Creating their own culture: Diasporic Tongans (original) (raw)

I'm interested in doing something to do with the Tongan culture, but I want to expose it. I'm just so sick of everyone saying how friendly Tongans are when in actual fact, they're not, they're real demons, they're tèvolo [devils, mischievous spirits]! These words were spoken, with a bitter laugh, by 'Ana, a young Tongan woman living in Melbourne, Australia. 1 I asked 'Ana whether she would describe herself as Tongan, or Australian, or both. She replied, "I'd say both. I'm not really Tongan; I am in appearance, but I'm very western because I just don't follow the Tongan culture. I only do what suits me, what I'm comfortable with." During her primary school years in Australia and her high school years in Tonga, 'Ana's parents encouraged her to speak only English at home, and she did not learn Tongan until she was an adolescent. Her parents did not closely follow anga fakatonga (the Tongan way) in her upbringing. Now, as a member of an extended Tongan household in Melbourne, when 'Ana says she wants to do "something to do with the Tongan culture" she means she wants to write about it. She also wants to write about how anga fakatonga is changing in Tonga, in ways as varied as the decreasing authoritarianism of parents and the increased use of plastic sheeting in the production of tapa cloth. Only a Tongan could write about such changes, she says, because outsiders could not really understand. The focus of my paper is the question of how young Tongan migrants