Remembrance of Pacific Pasts: An Invitation to Remake History

by Robert Borofsky (editor)

Book by

Genres: History

557 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2000

Reviews

[Ric Cezar]

Excellent. For the first time, someone stands up against the colonialist ghost that surrounds Oceanic cultures and asks us to review the written histories of the region without Captain Cook as the essential central figure. He does not play a central role in the region when it comes to oral traditions and the passing on of cultural knowledge, so let's get rid of this idea that without Captain Cook and his fellow travellers there would be no civilised cultures in the Pacific. Let the right characters play the right roles here. Let chiefs and their people be the central characters in their own stories, myths and history. Everyone interested in the Pacific view point as the story unfolds in the region, should read this collection of essays. A book written by Oceanic and Pacific Island scholars reviewing the concepts and the re-telling of culture, recreated by Europeans to suit their needs, whose results are used as the norm for scholar studies today.