Tongan coloniality: contesting the ‘never colonized’ narrative

ABSTRACT

The Kingdom of Tonga is a modern nation-state monarchy with a dominant discourse and popular narrative that claims it was ‘never colonized’ or ‘not formally colonized’ by modern foreign powers. In this article the authors argue otherwise, that Tonga was and is colonized, albeit more appropriately expressed through the concepts of coloniality within western modernity’s global paradigm. This is evident through global hegemonic forces that are animated through a local gendered and capitalist Christian nationalism. Tonga’s status is obscured, however, because Tongans are not ‘dispossessed of their land’, and Tonga is a nation that is not dominantly occupied by foreign European invaders, which are central points of contention for globally visible Indigenous peoples within settler-colonial nations. The paper draws upon critical Tongan scholarship that challenges European cultural hegemony and heteropatriarchy in national Tongan sociality to support these claims. We contend that contrary to a popular sentiment of ‘never being colonized’, Tonga’s national formation is made possible and founded within a global context of coloniality that is enacted through locals. This contestation re-interprets Tonga through and beyond coloniality’s world system, which invites radical analyses with global implications, such as re-envisioning Indigeneity.

KEYWORDS:

• Coloniality
• Christianity
• Nationalism
• Indigeneity
• Oceania

Acknowledgements

Mālō ‘Aupito Dave Fa‘avae, ‘Inoke Hafoka, and Mark Busse for feedback and insightful comments on this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

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2 Ming Lin, ‘Tonga’, ArtAsiaPacific Almanac, 9, 2014, p 181; Courtney Danyel, ‘8 Telltale Signs You’re an Expat in a Country that was Never Colonized’, The Wall Street Journal, 17 February 2016, https://www.wsj.com/articles/BL-272B-1516 (accessed 3 January 2022); Sela Jane Hopgood, ‘Tonga Was Never Colonised, So Why Does It Feel So Colonised?’, Vice Zealandia, 20 February 2019, https://www.vice.com/en/article/qvyzxb/tonga-was-never-colonised-so-why-does-it-feel-so-colonised (accessed 3 January 2022).

3 Jione Havea, ‘Postcolonize Now’, in Jione Havea (ed), Postcolonial Voices from Downunder: Indigenous Matters, Confronting Readings, Eugene: Pickwick Publishers, 2017, pp 1–7; Jione Havea raises the point that in considering where Tonga belongs in post-colonial discussions it is important to consider Tonga’s historical role as a colonial force on its neighbours. In addition to this we suggest that one should also consider that during the European imperial invasions in the Oceanic region many Tongans became participants in the project of western modernity - by spreading enlightenment ideas as effective Christian evangelists to their neighbours.

4 Charles W Forman, The Island Churches of the South Pacific: Emergence in the Twentieth Century, Ossining: Orbis Books, 1982, p 227.

5 Epeli Hau‘ofa, We are the Ocean: Selected Works, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2008, p 28.

6 Hau‘ofa, We are the Ocean, p 28.

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10 Hau‘ofa, We are the Ocean, p xx.

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33 Campbell, Island Kingdom.

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35 Campbell, A History of the Pacific Islands, p 216.

36 Lātūkefu, Church and State; Maldonado-Torres, Against War; Quijano, ‘Coloniality of Power’.

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38 Niko Besnier, Modernity, Cosmopolitanism, and the Emergence of Middle Classes in Tonga. The Contemporary Pacific 21(2), 2009, pp 215–262, p 220.

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40 Besnier, ‘Modernity, Cosmopolitanism’, p 220.

41 Besnier, ‘Modernity, Cosmopolitanism’, p 220.

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43 Dennis A Ahlburg, Remittances and their Impact: A Study of Tonga and Western Samoa (No. 7), Canberra: National Centre for Development Studies, Australian National University, 1991; Dennis A Ahlburg, ‘Remittances and the Income Distribution in Tonga’, Population Research and Policy Review 15(4), 1996, pp 391–400; Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, Verso Books, 2006; Besnier, ‘Modernity, Cosmopolitanism’.

44 Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, New York: Grove, 1967; Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, New York: Grove Press, 1968.

45 Michael Lujan Bevacqua, ‘Their/Our Sea of Islands: Epeli Hau‘ofa and Frantz Fanon’, LiNQ, 37, 2010, pp 80–92.

46 Epeli Hau‘ofa, ‘Our Sea of Islands’, The Contemporary Pacific, 6(1), 1993, pp 2–16.

47 Small, Voyages; Jemaima Tiatia-Seath, Roy Lay-Yee, and Martin Von Randow, Suicide Mortality Among Pacific Peoples in New Zealand, 1996-2013, The New Zealand Medical Journal (Online), 130(1454), 2017, pp 21–29.

48 Bevacqua, ‘Their/Our Sea of Islands’, p 87.

49 Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth.

50 Tēvita O Ka‘ili, Marking Indigeneity: The Tongan art of sociospatial relations, Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2017; ‘Okusitino Māhina, ‘Ta, Va, and Moana: Temporality, Spatiality, and Indigeneity’, Pacific Studies 33(2), 2010, pp 168–202.

51 Epeli Hau‘ofa, ‘The Pangs of Transition: Kinship and Economy in Tonga’, The Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology 14(2), 1978, p 160–165.

52 Besinier, ‘Modernity, Cosmopolitanism’, p 219.

53 Besnier, ‘Modernity, Cosmopolitanism’, p 221.

54 Hau‘ofa, We are the Ocean.

55 Hau‘ofa, We are the Ocean; Vaka‘uta, Reading Ezra 9/10 Tu‘a-wise.

56 Hau‘ofa, We are the Ocean.

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58 Vaka‘uta, Reading Ezra 9/10 Tu‘a-wise.

59 Vaka‘uta, Reading Ezra 9/10 Tu‘a-wise, p 27.

60 Ernest Edgar Vyvyan Collocott, ‘Notes on Tongan Religion. Part I’, The Journal for Polynesian Society, 30(3(119), 1921, pp 152–163; An example is found in the acceptance and flexibility that was given to and recorded by William Mariner who wrote that he was not subject to all of Tonga’s protocols and belief systems as a foreigner living there in the early 1800s, in Paul W Dale, The Tonga Book, Martinsville: Fideli Publishing, 2008.

61 Upolu Vaai, ‘A Theology of Talalasi: Challenging the “One Truth” Ideology of the Empire’, The Pacific Journal of Theology, 55, 2016, pp 1–19.

62 Maldonado-Torres, Against War, pp 114; Vaai, ‘A Theology of Talalasi’.

63 Maldonado-Torres, Against War.

64 Maldonado-Torres, Against War, p 114.

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67 Tiffany Lethabo King, The Black Shoals, Durham: Duke University Press, 2019, p 16.

68 Lātūkefu, Church and State.

69 Edward Winslow Gifford, Tongan Society (Vol. 16), Honolulu: The Museum, 1929; Lātūkefu, Church and State; While destruction of Indigenous symbols signalled a triumph of Christian conversion, it may also simultaneously carry double meaning, such as possibly also acknowledging the mana (honour) and tapu (protection) of ancestors through a ritual desecration of ‘sacred profanity’, see Arcia Tecun and Taniela Petelo, ‘Selekā’s profane potency: Kava artists and rebellious music in Tonga’, Perfect Beat, 20(2), 2020, pp 134–154.

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74 Vaka‘uta, Reading Ezra 9/10 Tu‘a-wise, p 27.

75 Vaka‘uta, Reading Ezra 9/10 Tu‘a-wise, p 27.

76 Vaka‘uta, Reading Ezra 9/10 Tu‘a-wise, p 30.

77 Maldonado-Torres, ‘Coloniality of Being’; Maldonado-Torres, Against War; Lugones, ‘The Colonial/Modern Gender System’; Lugones, ‘Toward a Decolonial Feminism’.

78 Besnier, ‘Modernity, Cosmopolitanism’, p 223.

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80 Niumeitolu, ‘The Mana of the Tongan Everyday’, p 118.

81 Niumeitolu, ‘The Mana of the Tongan Everyday’, p 118.

82 Lugones, ‘The Colonial/Modern Gender System’.

83 Niumeitolu, ‘The Mana of the Tongan Everyday’, p 53.

84 Niumeitolu, ‘The Mana of the Tongan Everyday’, p 145.

85 Vaka‘uta, Reading Ezra 9/10 Tu‘a-wise, p 31.

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87 Hau‘ofa, ‘The Pangs of Transition’, p 164.

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91 Duane Champagne, Notes From the Center of Turtle Island.

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93 Frank B Wilderson III, Afropessimism, New York: Liveright, 2020.

94 Sione Lātūkefu, Church and State, p 228.

95 Hau‘ofa, We are the Ocean, p 69–71.

96 Leonardo E Figueroa-Helland and Pratik Raghu, ‘Indigeneity Vs. “Civilization”: Indigenous Alternatives to the Planetary Rift’, in Jackie Smith, Michael Goodhart, Patrick Manning, and John Markoff (eds), Social Movements and World System Transformation, London and New York: Routledge, 2017, pp 189–211.

97 Figueroa-Helland and Raghu, ‘Indigeneity Vs. “Civilization”’, p 190.

98 Figueroa-Helland and Raghu, ‘Indigeneity Vs. “Civilization”’, p 190.

99 Ka‘ili, Marking Indigeneity.

100 Ka‘ili, Marking Indigeneity.

101 Daniel Hernandez, ‘A Divine Rebellion: Indigenous Sacraments among Global “Lamanites”’, Religions, 12(4), 2021, pp 1–14.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Arcia Tecun

Arcia Tecun is also known as Daniel Hernandez who is currently a lecturer in anthropology at the University of Auckland, and transitioning into a director position at the Tracy Aviary’s Jordan River Nature Center in his hometown of Salt Lake City, Utah.

S. Ata Siu‘ulua

S. Ata Siu‘ulua is a doctoral candidate in anthropology/ethnomusicology at the University of Auckland researching Tongan Indigeneity, coloniality, family music and kinship.