5.2 Introduction
If you are looking for a cut and dried text on how and why Pacific migrants have landed themselves in Australia, this is not the right chapter for you. I suggest that you head to an economist’s review or a political report on Pacific labourers and migration trends. Be mindful that if you do take the mainstream route,[1] you will most likely hear very little of the Pacific voices and narratives that give meaning to their migration and movements across the seas. However, if you are seeking a deeper understanding of what brings Pacific peoples to the shores of Australia, then do keep reading. This chapter presents Tongan mobility histories that have often been overlooked as unimportant or too familiar[2] by historical texts, yet are being retold because they provide key understandings. These Tongan mobility histories have been co-created – the telling and retelling of oral histories, collation of narratives, storage and passing on of material culture related to these histories and narratives by members of families and collectives – and preserved intergenerationally. The knowledge and meanings of how, why, when and where our Tongan people have settled and thrived in Australia, over time and space, have been passed on through several generations’ narratives. Such understandings are often preserved in private archives or shared online within collectives – an e-cultivation of cultural heritage both in Tonga and in diaspora contexts.
The Talanoa Vā methodology is a culturally responsive approach used to better understand Tongan communities in diaspora contexts like Australia. This chapter introduces the e-talanoa method – founded on Talanoa Vā – an online process of dialoguing with Tongans, something that is key to further analysis of material culture and cultural e-heritage that has been shared online with and by Tongan collectives.
I include a series of images from these online collectives, alongside images of private archives kept by Tongans living in diaspora contexts, and excerpts of migration narratives in this discussion are incorporated to illustrate and retell Tongan mobility histories in Australia. These are not the usual archives for an historian, but they show us how our shared past is made into history in a very personal way.
- Richard Bedford, “Pasifika Mobility: Pathways, Circuits and Challenges in the 21st Century” (Hamilton: University of Waikato Population Studies Centre, 2007); Richard Bedford, Elsie Ho, and Graeme Hugo, “Trans-Tasman Migration in Context: Recent Flows of New Zealanders Revisited,” People and Place 11, no. 4 (2003): 53–62; Robert Haig, “New Zealand Department of Labour Report: Working Across the Ditch – New Zealanders Working in Australia” (Wellington: Department of Labour, New Zealand Government, 2010); Paul Hamer, “Unsophisticated and Unsuited: Australian Barriers to Pacific Islander Immigration from New Zealand,” Political Science 66, no. 2 (2014): 93–118. ↵
- Ruth (Lute) Faleolo, “Re-visioning Online Pacific Research Methods for Knowledge Sharing that Maintains Respectful Vā,” Waka Kuaka: The Journal of the Polynesian Society, Special Issue: Re-visioning Pacific research method/ologies, 132, nos. 1 & 2 (2023a): 93–110; Ruth (Lute) Faleolo, Sh’Kinah Tuia’ana Nauna Faleolo, Lydiah Malia-Lose Faleolo, and Nehemiah Thomas Faleolo, “Understanding Diaspora Pasifika (Sāmoan and Tongan) Intergenerational Sense-Making and Meaning-Making Through Imageries,” Art Research International: A Transdisciplinary Journal, Special Issue: (Re)crafting Creative Critically Indigenous Intergenerational Rhythms and Post-COVID Desires, 8, no. 2 (2024b): 362–414. ↵
