Epeli Hauʻofa
Oceania is not a scattering of tiny islands in a far sea but a sea of islands, a large world joined by the ocean that its peoples have always crossed; calling them small and dependent is a colonial habit of belittlement.
Placement
Tongan anthropologist and writer who taught at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji: against the view of the Pacific Islands as small, remote and dependent he described Oceania as a “sea of islands”, a large world joined by the ocean, voyaging and kinship.
Key ideas
- Our sea of islands
- Oceania instead of islands far out at sea
- Against belittlement and dependency
- The ocean as shared heritage
Works
Essay that rejects the description of the Pacific Islands as tiny, isolated and dependent: seen from its peoples’ history of voyaging and their present networks of migration and exchange, Oceania is a “sea of islands”, not islands far out at sea.
- 1998The Ocean in Us
Essay that proposes a regional Oceanian identity grounded in the ocean as shared environment, history and heritage, beyond national borders and the categories of colonial administration.
Position
Hauʻofa is on the map for an essay that changed how the Pacific is thought about. In “Our Sea of Islands” (1993) he answered a view then common among economists, planners and scholars – including, as he admits, himself: that the island states were too small, too poor and too isolated to be anything but dependent on aid and remittances. This view, he argued, is a colonial one. It sees islands scattered far out in the ocean, tiny dots of land within borders drawn by colonial powers, where the peoples of Oceania themselves had known a “sea of islands”, a large world joined rather than divided by the ocean and crossed by voyaging, trade and kinship long before Europeans arrived. Present-day migration to Auckland, Sydney or Los Angeles continues this world instead of dissolving it. In “The Ocean in Us” (1998) he proposed a regional Oceanian identity grounded in the ocean as shared environment and heritage, and he saw creative work in the arts as a way to give it form. The essays shaped Pacific studies, art and literature, gave “Oceania” its present meaning as a self-description and are now also read as anticolonial political theory. No documented links yet connect him with others on the map.
Life & context
Epeli Hauʻofa was born on 7 December 1939 in the Territory of Papua to Tongan missionary parents and grew up in Papua New Guinea, Tonga and Fiji. He studied at the University of New England in Armidale, at McGill University in Montreal and at the Australian National University, where he took his doctorate in social anthropology with a study of the Mekeo of Papua, published in 1981. He taught at the University of Papua New Guinea and was a research fellow at the University of the South Pacific; from 1978 to 1981 he served as deputy private secretary to the King of Tonga and keeper of the palace records. After directing the university’s Rural Development Centre in Tonga, he became head of the Department of Sociology at the University of the South Pacific in Suva in 1983. In 1997 he founded its Oceania Centre for Arts and Culture, which he directed until his death. He also wrote satirical fiction on development and modernisation, “Tales of the Tikongs” (1983) and the novel “Kisses in the Nederends” (1987). He died on 11 January 2009 in Suva; in 2023 the University of Auckland awarded him an honorary doctorate posthumously.
Further main works
- Mekeo: Inequality and Ambivalence in a Village Society (1981)
- Tales of the Tikongs (1983)
- Kisses in the Nederends (1987)
- We Are the Ocean: Selected Works (2008)
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