'Bodies of Water' - with Harrison Freeth, 2023. Canterbury Museum. Ōtautahi, Christchurch
The ocean is not empty. It is thick with memory, saturated with story, and layered with the lives and crossings of those who came before.
Bodies of Water is an embodied response to the connective tissues between Tonga and Aotearoa - ancestral routes, shipwrecks, wayfinding stars, and the charged currents of tukufakaholo (inherited knowledge).
In 1962, Tofa Ramsay, owner of the 51-foot cutter Tuaikaepau, meaning “slow but sure,” decided to sail the vessel back to Auckland for further repairs. Captain Tevita Fifita, an experienced seaman, led a crew that included several of his sons and a group of Tongan boxers eager to compete in New Zealand. On the night of 6 July, Tuaikaepau struck the outer edge of Southern Minerva Reef. All seventeen passengers survived the wreck, clinging to the hull overnight. At dawn, they discovered the remains of a Japanese fishing vessel wrecked two years prior. Using its hull, they built a fire-powered still to produce fresh water and salvaged tools and wood for survival.
By late August, Captain Tevita and two others constructed a makeshift raft, Mālō e Lelei, and sailed toward Kadavu, Fiji. Tragically, Sateki Fifita drowned just before reaching shore. An RNZAF flying boat rescued the remaining survivors in mid-October. Four men died before help arrived.
The return of the survivors was marked with royal ceremony and deep cultural expression. Poetry was composed by Queen Sālote and transformed into performance through the artistry of punake kakato master poets Nōpele Ve‘ehala (Leilua) and Malukava (Tēvita Kavaefiafi), accompanied by the Kava Tonga choral ensemble. The survivors were welcomed as heroes in October 1962, and the lakalaka, a form of sung and danced poetry, was performed in their honour.
This faiva ta‘anga hiva haka lakalaka or sung and danced tragic poetry, is a form of faiva fakamamahi which mediates between anga‘i-tangata (social humanity) and anga‘i-manu (animality). The emotional outcome is fakamā, shame not as humiliation, but as a dignified and communal reckoning with survival, loss, and return. (‘Ō. Māhina 2008a: 31–54; 2011: 140–66).