Indigenous Studies and Religious Colonialism
In the Pacific, perhaps one of the most insidious of all types of colonialism is the religious type, particularly Christian colonialism. I take great risk in outright calling it colonialism because of the sensitive nature of the issue and perhaps because of the privileged status of Christianity not only among Pacific Islanders but among many indigenous peoples. Pacific societies are often times staunchly conservative in their approach to their acceptance of Christianity and the complexities in dealing with how they are addressed in terms of colonization/decolonization rhetoric.

Vicente Diaz’s Repositioning the Missionary teases out the complexities of this religious colonialism in Guam in the efforts to recognize a colonial figurehead, Father Diego San Vitores. Diaz asks a very important question: “Why, when the rest of colonized Oceania is trying to decolonize itself, are Guam’s indigenous leaders and laity celebrating the island’s most conspicuous colonial figure?” (4). Perhaps an adequate response to describe this phenomenon is that there are intricate layers of complexities among indigenous conceptions of identity and how this is often reorganized to consolidate various histories. [THIS SECTION will expanded upon later].

A similar observation could be made about the situation in Sāmoa. As we recall from Dan Taulapapa McMullin’s piece in Queer Indigenous Studies, religious colonialism is explicit in Sāmoa and in comes in recurrent waves. The first dealt with the initial onslaught of Christian missionaries who became the established denominations and soon made Christianity acculturated in the fa‘asāmoa (Samoan way of life). Various stories are used to justify the coming of Christianity and its firm establishment, or rather acculturation, in Samoan culture – at times demonizing those who rejected the new religion (as had been done to Matapang) and praising those who accepted the new faith for their unfettered piety. Various aspects of Samoan culture, as well as traditional characters and personalities endemic to Sāmoa were viciously demonized. [If you would like to see an example, please click on this story: Part 1]. A binary rhetoric is imposed on traditional native religious paradigms to fit the Christian message and assert its hegemony [an example is a cooptation of the neutral word ‘aitu’ (a spirit or a family god) to mean ‘ghost’ or ‘evil spirit’ or tevolo – ‘demon’, primarily pejorative connotations are given to entities that were largely viewed on a spectrum (good, neutral, or bad)].
In relation to Hawai‘i, the canonization process of the two Catholic missionaries Father Damien (Joseph De Veuster) and Mother Marianne Cope reveals various efforts by both Native and non-Natives to bring to the highest honors. But none of these candidates were of Native blood, and as much elsewhere in the Pacific, the rhetoric of native being “saved” and “civilized” by European missionary agents where a common phenomenon. Peter Chanel, Francis Xavier, and now Joseph De Veuster and soon to be Marianne Cope are all treasured “patrons” of the Pacific yet none of them are indigenous to the region. No native in the Pacific is deemed worthy of the highest recognition in the church, yet they are glorified through non-Native agents of missionary colonization.

If one were to ask the question, why would the people of Hawai‘i, including Native Hawaiians, be so enthusiastic in the canonization a figure associated with a missionary legacy of colonization of the Hawaiian Islands (including the alienation of native lands, usurpation of sovereignty, and the marginalization of the indigenous people) would this be a legitimate comparison to the case of San Vitores with the Chamorro?