Quote by Epeli Hau'ofa: “Our ancestors were ocean people, and so are we.”

Identity is not just about where you are now — it is about what your ancestors did and knew. Pacific peoples come from extraordinary navigators who crossed thousands of kilometres of ocean without instruments. Claiming that heritage is not nostalgia; it is recognising a deep capability that has not disappeared, only been forgotten.

Hau'ofa continued developing his vision of Oceania through the mid-1990s as the Polynesian Voyaging Society's Hōkūleʻa project was reviving traditional navigation across the Pacific. Indigenous languages, navigation skills, and oral traditions were at risk of extinction across Oceania as globalisation accelerated.

Tongan-Fijian writer, anthropologist, and academic whose 1993 essay 'Our Sea of Islands' transformed how Pacific peoples understand their place in the world. He argued that Oceania is not a scattering of tiny islands but a vast sea of connections. He taught at the University of the South Pacific until his death in 2009.