Trans-Pacific environmental studies: Indigenous literatures from Taiwan and the Pacific islands

Abstract

This study focuses on contemporary Indigenous literatures from Taiwan, Guam and Hawaiʻi to envision a decolonized Environmental Studies. The works discussed in this study include I Wish to Be a Fish Scale of the Ocean (2021) by Syaman Rapongan, Palisia Tongku Saveq (2008) by Neqou Soqluman, Habitat Threshold (2020) by Craig Santos Perez, and The Salt-Wind: Ka Makani Pa`akai (2008) by Brandy Nālani McDougal. The theoretical frameworks of this research are Trans-Pacific ecopoetics, Trans-Indigenous studies, Ecocriticism, Environmental Humanities, Hawaiian and Pacific literary studies, and Taiwanese Indigenous literary studies. This study highlights the voices and worldviews of Indigenous Taiwanese and Pacific Islanders and creates center-to-center dialogues among Indigenous Taiwanese and Pacific Islanders to challenge and expand Western-centric Environmental Studies. The specific fields of Environmental Studies revisited in this research are ecotopia (chapter one), Sacred Ecology (chapter two), Environmental Justice (chapter three), and Deep Ecology (chapter four). This study points out the problem that Indigenous Taiwanese and Pacific Islanders are still essentialized, romanticized, and exploited in the study of Environmental Studies, and argues for a centering of the Island perspective and Indigenous Taiwanese and Pacific Islanders’ worldviews since most scholarships in Environmental Studies still focus on land/continent. This study reads the agency and resilience of Indigenous Taiwanese and Pacific Islanders in their voicing out to the mainstream Environmental Studies and shaping a more sustainable and just future.