15 April 2024, 2:00-4:30 PM at the Center for Korean Studies
Register here for this event
We are pleased to invite you to a special launch and discussion of the latest volume in the Pacific Islands Monograph Series (PIMS), My Land, My Life: Dispossession at the Frontier of Desire, with author Siobhan McDonnell!
Land, and the kinship it nurtures, is the basis for sustaining livelihoods and ways of life. My Land, My Life explores the land rush that took place in Vanuatu from 2001 to 2014 which resulted in over 10% of all customary land being leased. In this book, Siobhan McDonnell offers new insights into the drivers of capitalist land transformations. Using multi-scalar and multi-sited ethnography she describes not simply a linear march toward commodification of the landscape by foreign interests, but a complex web replete with the local powerful Indigenous men involved in manipulating power and property.
The launch and discussion will be on Monday, 15 April 2024 from 2:00 to 4:30 PM HST (Tuesday, 16 April 2024 at 11:00 AM in Port Vila and Tuesday, 16 April 2024 at 10:00 AM in Canberra) in the Center for Korean Studies building (1891 East-West Rd. Honolulu, HI 96822).
Siobhan McDonnell is a lawyer and anthropologist with over 25 years of experience working with Indigenous people in Australia and Oceania on land rights, gender, and climate change issues. She is a Associate Professor at the Australian National University’s Crawford School of Public Policy and has been a lead negotiator on climate change for the Vanuatu and Fiji governments.
