“The Polynesian Problem”: Western Studies of Pacific Islander Origins

“What is a Polynesian?” This is a question with a long and troubling history embedded in settler colonialism. Join the Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology and Harvard Museums of Science & Culture on Monday, March 15 for the virtual lecture, "The Polynesian Problem."

From Europeans’ earliest encounters with the Pacific, White Europeans expressed a fascination and partial identification with the racial origins of Polynesians. Polynesians seemed to represent “natural man” in the purest state. In nineteenth- and early twentieth-century social-scientific studies, Polynesian origins became the subject of intense scrutiny and debate. Physical anthropologists such as Louis R. Sullivan declared Polynesians to be conditionally Caucasian. Maile Arvin, Assistant Professor of History and Gender Studies at the University of Utah, will discuss this history from a Native Hawaiian feminist perspective, attentive to the ways Polynesians have challenged as well as appropriated such ideas. This talk is presented by