Time: 2pm to 3pm AEDT
Date: Friday, 22 March 2024
Speaker: Anna Naupa, PhD Candidate, CHL-ECDI
Venue: Engma Room 3.165, HC Coombs Building & Online via Zoom
Meeting ID: 870 9460 4439
Passcode: 689488
When Vanuatu Prime Minister Alatoi Ishmael Kalsakau Maau’koro and French President Emmanuel Macron held high-level talks on 27 July 2023, their backdrop was the colourful and vibrant 7th Melanesian Arts and Cultural Festival (MACFEST). Following a series of traditional welcomes, including one by the Paramount Chief of Ifira island in Port Vila harbour, Kalsakau’s ancestral home, Kalsakau and Macron agreed to resolve the long-standing maritime boundary dispute over the Matthew and Hunter islands in southern Vanuatu before the year was out. New Caledonian President Louis Mapou was present in the talks, and, when prompted by Macron allegedly advised that Kanaky chiefs had already confirmed through kastom that the contested islands are traditionally bound to southern Vanuatu, captured in the Keamu Accord. The talks were then sealed with the sharing of kava, as per kastom protocol.
The intentional use of kastom or indigeneity in statecraft is a form of what I call vernacular diplomacy. My PhD research explores how the concept of the kastom roads in Vanuatu’s vernacular diplomacies has utility in understanding how diverse cultural identities form, adapt and traverse socio-political boundaries, including when a homogenous kastom identity is appropriated by the state for diplomatic outcomes. Effective navigation of kastom roads across cultural and state structures requires skilled actors, often emergent elites, – whom I refer to as vernacular diplomats – who have bounded identities as well as a deep understanding of all systems relevant to the success of a diplomatic encounter.
About the speaker
Anna Naupa commenced her PhD at the School of Culture, History & Language (CHL) in 2022. Her PhD project is supervised by Associate Professor Chris Ballard of CHL-ECDI.
As a ni-Vanuatu woman who has professionally worked across culture, history and diplomatic fields, both internationally and locally with her paternal island community of Erromango in southern Vanuatu, Anna’s research focuses on understanding how indigenous cultural systems and structures facilitate peaceful inter-community and trans-boundary relationships, and mediate conflict, at a range of scales from community to island, and nation to neighbour, in Vanuatu. By privileging local voices in indigenous traditions of diplomacy in Vanuatu, Anna hopes to broaden academic understanding of the evolution and diversity in concepts of indigenous Melanesian diplomacies.
Event Speakers
Anna holds a Masters in Public Administration from the Harvard Kennedy School at Harvard University (2014) and an MA in Geography from the University of Hawai’i, Manoa (2004). Her MA thesis on plural land tenure systems in Vanuatu contributed to national land law reforms, enhancing safeguards for customary governance systems.