Te Pōuli. The Darkness.

Words by Edwina Harris (she/her)

In the beginning, there was darkness. Only the hushed whisper of my cousin’s voice filled the room. There was an essence of fear when they spoke. Not because of what they were saying, but out of fear of being caught staying up later than we were supposed to. In a small bedroom, in the suburb of Waitangirua in Porirua, eight children huddled to hear secrets about Tokelau. Secrets, as our parents never passed on these stories. Why? Because the missionaries forbade their parents from doing so.

“Ko te tama a te manu e fafaga i nā ika, ko te tama a te tino e fafaga i nā kupu.”

This Tokelauan proverb translates to:

“The children of birds are sustained with fish, the children of people are sustained with words.”

This small bedroom became a safe space that sustained my hunger for learning Tokelauan histories through storytelling.

Kae (but), these spaces are not acknowledged by pālagi education. I cannot cite in an essay a song about a pregnant Hina being pulled into the ocean by a coral witch, without linking it to an archive. I cannot write about the movements that tell the stories of blackbirding into a Word document without linking it to an archive. I would lose so many marks if I wrote “My cousin told me… My mother told me… My ancestors passed on a song…” These forms of Pasifika literature have little space in academia because they barely exist in the archives. Academic institutions like the National Library of New Zealand imply that only if it is recorded there can a historical account be true and legitimate. For something to be accepted as Pasifika literature, it needs to be accepted by pālagi.

There are approximately 1,633 results that show up when searching for Tokelau through the NatLib online database. Approximately 1,393 items that I can request to see only if I physically enter the building. Like a kidnapper, they allow me to pay money as ransom for high-resolution copies of documents and photographs of my ancestors. Of my history. Pe vēhea la (but how can) our people access, narrate, and challenge colonised records of our histories? How can we ensure nā kupu (the words) we leave behind will be enough to sustain our descendants? How can we bring life to the partial records that are hidden away in darkness?

We need more Pasifika people who can speak up in these spaces. More Pasifika narrating and explaining our stories. More Pasifika people to record our oral histories, our visual literature such as tapa, and to emphasise the importance of place names, songs, and actions. More acknowledgement that this is not all that exists in our histories. More Pasifika-led projects like the Pacific Virtual Museum (digitalpasifik.org), a NatLib supported project, created “By, With, and For” Pasifika. Less nonPasifika stating that it does not exist and it cannot be used because their own records do not have it. This way, our stories can be brought to the light and shared openly. Not kept in secrecy, like how we did back in the beginning when there was darkness.