Hiapo: Past and Present in Niuean Barkcloth.

HIAPO: Past and Present in Niuean Barkcloth. By John Pule and Nicholas Thomas. Dunedin, New Zealand: University of Otago Press. 2005. 159 pp. (Pictures.) US$59.95, cloth. ISBN 1-877372-00-5.

Hiapo: Past and Present in Niuean Barkcloth is a beautifully illustrated text with images, mostly in color, of Niuean tapa as well as paintings and black and white etchings by one of the authors, John Pule. The study of Pacific indigenous textiles has slowly begun to gain in significance since the time I was told to abandon the idea of graduate study in this "insignificant" area. Their role as objects of aesthetic and social consequence is finally being explored. However, this is the first text to focus on barkcloth from the island of Niue.

Hiapo is written from two very different perspectives and this can make for rough going for some readers. Pule, an artist and poet of Niuean decent, approaches the material as a vehicle for personal reflection. He speaks in metaphor, the language of poetry, in order to record his own journeys and histories as well as those of the places and art he encounters. Pule weaves a tapestry of cloth, architecture, space, light, organics, growth, reproduction, soil, water. In an attempt to counter colonial "expertise," he considers tapa as a record of encounters, embodying a myriad of relationships. The prose is lyrical as we are carried along in the author's journey of discovery. However, I wish that the reader could also visually experience what Pule does; the objects he writes so personally about are not illustrated.

In contrast to Pule's intensely personal passages, Nicholas Thomas's text is more in keeping with Western analytical style. The misattribution and dating of many Niuean barkcloths has resulted in a detachment from the contexts of their creation. Therefore, Thomas acknowledges that a lack of data with which to provide contextualization renders his views as impressionistic as Pule's. However, his focus is more on the presumption of Western authority and its marginalization of Pacific textiles in both research and museums. The theme of colonial intellectual hegemony is found embedded throughout the book. In his questioning of the ethics of museums and collecting, the intentional mutilation of pieces acquired by the early European explorers in order to create sample books becomes a prime example. Thomas also calls for the greater inclusion of indigenous voices in the presentation and interpretation of materials on display.

Both authors see this book as one step in "reverse marginalization." However, they are also clear that the text is not intended as a dialogue between a Niuean and an anthropologist, but as a means of creating space for talk. For many Pacific peoples, it is the space between (the va) that allows for growth and the development of relationships. In Hiapo, Pule and Thomas have made spaces that allow for speculation and acknowledge the power of personal experience and the formation of relationships. Consequently, this is not a work where conclusions are drawn, but rather where questions are asked. That process is often hard on the reader, but it is a journey worth starting on.

ANNE E. GUERNSEY ALLEN

Indiana University, Southeast, USA