Our Sea of City Streets: Movement Towards an Oceanic Theology of Place in Diaspora (PDF)

Our Sea of City Streets Movement Towards an Oceanic Theology of Place in Diaspora Melodie Bergquist-Turori Abstract: The postcolonial period reintroduced mobility to...

Our Sea of City Streets Movement Towards an Oceanic Theology of Place in Diaspora Melodie Bergquist-Turori Abstract: The postcolonial period reintroduced mobility to Oceania, categorizing immigrant communities as diasporas that have been disconnected from ancestral homeland. For many Pacific Islanders residing on Turtle Island, this means our roots reach back to the motherlands but grow in urban concrete. The cultivation of diasporic Pasifika identity intersects with complex histories of Christian missions, legacies of colonialism, and notions of cultural hierarchy based on location. When relationship to land is essential to the flourishing of Indigenous identity and theologies, how do we understand ourselves as people of place living away from our ipukarea? Conceptualizing land as having physical and spiritual dimensions creates new possibilities for the cultivation of Indigeneity in diaspora, positioning the city as a pito space to nurture island identities in community. Keywords: diaspora, Oceania, colonization, Indigenous identity Kia orāna tātou kātoatoa ‘i te aro’a ma’ata ō tō tātou Atua. Ko Melodie Bergquist-Turori tōku ingoa. I come from the land of the Luiseño people, under the gaze of Wavamai Mountain, about thirty miles east from the shores of Moana Nui o te Kiva (the Pacific Ocean). This is the land that raised me, the place I have returned to live in San Diego County. The lands of the Ajacheman and Tongva people sustain my work as an artist and educator in Los Angeles and Orange County. Aotearoa is the land where I first drew breath, the place my father called home for the first half of his life. My siblings and I are Cook Islands Māori, descended from the people of Ara’ura Enua, Te Ulu-o-Te-Watu,1 Germany, and Sweden. Ure’ia 1 Ara’ura Enua and Te Ulu-o-Te-Watu are traditional or spiritual names for the islands more widely known as Aitutaki and Pukapuka, respectively. NAIITS 1 VOLUME 20 NAIITS 20.indd 1 2024-02-22 9:53:52 AM  is our grandfather’s village, Ngāti Pakau is our tribe, our grandmother’s family name is Amosa. The reflection on diaspora and migration that I share with you here was formed over years in the Pacific Islands communities of Los Angeles and Orange County, under the mentorship of our Elders and community leaders. I am deeply grateful to my fellow NAIITS co-learners and the Pasifika Transmissions family of artists and cultural practitioners who have all been instrumental in developing how I think about the weaving of faith and culture. My father, George Turori, has become an unexpected but welcome partner on the voyage of understanding what it means to be Māori in a faraway land. Dad was born on the ipukarea (ancestral homeland) and has memories of running around the island before the family immigrated from Rarotonga to Tāmaki Makaurau (Auckland), where they joined the Cook Islands diaspora. His family was part of the wave of Pasifika migrants who came from across Moana Nui to settle in Tāmaki Makaurau at the urging of a New Zealand government looking for laborers. Much of dad’s childhood was spent in inner cities like Grey Lynn. At the time, Grey Lynn was a pito, a belly button or center of Pasifika migration. In the Cook Islands there is spiritual significance to a person’s pito because it feeds the ngākau—your gut, the seat of emotions and the place from which Māori people construct a sense of the world. Being amidst his extended family and other Pasifika people nourished dad’s pito, allowing him to continue growing up in island values and ways of being despite being removed from his ipukarea. Being in community allowed for continuity in some ways of being, however, living in the city also required assimilation into the Euro-western society of New Zealand. Assimilation interrupted the transmission of many cultural practices, including the ability to speak te reo, the Māori language. While dad migrated to diaspora, I was born into it. Shortly after I arrived on scene in Tāmaki, we moved overseas to California, the place my mom’s family calls home. I grew up in Valley Center, a semi-rural town encompassed by Native reservations on three sides, about an hour drive from the city of San Diego. Valley Center is a cowboy town of ranchers and farmers, though that is beginning to change as urban sprawl reaches into our small town. We did not know this during my childhood, but San Diego County is home VOLUME 20 2 NAIITS NAIITS 20.indd 2 2024-02-22 9:53:52 AM  to the second largest population of Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders (NHPI) in the continental United States. Even though there were many Pasifika people—including other Cook Islanders—living in the city of San Diego, we were far enough away that I don’t remember meeting any other Pacific Islanders until I started college. Today, Valley Center has a population of 10,087 people, 0.2% of whom identify as NHPI, about 20 people.2 I remember finding similar numbers as a teenager, doing the same math, and wondering, who were the other Pacific Islanders living in my hometown? How could we find each other? Eighteen years later and I still can’t answer those questions, I don’t know how to find the other islanders living here. Growing up isolated from other Pacific Islanders created a profound sense of alienation and otherness that only began to shift when I moved to Los Angeles. Suddenly, I was crossing paths with a bank teller who happened to be Tongan, discovering an ori Tahiti dance studio around the corner from my apartment, and joining a community organization with culturally grounded leaders and elders. The city of Los Angeles fed my pito, just as another city did for my dad. Because the city held community, it became a place to nurture our respective island identities. How is this possible? For many Indigenous Peoples, relationship to land is the foundation of their Indigenous identity. In Oceania and around the world, western concepts have twisted relationship to land into a territorialized identity where a person is only considered Indigenous if they are residing on their ancestral homeland.3 This land must be rural, not urban. Additionally, Indigenous cultures are frozen in time and place, unable to experience change or adapt to new locations. For Indigeneity to be authentic, it must be tethered to a specific place and time.4 From the western perspective, describing city as a pito place that can nourish an identity held in our ngākau and inherently tied to land, is odd. My dad grew up in an urban setting, away from land but near Pasifika people who had experienced relationship to land. I grew up in a rural setting, away from people but near to land. We both experienced the gift of community facilitated by a city setting. When relationship to land is essential to the flourishing of 2 “QuickFacts: Valley Center CDP, California,” U.S. Census Bureau, Accessed on March 23, 2022, www.census.gov/quickfacts/valleycentercdpcalifornia. 3 Nandita Sharma, “Against National Sovereignty: The Postcolonial New World Order and the Containment of Decolonization,” Studies in Social Justice 14/2 (2021), 395. 4 Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples, Second ed. (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2012), 77. NAIITS 3 VOLUME 20 NAIITS 20.indd 3 2024-02-22 9:53:52 AM  Indigenous identities, how do we understand ourselves as people of place when living away from our ancestral homeland? Is it possible to continue relationship to land without physical proximity, perhaps even when one has never set foot on that land? How can we practice relationship to land from an urban context? These are increasingly important questions as Pasifika peoples continue to migrate from their homelands to join diasporas in other countries. Los Angeles is the largest Pasifika city in the continental United States,5 there is a diverse Moana Nui community that reflects the similarities and distinctions between our cultures, histories of Christian missions and colonization, and our present political contexts on the continent. The story of the Pasifika diaspora begins in these histories; I will share a few examples to illustrate the complexity of historical experiences that shape the present diaspora context, while acknowledging these are not comprehensive or representative of the larger whole. Throughout this paper I use the terms Pasifika, Oceania, and Moana Nui6 interchangeably to refer to both the vast blue continent widely known as the Pacific Ocean, and the Indigenous Peoples who call that place home. In the United States, these are currently the names most widely used by the community to further a sense of collective identity and exert self-determination, the terms themselves speak to the diversity of our histories. Missions and Colonization in Oceania European colonization of Moana Nui begins in Guåhan (also called Guam) with the 1668 arrival of Jesuit priests and Spanish military.7 In the following years, disease and military conflict resulted in a significant depopulation 5 U.S. Census Bureau, “The Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander Population: 2010,” (May 2012), 9. 6 In recent years, there has been an increase in the use of Moana Nui o te Kiva or Moana Nui as an Indigenous name for the Pacific Ocean. This usage often implies it is a name that is held in common across distinct languages throughout the entire region. However, Moana Nui and similar names are derived from languages that are spoken primarily in the part of the region known as Polynesia. Oceania is one of the most linguistically diverse regions in the world, there is no single name that can represent all the thousands of distinct languages. I choose to use Moana Nui o te Kiva because it is a name from the language my grandparents spoke, while recognizing the beauty of the many languages that are sustained by the ocean. 7 Francis X. Hezel, “From Conversion to Conquest: The Early Spanish Mission in the Marianas,” J Pac Hist 17/3 (1982), 115. VOLUME 20 4 NAIITS NAIITS 20.indd 4 2024-02-22 9:53:52 AM  of the CHamoru people. As part of the assimilation project, canoes were deliberately destroyed to limit the possibility of escape, severing connection between the CHamorus,8 land, and sea.9 In Eastern Oceania, John Williams first led the missionary activity of the London Missionary Society (LMS) to Tahiti. While in Tahiti, Williams engaged a new strategy of training Native people to carry the gospel and European culture, hoping it would be efficient in converting other heathen islands more quickly than the Europeans could on their own. Accompanied by two Tahitian missionaries, Williams arrived on Aitutaki in October 1821 where the strategy proved highly successful.10 Many Cook Islands Māori, including my own ancestors, were converted, trained, then sent west to Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea, and other islands to prepare for the later arrival of European LMS missionaries. These mission histories reveal a truth of Oceania today: it is a place that is deeply religious and widely Christian, though in many places Gospel and European culture continues to intermingle.11 What had once been a space characterized by voyaging and genealogical connections linking islands across vast distances became one of isolation when, in the words of Tongan anthropologist Epeli Hau’ofa, “continental men—Europeans and Americans—drew imaginary lines across the sea, making the colonial boundaries that confined ocean peoples to tiny spaces for the first time.”12 These imaginary lines include the division of the expansive sea into three subregions: Micronesia, named in reference to the smallness of the islands in the northern part of the Pacific; Polynesia, because of the numerous islands in the south of the Pacific; and Melanesia, the western most region with the darkest-skinned peoples. The subregions were further divided by imperial governments, restricting connective movement between islands until the postcolonial period. At that time, old imperial borders were transformed into nations and territories that experience a variety of neocolonial expressions today. In 1893 the free, independent, and modern Kingdom of Hawai’i was illegally overthrown by the United States, forcing 8 For details on Guam CHamoru orthography, see “Commission on CHamoru Language and the Teaching of the History and Culture of the Indigenous People of Guam,” UtugrafihanCHamoru, Guåhan Guam CHamoru Orthography (2020), 10. 9 Craig Santos Perez, “‘The Ocean in Us’: Navigating the Blue Humanities and Diasporic Chamoru Poetry,” Humanities 9/3 (2020), 3–4. 10 Richard Phillip Gilson, The Cook Islands, 1820–1950 (Victoria University Press, 1980), 20–32. 11 Feiloaiga Taule’ale’ausumai, “Pasifika Churches Trapped in the Missionary Era: A Case in Samoa,” in Theologies from the Pacific, ed. Jione Havea (Switzerland: Springer Nature, 2021), 147. 12 Epeli Hau‘ofa, “Our Sea of Islands,” Contemp. Pac. 6/1 (1994), 151–153. NAIITS 5 VOLUME 20 NAIITS 20.indd 5 2024-02-22 9:53:52 AM  Hawai’i to become a state and Kānaka Maoli to become U.S. citizens.13 The Cook Islands gained self-governance in 1965, but in free association with New Zealand; Cook Islands Māori are New Zealand citizens. Tahiti is a semi-autonomous country, one island in more than one hundred collectively known as French Polynesia, all part of the French Republic. Papua New Guinea is independent, but West Papua remains a province under Indonesian governance. American Sāmoa and Guåhan are territories of the United States; for many islanders, this is colonialism under a new name.14 The racial and geographic legacy of Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia perpetuated by the collective consciousness of the West, taking root in island communities. The western gaze perceived the peoples of Polynesia as the friendliest and most attractive islanders. In many spaces today, Polynesian is used interchangeably with Pacific Islander, erasing our Micronesian and Melanesian kin from history and contemporary narratives. Oceania is diverse in languages, cultures, and histories, a complexity inherently woven into the urban Pasifika diaspora on Turtle Island. Though the difference in histories can be stark, the singular collective experience of diaspora is the rupture in relationship to ipukarea, departure from the islands and ocean that shaped the languages, kinship, and spiritualities of our ancestors. No Land Diaspora is defined as the “scattering of a people away from an established or ancestral homeland,” a word whose origin is linked to the dispersion of Jews during the Babylonian Exile.15 Though the use of diaspora carries less connotation of forced displacement today, it remains a term that defines people groups by what they lack. The defining characteristic of a diaspora is separation from land, whether that occurs on the same continent or across an ocean. Over the years, 13 “The Illegal Overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom Government,” National Education Association, Accessed July 13, 2021, https://www.nea.org/nea-today/all-news-articles/illegal-overthrow-hawaiian- kingdom-government. 14 “Island of Warriors,” America by the Numbers, PBS (August 2016), Accessed April 29, 2022, www. pbs.org/video/america-numbers-island-warriors/, beginning at 21m 14s. 15 Merriam-Webster, s.v. “diaspora,” Accessed April 3, 2022, www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ diaspora. VOLUME 20 6 NAIITS NAIITS 20.indd 6 2024-02-22 9:53:52 AM  diaspora has become an ugly, othering identity that is too often accepted and perpetuated by both islanders in the ipukarea and those residing overseas. To be diaspora is to be less, never quite measuring up to the standards of cultural authenticity introduced by colonization. Sometimes, it is to be denied acceptance into the community altogether. This is a heavy price for the sin of disconnection from knowledge and cultural protocols, which for many does not occur by choice. Writer and artist Noelle Marie Falcis poignantly describes the acute grief of being born into diaspora, “Which land do we have permission to land on? Which land will not spurn us, burn us, or eat us alive? The decision is not a decision because no one ever asked for our opinion and, besides, there is no choice. The answer: no land.”16 For the first-generation immigrants who do make the choice to leave, it is not always done with an awareness of the many ways colonization shaped the environment that makes migration attractive or necessary or in the way those roots of coloniality travel with us. For second and third generations with no land connections or land-based knowledge, the experience of diaspora is one where they may be positioned as people who can only take, greedy to receive the gift of culture but with little to give in return. However, this fundamental problem of separation from land that characterizes immigrant Pasifika communities and their descendants requires a conception of land as belonging exclusively to the physical realm. What if we did not accept that concept? Understanding land to have physical and spiritual dimensions widens the possibilities for the cultivation of indigeneity in diaspora. Elekosi F. Lafitaga writes: fanua, although defined today as land fixed in a certain location (i.e. homeland), is a cultural and diasporic concept that can be defined as a perception of the natural and spiritual world from which we gain knowledge for all facets of human life: mentally, physically, and spiritually. When fanua can be understood in this way, it allows our sacred whispers that originated from this perceived world to be linked to our lived experiences of 16Noelle Marie Falcis, “Walang Hiya; Or Utterly Shameless: A Lyric on Philippine-American Displacement,” Kartika Review 18 (June 30, 2017), Accessed January 27, 2022, www.kartikareview.org/18/falcis.html. NAIITS 7 VOLUME 20 NAIITS 20.indd 7 2024-02-22 9:53:53 AM  reality regardless of location; offering a possible way of thinking and seeing Indigenously in the homeland and the diaspora.17 Lafitaga roots this conceptualization of land in a Sāmoan creation story and the cultural understanding of land as afterbirth or placenta, the source of nourishment for its children. This shared concept surfaces in various languages around Oceania where the word for afterbirth is also used to speak of land, evoking an image of land as mother.18 The connected relationships between child and mothers (human and earth) is embodied in practices of burying the umbilical cord and mother’s placenta in the earth or giving it to the ocean to form a spiritual bond between child and the place that will continue sustaining life.19 While this cultural practice is shared by many Indigenous peoples around the world, Lafitaga says the widespread notion of a spiritual land around Moana Nui makes it an inherently diasporic concept carried by our ancestors as they traveled between islands. This means “any place inhabited by tagata is potentially conceptualized in the light of fanua for fanua is whatever (island-)world the tagata finds a home.”20 Fanua is the Sāmoan word for both land and placenta, and tagata is the word for people. When the tagata practice the dual nature of fanua as a source of physical and spiritual sustenance they are carrying the land within their own bodies. If the body is at home, even outside the ipukarea, the homeland still lives within the body. Deriving a sense of place in the world through the land within may be what Hau’ofa was alluding to when he wrote, “the sea is our pathway to each other and to everyone else, the sea is our endless saga, the sea is our most powerful metaphor, the ocean is in us.”21 Teresia Teaiwa also spoke of the ocean in our blood,22 and to these I will add: the (is)land is in our bones. Securing diasporic identity in a spiritual landscape opens the potential for the Oceania diaspora to restore agency while physically distant from ipukarea, being shaped by “one’s perception and experiences of the 17 Elekosi F. Lafitaga, “Fanua as a Diasporic Concept: Rereading James 1:21,” in Theologies from the Pacific, ed. Jione Havea (Switzerland: Springer Nature, 2021), 291. 18 Lafitaga, “Fanua as a Diasporic Concept,” 292–295. 19 Emma Emily Ngakuravaru Powell, “’Akapapa’anga Ara Tangata: Genealogising the (Cook Islands) Māori Imaginary” (PhD Thesis, Victoria University of Wellington | Te Herenga Waka, 2021), 1, 55–56. 20 Lafitaga, “Fanua as a Diasporic Concept,” 296–297. 21 Epeli Hau’ofa, “The Ocean in Us,” Contemp. Pac. 10/2 (1998), 409. 22 Hau’ofa, “The Ocean in Us,” 392. VOLUME 20 8 NAIITS NAIITS 20.indd 8 2024-02-22 9:53:53 AM  surrounding reality of the cosmos, land, and sea.”23 From this place of empowerment, all generations of diaspora can work together to develop cultural practices and Christian theologies rooted in ipukarea and present location. To do so requires the kind of pito space my father and I encountered in diaspora. The interethnic context of city provides nurturing spaces where the conceptual landscape is realized in the gathering of Pasifika people who all bear the spirit of land within. Reconstituting Ipukarea in Urbanity Los Angeles is a sprawling sea of urban life, always moving and changing, shaping the reality of its residents, and recalling the ways a free-flowing ocean formed the perspectives of our Moana Nui ancestors. Los Angeles is also the largest Indigenous city in the U.S.,24 holding the spiritual landscapes of the Tongva, Kizh, Chumash, Native American diasporas from other places in the U.S., as well as Indigenous Peoples from Latin America and Oceania. In addition, there are many diaspora communities from other nations engaging in their own cultural practices. Within this urban seascape, all seek to carve out spaces where the community can gather and participate in culturally sustaining activities. In the face of dominant western culture, land within must have physical and relational space to move from conceptual to actual, it requires what Fijian theologian Winston Halapua describes as “space that allows both being and becoming.”25 One such Los Angeles space is the Pacific Island Ethnic Art Museum (PIEAM), a quiet atoll amidst the busy traffic on 7th and Alamitos in inner-city Long Beach. Under the guidance of CHamoru museum director Auntie Fran Lujan, PIEAM is a sacred space where land within is nurtured and contextualized to place through relational practices. Practically, this translates to ancestor pieces (not artifacts) living in the open air alongside their contemporary kin, intergenerational pieces and their makers meeting across time. Guests are invited to ask permission before interacting with ancestors in the gallery and garden space. There is a small community of artists whose individual practices are centered in the relational lifeworlds of Oceania 23 Lafitaga, “Fanua as a Diasporic Concept,” 301. 24 Mapping Indigenous LA, Accessed on January 20, 2022, https://mila.ss.ucla.edu/. 25 Winston Halapua, Waves of God’s Embrace: Sacred Perspectives from the Ocean (Canterbury Press, 2008), 52. NAIITS 9 VOLUME 20 NAIITS 20.indd 9 2024-02-22 9:53:53 AM  working regularly in the PIEAM space, collaborating on projects for the wellbeing of both Moana Nui and the broader intercultural community. These activities of being and becoming are cultivated in vā, the relational space between “that holds separate entities and things together in the Unity-that-is-All, the space that is context, giving meaning to things.”26 Re- awakening the land within occurs in vā, the space that holds our bodies in relationship to our ancestral homeland and to the land we reside upon. Vā as meaning making space is the connective force drawing land within into relationship with land upon. In Oceania, land and sea are understood as “maps of movements, pauses, and more movements,”27 the land within is formed and renewed through the mapping of movements and pauses in human and non-human relationships, building out an interior landscape of mountains, plains, deserts, and water ways. Ipukarea comes to life in the timbre of voices stretching to the ceiling like trees, in waves of music cresting off walls, and the quiet hiss of spray paint on canvas. Cultural practitioner Ālaoi’a Moni Pili says that “as we breathe in life and breathe out life, we are living from each other’s vā, from each other’s mana.”28 Vā as an activity of sustaining and strengthening one another is critical for the Oceania diaspora, it is not only a source of life but also the spring that feeds the ngākau through the pito, overflowing into tangible expressions of land within in the form of artworks. “Art is one of the defining characteristics of any culture or society, reflecting the mother culture and local environment. It is physically and ideologically shaped by these two factors.”29 In diaspora, the mother culture is first formed by land within which is then reconstituted through relationships and the land we stand upon. Sacred intergenerational spaces like PIEAM provide place for diaspora artists to embody the being and becoming of contextualization, to render the values of land within into creative production that uplift the community. Vā enables the land within to continue living while also reshaping that spiritual landscape in relation to present location and persons. Land within cannot survive internally if it is not also embodied 26 Albert Wendt, “Tatauing the Post-Colonial Body,” Span 42–43 (1996), 15–29. 27 Epeli Hau’ofa, “Epilogue: Pasts to Remember,” in Remembrance of Pacific Pasts: An Invitation to Remake History, ed. Robert Borofsky (University of Hawai’i Press, 2000), 466. 28 Ālaoi’a Moni Pili, “Ālaoi’a Moni Pili and the Pahu,” YouTube, Pasifika Transmissions presentation, Pacific Island Ethnic Art Museum (March 2021), Accessed April 21, 2022, https://youtu.be/tmNMXFcpjj4, beginning at 28m 14s. 29 Teweiariki Teaero, “Art Criticism for Schools in Oceania,” Pacific Curriculum Network 8/2 (1999), 7. VOLUME 20 10 NAIITS NAIITS 20.indd 10 2024-02-22 9:53:53 AM  externally through the relational activities that guide the creation of meaning. Cultivation of land within through vā is inherently energetic, connective, and life giving. This is not a deficient space of displacement as diaspora is typically understood. Instead, from this view, diaspora can also be appreciated as a place of possibility. Moving Towards a Diasporic Theology of Place Returning to diaspora and the connection to the Jewish dispersion in Scripture helps us understand it as a space for transformation and the cultivation of fresh perspectives. The Jewish diaspora is most often understood as the Babylonian exile, however, the earlier period in Egypt also has all the characteristics of a diaspora.30 The Egyptian and Babylonian diaspora experiences were two of the most important influences on Jewish identity and imagination, birthing imagery and prophetic themes connecting to the work of Christ. John writes of Christ as the Passover lamb (John 19:36) by referring to the first Passover event (Exod 12:46) that brought about the end of Egyptian diaspora. More broadly, the exodus out of Egypt becomes the model for Creator’s salvation work in the story of Israel. Out of the Babylonian diaspora, Isaiah prophesied about Christ as a Suffering Servant (Isa 52:13–53:12) which Jesus later confirms is a reference to himself (Luke 22:37). These examples sketch an outline of the profound impact diaspora experience had on the development of Jewish and Christian theologies. The covenant story of Creator and Israel flows between the promise of place, the pain of leaving, perseverance of hope in waiting, and the joy of returning. For the Jewish people, each movement away meant new experiences and space for new ways of thinking to grow—a hopeful model any diaspora people can embrace. For the Moana Nui diaspora, speaking of space or push and pull in movement evokes images of the vast sea. It helps us reimagine the displacement of diaspora as a gift of space to be received and reciprocated. With physical and emotional distance from ipukarea, there is space to explore challenging questions of history, culture, and spirituality, through a diasporic lens that is in conversation with other decolonizing peoples. 30 Ted Rubesh, “Diaspora Distinctives: The Jewish Diaspora Experience in the Old Testament,” Torch Trinity Journal 13 (2010), 115. NAIITS 11 VOLUME 20 NAIITS 20.indd 11 2024-02-22 9:53:53 AM  Distance makes it easier to spot the places where the legacy of colonial thinking and practices have been so well absorbed, it seems as if they were always present. Diasporic exploration of questions at the intersection of missions, cultural change, and Oceanic spiritualities may be fruitful for all of us. Questions like: how have the perspectives of European and American missionaries influenced how we think about the pre-Christian spiritual practices of our ancestors? What impact did native island missionaries have on the culture and spiritual lives of other islanders? What role did Christianity have in the proliferation of diasporic movement? This is not to suggest that by studying questions like these, the Moana Nui diaspora in the United States will become a progressive savior for our home islands. It is a reminder that when we look up we all see the same constellations, but from here, they occupy a different position in the night sky. Land within and vā must be the guiding points for navigating this voyage. The land within will remind us to honor and learn from the people of the land we live upon, in addition to honoring and learning from those who are at home caring for our ipukarea. The principle of teu le vā, the tending to or caring for relational space, requires the humility of active listening and awareness in recognizing the different places we may be occupying from moment to moment. Diaspora need not be a place where distinct island cultures become homogenized or assimilated into urbanity. The undeniable grief of separation from ipukarea fundamentally changes all involved; the people who leave and the ones who stay. Hope for the future is what sustained the Jewish diasporas,31 and the ancestors of the faith who “did not receive all that had been promised, they took the promises to heart and welcomed them from afar” (Heb 11:13, FNV). They saw a land beyond the one they stood upon, and it gave them courage to persist, remaining steadfast on their voyage. In view of the role hope plays in survival and thriving, I will conclude by applying Epeli Hau’ofa’s vision for Oceania to the diaspora. Voyaging Into the Future In one of his most influential essays “The Ocean in Us,” Hau’ofa concludes with a vision of what a strong collective regional identity could produce: the renewal of a mobile Oceania ready to engage in cultural exchange 31 Rubesh, “Diaspora Distinctives,” 125–126. VOLUME 20 12 NAIITS NAIITS 20.indd 12 2024-02-22 9:53:53 AM  as the ancestors did long ago. To prepare for this renewal, he sees the production of creative works as an essential activity of embodiment, after all, “our ancestors wrote our histories on the landscape and the seascape; carved, stenciled, and wove our metaphors on objects of utility; and sang and danced in rituals and ceremonies for the propitiation of the awesome forces of nature and society.”32 Inspired by the decolonial potential in acts of making, Hau’ofa founded the Oceania Centre for Arts and Culture in Suva on Fiji. From this location, a restored Oceania goes first to the diaspora to share the news of a new home. After reconnecting with the diaspora, the voyage of renewal seeks out ocean peoples from outside Moana Nui to share and exchange the fruits of cultural activities which leads to harmonizing between cultures. Hau’ofa says, “We may even together make new sounds, new rhythms, new choreographies, and new songs and verses about how wonderful and terrible the sea is, and how we cannot live without it. We will talk about the good things the oceans have bestowed on us, the damaging things we have done to them, and how we must together try to heal their wounds and protect them forever.”33 Three important themes emerge from Hau’ofa’s vision. First, this is a movement that centers in Oceania and moves outward. Given the presence of land within, the center point of the outward flow need not be constrained to ipukarea. The pito spaces where Pasifika identities are revitalized at home and in each diaspora already flow outward, meeting to embrace the other, regardless of whether these exchanges are acknowledged. Second, the cultural exchange described is already occurring in diaspora, this is particularly true in urban locations. The work of those who reside in diaspora is to engage cultural exchange with intention, grounding in land within and land upon through vā. Finally, communing through storytelling and collaborating on healing projects with other communities can also be practiced in diaspora. There is much for Moana Nui peoples to humbly learn from the Indigenous and Black communities on Turtle Island who have sailed further on the voyage of decolonizing lifeworlds and integrating theologies. We must trust in Creator and the gifts of land upon and land within, reaching out in faith for these visions of hope, confident the wind will fill our sails, so that we too may look out and see promises on the horizon. 32 Hau’ofa, “The Ocean in Us,” 407. 33 Ibid., 407–08. NAIITS 13 VOLUME 20 NAIITS 20.indd 13 2024-02-22 9:53:53 AM  License and Permissible Use Notice These materials are provided to you by the American Theological Library Association, operating as Atla, in accordance with the terms of Atla's agreements with the copyright holder or authorized distributor of the materials, as applicable. 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