Oceania Currents: A New Podcast for Pacific Storytelling
Kenji Cataldo is a master’s student with the Center for Pacific Islands Studies at the University of Hawai‘í at Mānoa.
The views expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the policies or positions of the Pacific Islands Development Program or the East-West Center.
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Our world is full of stories. They tell of our origins, our pasts, help us deal with the present, and assist us in navigating the future. Stories also instruct us on issues of morality, how to relate to each other, to nature, and to the world around us. They connect our human form to divine existence. Stories are powerful and fundamental to our existence. The truth about stories is that that is all we are—without them, we are nothing. (Tarcisius Kabutaulaka, Oceania Currents Episode 8 “Oral History in the Pacific, Part 1”).
In the field of Pacific studies, it is widely acknowledged that storytelling is foundational to Pacific ways of knowing, being, and relating. It is also noted that oral storytelling—embodied, in person, in place —loses richness and context when it is flattened on a page as written text. Pacific studies scholar-practitioners have experimented richly with various techniques, media, and formats for presenting research in innovative ways that draw on the rich storytelling and artistic traditions of the region and the full range of tools available today. Kathy Jetn̄il-Kijiner’s “seawall soliloquies” reflect on her ongoing policy work on climate change adaptation in the Marshall Islands through poetry and her video work pairs her spoken word with a montage of images. Dr. Katerina Teaiwa’s traveling exhibition Project Banaba brings forward historical archives and multimedia works to educate viewers on the history of phosphate mining on the island of Banaba. Pacific studies has been written, sung, danced, chanted, staged, woven, tattooed, and filmed. How about podcasted?
In February 2024, the Center for Pacific Islands Studies (the Center, or CPIS) launched a new podcast, Oceania Currents. The brainchild of Professor Tarcisius Kabutaulaka, co-produced by me, Oceania Currents brings “voices, stories, and conversations with crisscrossing currents between the past, present, and future that flow deep and across Oceania, and beyond” (in the words of our tagline). The format of a podcast is well-suited for a regionally-focused program and draws on the wealth of relationships that the Center enjoys.
Since the Center, in partnership with PIDP and other units on campus, frequently brings guest speakers from across Oceania, there is a strong rotation of scholars, artists, and political leaders already passing through. By recording interviews with them, we can create a lasting and engaging resource from their visit, not only for our Hawaiʻi-based community but also for our regional and global audiences. The podcast provides a vessel for our guests’ stories and voices to travel far beyond the university campus and engage listeners across the Pacific and the world.
In the first run of ten episodes over the last spring semester, Oceania Currents shared conversations about climate change, migration, the preservation of language and culture, displacement, decolonization, relationships to land and ocean, and grassroots activism. The ethos of the podcast is shaped by Dr. Tara’s long meditations on re-presentations of the region, from within and without, and engages leading and emerging scholars, artists, filmmakers, musicians, poets, and activists in conversation not only about the substance of their stories but also about storytelling itself. As storytellers and artists engaged in different media, our guests spoke about a range of storytelling modes, including music, film, theater, exhibition curation, oral history, poetry, and the discipline of Pacific studies.
For example, when the University of Hawaiʻi (UH) Center for Oral History hosted Māori oral historian Nēpia Mahuika, co-sponsored by CPIS, we recorded a talk story with him in conversation with UH-based oral historians Davianna Pōmaikaʻi McGregor and Ty Kāwika Tengan. Dr. Mahuika’s work has been foundational for the UH Center for Oral History’s re-thinking of oral history in the context of Hawaiʻi. Through the podcast medium, we were able to highlight this intellectual relationship as a conversation, both discussing oral history as a field and practicing a form of oral knowledge transmission through talk story, song, and chant.
Indeed, perhaps more than any other medium, the podcast prioritizes the voice itself, in all its range and musicality. Reflecting on the title of this publication, Visions and Voices, I think about our recent episode with Raki Ap and Koteka Wenda, two West Papuan activists who are spokespeople for the Free West Papua Campaign. Raki and Koteka came to Honolulu for the Festival of Pacific Arts and Culture in June, not as official delegates—for West Papua had no official representation at the Festival—but to connect with allies, to give voice to the struggle of their people, and to share their vision of freedom.
In the interview, they spoke about the history of Indonesian occupation and the ongoing “silent genocide” that has killed 500,000 West Papuans since the 1960s. Raki’s father, Arnold Ap, was a prominent proponent of a free West Papua who was murdered by the Indonesian military to silence him. An anthropologist and musician, Arnold Ap documented and uplifted indigenous West Papuan culture through his research and music. And his voice can still be heard in his recordings. In this podcast episode, one of his songs joins the voices of his son Raki and Koteka as they speak to Oceania and the world, calling for support and compelling us with their vision of a free West Papua. This podcast is but one platform for these freedom fighters who are telling their story everywhere they can. The question for us is: are we listening?