It's normal for westerners to travel in different worlds from their own and then write about their experiences. It's a lot less common to come across someone from another world who describes what they have experienced in our world. We westerners are centered in our cultural reality and take it for granted while that of others is only considered in a peripheral way. When this viewpoint is shattered the egocentric western outlook is deeply disturbed. So, almost a century ago the German poet Enrich Sheurmann was the first, followed by millions, to delight in the reminiscences of the Tuavian Chief, who, on his return to Samoa described to his people the Westerner, the Papalagi, and how he lives. That account is certainly one that shouldn’t be forgotten on the bookshelf as having already been read. In its simplicity and frankness it is ready at any moment to shine a blessed ray of light on the clouded heart of western man. But the time of Tuavii is already long gone. The Papalagi has not stopped his mad race and his world meantime has changed. A descendant of Tuavii, Apineru, chief of a small community left his little island for about a year travelling to the west in the seventies. In Papalagi Act II, Apineru while sitting on his mat, describes what he has seen and experienced to his family members and other islanders that visit him of evenings in his hut. What is the everyday life of a westerner, what are progress, television and freedom to a man, seemingly uncultured, yet with only the good and well-being of his virgin island at heart? His style follows no logic, there’s no false pretence in his criticisms and the impressions that he communicates and the images that he describes do not follow any classical line of analysis that the Papalagi are used to. Apineru cuts through all the usual paradigms simply with the freshness of his sentiment, in the poetry and magic of his singular imagination, provoking us to smile and look beyond the daily shortcomings of so called modern life. Available in German, French and Italian. The original version of the Papalagi edited by Erich Sheurmann has been published in English by Legacy Editions in 1997, under the title Tuiavii's way. The text (no copyright) can be read also here http://www.nonduality.com/papalagi.htmIndex "The Papalagi poisons himself day after day, word after word, action after action, mouthful after mouthful. He doesn’t die straight away as was about to happen to me, but a bit by bit, day after day. In the end, he is dead even without realizing it. But now too much time has passed from the moment that the poisoning has begun and so the dead Papalagi doesn’t remember anything of how life was at the beginning. So the Papalagi behaves like the protagonist of that story that a village chief told me when he visited our island on the day I got married. It is told that a certain Ira left his island where he had his father, mother, brothers and sisters to look for pearls on other islands even though you could find marvellous pearls in the sea around his. He reached another island in his canoe and stayed there for a while finding pearls, but a bit smaller than those found around his. So he left even that island to go to another, then another again, finding pearls but always smaller. He arrived at a sixth island, and here the pearls were so small that you could hardly see them. One morning he took his canoe out and reached a seventh island. He landed and here he met some men and women to whom he immediately tried to sell his merchandise. Straightaway the islanders recognized him as the brother who had left a long time before, who, from a seeker of precious pearls, had transformed into a collector of empty shells. In fact he had returned to the island from which he had begun his adventure, but he wasn’t aware of it..." MetaArt Editions [email protected] Coming Publications: The Submarine and the Whale, by Cristelle Wells The King’s Chef, by Amussis Charisteas

Changing your mind to change the world is the general principle proposed to educate for responsibility. Using an interdisciplinary scientific approach, this book dissects the functioning of the ego, that is to say the belief in a self, an illusion that causes disharmony. After an original modeling of the notion of responsibility, the author deduces that it is incumbent on all of us to become aware of the relationship between our own minds and the world. Thus, gaining consistency and awareness, everyone would have the potential to free themselves from the illusion of the ego and contribute to a more harmonious world. This book therefore proposes psychospiritual skills, favored in particular by different forms of reflexivity and by meditation (and mindfulness), which can serve as a basis for a curriculum to educate for responsibility. This academic connection between meditation and ethics is a major innovative contribution.

Full of colorful details and engrossing stories, Pursuing Respect in the Cannibal Isles shows that the aspirations of individual Americans to be recognized as people worthy of others' respect was a driving force in the global extension of United States influence shortly after the nation's founding. Nancy Shoemaker contends that what she calls extraterritorial Americans constituted the vanguard of a vast, early US global expansion. Using as her site of historical investigation nineteenth-century Fiji, the "cannibal isles" of American popular culture, she uncovers stories of Americans looking for opportunities to rise in social status and enhance their sense of self. Prior to British colonization in 1874, extraterritorial Americans had, she argues, as much impact on Fiji as did the British. While the American economy invested in the extraction of sandalwood and sea slugs as resources to sell in China, individuals who went to Fiji had more complicated, personal objectives. Pursuing Respect in the Cannibal Isles considers these motivations through the lives of the three Americans who left the deepest imprint on Fiji: a runaway whaleman who settled in the islands, a sea captain's wife, and a merchant. Shoemaker's book shows how ordinary Americans living or working overseas found unusual venues where they could show themselves worthy of others' respect—others' approval, admiration, or deference.

An epic spanning three generations, Leaves of the Banyan Tree tells the story of a family and community in Western Samoa, exploring on a grand scale such universal themes as greed, corruption, colonialism, exploitation, and revenge. Winner of the 1980 New Zealand Wattie Book of the Year Award, it is considered a classic work of Pacific literature.

Originally published in 1973, this story of star-crossed lovers spotlights the complex nature of love, freedom, and racism in New Zealand. Samoan writer Albert Wendt's first novel, Sons for the Return Home, has long been out of print. Yet, readers continue to respond to the clarity of vision in this simple, powerful story of cross-cultural encounter.

The Argonauts in the Pacific, famous through Malinowski's work, have not been exempt from general historical developments in the world around them. By focusing on two plays performed by the Tokelau Te Ata, a theater group, the author reveals the self-perceptions of the Tokelau and highlights the dynamic relationship between issues of representation and political processes such as nation building, infrastructural changes and increased regional migration. It is through an analysis of communicative practices, which the author carried out in the home atolls and in the diasporic communities in New Zealand, that we arrive at a proper understanding of how global processes affect local institutions and everyday interaction.