An excerpt from the latest PJR cover.

OKINAWA MEDIA AND THE MILITARY
The US military presence in Okinawa has been at the center of Okinawa’s politics, its relations with the central government in Tokyo and the US-Japan relations since 1945. The US bases and facilities occupy 20 percent of the island of Okinawa, accounting for 71 percent of the total US military presence in Japan. This has contributed to a strong local pacific movement supported by Okinawa’s local media which have kept a critical coverage against the Japanese government and the US bases. Amid reoccurring incidents involving US military personnel, accidents and the most recent developments around the relocation of Futenma Base, there are complaints about oppression of freedom of expression, limited public access to information and mainland Japanese media’s bias towards Okinawa. The two local newspapers, Ryukyu Shimpo and The Okinawa Times, have made it their mission to address these issues that are rarely covered in mainstream Japanese media. Dr Evangelia Papoutsaki will talk about the strong anti-base editorial stance of the Okinawan newspapers while providing a wider historical and current context of their reporting.

Who:  Dr Evangelia Papoutsaki
Associate Professor
Communication Studies, Unitec Institute of Technology
Auckland, New Zealand

When: Wednesday, 19 September 2018, 4.30-6pm 

Where: WG703 , Sir Paul Reeves Building, Auckland University of Technology
City Campus 

PACIFIC MEDIA CENTRE SEMINAR: Why is folk wisdom important?  In this presentation, Jourdene Aguon will explore and discuss the intersection between Pacific island communities (Samoa, Tonga, New Zealand and the Cook Islands, Guam and the Marianas) and their oral traditions, focusing on folk wisdom and its two variants: superstition and “old wives’ tales”. Interpreting a collection of historic and modern reports of these islands’ folk wisdom, we determine the commonality among them: what was important to these colonised places and what it means to have certain folk wisdom survive today.

Who: Jourdene Rosella Cruz Aguon 

When: Friday, August 29, 2018, 4.30pm-6pm

Where: Sir Paul Reeves Building,
Auckland University of Technology,
City Campus 
Room, WG903A

PACIFIC MEDIA CENTRE SEMINAR: Indigenous meanings and epistemologies tend to be forgotten and buried, and even erased, by non-indigenist interpretations and translations. This seminar is an exploration of an ‘indigenist hermeneutic’ to a re-translation of key texts of the Katipunan ng mga Anak ng Bayan, a 19th-century anti-colonial movement in the Spanish colony of Filipinas, the present-day Philippines. That the Katipunan used the indigenous language, Tagalog, in all their communications and not the language of their colonisers, Spanish, signified a delinking from European constructs epistemically, ethically and politically. An indigenist re-translation aims to recover indigenous meanings erased or concealed by modernising translations; and it challenges and offers an alternative interpretation to the prevailing notion in Philippine historiography that the Katipunan movement was essentially influenced by ideas from the European Enlightenment. Translation becomes a struggle and resistance against erasure, and incorporation into modernity’s Eurocentric epistemic territory.

Who: Pia Cristóbal Kahn, Master of Indigenous Studies, Te Tumu School of Māori, Pacific and Indigenous Studies, University of Otago.

When: Wednesday, 25 July 2018, 4.30-6pm

Where: WG703, City Campus

PACIFIC MEDIA CENTRE SEMINAR 2/2018: INDIGENOUS LUMAD PEOPLE’S RIGHT TO EDUCATION, AUTONOMY AND DIGNITY

The Indigenous Lumad people’s Our Right to Education, Autonomy and Dignity (READ) Programme in the Philippines is rooted in the vision that every child deserves the basic human right of an education.

Today the majority of Lumad children in the southern island of Mindanao remain illiterate and have limited access to education.

Salupongan International is committed to sustaining culture-responsive basic education programmes and schools that help Lumad and Moro students and communities obtain a quality education.

SI currently supports hundreds of indigenous scholars, teachers and faculty from Salupongan Ta Tanu Igkanugon Community Learning Centers (STTICLC), Mindanao Interfaith Services Foundation Inc. (MISFI) Academy and other community schools throughout Mindanao.  STTICLC and MISFI Academy has provided free, quality culture-responsive education to underserved indigenous, Moro and rural communities throughout Mindanao for over a decade.  

Two Lumad advocates visiting New Zealand will speak on the issues at the Pacific Media Centre seminar at Auckland University of Technology. Jointly organised by Philippine Solidarity, Asia Pacific Human Rights Coalition (APHRC) and the PMC.