Remembering Epeli Hau’ofa His Life and Legacy
Price: $50
Ordering info:
Pick up between Monday – Friday 10am – 4pm from room 401, level 4 of the James Logie building, University of Canterbury.
No returns or refunds.
Contact:
If you have any queries, please contact the Macmillan Brown Centre for Pacific Studies Office and Project Administrator, Holly Neave holly.neave@canterbury.ac.nz.
Epeli Hau’ofa (1939-2009) played a crucial role in reimagining the place and status of the people of the Pacific Islands in the global community. Tongan by name, Papuan by birth, Tongan, Fijian, Canadian and Australian by education, and Fijian by citizenship, he embraced the lives of everyone whose destiny is wedded to Oceania. Yes, Oceania, a maritime continent whose islands are woven into a thriving web of seaways.
Scholar, satirist and founding director of the Oceania Centre for Arts and Culture at the University of the South Pacific in Suva, Epeli Hau’ofa inspired an entire generation of fellow Oceanians, from poets to politicians and artists to academics. A trenchant critic of predatory development, he dedicated his life to the promotion of Oceanian ways of creating and transmitting knowledge.
Remembering Epeli Hau’ofa tells his story and it offers moving insights into the enduring legacy of the thoughts and actions of a man who, in the view of many of his contemporaries, was perhaps “the finest Pacific Islander of our times”.
The editors Vijay Naidu, Claire Slatter and Eric Waddell were contemporaries and close friends of Epeli Hau’ofa during the latter part of his life. Vijay and Claire spent all their professional careers at the University of the South Pacific, the one in Sociology and the other in Political Science, and they both reside in Suva (Fiji). Eric taught Geography at USP in the early 1990s and was a frequent visitor to the University thereafter. He lives in Québec (Canada).
