Quote by Epeli Hau'ofa: “There are no small islands. There are only small minds that see them that way.”

The dismissal of Pacific island nations as too tiny to matter says more about the dismisser than the islands. Size is not the measure of significance — the richness of a place comes from its culture, history, and relationships, not its square kilometres. This reframes the measure of worth entirely.

This essay appeared in 1993 as Pacific island nations were engaging with international development frameworks that classified them as MIRAB economies — dependent on Migration, Remittances, Aid, and Bureaucracy. Hau'ofa was directly challenging these frameworks, which he believed fostered colonial dependency and self-doubt.

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.