Ethnographic Poetry and Academic Writing: A Reflection

“Whatever your eye can see, it's vecik.” This line resonated with me while I was conducting my fieldwork in Taiwan with the indigenous Paiwan village known as Paridrayan. Good friend and prolific artist, Etan Pavavaljung, once mentioned to me this Paiwan concept known as vecik. The concept, briefly speaking, implies an interconnectedness that links all tangible things with each other. From humans, rocks, and trees to winds and words, they are connected to each other through vecik...“However,” he added, “something like poetry can be vecik.”. He continued, “let’s take for example, a village elder reciting a poem about his childhood. He recites verses about his flower garden from his childhood home as well as reminiscing his childhood days. These words become vecik.”

Ep. #26 Mining Banaba: Katerina Teaiwa talks mining phosphate & decolonising modern anthropology

“The body of the people is in that landscape so when it's mined and crushed and dug up, you’re not just doing it with rock, you’re also doing it with people, with the remains of people, and we know that happened on Banaba.” Katerina Teaiwa, Associate Professor at the School of Culture, History and Language … Continue reading Ep. #26 Mining Banaba: Katerina Teaiwa talks mining phosphate & decolonising modern anthropology

Ep. #23 Decolonizing anthropology, with Sana Ashraf and Bruma Rios-Mendoza: this month on TFS

"We think we are supposed to be comfortable. As long as we are trying to do everything to be comfortable, we will never make a change." In this themed panel discussion, our own Jodie and Simon sat down with Sana Ashraf and Bruma Rios-Mendoza, two PhD candidates in anthropology at ANU, to talk about decolonization: … Continue reading Ep. #23 Decolonizing anthropology, with Sana Ashraf and Bruma Rios-Mendoza: this month on TFS