Keeping the Canoe on Course. Performing Arts, Ecologies of Knowledge, and Etak

The performing arts constitute knowledge in many Pacific Island settings, as scholars in Pacific studies—Western Pacific music studies in particular—have emphasized for a long time. Their relational and ecological complexity has recently moved to the fore as a major category for the analysis of traditional performing arts in the Pacific Islands. Academic exploration of such knowledge, however, treads on complex ground: the postcolonial entanglement of ontological, epistemological and interdisciplinary challenges poses multiple difficulties for any research that pledges to be mindful of diversity and critical of the contemporaneity of colonialism and imperialism. In this contribution, I follow the call of Pacific Island scholars to consider the potential of etak as a critical tool that might help acknowledge these challenges. Etak is a central Carolinian nautical technique. Pacific Indigenous studies have used it prominently as an Indigenous response to the triangulating approaches common in social science research. In this article, I sound out the concept’s potential usefulness for the study of the performing arts in the Western Pacific Island world and beyond. I also argue that etak resonates well with Tim Ingold’s critique of conventional ethnography and offers viable suggestions for an improved methodology of working with music-making ethnographically.