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How can we understand the Pacific, Asia, and the broader world from indigenous perspectives–from the perspective of the people that Westerners claimed to “discover”? This paper turns the tables on stories of exploration by tracing the travels of two Native Hawaiians who traveled the Pacific in the late eighteenth century. Ka Wahine (a commoner and lady’s maid) and Kaʻiana (a male high chief who took an English captain as his lover) traveled to Macao, the Philippines, Pelau, the Aleutians, and Vancouver Island. Their motives, their experiences, and the ways they put their knowledge to use shed light on how knowledge and power were at play in the age of exploration. Placing indigenous exploration at the center of study opens up a much more sophisticated understanding of the forces at play in shaping the modern world and colonial spaces—especially if we use sources in indigenous languages by indigenous people.

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This pathbreaking study provides the first comprehensive examination of India-China interactions in the broader contexts of Asian and world history. By focusing on material exchanges, transmissions of knowledge and technologies, networks of exchange during the colonial period, and little-known facets of interactions between the Republic of India and the People’s Republic of China, Tansen Sen argues convincingly that the analysis of India-China connections must extend beyond the traditional frameworks of nation-states or bilateralism. Instead, he demonstrates that a wide canvas of space, people, objects, and timeframe is needed to fully comprehend the interactions between India and China in the past and during the contemporary period. [...] The author’s formidable array of sources, pulled from archives and libraries around the world, range from Chinese travel accounts to Indian intelligence reports. Examining the connected histories of the two regions, Sen fills a striking gap in the study of India and China in a global setting” (quoted from the blurb). Stewart Beck, former Canadian High Commissioner to India and President and CEO of the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada, and Professor Anup Grewal, Assistant Professor in the Department of Historical and Cultural Studies, UofT, will join the author Tansen Sen in a discussion of his book. The book will be available for sale at the venue.

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This presentation examines the spread of Chinese temples associated with the veneration of Ruan and Liang buddhas from Sihui County in Guangdong Province, China, through Southeast Asia to the Chinatown in Kolkata, India. Ruan Ziyu and Liang Cineng were followers of the sixth Chan patriarch Huineng (638–713) and are believed to have attained enlightenment and become buddhas during the Song dynasty (960-1279). In the thirteenth century temples dedicated to these two Chinese buddhas were established in the Sihui County. With the migration of people from the region in the nineteenth century, the belief in the two buddhas and the temples associated with them spread to present-day Malaysia and India. These Ruan-Liang temples in foreign settings functioned as religious sites as well as community spaces and heritage markers. By tracing the spread (and evolution) of the Ruan-Liang belief and examining the communal function of the temples through the use of photographs, this paper analyzes the relationship between migration and the diffusion of Chinese religious traditions, the role of temples in the preservation of sub-dialect identity, the mixing of Chinese and local ideas and histories, and the intimate maritime connections between China, Southeast Asia, and India in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century.

Biography:

Tansen Sen is Professor of history and the Director of the Center for Global Asia at NYU Shanghai. He received his MA from Peking University and Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. He specializes in Asian history and religions and has special scholarly interests in India-China interactions, Indian Ocean connections, and Buddhism. He is the author of Buddhism, Diplomacy, and Trade: The Realignment of Sino-Indian Relations, 600-1400 (2003; 2016) and India, China, and the World: A Connected History (2017). He has co-authored (with Victor H. Mair) Traditional China in Asian and World History (2012) and edited Buddhism Across Asia: Networks of Material, Cultural and Intellectual Exchange (2014). He is currently working on a book about Zheng He’s maritime expeditions in the early fifteenth century and co-editing (with Engseng Ho) the Cambridge History of the Indian Ocean, volume 1. He has done extensive research in India, China, Japan, and Singapore with grants from the American Institute of Indian Studies, the Japan Foundation, the American Philosophical Society, the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (Singapore). He was the founding head of the Nalanda-Sriwijaya Center in Singapore and served on the Governing Board of the Nalanda University.

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In recent years, the task of “restorying” has been identified as an important strategy in making space for the counternarratives of the nation-state from the perspective of Indigenous histories. Here, I use four stories to start to tell a different history of Indigenous Ainu life in Japan. The stories recount Ainu experiences of migration to Tokyo and other cities since the early 1900s. Beyond their narrative content, I explain how these stories are part of a broader political project that urban Ainu leaders have used for over forty years to contest and resist the ‘regionalization’ of Indigenous Ainu affairs to Hokkaido. Using the Ainu situation as my reference point, I develop a comparative conversation about the transformation of Indigenous geographies across the Pacific and elaborate on the fraught politics but also moral value of thinking with urban mobilities. I end with reflections on an exchange between Tokyo Ainu and Montreal Inuit in Osaka in 2003 and its relevance for my current project.

Biography:

Mark Watson is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Concordia University. His main area of research concerns the comparative analysis of urban Indigenous collectivity, self-organization and mobility. This focus informs broader, on-going interest in practices and theories of action-oriented and collaborative research.

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Abstract:
In 1995, at a UN meeting on indigenous rights, China and Japan each declared that there were no indigenous people in Asia because indigeneity was a product of European colonialism. Yet, their statements belied China’s past and Japan’s future. In the past, China had been a consistent and ardent supporter of global indigenous rights, inviting more indigenous groups than any other country. Thirteen years in the future, the Japanese government reversed its position and declared that its Ainu citizens were indigenous peoples. This talk explores the hidden history of China’s role in mobilizing indigenous groups throughout the Asia Pacific. We focus on how China’s repeated invitations to Ainu led them to transform their own identity, as well as radically challenge Japanese society itself. China was perhaps the Ainu’s most important catalyst for becoming important players in global indigenous dynamics.

Biographies:
Michael Hathaway is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. His first book, Environmental Winds: Making the Global in Southwest China (California, 2013), explores the intersections between China’s emergence on the stage of global conservation and the rise of questions of indigeneity within China itself.

Scott Harrison is Program Manager at the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada, a not-for-profit organization focused on Canada-Asia relations. His research examines global Indigenous peoples and Cold War history, Canada-Asia business and policy issues, and building Asia-related competencies for Canadians. He obtained a PhD in History from the University of Waterloo.