Indigenous Autonomy and Latin Characters

Indigeneity is more than ancestral ties – taking part in the receiving and transmitting of knowledges is just as important. This means building on the work of your predecessors and creating space for new contributions. In Samoan culture, one of the areas in which this takes place is in tatau.

Unlike Western creative fields that result in a large (post)graduate debt, the ancient art is passed down through families that act as guilds. Although commonly used in relation to tufuga tātatau, the word ‘tufuga’ translates to a master craftsperson or guild. Within my own family, from the village of Faleasi‘u, there is now a tufuga tusi noa – a new guild, formed by accident, that specialises in a much less ancient art form.¹

Despite my formal training as a graphic designer, I did not actively pursue a particular interest in typography until these past two years. However, I previously made artworks centring language, in particular, reconnection to gagana Sāmoa as a way to promote cultural engagement and visibility. This led to a particular curiosity about Indigenous practitioners within the field of type design. Most often, ‘Indigenous typefaces’ are created ‘in consultation’ with Indigenous communities, where once again the White Saviour dynamic is replicated. There are some examples of typefaces by Indigenous practitioners, however, their fonts are not widely used nor is the type designer internationally well known. There is one exception.

I first came across the work of Joseph Churchward when browsing the internet. My immediate draw was quickly followed by the discovery that he was also Samoan. To share the same culture, out of the thousands of possible Indigenous communities, seemed like a convenient coincidence. I dug deeper and there were more coincidences. We share the same birthday and he also had some Chinese ancestry. I have been told that my maternal grandfather’s maternal grandfather, Kai Ah Sue, was one of the first Chinese people in Sāmoa. I kept investigating and discovered that his ‘āiga was Sā Anae.² This caught my attention as Anae is my uncle’s (my mother’s brother’s) matai title. Reading on, I saw that he was from the villages of Faleasi‘u and Tufulele, which is the border that my family is from. I messaged my cousins and found out that the rest of my family already knew. It turns out that the closest shared ancestors between Joseph and myself are Kai Ah Sue and Pa‘ugata Anae.

Joseph Churchward (Gregorian shame-time: 1933–2013) was a prolific and widely renowned type designer.³ He was born in Āpia, Sāmoa where he retained the memory of drawing Latin letters in the sand.⁴ As a teenager he moved to Aotearoa, where he excelled at lettering at technical college, before working as a commercial artist at an advertising firm.⁵ The many hours tracing letters led Joseph to draw his own instead. He went on to draw an estimated 690 alphabets (with approximately 150–300 working hours for each) by hand, more than any other individual globally by a huge margin.⁶⁷

My goal in examining Joseph’s work is not to restate what has already been said by others, but to offer perspectives that are missing, particularly through my own lens as someone sharing artistic, cultural and familial concerns. In working with Joseph’s typefaces, I am lucky to be able to draw from an exceptionally crafted and extensive body of work. However, there are aspects in need of critical analysis, particularly in the tensions between the incorporation of culture and commercial success in an elitist, Eurocentric field. There are also other questions raised in analysing Joseph’s work through both typefaces (designs that are practically applied/direct problem solving) and art (visual explorations/abstract problem solving), as well as the expectations and definitions for these ‘different fields.’ If ‘art’ is distinguished by an incorporation of speculative, emotional and intellectual qualities, as well as its ability to be appreciated while in an isolated form that serves no essential day to day function (this definition creating an elevated status is something that I completely disagree with), Joseph’s designs also fall into this ‘category’. (Current notions of art, design and who gets to make these distinctions is something in urgent need of re-examining).

The depth of Joseph’s mastery over Latin letterforms cannot be completely understood unless one spends time tracing his alphabets. To the untrained eye, and those with a limited understanding of global creative practices, there may be a temptation to align the styles of Joseph’s alphabets with a Eurocentric view of art history. However, the way that the letters are constructed defy Western art canon definitions. For example, in his typefaces that could be categorised as ‘geometric,’ no character has two lines that are perfectly straight or exactly the same. Notions of geometry and abstraction, including in type design, should not prioritise Eurocentric categorisation of recent decades. There are other contexts that date further back with deeper histories and richer meanings. Indigenous art and design histories form the foundation for global art and design history, and existed long before Europe was even uncovered from the ice.

My analysis of Joseph’s work is a part of a body of research in-progress called ‘Indigenous Autonomy and Latin Characters’, which advocates for Indigenous self-determination in the construction of written language. Through a Samoan diasporic lens, the cultural, social and political conditions of type design are examined through critical writing, as well as in multiple typefaces and artworks. Although speaking to Indigeneity broadly, there is a particular focus on Sāmoa and the Great Ocean.⁸ This project does not seek to justify the continued dominance of Latin characters nor argues that it can be fixed by token diversity. Those who are most negatively affected by frameworks are best able to accurately point out its flaws and speculate alternatives that will lead to positive change for all. Indigenous peoples have been most impacted by the imposition and homogenisation of written language. European texts were used to justify the genocide of entire populations, the (ongoing) theft of lands and waters, and the suppression of thousands of languages and cultures. In challenging the document, the law, the constitution, we must also challenge the systems that enable these artefacts to hold such power. This should be holistic, examining each part of the framework – the foundation of European written languages, the Latin character set, included.

The entire character set was created in seven hours distorting a style of Akzidenz-Grotesk, a venerated German font (Germany colonised Sāmoa). The letter forms have been distorted to the silhouette of Univers, a Swiss designed font that embodies European delusions of ‘universality’ and is also based on Akzidenz-Grotesk.

In this case, a style of Caslon is distorted to a style of Times New Roman. Based on Roman style, which has Italian roots, Times New Roman is an English typeface (England are complicit in the colonisation of Sāmoa).⁹ Caslon is based on typefaces by an English type designer, based on old Dutch designs, and were ‘popular throughout Europe and the American (also a coloniser of Sāmoa) colonies.’ ‘The first printings of the American Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were set in Caslon.’

The reverence for the written word and the subconscious effects of typography contribute to cultural erasure and subordination, especially for the many Indigenous languages that have had Latin characters imposed through colonisation. Type design was essential to the formation and dissemination of ‘the European Enlightenment,’ whose supposed inventions blatantly disregards thousands of years of sciences and philosophies in many Indigenous cultures around the world. All typographic histories acknowledge the ‘Enlightenment’ origins with adoration, without mentioning its inseparable ties to imperialism and the ongoing repercussions that negatively impact the Global Majority. The Eurocentric delusion and entitlement that Latin characters embody are detached from their role in violence under a false guise of ‘neutrality’ and ‘universal objectivity’ – contradictory notions which are at best laughable, and at worst, extremely damaging.

Letterforms are ubiquitous expressions of power, not only in the principles they symbolise, but also in terms of authorship. Dominated by cis white men, inequality in type design is dire. We allow mediocre white boys (the design bros) to dictate how information is recorded and presented, and this needs to change in order to address power imbalances and to make way for ‘more authentic visual expressions.’¹² Other forms of language that make up Indigenous knowledges – oral, visual, physical, sonic, interpersonal – cannot be accurately notated through a system of symbols. However, Indigenous practitioners are the only ones able to incorporate aspects from their own particular culture(s) into written language. While typography remains central in the most dominant and societally valued means of information exchange, it is a tool that we must contend with. Through my research I do not mean to propose a singular ‘correct way’ to improve the field of type design with Indigenous epistemologies, but to ruminate on some of the many possibilities where Indigenous agency is centred.