Present Encounters : Papers from the conference of the Second Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Brisbane, 1996

every one of the artists who attended the symposi um. I n New Caledonia in December 1 995, I visited the Kanak artist Ito Wa ia, h is people's representative at the symposi um. He was having an exh ibition, and I was interested to see that one of his drawings depicted his i nterpretation of the kind of traditional Maori figurative carving he would have seen in Rotorua . At t h e symposium , however, a Maori art student had been rather intrigued by the work o f one of the visiting artists and thought that he might try someth ing similar. No, he was told by his tutor. That was their th ing , and we should leave it to those people out of respect. What a complex and pai nful debate we are yet to have in the global community on I ndigenous i ntel lectual and cultural property rights. Perhaps in an age when there is a danger of everything becoming the same, homogenised , we should be fighting to maintain our unique identities, our distinctiveness, and allowi ng other societies and cultures to retain or reclaim that rig ht. Globalisation can be a great level ler. For many Indigenous peoples the loss of identity, a sense of purpose and self-worth, and cultura l and intellectual property from globalisation is a prospect to be feared - indeed, Professor H i rini Mead has condemned the prospect as 'gobble-isation'. The fear of being gobbled up makes some Indigenous artists very wary of engaging with the kind of globalism in wh ich the cultures of the West are dominant. Cultura l resistance and separatism are often seen as necessary in order to maintain the integrity, and ensu re the continuity, of unique cultura l identities. After all, it is the thi ngs that make us d ifferent that make us special. I n 1 995 a conference on the theme 'Re-writing the Pacific', organised by the Pacific Bridges Committee, was held at the Davis and Berkeley campuses of the University of Ca liforn ia. I n August 1 996 a conference on t he theme 'Re-imag i n i ng the Pacific' took place a t the Australian National Library. I ndigenous people from the region who attended these confe rences were left wonderi ng for whose benefit the Pacific was to be 're-written' and 're­ imagined'. Certai nly, we were startled to hear one Eu ro-Australian speaker at the Canberra conference i n an off-the-cuff aside announce . . . and here memory falters because we cou ld n 't quite believe that we were heari ng it . . . that he was not going to talk about spirituality or any of that nonsense with respect to one of the I ndigenous Australian artworks he was discussing . A throwaway? Or a g iveaway? If that is the attitude of Western scholars to ou r sacred treasures, why would we wish to continue to engage with Western scholarship in this part of the world while the descendants of our colonisers are strugg ling to come to terms with a situation they are cal l ing post-colonial but we , who are pennanently colonised , mig ht perhaps term 'post-European'. Roll on the post-European vision of the South Pacific. John Bevan Ford was prompted by the Pacific Bridges conference to repeat a statement he had heard at another conference: 'Universities are rapidly becoming unsafe places for culture'. 2 So how do we ensure that the integrity of our unique cultura l identities is maintained? How do we assure their continu ity, while engaging , out of necessity, with global culture? I say that I ndigenous people can have the best of both worlds, provided that we are secure i n our identities, our traditions, our h istories, and we hold the past in bal ance with the ever-shifting dynamics of the present. (But there wi ll be losses.) Much of who a nd what we are as I ndigenous peoples of Te Moananu i-a-Kiwa is really marginal to the concerns of the Asia-Pacific Triennial while we are still trying to retrace our ancient and d istant connections. But we are central to ourselves; we live in our own place, not i n some Nothemer's antipodes. Our time is coming. Watch this space. 1 . Pleasures & Dangers video. 2. Hayes, 'Burning Bridges', in Art Asia Pacific, vol.3, no. 3, 1 996, pp. 31 -33. 35