What's Mine is Yours? Cultural Borrowing in a Pacific Context

Abstract

Ever-increasing opportunities for artistic contact and interaction between music and dance cultures of the Pacific create new potentials for significant artistic exchange. This paper considers three eastern Polynesian cultures (Marquesas, Society Islands, Cook Islands) and explores the nature and content of the artistic borrowing that occurs. Although certainly not a new practice, such borrowing has contributed to growing tensions in the region-tensions that relate to questions of "authenticity" and cultural appropriation. This paper expands the discussion to a global framework and examines artistic exchange in relation to the growing political and economic importance of cultural distinctiveness, particularly when defining that culture to outsiders. Predictions are offered about the role music and dance will playas Pacific nations determine the boundaries of local, regional, and global culture.