<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><rss xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" version="2.0"><channel><title><![CDATA[Reef Shark]]></title><description><![CDATA[Reef Shark]]></description><link>https://www.reefshark.online/blog</link><generator>RSS for Node</generator><lastBuildDate>Wed, 14 Oct 2026 05:09:44 GMT</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://www.reefshark.online/blog-feed.xml" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"/><item><title><![CDATA[Jack London versus Melanesia]]></title><description><![CDATA[Scott Hamilton Adelaide University scholar Mandy Treagus will be giving a talk called 'Jack London in the Solomon Islands: race, labour, &#38; Melanesianism' on the 15th of October. Anyone can watch the talk via Zoom using the following link: https://uni-sydney.zoom.us/j/85211517526  Jack London is one of the subjects of Treagus' new book The Pacific Tale: short fiction from 1890-1950, which has been published by Palgrave Macmillan. London helped create some of the enduring stereotypes of...]]></description><link>https://www.reefshark.online/post/jack-london-versus-melanesia</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6acee9174d72865fb01691d8</guid><pubDate>Wed, 14 Oct 2026 02:37:29 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/d7988f_ce997c1a2e554d038e99c8fd8b9ef5c6~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_915,h_528,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Reef Shark</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Text of the Week: 'How Instability Creates Stability: The Survival of Democracy in Vanuatu']]></title><description><![CDATA[Wouter Veenendal, Third World Quarterly, 2021 Discussed by Scott Hamilton According to the precepts of mainstream political science, Vanuatu should be a violent, intolerant place in the 21st century. Instead it is ranked as one of the freest countries in the world by Chatham House. Vanuatu's political system is profoundly paradoxical. The country has fifty-two MPs, yet they belong to over a dozen parties. Parties form and collapse regularly, MPs frequently change their colours, and one...]]></description><link>https://www.reefshark.online/post/text-of-the-week-how-instability-creates-stability-the-survival-of-democracy-in-vanuatu</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6ac886e9b89f0f638e3bc3fa</guid><category><![CDATA[Book of the Week]]></category><pubDate>Fri, 09 Oct 2026 06:30:50 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/d7988f_4799e81a88ee4405ba2d09823364ec7f~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_680,h_481,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Reef Shark</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Why James Marriott Should Read the Kumulipo]]></title><description><![CDATA[Scott Hamilton James Marriott's substack essay 'The Dawn of the Post-Literate Society' went viral in the United Kingdom and United States after it was published last year. Marriott documented the decline in reading in those societies, and linked this decline to the explosion of social media. He argued that members of a post-literate society will be vulnerable to conspiracy theories and demagogues, and wondered whether democracy could survive without a mass reading culture. Marriott has now...]]></description><link>https://www.reefshark.online/post/why-james-marriott-should-read-the-kumulipo</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6ac473b0be2a50557c900a64</guid><pubDate>Tue, 06 Oct 2026 04:16:46 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/d7988f_4e07d839af5a43f384d9699c78d7c9cc~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_971,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Reef Shark</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Book of the Week: White Identities: An Historical and International Introduction]]></title><description><![CDATA[Alastair Bonnett, Routledge, 1997 Reviewed by Scott Hamilton Jimmy Corry lives, or rather lived, on Lendrick Street, in Protestant East Belfast. On the night of June the 9th a mob waving Union Jacks and Loyalist paramilitary banners ran down the street, smashing the windows of homes and cars. Corry's car was parked outside his house. Someone broke its windows, poured petrol in, and dropped a match. The fire grew quickly, then leaped the gap between the car and Corry's broken front window.   ...]]></description><link>https://www.reefshark.online/post/book-of-the-week-white-identities-an-historical-and-international-introduction</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6abf1a607333c9a7b0d12381</guid><category><![CDATA[Book of the Week]]></category><category><![CDATA[Reviews]]></category><pubDate>Fri, 02 Oct 2026 02:50:46 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/d7988f_0ae8cc4fece24f698da3f45c2f7da802~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_680,h_375,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Reef Shark</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Machines Against Infinity: Wolfgang Sperlich on AI]]></title><description><![CDATA[Scott Hamilton One day in 2023 Noam Chomsky, the most influential linguist of all time and the most famous anarchist alive, picked up the phone and called a small village on the edge of the Aotearoan rain forest. Chomsky was calling his friend and collaborator Wolfgang Sperlich, who has lived for years in Huia, between the Waitakere Ranges and the turbulent entrance to the Manukau harbour. Like Chomsky, Sperlich is both a linguist and an anarchist. In the seventies he was part of Wilderlands,...]]></description><link>https://www.reefshark.online/post/the-machines-against-infinity-wolfgang-sperlich-on-ai</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6abc6d55ede85b55aeb97377</guid><pubDate>Wed, 30 Sep 2026 02:05:47 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26hlaxrjoNA" length="0" type="video"/><dc:creator>Reef Shark</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Book of the Week: What's So Funny?]]></title><description><![CDATA[Rene Kahu Astle, self-published, c. 2020 Reviewed by Scott Hamilton In the 2020s autism has been studied and discussed with a new intensity. For decades the condition was little-known, even among most members of medical communities. Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bleuer defined autism in 1911, yet not only general practitioners but many psychiatrists and psychologists in Aotearoa remained unfamiliar with its symptoms into the twenty-first century. In a factory so large Each sardine came in a barge...]]></description><link>https://www.reefshark.online/post/book-of-the-wek-what-s-so-funny</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6ab5d1f21f93d48436e4febe</guid><category><![CDATA[Book of the Week]]></category><category><![CDATA[Reviews]]></category><pubDate>Fri, 25 Sep 2026 01:53:06 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/d7988f_28e2aee4e5024426a79a8814aa44db6b~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_747,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Reef Shark</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Waiting for a Book]]></title><description><![CDATA[Scott Hamilton Aotearoan media and social media are abuzz with speculation about Nicky Hager's forthcoming book. Hager's publishers Potton and Burton have not disclosed the book's name, let alone its subject. All will be revealed tonight, at Wellington's Unity Bookshop. Previous Hager volumes have arrived shortly before elections, and destabilised governments with claims about crimes and cover ups. Journalist Philip Matthews joked on social media that 'some people are going to be very...]]></description><link>https://www.reefshark.online/post/waiting-for-a-book</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6ab1e7b4703293e42172cbf6</guid><pubDate>Tue, 22 Sep 2026 02:31:16 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/d7988f_14362d95030e410d99d45dd408e6054e~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Reef Shark</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Book of the Week: Scratching a Living]]></title><description><![CDATA[Peter Bromhead, Wardini Books, 2016 Reviewed by Scott Hamilton Peter Bromhead died on August the 25th. He was 93. At his peak, when he was drawing cartoons for the Auckland Star in the late '70s and '80s, Bromhead was an Aotearoan George Grosz, a caricaturist who mocked powerful people and ideas using an artfully primitive style that perfectly complemented a caustic, proletarian sense of humour.  Bromhead's portraits of Prime Ministers Rob Muldoon and David Lange became famous, and were good...]]></description><link>https://www.reefshark.online/post/book-of-the-week-scratching-a-living</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6aac9486401c61492d5bc6ed</guid><category><![CDATA[Book of the Week]]></category><category><![CDATA[Reviews]]></category><pubDate>Fri, 18 Sep 2026 01:45:24 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/d7988f_83fd23fab5894042ad9f65e708280bde~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Reef Shark</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Notes on the Endangered Species of Humanity &#38; its Stronghold in Oceania]]></title><description><![CDATA[By Scott Hamilton and Nadine Ludd "The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade. This is not a marketing stunt. If anything, many executives and senior researchers will couch their phrasing in the press to sound sensible—but I hear the same people express fear." —Jacob Coxon "Jacob is correct here—we really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans! I personally think it is >10% within the next decade. I believe Anthropic is trying its best,...]]></description><link>https://www.reefshark.online/post/notes-on-the-endangered-species-of-humanity-its-stronghold-in-oceania</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6aaa191d492c8c41baf7aaed</guid><pubDate>Wed, 16 Sep 2026 04:33:08 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/d7988f_64ed01ed89ef4514be4622be5866c99d~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_1000,h_550,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Reef Shark</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Book of the Week: Paragraphs and Letters]]></title><description><![CDATA[Murray Edmond, Caxton Press, 1988 Scott Hamilton Talks with Murray Edmond about His Eighties Masterpiece Town and Country Players perform Games We Play, a piece about the turmoil around the 1981 Springbok Tour of Aotearoa. From left to right: Murray Edmond, Anne Hunt, Ralph Johnson, and Janet Elepans. For five and a half decades Murray Edmonds has been one of Aotearoa's most innovative and interesting writers. This is part of an interview I did with the man during his recent visit to...]]></description><link>https://www.reefshark.online/post/book-of-the-week-paragraphs-and-letters</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6aa3841b5462f0629b9b09b5</guid><category><![CDATA[Book of the Week]]></category><category><![CDATA[Interviews/Talanoa]]></category><category><![CDATA[Poetry]]></category><category><![CDATA[Reviews]]></category><pubDate>Fri, 11 Sep 2026 08:58:51 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/d7988f_dac686580dd347b6beb5f0a0469bc29c~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Reef Shark</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Perils of Colonial Archaeology]]></title><description><![CDATA[Scott Hamilton Jomon pottery, of the sort that Jose Garanger claimed to have discovered on Efate Island in Vanuatu. Mele Plain is one of my favourite places in the Pacific. It separates the jungly highlands of Efate, Vanuatu's capital island, from the sheltered waters of Mele Bay. The plain was once dominated by French-owned plantations worked by imported Vietnamese (the character Bloody Mary, from James Michener's South Pacific and the subsequent musical, made the Vietnamese of the New...]]></description><link>https://www.reefshark.online/post/the-perils-of-colonial-archeology</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6aa0dba99403ba39f028e70f</guid><pubDate>Wed, 09 Sep 2026 04:17:04 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/d7988f_f1c8ae2ba3b04123914f6e50743937b8~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_960,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Reef Shark</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Book of the Week: Stone Men of Malekula Vao]]></title><description><![CDATA[John Layard, Chatto &#38; Windus, London, 1942 Reviewed by Andrew Paul Wood Haidy Geismar included this photo of Vianney Atpatoun holding a 'bootleg' copy of John Layard's book in her fascinating essay 'The Stone Men of Malekula: an ethnography of an ethnography'. The essay can be read via her page at ResearchGate. John Layard &#38; Stonemen of Malekula: from Colonial Archives to Village Council I. Ethnographic texts, far from being static documents, are living artifacts that continue to shape and be...]]></description><link>https://www.reefshark.online/post/book-of-the-week-stone-men-of-malekula-vao</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a99f76840b25387a6f0a75a</guid><category><![CDATA[Book of the Week]]></category><pubDate>Thu, 03 Sep 2026 23:05:44 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/d7988f_770364ffcc144a41917b76f0d0d8bd46~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_293,h_297,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Reef Shark</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Building Links]]></title><description><![CDATA[Introducing our Reef Shark Links page. These links are designed to help explorers of Oceanic art, literature, and thought, especially palangi readers who may have grown up outside Oceania's indigenous cultures. Keep an eye on the page as new links will be added regularly. Many people live in Oceania without understanding the region. The majority of Pakeha New Zealanders and Caldoche New Caledonians, for example, are still living mentally in Europe. The Javanese settlers of West Papua have...]]></description><link>https://www.reefshark.online/post/building-links</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a9625f216a2f4a7938a99d5</guid><pubDate>Tue, 01 Sep 2026 01:27:00 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/d7988f_16cf225f3c514acdb8fab9becfc0b896~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_1000,h_720,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Reef Shark</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Book of the Week: The Bond of Time]]></title><description><![CDATA[John Pule, Canterbury University Press, 2014 Reviewed by Scott Hamilton The Bond of Time was written in 1983 and published in a small edition in 1985. It was republished in 1998 by the Pacific Writing Forum in Fiji, then appeared in a new edition with an introduction by Jeffrey Papamoa Holman in 2024. This is the cover of the 2024 edition; it features Pule's painting The Great World (to Ha). RS: Massey University Press has just published This Must Be the Island: Liga Hanai e Motu, a book of...]]></description><link>https://www.reefshark.online/post/book-of-the-week-the-bond-of-time</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a8e0f8176a0a4a55f356e9d</guid><category><![CDATA[Book of the Week]]></category><category><![CDATA[Reviews]]></category><pubDate>Tue, 25 Aug 2026 22:09:57 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/d7988f_bd1e541a086c4583bc353b89a200894c~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_175,h_262,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Reef Shark</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[No Island is Doomed]]></title><description><![CDATA[Scott Hamilton Hilinga Mea'a o te Maramataka exhibition poster, 14 Aug–19 Sept 2026, Fresh Gallery, Ōtara. At Fresh Gallery in Ōtara the Seleka Club has been holding an important exhibition. This year the Selekarians have been giving art classes to children in the new village of Atata Si'i, whose people had to flee the low island of 'Atatā after it was devastated by the eruption and tsunami of 2022. Visitors to Fresh Gallery can see the work that the children made, as well as paintings by...]]></description><link>https://www.reefshark.online/post/no-island-is-doomed</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a87bb240c902f24d9c361b8</guid><pubDate>Fri, 21 Aug 2026 03:25:10 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/d7988f_ae2b864e53aa4b7faf0fe6e40f77a996~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_936,h_707,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Reef Shark</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Book of the Week: kluge]]></title><description><![CDATA[pip adam, Te Herenga Waka University Press, 2026 Reviewed by Scott Hamilton 'No one else in New Zealand is writing like this' says Philip Matthews in an admiring review of pip adam's new novel kluge for Newsroom. Like the creators of modernism a century ago, pip adam is trying to find new ways of writing suitable for a new century. And like them she is addressing the crises of her century. The academic industry that has grown up around modernist masterworks like TS Eliot's The Waste Land and...]]></description><link>https://www.reefshark.online/post/book-of-the-week-kluge</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a840573c334f409c631cd12</guid><category><![CDATA[Book of the Week]]></category><category><![CDATA[Reviews]]></category><pubDate>Tue, 18 Aug 2026 18:45:02 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/d7988f_681c44fd70734ec08b88f951ec001e4c~mv2.png/v1/fit/w_505,h_768,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Reef Shark</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Greece Never Existed]]></title><description><![CDATA[Andre Breton and Keiji, with notes by Scott Hamilton RS: This new translation of Andre Breton's poem Rano Raraku was supplied by Indonesian-Australian activist and linguist Keiji, whose translated documents from Indonesia's 2025 uprising were featured in an earlier Reef Shark post. Notes by Scott Hamilton follow the poem. Rano Raraku How beautiful the world is when Greece never existed when the Persians did not pass My horse is grazing at the bottom of a crater The bird-men follow the...]]></description><link>https://www.reefshark.online/post/greece-never-existed</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a7e8042cae5bb2ffa113df8</guid><category><![CDATA[Poetry]]></category><pubDate>Fri, 14 Aug 2026 05:41:36 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/d7988f_b1196de35e784be5af88d065fc8bac39~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_1000,h_750,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Reef Shark</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Pat Hanly's Dance]]></title><description><![CDATA[Scott Hamilton This photo, taken from Te Ara's website, shows Pat Hanly working in 1977 on Prelude to a Journey, a mural for Auckland's international airport. Shamefully the mural was removed in 1996 when the airport was redesigned. In 1975 Pat completed another set of huge paintings for the University of Auckland's medical school. Called The Seven Ages of Man, they still grace the school. I was thinking about Pat Hanly on the weekend because the bright winter sunlight pouring onto our...]]></description><link>https://www.reefshark.online/post/pat-hanly-s-dance</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a7bc6c5f1f88bc38bdbf68b</guid><category><![CDATA[Art]]></category><pubDate>Wed, 12 Aug 2026 01:13:08 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/d7988f_13a722d08aef42ba9120021e58c8028f~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_660,h_432,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Reef Shark</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Forgetting the Pacific Connection]]></title><description><![CDATA[Scott Hamilton In an article published in the May-June issue of New Zealand Geographic, Kate Evans asserts that 'across Polynesia, pā are extremely rare'. I don't think her magazine has many readers in Rapa Iti, which is just as well, because they'd be pretty confused by that claim. Rapa Iti island is famous amongst archaeologists for the spectacular terraced forts that top almost all its hills. Visitors to Rapa Iti have often remarked on how much the island resembles Aotearoa's far north,...]]></description><link>https://www.reefshark.online/post/forgetting-the-pacific-connection</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a75487c421979b2d96fab71</guid><pubDate>Fri, 07 Aug 2026 07:41:29 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/d7988f_b00152439add457d99d7ed9bd179c211~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_1000,h_1000,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Reef Shark</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[From Mussolini to Britney Spears to Mayan Glyphs: a Talk about Translation with Jack Ross]]></title><description><![CDATA[Scott Hamilton Jack Ross has been one of Aotearoa's key experimental writers in the twenty-first century, exploring many different literary forms and drawing on many cultures. This is the second in a series of interviews in which Ross lifts the lid on his toolbox, sharing techniques that can be alternatives to the hegemony of a dreary realism in Aotearoan literature. SH: You've been a prolific and very adventurous translator, tackling many different writers from many different languages. I...]]></description><link>https://www.reefshark.online/post/from-mussolini-to-britney-spears-to-mayan-glyphs-a-talk-about-translation-with-jack-ross</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a69616d2d76e381b8834c7b</guid><category><![CDATA[Polemic]]></category><category><![CDATA[Interviews/Talanoa]]></category><pubDate>Wed, 29 Jul 2026 02:14:01 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://static.wixstatic.com/media/d7988f_a905dd66be42458ea5c3e936df69dbca~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_900,h_676,al_c,q_80/file.png" length="0" type="image/png"/><dc:creator>Reef Shark</dc:creator></item></channel></rss>