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Death to Individualism: Tongan grief and togetherness

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Since my grandmother Lupe’s death in November 2023, I’ve been collecting different experiences of people’s grief and have found great comfort in its universality. There are endless books, movies, songs, that capture the one guarantee we are afforded in life: people die, and those that love them, miss them. So I cried to Korean-American author Michelle Zauner’s memoir “Crying in H Mart”, relating to her mourning her mother before she even died. Desperately, I briefly turned to religion, listening to Elvis’ gospel albums, skimming through generic “Christians Grieve, Too” pamphlets. I watched Kamilaroi writer Nakkiah Lui visit her late grandmother’s home in St Marys and made myself cry about my grandma as well as the incompetence of the DCJ. More recently, I watched acclaimed Australian journalist Ray Martin’s SBS documentary series, “The Last Goodbye”, which explored the ‘taboo’ of death among Australians. As a Tongan, I’ve found this collective aversion to death in the West quite unrel...
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For my late grandma

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  When we were children my sister and I were taught that our ancestors visit us in the form of moths. We met our great grandmother when I was 8 visiting her village in Vava’u for the first time. She came to us fluttering above a burning mosquito coil, her wings silky and white in the smoke. We watched her attentively from the cold linoleum floor. I’d like to think that I’ve seen Lupe a few times. Like whenever I open a window at night, or when visiting a new place, when I pray for my protection.
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July writing

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  I haven't written on here lately. Sorry. I forget I don't always have to keep things to myself and that people (maybe 2) follow this 'blog' and actually may want to hear what I'm thinking about. Well, there isn't much. I have a thesis due in four months, and I have barely made a dent in it. Instead, I've written these ^. Hope someone likes them? Shoot me an email or leave a comment. Sala
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12 November 2021, a day off

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Enjoying everything even during the hardest part of the semester. There are plenty of articles left to read, and even more papers to write. But yesterday I found time to just drive with no particular destination in mind, listening to my favourite John Martyn record with nobody telling me to turn it down. I walked about aimlessly along St Marys’ Queen St, finally deciding to sit outside a cafe and read for fun. I haven’t done it in a long time. I left before the rain came down heavily, and watched the jacarandas bleed purple on to the sidewalks as I drove back home.
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writing from july

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on cultural indigenous knowledge, emotions, and their significance in social movements

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It is important to recognise that the very study of emotions as a separate factor to social movements, and not as an integral, fundamental, and defining component of social movements, is a foreign concept for many societies and communities. When many social movements, predominantly in the west, have been characterised by ‘individualistic linear organising’ (brown, a. m. 2017: 10), it is understandable why many have failed to consider and study the inexplicable spiritual and emotional motives for social movements, and to articulate them in a way that does not whitewash them, or diminish the potency of their cultural value and significance. The way I, and many Pasifika people, understand social movements is founded on mutuality, love, kinship, and an obligation to care for our community. These can be attributed to key cultural concepts and principles such as the generalised Pasifika concept of mana , the Hawaiian aloha ‘āina , and the Tongan concepts of ‘ofa, faka’apa’apa, fetokoni’aki ,...
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Hymns and harmonies - a post-quarantine miracle

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One thing I didn’t realise I missed during quarantine were Tongan hymns. The church my family attends sits idly along Mt Druitt Road, and enjoys the shade of a gumtree much older and grander and holier than the church itself.  I’m not at all religious like my family, for I’ve found faith in plenty of ordinary things in life: letters from friends in the mail, cicadas singing in spring, that particular hue of aegean blue that allows you to see the contours of the mountains from afar.  But the last time the Tongans at my family’s church congregated was maybe in March, and for months the only Tongan hymns I was hearing were crackled through the static of the Tongan radio and my grandma humming an old tune alone in her room. Hearing their voices reunite in harmony so seamlessly, like silk, as if they weren’t apart for all these months, overwhelmed me.   Was it homesickness that made me miss the harmonies of Tongan hymns or did I just reach my limit hearing my grandmother sing ...
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