Indigenous Way of Representing themselves through Media

The programme of Miss South Pacific can be seen as a platform for indigenous people to self-represent and self-determinate. To proudly speak out to the world using their own voice and to decolonise themselves.

In the video of 2007 Miss South Pacific, the winner Miss Tonga showed herself with her natural beauty, her original fascinating indigenous cultural background and her fabulous talent. She has the burden of representing her community. She succeeded for doing so.

In the video, she was performing the Tongan, Samoan and other pacific traditional dance by changing her dressing. She is seen as eligible for representing Tonga and even South Pacific, since she knows the culture of her own community.

Although English is not the original language of the indigenous people, it is used as a tool for communicating between different cultural groups. Through this way, indigenous could express their own feelings to the non-indigenous. This can be traced in the video, when Miss Tonga making her speech to the audience.

One may be encouraged to use the ideology of post-colonialism. According to the lecture, it is “a way of looking at the world, a way that understands the present postcolonial situation in the light of the past colonial situation, and draws our attention to this link – not to remind us or make us feel guilty, but to see how this past is still relevant and still has an influence on power relations

and social attitudes” (O’Shaugnessy and Stadler’s Media and Society: An Introduction).

From this point, we could tell that the main focus is to represent the indigenous identities in the contemporary society instead of merely concentrating on the past colonisation.

This could be done through the method of media disseminating, for instance, the Miss South Pacific.

Sources:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fF9_SWRfTG8

Woodward, Suzanne. "Post-colonialism." FTVMS 325. The University of Auckland. 6 May. 2016. Lecture.