Quote by Epeli Hau'ofa: “We are the sea. We are the ocean.”

Pacific Islander identity is not defined by being trapped on small dots of land in a vast sea. Instead, the ocean itself is home — a highway, a source of life, a place of belonging. This flips the colonial idea that Pacific peoples are isolated and minor.

Hau'ofa wrote 'Our Sea of Islands' in 1993 as Pacific nations grappled with postcolonial identity and economic dependency. Development economists were dismissing Pacific island nations as too small to be viable. This essay was a direct intellectual counterattack, reframing the ocean as Pacific peoples' ancestral domain rather than a barrier.

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.