Consuming Ocean Island: Stories of People and Phosphate from Banaba

by Katerina Martina Teaiwa

Overview

Consuming Ocean Island tells the story of the land and people of Banaba, a small Pacific island, which, from 1900 to 1980, was heavily mined for phosphate, an essential ingredient in fertilizer. As mining stripped away the island's surface, the land was rendered uninhabitable, and the indigenous Banabans were relocated to Rabi Island in Fiji. Katerina Martina Teaiwa tells the story of this human and ecological calamity by weaving together memories, records, and images from displaced islanders, colonial administrators, and employees of the mining company. Her compelling narrative reminds us of what is at stake whenever the interests of industrial agriculture and indigenous minorities come into conflict. The Banaban experience offers insight into the plight of other island peoples facing forced migration as a result of human impact on the environment.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780253014528
Publisher:	Indiana University Press
Publication date:	12/27/2014
Series:	Tracking Globalization
Pages:	264
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Katerina Martina Teaiwa is Head of the Department of Gender, Media and Cultural Studies and Pacific Studies Convener in the College of Asia and the Pacific at the Australian National University. Born and raised in the Fiji Islands, she is of Banaban, I-Kiribati, and African American heritage.

Table of Contents

Prelude: Three Global Stories

Acknowledgments
Notes on Orthography and Geography

Part I. Phosphate Pasts
1. The Little Rock That Feeds
2. Stories of P
3. Land from the Sea

Part II. Mine/lands
4. Remembering Ocean Island
5. Land from the Sky
6. Interlude: Another Visit to Ocean Island
7. E Kawa te aba: The Trials of the Ocean Islanders
8. Remix: Our Sea of Phosphate (photo essay)

Part III. Between Our Islands
9. Interlude: Coming Home to Fiji
10. Between Rabi and Banaba

Coda

Ocean Island/Banaba Timeline
Notes
Bibliography

What People are Saying About This

"Consuming Ocean Island is an ethnographic and analytic tour-de-force. Writing an intimate cultural history of the island of Banaba, Kiribati, conjoined with a history of phosphate and its extraction, Katerina Teaiwa places us amid unsettling stories of mining and its violent transformations—phosphate turned to fertilizer, a bountiful Pacific homeland left desolate, a people and their island's very earth dispersed around the globe. In part a moving family story, this brilliant ethnography offers new ways to track globalization, dispersal, and creative recovery."

Kirin Narayan]]>

Consuming Ocean Island is an ethnographic and analytic tour-de-force. Writing an intimate cultural history of the island of Banaba, Kiribati, conjoined with a history of phosphate and its extraction, Katerina Teaiwa places us amid unsettling stories of mining and its violent transformations—phosphate turned to fertilizer, a bountiful Pacific homeland left desolate, a people and their island's very earth dispersed around the globe. In part a moving family story, this brilliant ethnography offers new ways to track globalization, dispersal, and creative recovery.

Kirin Narayan

Consuming Ocean Island is an ethnographic and analytic tour-de-force. Writing an intimate cultural history of the island of Banaba, Kiribati, conjoined with a history of phosphate and its extraction, Katerina Teaiwa places us amid unsettling stories of mining and its violent transformations—phosphate turned to fertilizer, a bountiful Pacific homeland left desolate, a people and their island's very earth dispersed around the globe. In part a moving family story, this brilliant ethnography offers new ways to track globalization, dispersal, and creative recovery.

Editorial Reviews

08/11/2014
In this dense work, Teaiwa, a Banaban by birth and co-convener of Pacific Studies in the College of Asia and the Pacific at the Australian National University, proffers an insider’s look at the geological, political, social and economic history of Banaba (aka Ocean Island), a miniscule island in the Republic of Kiribati. Teaiwa juxtaposes personal and community anecdotes with years of solid academic research to examine the effects of phosphate mining on the landscape. On a 1997 visit, Teaiwa encountered a “desiccated field of rocks and jagged limestone pinnacles jutting out of a gray earth,” an “industrial oceanic wasteland” full of “roofless concrete buildings and corrugated iron warehouses.” For most of the 20th century, British companies mined the island for its phosphate, a key ingredient in fertilizer, which is key to agriculture and global food security. Teaiwa deals with the great sense of betrayal, loss, and displacement indigenous Banabans suffered through as well as the harsh physical toll decades of excessive mining has taken on the land. With a justified sense of outrage, Teaiwa educates her audience without alienating it, laying bare the consequences of reaping such a natural bounty at the expense of others. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

Teaiwa displays artfully the powerful potential of interdisciplinarity as an approach toward gaining a richer and deeper understanding of Pacific pasts and peoples.

The Contemporary Pacific

"Teaiwa deals with the great sense of betrayal, loss, and displacement indigenous Banabans suffered through as well as the harsh physical toll decades of excessive mining has taken on the land. With a justified sense of outrage, Teaiwa educates her audience without alienating it, laying bare the consequences of reaping such a natural bounty at the expense of others."—Publishers Weekly

"Recommended."—Choice

"A detailed ethnography of Banaba undertaken by a researcher who hails from this 'very, very small island' . . . is an example of reflectivity and insightful scholarship. This is not a book to be taken lightly, but rather should be suggested to anyone with an interest in material culture, globalization, and post-colonial and ecological studies."—Antipode

"Teaiwa displays artfully the powerful potential of interdisciplinarity as an approach toward gaining a richer and deeper understanding of Pacific pasts and peoples."—The Contemporary Pacific

"By bringing gritty ethnographic detail, an omnivorous approach to sources, and surprising narrative innovations to bear on such topics, Teaiwa's book moves the social history of Earth's biogeochemical cycles into fertile new terrain."—The Journal of Pacific History

"Consuming Ocean Island is an ethnographic and analytic tour-de-force. Writing an intimate cultural history of the island of Banaba, Kiribati, conjoined with a history of phosphate and its extraction, Katerina Teaiwa places us amid unsettling stories of mining and its violent transformations—phosphate turned to fertilizer, a bountiful Pacific homeland left desolate, a people and their island's very earth dispersed around the globe. In part a moving family story, this brilliant ethnography offers new ways to track globalization, dispersal, and creative recovery."—Kirin Narayan, author of Alive in the Writing: Crafting Ethnography in the Company of Chekhov

From the Publisher

By bringing gritty ethnographic detail, an omnivorous approach to sources, and surprising narrative innovations to bear on such topics, Teaiwa's book moves the social history of Earth's biogeochemical cycles into fertile new terrain.

The Journal of Pacific History

A detailed ethnography of Banaba undertaken by a researcher who hails from this 'very, very small island' . . . is an example of reflectivity and insightful scholarship. This is not a book to be taken lightly, but rather should be suggested to anyone with an interest in material culture, globalization, and post-colonial and ecological studies.

Antipode

Recommended.

Choice