Sailing into the Big Picture

Sailing into the Big Picture

Hau*ofa, Epeli, et al. A New Oceania : Rediscovering Our Sea of Islands. Suva, Fiji: School of Social and Economic Development, The University of the South Pacific in association with Beake House, 1993. Print.

To quote from the obituary in scoop, “A well known writer of fiction and non-fiction, critic, and thought leader of Oceania, Epeli will be remembered for his many contributions, especially to the Pacific imaginary.

Hau’ofa encouraged the Pacific region to seek a unified, inclusive identity sourced in the vastness of the Pacific Ocean, rather than the smallness of individual atolls, scattered islands and struggling nation states. Hau’ofa saw the Ocean as our major source of sustenance, “our pathway to each other and to everyone else, the sea is our endless saga, the sea is our most powerful metaphor, the ocean is in us”. Professor Epeli Hau’ofa was a former Deputy Private Secretary to the late King of Tonga, Reader and Head of Sociology at the University of the South Pacific. He was the founding Director of the Oceania Centre for Arts and Culture at the University of the South Pacific and held this post until his untimely passing. He leaves behind a great legacy of literature, art and intellect. Professor Hau’ofa will be sadly missed. His ideas will live on”.(Scoop)

This piece was in keeping with this sentiment. When he pointed out the missionary arrogance in Tonga, he also owned it as part of his own Tongan culture. His sentiments and thinking I found to be entirely anti racist and reading his piece was redemptive and unifying. You felt it would be great to see ourselves as part of Oceania. He appealed to the seafarer in us all (or in me anyway). By such a simple reversal of concept as changing our thinking from “Pacific Islands” to “Oceania”, we move from separation and powerlessness to unity and strength. This appeals to the communist in me.[1]

If we compare this to a New Zealand thinker, Kyle Chapman, at first there appear to be similarities in thinking. Chapman is the leader of the New Zealand National Front, which is a racist right wing separatist group. Reading his essays online you could be lulled into thinking otherwise. He seems to call for Maori and “White Europeans” to join together against a common enemy. He appeals to the idea that Gaelic people had a lot in common with Maori and sites instances of common social harm from globalization. But essentially he is making the case for a sense of culture, in his case a manufactured Gaelic /Norse culture, to hold precedence over any sense of humanity or any struggle against oppression.(Chapman) [2]

I prefer to sail with Epeli Hau’ofa and the “ordinary people, peasants and proletarians” of Oceania.

Chapman, Kyle. "New Zealand European Nationalists and the Issue of Maori Self Determination." Kyle Chapman2010. The Only Blog by Kyle Chapman. True ideas, history and future. Print.

http://kyle-chapman.blogspot.com/

Scoop. "Mourning the Passing of Epeli Hau’ofa 1939 – 2009". Culture. Obituary.15th January 2009. <http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/CU0901/S00096.htm>.

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/CU0901/S00096.htm

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[1] The difference between the two perspectives is reflected in the two terms used for our region: Pacific Islands and Oceania.

The first term, 'Pacific Islands', is the prevailing one used everywhere; it connotes small areas of land surfaces sitting atop submerged reefs or seamounts. Hardly any anglophone economist, consultancy expert, government planner or development banker in the region uses the term 'Oceania', perhaps because it sounds grand and somewhat romantic, and may connote something so vast that it would compel them to a drastic review of their perspectives and policies. The French and other Europeans use the term 'Oceania' to an extent that English speakers, apart from the much maligned anthropologists and a few other sea-struck scholars, have not. It may not be coincidental that Australia, New Zealand and the USA, anglophone all, have far greater interests in the Pacific and how it is to be perceived than have the distant European nations. 'Oceania' connotes a sea of islands with their inhabitants.

The world of our ancestors was a large sea full of places to explore, to make their homes in, to breed generations of seafarers like themselves. People raised in this environment were at home with the sea. They played in it as soon as they could walk steadily, they worked in it, they fought on it. They developed great skills for navigating their waters, and the spirit to traverse even the few large gaps that separated their island groups.

[2] A good look at the history of Maori Urbanisation is a must, along with the rational ideas that link us together as a Nation. We should no longer resist Maori Culture; we should support it and build that partnership the treaty talked about. Both treaties (Littlewood and Waitangi) wanted New Zealand to be united as a partnership. As long as we are divided we will be defeated by the wealthy, greedy, foreign, globalized capitalists who are over-powering us and controlling the bulk of the population like puppets. It is them who make the policies that destroy us, they are the ones who drive insane, unmanageable money policies and they let the greed and power grey their view of the world and what could be done to actually do well for each people. As Hugh Fletcher, one of the NZ wealthy, said a few years ago; Maori sovereignty means very little when it is transnational corporations rather than national governments that run the economy. We are in a struggle with the “politically correct” views about mingling cultures; multiculturalism (muddy culture). The proponents of this agenda no longer have loyalty to their own people, they no longer care about the Nation, they just follow intellectual ideas about humanity and globalization, they look past all the harm it does and all the sufferingMaori and European New Zealanders have common issues to deal with.

Let us unite against them before neither of us has anything left.