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A review by mveldeivendran
We Are the Ocean: Selected Works by Epeli Hau'ofa
5.0
"To remove a people from their ancestral, natural surroundings or to destroy their lands with mining, deforestation, bombing, large-scale industrial and urban developments, and the like - is to sever them not only from their traditional sources of livelihood but also, and much more importantly, from their ancestry, their history, their identity, and their ultimate claim for the legitimacy of their existence.
..
Such acts are therefore sacrilegious and of the same order of enormity as the complete destruction of all of a nation’s libraries, archives, museums, monuments, historic buildings, and all its books and other such documents."
The work comprises of the writer's essays, fiction and personal accounts. It has so much to offer insightful and enduring perspectives on the cultures, historical understanding and distortions, political atmosphere, and more importantly the contemporary survival livelihoods amidst establishments and reconciling the challenges of indigenous lives in the Pacific region with the role of art.
With a PhD in Anthropology, he worked at the University of South Pacific balancing the academic times with his artistic activities with regional artists to find their inspiration in their own cultures, histories and contemporary experiences.
With multitude of cultures within the sea of islands, he brings ocean as the common thing to mend a regional identity that unites them literally and metaphorically. The essays featured raises very important questions regarding the notion of what it means to live in a multicultural society. With so many of us (un)consciously assimilating towards a singular clichéd digital/ popular/ mainstream ways of living, I think, the writer's effort to reconcile these cultural conundrums in the region is a powerful tool as in itself and insights could be developed for the sake of decency and persistence of dignity of humans from all walks of culture.
I'm adding some of the quotes from the work for those got interested enough to reach this point.
Pg: 46-47
"In the earliest stage of our interactions with the outside world, we were the South Sea paradise of noble savages living in harmony with a bountiful nature; we were simultaneously lost and degraded souls to be pacified, Christianised, colonised, and civilised."
Pg: 70-71
"With little or no memory, we stand alone as individuals with no points of reference except to our dismally portrayed present, to our increasingly marketised national institutions, to international development agencies, international lending organisations, transnational corporations, fit only to be globalised and whateverised, and slotted in our proper places on the Human Development Index."
Pg: 88
"Globalisation, on the other hand, is such a serious, mechanical, joyless, and soulless enterprise that the flames in people’s spirit are often extinguished at the outset, making it very difficult to rekindle them. Much time and effort are thereby consumed wastefully."
Pg: 147
"If you survive the pain in the arse you can live with just about anything."
Pg: 131
"We must greet, love, and dance with each other in the middle of our zones of taboo, for we have not created any real taboos, only the fears and phobias that we, in our limitless capacity for self-delusion, have swept to the boundaries of our cherished conventions, where they remain to haunt us into insanity and violence."
Pg: 141
"I almost lost my sense of humour trying to be civilized; but fortunately I never got quite civilized."
..
Such acts are therefore sacrilegious and of the same order of enormity as the complete destruction of all of a nation’s libraries, archives, museums, monuments, historic buildings, and all its books and other such documents."
The work comprises of the writer's essays, fiction and personal accounts. It has so much to offer insightful and enduring perspectives on the cultures, historical understanding and distortions, political atmosphere, and more importantly the contemporary survival livelihoods amidst establishments and reconciling the challenges of indigenous lives in the Pacific region with the role of art.
With a PhD in Anthropology, he worked at the University of South Pacific balancing the academic times with his artistic activities with regional artists to find their inspiration in their own cultures, histories and contemporary experiences.
With multitude of cultures within the sea of islands, he brings ocean as the common thing to mend a regional identity that unites them literally and metaphorically. The essays featured raises very important questions regarding the notion of what it means to live in a multicultural society. With so many of us (un)consciously assimilating towards a singular clichéd digital/ popular/ mainstream ways of living, I think, the writer's effort to reconcile these cultural conundrums in the region is a powerful tool as in itself and insights could be developed for the sake of decency and persistence of dignity of humans from all walks of culture.
I'm adding some of the quotes from the work for those got interested enough to reach this point.
Pg: 46-47
"In the earliest stage of our interactions with the outside world, we were the South Sea paradise of noble savages living in harmony with a bountiful nature; we were simultaneously lost and degraded souls to be pacified, Christianised, colonised, and civilised."
Pg: 70-71
"With little or no memory, we stand alone as individuals with no points of reference except to our dismally portrayed present, to our increasingly marketised national institutions, to international development agencies, international lending organisations, transnational corporations, fit only to be globalised and whateverised, and slotted in our proper places on the Human Development Index."
Pg: 88
"Globalisation, on the other hand, is such a serious, mechanical, joyless, and soulless enterprise that the flames in people’s spirit are often extinguished at the outset, making it very difficult to rekindle them. Much time and effort are thereby consumed wastefully."
Pg: 147
"If you survive the pain in the arse you can live with just about anything."
Pg: 131
"We must greet, love, and dance with each other in the middle of our zones of taboo, for we have not created any real taboos, only the fears and phobias that we, in our limitless capacity for self-delusion, have swept to the boundaries of our cherished conventions, where they remain to haunt us into insanity and violence."
Pg: 141
"I almost lost my sense of humour trying to be civilized; but fortunately I never got quite civilized."