Melodie Turori

Hot Pink Purse

Melodie Turori — Tue, 09 Dec 2025 05:53:02 +0000

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The Doctrine of Discovery in Pacific Waters

Melodie Turori — Sat, 11 Jan 2025 16:43:21 +0000

Resources

Books

Unsettling Truths by Mark Charles and Soong-Chan Rah
Pathway of the Birds by Andrew Crowe
The Inconvenient Indian by Thomas King
Missionary conquest: The gospel and Native American cultural genocide by George Tinker

NAIITS: An Indigenous Learning Community

Symposium Videos

Doctrine of Discovery in English

Historical Movements Map

Mapping different historical points in Pasifika was first part of my doctoral research, a way to visualize different kinds of movement through time and the space of our great ocean. Through the Restorying Pasifika Histories series at the Pacific Island Ethnic Art Museum in Long Beach, California, the map grew exponentially.

This is NOT a comprehensive mapping of historical activities from all islands. I’ve focused on adding movement and activity within these guidelines: 1) the map should provide a broad sense of movements that is inclusive of Melenesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. 2) The map should provide relational context for our Pasifika communities in southern California and the Indigenous Peoples whose lands hold us here.

Finally, I will note that the map includes specific points from Aitutaki and Pukapuka (Cook Islands) because those histories belong to my family. It is through my papa’anga (genealogy) that I best understand our histories.

This is very much still a work in progress that I hope will be helpful to our communities living away from our ancestral home islands.

Updates

If you would like to receive a direct link to the map and updates about the Restorying Pasifika Histories series at PIEAM, enter your name and email below:

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Teina

Melodie Turori — Sat, 22 Jul 2023 02:20:02 +0000

made to be worn and handled

close up Golden Poppy pattern

Close up, stitched Tiare Maori

Pattern details

Teina is an ancestor emerging, made to be a sister piece to Masi, with the intention that she could be worn and handled in ways the older 19th century sister cloth cannot be.

Like traditional and some contemporary bark cloth (or tapa, as it is widely known), Teina is painted in earth pigments on 100% cotton muslin. The hand stitched embellishments honor my grandmother, who was a tivaevae maker. Cook Islands tivaevae quilts are a descendant art from bark cloth traditions, evidence of how culture grows and adapts to environment.

The selection of Fijian and Māori (Cook Islands) patterns share the journey of Masi, the people she encountered, and their practices of care.

Holding the Pimu Grandmother Bowl at PIEAM

Signs of wear and handling

Worn by Melodie Turori

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Te ‘Iti Nei Te Marama

Melodie Turori — Sun, 30 Apr 2023 05:53:54 +0000

The Exhibit

A rising story at the Pacific Island Ethnic Art Museum, exploring the industrialization of time that has characterized work and rest as opposing forces. Industry values rest as a tool to improve productivity and efficiency, giving rise to a self-care industry that commercializes rest as an individual practice. Our ancestors were children of the ocean and islands, how did they understand what it is to work and rest in community?

Rest in the intergenerational conversations between Pacific Indigenous ancestor pieces, lands, ocean, and artists living in the diaspora. Expect shifts, moving within the space as we enter moon phases, growing to fullness toward a Living Handbook.

This is a story that follows the moon, shifting and changing in phases over several months as it grows to fullness. As the exhibit rises, visitors and community members contribute to the Living Handbook through on-site interactions and Community Offerings.

The Handbook

After the PIEAM phase of Te ‘Iti Nei Te Marama concluded, community responses were gathered into an ebook to guide ongoing reflection processes to support our collective and individual wellbeing.

Photography

Part of my contribution to the exhibit and handbook are a series of ancestor piece* portraits made in the light of the full moon. These portraits were informed by time spent with the waters of Mi’kma’ki; some of the photos feature in the handbook linked above.

The photographs are long exposures, playing with time and the way being lit by the moon paints a familiar world in an unfamiliar way. It looks like daylight, but also not quite. An invitation to pause, observe, and reconsider what we think the world must be like.

*What we call “ancestor piece” you might think of as an “artifact.” We use this term to honor the role and relationality of “things” in our Indigenous Pacific cultures.

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Ko ai koe?

Melodie Turori — Mon, 30 Jan 2023 06:55:00 +0000

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The Future Behind Us

Melodie Turori — Fri, 04 Nov 2022 05:33:00 +0000

Film Festivals & Screenings

Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival, 2022
Pasifika Film Fest (Australia), 2022
Māoriland (Aotearoa New Zealand), 2023

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Prayer of Stitches (Toe Fo’i)

Melodie Turori — Wed, 30 Mar 2022 05:43:32 +0000

Our virtual story circles were a sacred, safe space for the community to gather and participate in the ceremony of storytelling. Storytelling is an exchange of generosities; the teller gifts their experience in vulnerability and the listeners gift their full attention and presence.

In Cook Islands culture, tivaevae are ceremonial gifts that tell a story about place, time, and connections. This tivaevae was made to reciprocate the gifts of story I received from the community. The design is grounded in the nurturing care of taro, the dreams and visions the connect us to our ancestors, golden poppies that open and close with the sun in the way that grief ebbs and flows, and the spirit of the land, the ocean, and the people, which continues to burn.

The plants in the globes will root over the course of the exhibit (hopefully!), reminding us that life grows out of death. The globes are placed in the shape of the moon phase at the time of installation.

About Toe Fo‘i

Toe Fo’i:The Return is a community exhibit at Pacific Island Ethnic Art Museum, in collaboration with 5 Pasifika artists engaging the power of storytelling to humanize the numbers behind those lost to COVID-19. March 20 – August 21, 2022

The exhibit builds upon a series of story-circles held November 2021 through the February 2022, which reminds visitors that the stories of those lost are the stories of those who survived. Toe Foʻi: The Return is anchored to the role of artists as healers who move us collectively through this hurdle of misinformation, fear, mistrust, and entitlement. “This process recognizes and elevates our Pasifika artists as storytellers, culture bearers, and healers. It in itself is a return back to indigenous ways of healing,” says Kiana “Kiki” Rivera, Guest Curator.

Toe Foʻi: The Return brings the voices of the community through multidisciplinary art forms. Featuring works by: Melodie Bergquist-Turori, Ālaoi’a Moni Pili, Roldy Aguero Ablao, Mariquita “Micki” Davis, and Jason “JP” Pereira. In addition, an exterior installation entitled Hoʻokahi (Hawaiian word meaning “to make one”) also created by JP will tell a visual story of holistic wellness and resilience.

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Pasifika Transmissions

Melodie Turori — Tue, 02 Nov 2021 22:54:00 +0000

Through this mini-residency I had the opportunity to spend a month in conversation with the ancestral artifact I was paired with: the Masi.

From these conversations I created a body of work that included a series of photographs, poetry, and a short poetry film. These works were shared during a live 30-minute presentation on the Pasifika Transmissions Facebook page.

Pasifika Transmissions

Pasifika Transmissions is a distance learning program that invites indigenous artists in California to visit the archive of the Pacific Island Ethnic Art Museum and develop a video “transmission” geared towards children and families. This museum is the only institution of its kind in the contiguous United States soley dedicated to Pacific Island descendants. Pasifika Transmissions is hosted by Pacific Island Ethnic Art Museum and funded through the generous support by the RuMBA Foundation of Long Beach.

Melodie was paired with the Masi, a traditional cloth from Fiji, made from the inner bark of the Mulberry Tree. Melodie’s Transmission comes from a pairing inspired by a recent response to the alarming rise in racially charged violence, “In this Pasifika Transmission I reflect on what it means to remember, to move beyond, and to live more presently.”

The Exhibit

It wasn’t an official “exhibit,” but the ancestor pieces who were part of Pasifika Transmissions, and the works inspired by relationship with those ancestors, held the space in PIEAM as the world began to re-open during the COVID pandemic.

For this, I created a “fabric paper” collage to embody the Masi’s poem. Made from different types of paper, muslin, and acrylic paint.

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The Ocean Knows My Name

Melodie Turori — Mon, 31 Aug 2020 02:30:00 +0000

A visual poem honoring mama moana as the keeper of ancient memories, the one who connects the Pasifika diaspora with our home islands.

The ocean knows my name
she wrote ancient stories on my soul
memories not mine riding tides
like my voyaging ancestors

In time, the ocean leads me home
not to stay, simply to show
that I belong
to coral sand and coconut trees.

When the heart aches
to be whole, to return
her waves sing comfort
catching tears to carry home
so the sand will remember me.

I ask why the ocean should know me
an abundance of life in your waters
the very depths assigned to your care
and ocean replies
I, too, am one of hers.

She reminds me
our bones are volcanic rock
salt water flowing in our veins
home and belonging
echoing inside our skin
like the sound of waves in a shell.

Is it enough for home and place
to meet in us?
People of the ocean
guided by currents of gratitude
for the gift of knowing and
being known by an ocean.

The ocean knew many names
before she knew mine
she will know many
after we are gone.

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Audio Connections

Melodie Turori — Sat, 15 Aug 2020 03:55:00 +0000

Exploring the Art of Radio and Podcasting

This is a talk I gave for a the Saddleback Arts: Live at Home series. We dig in to the two sides of our voices and how voice can be a powerful tool for creation, connection, and change.

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