Hawaiki according to Tupaia
- This essay looks into the concept of an ancestral homeland in Remote Oceania, commonly referred to as Hawaiki (‘Avaiki; Havai‘i; Hawai‘i). Hawaiki intriguingly challenges Eurocentric notions of ‘home.’ Following the rapid settlement of the so-called Polynesian triangle from Samoa/Tonga at around 1000 AD, Hawaiki has emerged as a concept that is both mythological and real; genealogical and geographic; singular and yet portable, existing in plural regional manifestations. I argue that predominantly Pakeha/Popa‘ā research trying to identify Hawaiki as a singular and geographically fixed homeland is misleading. I tap into the archive surrounding the Ra‘iātean tahu‘a and master navigator Tupaia who joined Captain Cook’s crew during his first voyage to the Pacific to offer glimpses of an alternative ontology of home and epistemology of Oceanic ‘homing.’
| Author details: | Lars EcksteinORCiDGND |
|---|---|
| DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1515/zaa-2023-2006 |
| ISSN: | 0044-2305 |
| ISSN: | 2196-4726 |
| Title of parent work (English): | Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik : ZAA ; a quarterly of language, literature and culture |
| Subtitle (English): | glimpses of knowing home in precolonial remote oceania |
| Publisher: | de Gruyter |
| Place of publishing: | Berlin |
| Publication type: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Date of first publication: | 2023/03/28 |
| Publication year: | 2023 |
| Release date: | 2024/06/13 |
| Tag: | Hawaiki; Indigenous ontology and epistemology; Oceania; Tupaia’s Map |
| Volume: | 71 |
| Issue: | 1 |
| Number of pages: | 14 |
| First page: | 55 |
| Last Page: | 69 |
| Organizational units: | Philosophische Fakultät / Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik |
| DDC classification: | 8 Literatur / 82 Englische, altenglische Literaturen / 820 Englische, altenglische Literaturen |
