Beyond the Rupture: Forming Indigenous Christianity as a Temporal Hybridity

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Abstract:
This talk explores the central thesis of Misaki’s monograph, Christianity, Colonialism and Indigenous History in French Polynesia: Advance into Past by examining the contemporary
analysis of Christian conversion—an event initiated over 200 years ago—within the formation of Indigenous Christianity in French Polynesia. I argue that for the theological actors of the Maohi Protestant Church (EPM), conversion is understood less as an internal transformation and more as a historical modality that incorporates the arrival of the ‘foreigner’ without erasing indigenous religiosity. By tracing a historical trajectory from the initial missionary contact in 1797 through the era of nuclear experimentation and the contemporary pressures of neoliberal markets, I demonstrate how the EPM actively forges what they term the ‘True Māòhi Religion.’ This ethnically tailored faith serves as a strategic synthesis of temporalities, designed to overcome two distinct historical toparaa (fallings): the loss of ancient cults and the modern deterioration of traditional community bonds. Ultimately, I illustrate how the ‘True Māòhi Religion’ functions as an evolving product of resistance against the precariousness of Pacific modernity and the invisibility of the indigenous subject within the colonial state.
The seminar will be led by dr Małgorzata Owczarska.

Bio:
Mai Misaki is a Hakubi researcher at Kyoto University. In her doctoral research (University of Oxford), she focused on Indigenous Christianity in French Polynesia and the role of colonial history and memory in forming religion. She also worked on revitalisation movements on intangible Indigenous cultural heritage in the Pacific, such as traditional medicine, language, and dance. Currently, her main research project focuses on pro-independence narratives and the vision of sovereignty in French Polynesia.

Małgorzata Owczarska is a cultural anthropologist and ethnographer affiliated with the Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Warsaw. She completed her doctoral training at the Graduate School for Social Research, Polish Academy of Sciences, and was a Fulbright scholar at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa. Her research focuses on blue humanities, Polynesian ethnography, Indigenous studies, and postcolonialism, with fieldwork conducted in Poland, Lithuania, and French Polynesia. Author of the book “Theory of Reconnection. Paths of Tahitian Activism.”