Anne Hattori was in attendance when Tongan scholar Epeli Hau‘ofa delivered a speech that would become his profound and seminal essay, ‘Our Sea of Islands’. Attending the conference with other Pacific Island graduate students, she recalls that it shook them from their insularity and sense of smallness. It reminded them of their historic interconnectedness, fluidity, and dynamism. Yet she also understood that Pacific Islanders, in general, have a strongly centred sense of place. They are grounded in their individual villages and specific islands. This is most clearly demonstrated in the Micronesian navigational concept of etak, the navigational practice of positioning one’s home island as the reference point from which all other movement is located, thus requiring you to know your precise point of origin before undertaking any voyage. Read metaphorically, etak engrains in Islanders the consciousness that they must know their homeland well before moving forward in a reliable and safe manner.

Pacific. Peaceful. Placid. Pacifying. Magellan named our Ocean in 1519 because of the calm waters he encountered, then unaware of its life-threatening typhoons and hurricanes, tsunamis and tidal waves, undertows and rip currents. Those of us who make the Pacific our home know it to be an ocean of vivid contrasts, an ocean whose spirits and power one never takes lightly, regardless of how ‘pacific’ the waters might appear. These conflicting understandings of the ocean have likewise informed our lives as Pacific peoples for centuries as these contrary understandings of the ocean are indeed mirrored more broadly in our daily realities. The world at large may think of Pacific Islanders as beach-going, hula-dancing, laughter-filled peoples for whom there is not a care in the world, yet that superficial stereotype works mainly to feed the self-interests of those swimming in the warm waters of tourism, colonialism, and militarism. The reality is infinitely more complex, not only today in the face of global warming, overfishing, and oceanic pollution, but also in the past when Islanders faced the daunting challenges of their eras. Coping and thriving in the face of natural disasters, diseases, and invasions of all sorts are stories not new to Oceania. In this placid Pacific, we live a life of contrasts. Always have.