Matters of Empathy and Nuclear Colonialism: Marshallese Voices Marked in Story, Song, and Illustration

Schwartz, Jessica A. (November 2016). "Matters of Empathy and Nuclear Colonialism: Marshallese Voices Marked in Story, Song, and Illustration". Music and Politics. X (2): 1–16. doi:10.3998/mp.9460447.0010.206. ISSN 1938-7687.

Abstract: The United States detonated 67 nuclear weapons in the Marshall Islands from 1946 through 1958. During this period, the archipelago was part of the U. N. Strategic Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands (TTPI), which was administered by the United States. The tests and scientific and medical programs were shrouded in secrecy; information about the tests conducted on Marshallese bodies and their lands remains largely classified. I conducted ethnographic work from 2008 through 2010 in what is now the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI), politically autonomous from the United States since 1986, and in northwest Arkansas and southwest Missouri from 2011 onwards. Marshallese will often note that they do not have a written history; rather, they rely on their voices to interactively share their oral histories in story and song. My Marshallese interlocutors living in the RMI and US stress the value of collecting these dynamic oral histories as well as utilizing them for pedagogical purposes and in platforms for social justice at events like the annual Nuclear Remembrance Day ceremonies. In 2013, I co-founded the Marshallese Educational Initiative (MEI), an Arkansas-based nonprofit to develop intercultural pedagogy and outreach through projects such as the Marshallese Oral History Project and Digital Music Archive (MOHP), Nuclear Remembrance Day, and collaborative work with Marshallese college student members of the Manit Club (Culture Club). In this article, I define Marshallese voices in terms of material and political representations. The word for voice and sound are the same in the Marshallese language (ainikien). Voice is its sonorous materiality, but it also represents the throat, where various physiological and emotional processes coalesce. Marshallese body perception of the throat as the center of the emotions also speaks to larger notions of connectivity, communication, and social values. Marshallese social organization is based on land and lineage, specifically,…

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