Definition
Subject / Aronga
Term
Curriculum
Resources
[ Video Resource ]
- Title: Fonua
- Description: Examples of Fonua in practice.
- Video Duration: 7 minutes
- Video URL: https://player.vimeo.com/video/768790453?h=350b6da0ff
- Transcript: ‘Fonua’ in Tongan means ‘land’. I always think about the journey of our people to settle the many lands that make up the Pacific. And when I think about fonua I think about the connections that we have to land. In Tonga we have Tofoa
‘Fonua’ in Tongan means ‘land’. I always think about the journey of our people to settle the many lands that make up the Pacific. And when I think about fonua I think about the connections that we have to land. In Tonga we have Tofoa, where I grew up, we have Vainī, which is where our ‘uta’ or ‘farm’ is, and all of that land has many memories tied to it.
It's very holistic and it captures this very harmonious talanoa that we have in the importance of culture, language, if you’re looking at nature, you know, fonua is the land, fonua also is something that we carry intangibly.
Fonua is holistic in the sense that it includes the metaphysical. So that’s all our past history of our ancestors, whether it's through voyaging, the naming of the land, our cultural practices, those particular types of experience that perhaps we still practice here in New Zealand, but stem from those practices and knowledge that have been orally transmitted through our ancestors.
Fonua again is the concept of land, but it's also ‘place’. For our people in Aotearoa we are always looking for our place. We are always looking for home. Immediately when I came to this country, I looked for home. I looked for my people. I was so excited when I found the Tongan community, I could speak my lea faka-Tonga with them.
I'm a descendant of migrant parents from Samoa and Tonga and so I have my ancestral roots back in our villages in Samoa and Tonga. So for me, what I call the ‘motherland’ that’s the anchor of the significance of whenua to me. And while I'm New Zealand born, for me fonua is transitional. In the fact that I have over 50 years plus of living in the South Island in Ōtepoti or Otakou as we call it, in Dunedin. And so I have that type of transitional type of anchoring in the fonua of Aotearoa New Zealand.
I always wonder how can you bring your fonua closer to you? I carry my fonua when I wear my kiekie, which is from Tonga, was given to me by my mother who’s pālagi when I came because she said, “No matter where you go, you should carry your fonua.”
There’s a hymn, 391, that's almost become Tongan’s second national anthem. And we usually hear at times when Tongans come together in solidarity and unity. And the words goes: “ ‘Oku i ai ha ki’i fonua. ‘Oku tu’u ‘i ‘Oseni.” “There’s a small island, that stands in the middle of the ocean.” And as for Tongan people, when we sing that, we sing that with pride, because we know that the islands is constantly surviving but also thriving in the biggest ocean in the world.
One of the a phrase that comes up like how do we, are we all familiar with it, “How do we sing our song in a foreign land?” I’ve sort of like kind of adapted that and to our ākonga growing up in New Zealand, “How do you sing our own song in a not so foreign land, but which we now call home?”
Growing up, I was in a school that I would say maybe had two Pasifika kids total and so I just had no exposure to that world to anything that they are experiencing. So everything I've learned, I've learned on this job and the connections I've made are through teaching and it's kind of is like it sounds very dramatic, but it's actually changed how I approach life and I take a lot of their values now into my life in how I relate to my family and like how I relate to people as a family as a whole. Yeah, I'm still very much on my journey, but like if you put in your authentic self and you come in with the values that you have which absolutely align to Pasifika values, usually then you will get this amazing experience of teaching them.
And I think you can utilise fonua as that anchor point to create common ground amongst all learners. I actually have a map in my classroom and I get each of the learners or each of my students to get up and put a little pin in there and then “Okay, let’s just acknowledge where you’re all from.” For me, it's an opportunity to create connectedness, an opportunity to create meaningful engagement amongst the students and to get a greater appreciation and to get a greater appreciation of their worldview and how they see the world so that you can better engage them in the classroom.
One way that I try to foster fonua in the classroom is for kids to enter the space and feel like they can connect with me authentically and also connect with others in the class authentically. And that's sharing about themselves, their history, their family, their genealogy, like all sorts of things that make them who they are. And I think once they are authentically in the room as that person, then they can go beyond that and they can learn as their authentic self.
How we’re connected to our fonua gives us that, gives us that sense of belonging. The connectedness. So we cannot separate the two. It's already in our DNA. It's about evoking those gifts that the strengths that our Pacific ākonga have in terms of and and then applying that.
For our Pacific learners they are always trying to find that place and it is the role of the education system, it’s the role of our faiako or kaiako to facilitate that. How can you build a place for our learners within classroom? For a lot of our Pacific children who uphold and maintain a sense of fonua or identity, entering the gates or entering the school and seeing someone that they can familiarise themselves with gives them the sense of hope that their cultures are not being left at the gates.
If we carry our fonua with us, that means we should always carry and build a place and space for our learners wherever they go.