Abstract
In recent years, the place of Polynesians in American football has received considerable attention as the news media complex has featured stories on Hawaiians and Tongans performing Maori war dances in New Mexico and Texas, while the life stories of Samoan players appear in film and in hardcover. In this essay we argue that the performances of Polynesian warriorhood and masculinity in American football embody the larger history of islander engagements with US empire, militarism and global capitalism in the Pacific. We focus on the University of Hawai‘i (UH) football team, whose ‘macho makeover’ as ‘The Warriors’– including a rejection of its ‘Rainbow’ traditions – reveals the racialized and gendered nature of sports marketing and recruiting. Our history of Hawaiians and Samoans in UH football sheds light on the ways that present flows of capital, images, and bodies follow familiar patterns of settler colonialism, military occupation, islander diaspora and indigenous struggle.
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