Ep. 41: Intro and Background to Tongan Coloniality with Ata

Ata and I have just published a paper on Tongan Coloniality which
this episode provides a brief introduction to as well as a bit of
background behind this research project.  Prior to
successfully publishing this paper we were getting blocked within
academia when making attempts to discuss Indigenous issues from a
Tonga context in relation to global perspectives. Questions of
Tongan Indigeneity have regularly been raised due to the dominant
idea and definition of Indigeneity based on minoritized people
within ancestral homelands, predominantly in settler-colonial
nations. Tonga also has a popular narrative of ‘never being
colonised’ so this project initially confronted the scholarly
audience in Pacific Studies, Pacific Anthropology, and Indigenous
Studies in order to be able to eventually do the work we want to
and have the conversations we’d like to in that arena. However,
this episode is aimed at a broader and more public audience in
mind. We explain why we are challenging popular assumptions and
ideas directly by drawing from Tongan scholars and scholars of
Tonga and the Oceanian region, while making links to ‘Global
South Third World’ perspectives. Topics include coercion into
British protectorate status, the role of Christianity,
capitalism, and nation-state formation. We end with a teaser on
Tongan Indigeneity from Ata’s current doctoral research and
insights of how critical consciousness is a long-standing
tradition in Tonga.


Terms: ASAO (Association for Social Anthropology in Oceania),
Cognitive Dissonance (a concept from the field of psychology to
identify the mental stress of paradox or contradictions, by
altering how one processes information to make a contradiction
fit within the consistency or belief one is socialised or
accustomed to already, despite evidence from new information that
is contrary to it), TRA (Tongan Research Association, formerly
the Tonga History Association), Bad Faith (Lewis Gordon draws
from Sartre’s concept of ‘bad faith’ and applies it to
anti-blackness such as the bad faith practiced in the modern
fears of Black consciousness; we apply it in this podcast in the
principle of avoiding personal torment by ignoring evidence that
reveals a reality contrary to a cherished belief; related to
cognitive dissonance), Wansolwara (Tok Pisin, Bislama, Pijin for
the Salt Water Continent of Oceania), Tåsi (Sea or Ocean in
Chamorro, the Indigenous language of Guåhan/Guam), Moana (Big or
Deep Ocean, Oceania in eastern Oceanic languages from the
‘Polynesian’ region), ‘Uta (plantation or commonly interpreted as
‘the bush’ in lea faka-Tonga), Kolo (town, city, or dense
settlement in lea faka-Tonga), Motu (island, at times in
reference to ‘outer island(s)’ in lea faka-Tonga), tu‘a (later in
time, periphery, outer/outside/marginal, or else in reference to
lower ranking people currently also conflated with 17th century
British notions of class and interpreted as ‘commoner’).