Work · Indigenous Philosophies
The 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.
Introduction
The essay appeared in 1998 in The Contemporary Pacific and was later included in “We Are the Ocean” (2008), a collection of Hauʻofa’s essays, fiction and poetry. Hauʻofa takes up the argument of “Our Sea of Islands” and asks what could hold together the many peoples of Oceania without erasing their differences. His answer is the ocean itself: a shared environment, a shared history of voyaging and settlement and a shared future for which its peoples are responsible together, and which calls for a regional identity beyond national borders and the divisions drawn by colonial powers. He sees creative work in the arts as one way to give this identity form; the Oceania Centre for Arts and Culture, which he had founded at the University of the South Pacific in 1997, was meant to serve it. The essay is read as the programme of an Oceanian regionalism from below.
Connections
Builds on
- Our Sea of Islands1993 · Epeli Hauʻofa
More works by Epeli Hauʻofa
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