Ata's Speech at the Royal Kava Ceremony Installation of Tu‘i Kanokupolu Tupou V on 30 July 2008: A Response to the Tongan Democracy Movement

His Majesty King George Tupou V, who reigned as the king of Tonga from 2008 to 2012, inherited near-absolute political power from his predecessors, yet two days before his coronation he announced that he would relinquish that power and granted amendments to the Tongan constitution, thereby making Tonga democratic. Innovative additions to the conventional speech made by the chief Ata at his taumafa kava installation ceremony as the 23rd Tu‘i Kanokupolu, on 30 July 2008 in Nuku‘alofa, suggest that the speech was composed by, or at the behest of, Tupou V himself to express his view of the contemporary ideology of his dynasty. The speech consists of 92 lines of traditionally styled Tongan poetry that rehearse the origins, history and achievements of the Tu‘i Kanokupolu dynasty, frequently employing pre-existing phraseology. Twenty-five anomalies of rhyme indicate that the speech was composed on the basis of a pre-existing composition and redacted to remind Tongans of particular aspects of the past and present character of the Tu‘i Kanokupolu dynasty.     

‘Traditional’ Healers,Speaking and Motivation in Vava'u,Tonga: Explaining Syncretism and Addressing Health Policy

ABSTRACT Bilateral health system development in Tonga is implicated in a misrepresentation of ‘traditional’ healing that has serious implications for the provision of health care. It has strengthened the tendency to homogenise and stereotype a diverse body of healers in counter distinction with biomedicine. The diversity of and syncretism in non‐biomedical local healing practice is little appreciated in policy debates. Addressing the epistemological, social and linguistic context of syncretism in terms sensitive to healers' concerns and conceptualisations is vital to build on the pre‐existing collaborations between health professionals and a diverse body of healers in a country that has experienced a marked shift from communicable to non‐communicable disorders. This paper examines the diversity and syncretism of five of the most popular ‘spirit’ healers in Vava'u, Tonga in terms suggested by healers themselves using the Tongan concept and value of tauhi vaha'a (to evoke and intensify relatedness) as an analytic tool. The creativity implied in healers' socially constitutive use of language with ancestors, relatives, patients, churches and the hospital questions the value of any notion of traditionality and suggests considerable grounds for collaboration.     

The Curious History of the Minerva Reefs: Tracing the Origin of Tongan and Fijian Claims Over the Minerva Reefs

ABSTRACT

This article explores the historical events relating to the competing claims over the Minerva Reefs by Tonga and Fiji. Tonga’s sovereign claim over the Minerva Reefs was prompted by a private group’s laying claim to a 'Republic of Minerva' in 1972. At that time, Fiji, as well as the South Pacific Forum, recognized Tonga as the only possible owner of the Minerva Reefs, but did not explicitly recognize Tonga's claimed sovereign title. Such a position reflected the legal uncertainty in relation to Tonga's claim in 1972. The establishment of the 200?nm Exclusive Economic Zone legal regime in the late 1970s gave rise to Fiji's claim to the Minerva Reefs, whereas subsequent developments in international law have significantly reduced the legal uncertainty in relation to Tonga's claim.     

Interpreting Ritual as Performance and Theory Association for Social Anthropology in Oceania 2010 Distinguished Lecture

ABSTRACT The paper looks at specific rituals and their relationships with dance in Hawaii, Tonga, Bulgaria, and India. These four short case studies explore the relationship between dance and ritual, in particular how dance is presented as representing the ritual past. I bring ‘structured movement,’ as one of ritual's distinguishing marks, to center stage to explore how ritual movement and dance are related.     

Tongan and Samoan volcanic glass: pXRF analysis and implications for constructs of ancestral Polynesian society

A provenance study of volcanic glass specimens from 12 archaeological sites in the Kingdom of Tonga is carried out employing pXRF (portable X-ray fluorescence) analysis. To accomplish this, volcanic glass samples from previously identified sources in northern Tonga and the adjacent islands of Samoa are analyzed. Results indicate inter-island voyaging and interaction over a 600 km linear distance along the Tongan island chain from first Lapita settlement ca 2900 BP throughout later prehistory. Tongan volcanic glass, however, is not found in Samoa and, with the exception of one late prehistoric specimen, Samoan volcanic glass is not present in Tonga. This distribution challenges current concepts of an integrated ancestral society and homeland common to Tonga and Samoa from the Lapita period onward.     

Rational,reverential or experimental? The politics of electoral reform in Oceania

Oceania, with the exception of New Zealand, has received little comparative attention in studies of electoral reform. This article uses evidence from Fiji, Tonga, Papua New Guinea and Nauru, as well as New Zealand and Australia, in order to: understand the process of electoral reform at national and regional levels; examine variation in the process and consider whether theories of electoral reform from elsewhere apply to Oceania. It finds that electoral reform is a highly complex process that is influenced by the self-interest of parties, democratic values and diffusion.

除了新西兰,不大有人从比较选举改革的角度关注大洋洲。本文使用斐济、汤加、巴布亚新几内亚、瑙鲁以及新西兰和澳大利亚的资料,目的是在国家和地区的层面上理解选举改革的过程;探讨过程中的变异,并思考其他地方的选举改革理论是否适用于大洋洲。     

Plainware ceramics from Sāmoa: Insights into ceramic chronology,cultural transmission,and selection among colonizing populations

The first people in Sāmoa produced a varied ceramic archaeological record including a single deposit with decorated Lapita ceramics on the island of ‘Upolu in the west of the archipelago and a nearly contemporaneous plainware deposit over 250 km to the east on Ofu Island. Post-Lapita ceramic change across Sāmoa is similar with almost no decoration, local ceramic production, limited vessel form diversity, and changing frequencies of thin- and thick-wares. This Sāmoan ceramic record is different from nearby Tonga and Fiji where early decorated Lapita ceramics are widely distributed, there are no thickness-defined ware types, and for Fiji, post-Lapita ceramics are more variable. Here we investigate the apparent uniqueness of the Sāmoan ceramic record through an analysis of early plainware ceramics, the second oldest after the Ofu deposits, from Tutuila Island in the center of the Sāmoan archipelago. Our assemblage-specific findings are similar to other Sāmoan plainware analyses, but we suggest the ceramic and other archaeological evidence from Sāmoa and the region indicates Sāmoa was colonized by a few isolated groups and that within the context of cultural transmission of ceramic variants, selection explains thickness variation and likely other aspects of Sāmoan ceramic change.     

Jean Charlot and Classical Hawaiian Culture

A small group of Japanese civilian internees from the South Pacific were confined in New Zealand during World War II, with some being subsequently transferred to Australia in readiness for planned civilian exchanges with Japan. Most from Tonga had Japanese wives and children who were also detained in New Zealand. With one exception, all Japanese who had local wives and families were forced to leave them behind in either Tonga or Fiji. These families proved an anomaly to the Fijian authorities who had to provide care for some, even non-Fijians. In defining who was supported in their former island homes and who was ultimately deported to Japan or allowed to return to the islands, racial attitudes of the various administrations emerge, reflecting an antipathy towards Asians not found in regard to other enemy aliens of the time. New Zealand played the role of honest broker but it, too, did not offer any permanent home to displaced Japanese civilians after the war ended, and supported the expulsion of them from the South Pacific.     

MANUSCRIPT XXXIV: ‘The feelings of friendship which We have always entertained’: Fragments of Tongan–Hawaiian Relations, 1880–8

ABSTRACT

After the Hawaiian Kingdom had played an important part as a model for Tonga's transition to a modern constitutional monarchy from the 1850s to 1870s, Tonga's government attempted to reconnect with Hawai‘i in the 1880s by suggesting a friendship treaty between the two kingdoms but then failed to follow through, despite Hawaiian enthusiasm for the project. Correspondence in the Hawai‘i State Archives, hitherto unacknowledged by historians, documents these late 19th-century fragments of Hawaiian–Tongan relations.