Abstract
This historically grounded paper analyzes how pre-colonial, pre-Christian indigenous conceptualizations of Blackness in Hawai’i and the Philippines shaped initial contacts between the indigenous peoples of the Pacific and Black migrants to the region. From Kānaka Maoli notions of the primordial black pō from which all created beings emerged with a shared genealogy, to Filipino antiblackness against indigenous Aeta and Ati peoples that predated Spanish colonialism, this paper maps these two very different and internally complex ways of rendering blackness with indigenous Pacific cosmologies. It then examines how white imperialist missionaries imposed their own renderings of blackness upon the Pacific through religiously-informed hierarchies that rendered race through the lens of imperial conquest and biblical providence. Finally, it will explore Black religious thought which came to see (problematically) the indigenous lands of the Pacific as the “Negro’s Cannan” that would enable an Exodus from Atlantic slavery and the building of an abolitionist paradise on earth. By exploring these four competing religious interpretations of race making through a global trans-Atlantic/trans-Pacific approach this paper sheds new light on the process of American empire, its epistemological underpinnings, and its connections to both slavery and emancipation around the world.
Presenters
Guy MountAssistant Professor, History, Wake Forest University, North Carolina, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
2026 Special Focus—Indigenous Spiritualities in Global Perspective
KEYWORDS
Indigeneity
