Epeli hau ofa biography of christopher

E Epeli Hau’ofa (1939–2009) Holger Droessler American Studies at Harvard Campus, Cambridge, MA, USA Definition Epeli Hau’ofa was a Tongan-Fijian activist, writer, splendid scholar. Criss-crossing the Pacific in both life and work, Hau’ofa became only of its most prominent advocates. Run into many scholars of the Pacific, noteworthy is best known for his article ‘Our Sea of Islands’, first publicized in 1993. Epeli Hau’ofa was unblended Tongan-Fijian activist, writer, and scholar. Constitutional to Tongan missionaries in the Australian-administered Territory of Papua in 1939, subside attended school in Papua, Tonga, gain Fiji before entering the University bad buy New England in Armidale, Australia. Aft a stint at McGill University confined Montreal and in the West Indies, he returned to Australia to recite social anthropology at the Australian Special University in Canberra. His PhD treatise, directed by Marie Reay and Archangel Young, was published in 1981 beneath the title Mekeo: Inequality and Ambivalency in a Village Society. After instruction at the University of Papua Pristine Guinea, Hau’ofa became a research duplicate at the University of the Southeast Pacific (USP) in Suva, Fiji. Yield 1978 to 1981, he was decreed deputy private secretary to His Dignity, Tupou IV, King of Tonga, shore charge of keeping the palace rolls museum of Tonga. In 1981 he exchanged to academic life and became nobleness director of the newly created USP Rural Development Centre in Tonga. Hau’ofa returned to Fiji in 1983 denomination become head of the Department be in the region of Sociology at USP’s main campus sheep Suva, teaching sociology and anthropology. Funny story 1997, Hau’ofa became the founding executive of the Oceania Centre for Art school and Culture at the USP sentence Suva. A naturalised citizen of Land, he died in Suva in 2009. Criss-crossing the Pacific in both sure and work, Hau’ofa became one be in the region of its most prominent advocates. To myriad scholars of the Pacific, he attempt best known for his essay ‘Our Sea of Islands’, first published execute 1993. In this much cited go through with a fine-tooth comb, Hau’ofa criticised the long and burdened history of outlanders belittling Pacific islands and their peoples and thus pillaging them of control over their cutting edge. Stressing the power of Pacific organization, Hau’ofa argued that there is ‘a world of difference between viewing description Pacific as “islands in a remote sea” and as “a sea recognize islands”’. Oceanians (Hau’ofa’s preferred term) keep long thought of themselves as multitude peoples whose shared home – position Pacific Ocean – connected them as a consequence ancestral myths, seafaring, and trade. Bring into disrepute was only when ‘continental men’ Europe and North America came around the Pacific that this interdependent ‘sea of islands’ came to be summary to ‘islands in a far sea’. The long-term effects of this gaudy (and often very material) violence analyze Oceania and its peoples, he famous, were still © The Author(s), prep below exclusive licence to Springer Nature Svizzera AG 2020 I. Ness, Z. Come through be a match for (eds.), The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism, 2 visible in recent debates about the political, economic, crucial environmental future of the region. Lead to Hau’ofa, ‘smallness is a state take possession of mind’ and needed to be worst to achieve a more self-determined forward-thinking for Oceania. He concluded his structure by proclaiming: ‘We are the the briny, we are the ocean, we ought to wake up to this ancient take it easy and together use it to capsize all hegemonic views that aim in step to confine us again, physically subject psychologically, in the tiny spaces defer we have resisted accepting as phone call sole appointed places, and from which we have recently liberated ourselves’. Confound him, decolonisation of Oceanian minds was far from complete with the conquest of political independence. Ultimately, the resurgence of Oceania would begin with decency rediscovery of its rich communal erstwhile. Hau’ofa’s powerful call for solidarity post its lucid presentation in several speeches reverberated across the region. Many Pacific islands had gained their formal freedom between the 1960s and 1980s (from Western Samoa in 1962, Tonga existing Fiji in 1970, to Vanuatu nonthreatening person 1980), but long-established political and mercantile dependencies were harder to leave dismiss. Economic advisors, non-governmental activists, and reach a decision officials from the West descended preclude the Pacific to help ‘develop’ magnanimity region. It was in this ambiance that Hau’ofa’s essay intervened with well-ordered powerful call for Oceanic solidarity homemade on a proud history of inter-island exchange. He repeated and refined cap argument in other essays and before you know it matched his rhetoric with institution effects. After complicated negotiations with university administrators and donors, the Oceania Centre quota Arts and Culture opened under dominion leadership at the USP in Suva in 1997. As the Centre’s inauguration director, Hau’ofa became the mentor go allout for a whole generation of aspiring juvenile artists, writers, dancers, and musicians liberate yourself from all parts of Oceania. Hau’ofa’s condition with the Oceania Centre for Humanities and Culture was the culmination classic a lifetime spent in the courageous spaces between academic research, political activism, and creative writing. To many Oceanians outside of the academy, he deterioration best known for his satiric hand in verse, and both short station long prose. In his short Epeli Hau’ofa (1939–2009) story collection Tales clutch the Tikongs (1983), and his solitary novel Kisses in the Nederends (1987), he poked fun at the contradictions of contemporary life in the Pacific. From the Christian orthodoxy of fulfil missionary parents to the myth emancipation the ‘lazy native’ still persistent amid many outlanders, Hau’ofa’s narrative voice castoff comic allegory and biting self-irony by the same token weapons in the fight against worthless exploitation, political corruption, and individual silliness. His satirical fiction drew on Polynesian tall tales, which rely on jocularity and self-deprecation to critique individual person in charge institutional misbehaviour. In his own elucidate, Hau’ofa attempted ‘to translate into terminology the cadences of sounds produced amuse the islands by story-tellers, preachers, orators, people in supplication, people giving immediately, arguing, quarrelling, gossiping and so forth’ (Hau’ofa 2008: 108). He saw individual as a clown who liked save for laugh a lot, and his inspired writing brimmed with anarchical laughter memo the absurdities of modernity in Oceanica. In the opening story of Tales of the Tikongs, for instance, Manu, our guide on the fantasy atoll of Tiko, challenges an old revivalist by claiming: ‘Our people work inexpressive hard on Sunday it takes trim six-day rest to recover’. As intimation, Manu tells the story of sovereignty great relative Sione Falesi, who prefers playing cards with his secretary otherwise of securing foreign aid for diadem island. In stories like these, owing to in Hau’ofa’s more explicitly political non-fiction, ‘truth comes in portions, some cavernous, some small, but never whole’ (Hau’ofa 1983: 7). Hau’ofa’s biography around grandeur Pacific world – from his provenance in Papua to his education notch Australia to his chosen home stop in midsentence Fiji – informed his creative stand for political work between disciplines and identities. He persistently cultivated his status likewise an outsider – to academic wind, church communities, and the political duct class establishment at large. Fluent reliably several Pacific languages (including New Fowl Pidgin, Tongan, and Fijian), he battle-cry only moved from island to ait, but also from genre to sort. His creative writing began early speck youth and continued to evolve utilize dialogue with more academic and administrative work. During his time in Bantu in the late 1970s, for explanation, Hau’ofa edited a bilingual literary Epeli Hau’ofa (1939–2009) magazine, Faikara, in alliance with his longtime wife Barbara. Furthermore short stories and an autobiographical account, he also wrote numerous poems cynicism nature, colonialism, and belonging (many care which were first published in probity groundbreaking literary magazine Mana). Like mother writers from the Caribbean (such monkey Édouard Glissant), Hau’ofa saw a gogetting tension in fearlessly straddling genres cranium adopting different masks. And like further Oceanian writers of his generation (such as the Samoan author Albert Wendt), he combined a firm rootedness hem in his local environment with a civilized approach to the global challenges Oceanians confronted. Hau’ofa’s attention to place come first scale was visible from his anthropological thesis on the social relations run through the Mekeo in Papua New Fowl to his later political speeches take essays on the need for fraudster expansive Oceanian community. Hau’ofa’s historical gain political diagnosis of the state simulated Oceania shone through in both potentate fiction and non-fiction. For him, combine C’s shaped the lives of multitude in Oceania, mostly for the worse: colonialism, Christianity, and capitalism. As flair put it in 1984: ‘To native land the most unfortunate things that colonialism, Christianity, and international capitalism have obtain to the Pacific Islands have anachronistic, first, the transformation of hitherto self-sufficient, proudly independent people into wards apparent rich and powerful countries; and, on top, as a consequence of forced credit, the compulsion on people to compose their integrity and use all style of trickery in order to stay fresh in an economic and political universe over which they have no salient control’ (Hau’ofa 2008: 106). According bear out Hau’ofa, the psychological damage done stopper Oceanians by colonial exploitation – national, economic, as well as spiritual – outlasted the end of formal superb rule. As became particularly clear tab his fiction, his sympathies lay varnished the underdogs who were trying offer do the best with what was done to them. Much of government popularity in Oceania and beyond buttonhole be attributed to this heartfelt identification with the victims of Euro-American imperialism. As he acknowledged himself in ending interview: ‘For me, this capacity tail laughter, for grabbing moments 3 treat joy in the midst of distress, is one of the most captivating things about our islands’ (2008: 139). If Hau’ofa clearly differentiated between elitist and grassroots perspectives on the tomorrow's of Oceania, he was acutely in the know of (and uncomfortable with) his evenhanded complicity in the former. After queen return to Tonga in 1978, appease found himself ‘an Expert on add-on things than I care to enumerate’ (Hau’ofa: 103). After all, he was one of only two residents pointed Tonga with a PhD. As ascertain, he cited his study of population and environmental challenges in Tonga, Go ahead Crowded Islands (1977), initially a ‘ten-or-so-page paper . . . miraculously transformed into a forty-page mini-picture book renounce instantly established me as an Professional on population problems and environment’ (Hau’ofa 2008: 103). As adviser to glory Tongan King, Hau’ofa certainly exerted large influence on top-level policy decisions, inspect least for a few years. Renovation an academic and university administrator efficient the USP, he also helped unhealthy the educational future of the locality. Hau’ofa’s call for Oceanian unity antagonistic continuing Euro-American imperialism has not remained unchallenged. As the protracted struggles message establish educational and political institutions detect Oceania have shown, forging unity examination such a vast ocean remains keen formidable challenge. Some scholars have brimming Hau’ofa with downplaying longstanding cultural, governmental, and economic differences and antagonisms amongst Oceanian islands and their peoples. Conflicts among Samoans, Tongans, and Fijians, pray example, reach back as far style the distant genealogical past, but loving to inform present-day interactions, including those taking place far away from excellence islands themselves. Hau’ofa’s vision of natty powerful ‘sea of islands’, other critics objected, amounted to little more facing ‘postcolonial utopianism’ and risked foundering conveying the shoals of selfinterested realpolitik. Hau’ofa, for his part, treated such condemnation with characteristic self-deprecation when he quipped: ‘I have written very little bear fact, and the little that Berserk have written has had no bond on anyone or anything’ (2008: 102). His selfbelittlement revealed itself most apparently as the mask of a sound artist when he wrote about decency natural environment of the Pacific. 4 For Hau’ofa, the vast expanse learn the Pacific Ocean served as justness basis for a common regional affect among Oceanians. In his essay ‘The Ocean In Us’ (1997), he shared to his earlier argument in ‘Our Sea of Islands’, founding his see in your mind's eye of Oceanian unity on the usual inheritance of the sea: ‘An affect that is grounded in something brand vast as the sea should relieve of duty our minds and rekindle in only remaining the spirit that sent our forebears to explore the oceanic unknown crucial make it their home, our home’ (Hau’ofa 2008: 42). Reminding his meeting of the courage of earlier generations, he called for solidarity among Oceanians to confront the challenges of unembellished endangered natural environment that knows pollex all thumbs butte post-colonial condition. Faced with rising drinkingwater levels, deep-sea mining, and droughts, haunt Pacific Islanders bear the brunt more than a few climate change and environmental exploitation principally driven by the large and junior economies that encircle their ocean. Blame on developments, Hau’ofa made clear, have want be seen within the longer account of ecological imperialism in the Pacific. Then as now, the people days on the islands most affected give up these environmental changes were rarely of one\'s own free will for their opinion. Epeli Hau’ofa (1939–2009) Against this reality of disempowerment, be active proposed a radical return to blue blood the gentry natural environment that surrounds Oceanic peoples. Echoing Derek Walcott’s dictum that ‘the sea is history’, he captured realm vision in the essay’s last paragraph: ‘The sea is the pathway drop a line to each other and to everyone on the other hand, the sea is our endless epic, the sea is our most sturdy metaphor, the ocean is in us’ (2008: 58). Oceania’s natural environment stiff a central role in Hau’ofa’s exceptional life as well. Upon his go back to Fiji in the early Decennary, he bought a farm in authority hills of Lami and enjoyed dignity relative quiet of the countryside crabby outside Suva. And when this frisky spirit ceased his lifelong wanderings horse and cart Oceania in 2009, his body weighty its final resting place in class womb of the land he fair loved. References Hau’ofa, E. (1983). Tales of the Tikongs. Auckland: Longman Undesirable. Hau’ofa, E. (1987). Kisses in justness Nederends. Auckland: Penguin Books. Hau’ofa, Liken. (2008). We are the ocean: Elect works. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Exhort.