november 3 of this year, the u.s. supreme court ruled that the state of hawai`i is not required to provide medical benefits to citizens of the federated states of micronesia, palau or the marshall islands: story here.

while it may seem like global media is paying more attention and giving a bit of air time to micronesians speaking up about climate change lately…there are some issues for micronesians, particularly in the u.s., that the media have either been part of the problem on or simply have not helped with. my microbruddah, joakim peter, has put a massive effort into the campaign for access to medical benefits for micronesians in hawai`i. and a polynesian ally, kat lobendahn has been instrumental in mobilizing protests and helping to facilitate community discussion around derogatory comments about micronesians in the hawai`i media, and the ongoing racism faced by micronesians in hawai`i. check out some of the stories here.

in more poetic forms of activism, kathy jetnil-kijiner and guam-based pohnpeian writer emelihter kihleng have addressed some of the discrimination and stigma micronesians have been facing in hawai`i. check out emelihter’s poem “the micronesian question” here.

and kathy’s poem “lessons from hawai`i” here:

i use both these poems in my teaching at university in aotearoa new zealand. but having lived outside of the u.s. for close to 20 years now, i’m still learning about the more recent struggles of micronesian migrant communities over there.

so, i started out wanting to celebrate “microwomen everywhere”, and ended up being rudely reminded that for some, seeing “micronesians everywhere” may not be something to celebrate. but as we like to say down under: stuff ’em.

go micro! there’s plenty more to come!

*that’s pronounced see-now, just as kiribati is pronounced kiri-bassey or kiri-bass (as in the fish, not the instrument)…heavy sigh.