Being a Better Tongan" Identity, Sport and the Tongan Diaspora (original) (raw)
Related papers
Creating their own culture: Diasporic Tongans
1998
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
Double Bind: The Duality of Tongan American Identity
NASW Press, 2014
Tongan Americans trace their heritage and ancestry to the island Kingdom of Tonga, a sovereign constitutional monarchy in the South Pacific (Hau’ofa, 2008). Tongans migrate to the United States primarily for educational and employment opportunities (Cowling, 1990). Of approximately 45,000 Tongan Americans, 18,500 were born outside of the United States (U.S. Census Bureau, 2012). About 63 percent of Tongan American families entered the United States before the 1990s and thus have lived in the United States for multiple generations. Tongans reside primarily in Hawaii, California, Utah, and Oregon. Their locations are strategically established to support a transnational life that includes frequent travel to Tonga for family and community events. This chapter will explore aspects of how Tongans have navigated the U.S. thus far.
Cultural Pride: Exploring Indigenous athlete culture and well being
Mai Journal, 2022
Indigenous people are over-represented as professional players in many sporting codes, and recently a trend has developed whereby Indigenous athletes are choosing to play internationally for their heritage nations as opposed to the top-tier countries they reside in. With regard to rugby league and rugby union, many of these athletes are Pasifika who have had minimal exposure to their heritage nations, being born and raised in, for example, Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia or the United States. Nevertheless, this cohort is increasingly choosing to play for their heritage nations, despite the substantial cut in pay and available resources this decision entails. Throughout this commentary, these athletes are not viewed as mere individuals. Instead, we acknowledge their relationality-that is, the fact that they are intertwined in collective networks of family and nationhood. As researchers from the Pasifika community, we explore the factors which contribute to Pasifika athletes choosing to play for their heritage nations. By analysing the rise of Mate Ma'a Tonga, Tonga's national rugby league team, we aim to gain a deeper understanding of the cultural pride-the connection to family and heritage nation-that drives these athletes to play for this team, and the subsequent implications for wellbeing and performance.
Australian Association of Pacific Studies conference 2016
Too often western sports studies perpetuate racial stereotypes of Pacific men, focusing on either ‘flair’ or remittances. Sport is often mentioned in lists of crucial Samoan phenomena, alongside church and family for instance, and yet understanding is limited and stereotypes are rife. Using a critical anthropological methodology, I explore how sports are presently practiced and perceived by Samoan people in two postcolonial ‘global-north’ cities, to not only understand the nuances of sport in the diaspora, but the role of sport in the postcolonial world more generally. Using a transnational framework, I explore how sports, indigenous values, and western values intersect for Samoans abroad and how sport can both affirm and transgress cultural values. I hope to contribute to greater understandings of the unique and pertinent place the Pacific can play in understanding the global proliferation of sport, and help edge sport closer to being a well-understood and utilised bastion of diverse human interaction.
Transforming Transnationalism: Second Generation Tongans Overseas
Asian and Pacific Migration Journal, 2007
Since the 1960s Tongans have developed extensive transnational ties between the homeland and the overseas populations, including remittances that for many years have bolstered Tonga's economy. This paper examines how these ties have been transformed over time, and focuses on the question of whether the children of Tongan migrants are likely to sustain such ties in the future. Drawing on data collected from ‘second generation’ Tongans in Australia, the paper explores their attitudes towards transnational practices and the extent to which they maintain connections with their parents' homeland. I argue that although Tonga's need for support from the diaspora is growing, migrants' children are unlikely to sustain the current level of remittances. Without an ongoing flow of new migrants, transnational ties are likely to weaken and levels of remittances will suffer a significant decline, with potentially devastating consequences for Tonga.
Navigating Change: Pacific Islanders, Race, Sport, and Pipelines to Higher Education
Oxford Encyclopedia of Education, 2023
Tagata Pasifika (Pacific People) is a transnational affiliation whose collective colonial experiences provide island nations of Oceania a means for contestation over local discourses of power and race. Employing the principle of Tagata Pasifika within higher education necessitates recognition of how postsecondary institutions are significant sites of conflict that engender the collective resistance among Pasifika communities for the following reasons: (a) to close the educational opportunity gap between Pasifika communities and spheres of influence-positions of power that dictate policies, social circumstances, and human living conditions; (b) to affirm Pasifika participation in the knowledge production process by developing ontological self-efficacy and decolonizing spaces in higher education that erase and marginalize Pasifika ontologies; and (c) to engage action research as opportunities that enact various forms of sovereignty, such as the ability to participate in cultural practices as authentic and legitimate ways of knowing and being or recognizing Pasifika intellectual participation as a process of action, or inaction, informed by cultural and experiential values. A salient college access point for Pasifika communities is the phenomena of college athletics because Pasifika college football players are 56 times more likely to matriculate to the National Football League. However, low graduation rates-only 11% of Pasifika college football players graduated from the Football Championship Series college division in 2015-have made this "untraditional" pathway an extractive pipeline that provides the National Collegiate Athletic Association membership institutions with athletic labor. Although college athletes continue to have the conditions of their admissions leveraged against them to prevent student resistance/activism, student-athletes have an unprecedented potential for influence in the "post-COVID" landscape of college athletics.
Fabled Futures: Migration and Mobility for Samoans in American Football
Since the 1970s, Samoan participation in American gridiron football has grown exponentially. In American Sāmoa (and other transpacific Samoan communities), football has come to represent both a real and imagined “way out” of what appears to many as a strangled field of possibility. The visibility and vibrancy of football in American Sāmoa is rooted in Samoan histories of migration to the United States, Samoan cultural sensibilities, the changing market of the American football industry, and narrowing economic opportunities. The transnational nature of football migration is key to understanding the appeal of playing football, the rewards that accrue to successful players, and how these resources have continued to transform conditions of possibility (materially and ideologically) for young people in the islands. This article explores the layered and complex motivations for football participation as shaped by prospective forms of capital, transnational sporting institutions, and historical contingency. Focused on history, economy, and a transformed vision of the future, it offers a critical genealogy of football in (American) Sāmoa and Samoans in American football.
After the whistle: issues impacting on the health and wellbeing of Polynesian players off the field
Asia-Pacific Journal of Health, Sport and Physical Education, 2013
In Australia and New Zealand recognition of Polynesians is almost exclusively defined by their physicality. Sought after for size and strength on the sporting field, excellence in sport is arguably regarded as a life goal in itself. This paper will examine how this situation arose and the implications for Polynesians living in Australia. For a working-class community struggling with rapidly diminishing job opportunities and a high cost of living, sport is increasingly regarded as the only avenue out of poverty. With comparatively low rates of educational achievement keeping many in ‘blue collar’ jobs, there are consequences for health and health literacy, particularly with regard to obesity-related illness and premature mortality from otherwise preventable diseases. This paper will discuss the findings of two studies: an ethnographic project exploring the rugby life histories of 15 Polynesian men in Melbourne and qualitative interviews with 67 Polynesians in Sydney and the Hunter region about their perceptions of health and lifestyle. It will argue success in sport is inextricably bound up with cultural pride and identity. The sporting domain therefore has the potential to allow a migrant minority a ‘voice’ in other areas of civic engagement. In this way, rather than a sporting career coming at the expense of an education, participation and achievement in sport should provide a background to improving culturally targetted programs around improving outcomes in education and health awareness. Keywords: Polynesians; sport; health; education; migration
Finding one's footing on foreign soil: A composite vignette of elite athlete acculturation
Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 2016
Objectives: The focus of this manuscript is the challenges associated with newcomer athlete acculturation within a sport system. The research question was as follows: What acculturation challenges do immigrant athletes have to work through as they attempt to integrate into new sport environments and facilitate their athletic careers within shifting cultural dynamics? Design: The research was framed as a critical acculturation project (see Chirkov, 2009a, 2009b). The project aligns with broader calls in sport research for innovative qualitative approaches that reveal the complexity and multifaceted aspects of acculturation. Using creative non-fiction (e.g., a composite vignette), this project sought to illustrate the fluidity of acculturation, based on athletes' stories. Methods: Conversational interviews were gathered and an interpretive thematic analysis was performed. The data were then developed into a composite vignette to illustrate the fluidity of the athletes' acculturation experiences. Results: The acculturation vignette revealed four major themes: (a) navigating the Canadian Sport System without local support, (b) adjusting to new sport programs and training approaches, (c) dealing with cultural differences in Canadian athletes' mindsets, and (d) searching for balance. Conclusions: This project reveals how immigrant elite athletes experience continuous acculturation. These fluidities are best captured through emerging methodological approaches, where acculturation can be storied as non-linear.
ISSP position stand: Transnationalism, mobility, and acculturation in and through sport
International Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 2017
The historically unprecedented pace of internationalising sport industry and transnational movement of athletic talent in the last 20 years has heightened the need for developing new competencies in research and daily practice of sport psychology professionals. While academic literature in cultural sport psychology and praxis has been increasing, sport professionals and local organisations seem to give scant time and resources to stay abreast of complex social changes in transnational industry and to the development of cultural competencies. Stemming from the continuing need for qualified athletic personnel to support transitioning athletes and to achieve intercultural effectiveness in daily practices, our objectives in this position statement are to critically review and analyse the growing scholarship pertinent to various forms of transnational mobility and acculturation of athletic migrants, and subsequently provide recommendations for further use in research and applied contexts.