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What would we do without white dudes telling us how other people actually live? Why could we not have had this story told by someone from Tonga? A thread... https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/may/09/the-real-lord-of-the-flies-what-happened-when-six-boys-were-shipwrecked-for-15-months
“For centuries western culture has been permeated by the idea that humans are selfish creatures.” Now I find this opening hilarious because for centuries western culture has also told us we are uniquely benevolent and caring, true humanitarians. We’re really everything it seems.
“But in the last 20 years, something extraordinary has happened. Scientists from all over the world have switched to a more hopeful view of mankind.” Really? Scientists from all over the world? Or have western scientists just have started paying attention to other ways of living?
“This development is still so young that researchers in different fields often don’t even know about each other.” ‘So young’ to who? Young to western people, who have also claimed to be humanitarians? Because it obviously isn’t young’ to the Polynesians featured in the story...
The whole set up of this article is deeply colonial. It appears on the surface to be open to other ways of living but it’s written from an assumed centring of the west as the norm so that it can claim surprise at ‘new’ ways of living.
But then what should one expect from a man happy to bask in and capitalise on the excellence of Black women one minute and violently dismiss them the next.
I find it just a little bit fishy that a man who used misogynoir to claim Dutch white innocence has now “magically discovered”, sorry appropriated, kindness from Indigenous ways of living.
Magic ships! https://twitter.com/anneardon/status/1259400814214500353?s=21 https://twitter.com/anneardon/status/1259400814214500353
Can we add ‘Cooking’ to the lexicon as the Pacific version of ‘Columbusing’?
I’m repeatedly told by @Guardian that they want an increased presence in Aotearoa New Zealand, there are 40,000 Tongans living there... and some ‘interesting’ NZ-Tonga relations, maybe the Guardian could increase its Pacific reach by amplifying Pacific voices, just a thought.
For those who want an introduction to the Pacific from the Pacific and for the Pacific follow Dr Damon Salesa’s online lecture series. https://www.rnz.co.nz/international/pacific-news/414339/new-online-lecture-series-about-the-pacific-for-the-pacific?fbclid=IwAR1LenQy55EixqIw6n74Opu7BTE02Z14kQkmCnxRPLJGD14qWWRg3lxxjDY
This thread! https://twitter.com/endlessyarning/status/1259346151154708480?s=21 https://twitter.com/endlessyarning/status/1259346151154708480
And this one! As I said, this story should be told by Tongans not white dudes using some faux-decolonisation shtick to centre themselves. https://twitter.com/endlessyarning/status/1259441213058342913?s=21 https://twitter.com/endlessyarning/status/1259441213058342913
I still can’t get over this excerpt from the article/story: “Then he had the six boys brought over and granted them the thing that had started it all: an opportunity to see the world beyond Tonga. He hired them as the crew of his new fishing boat.”
Yes, yes, yes! https://twitter.com/fangirljeanne/status/1259517464209092609?s=21 https://twitter.com/fangirljeanne/status/1259517464209092609
And more yes... https://twitter.com/fangirljeanne/status/1259519391474958340?s=21 https://twitter.com/fangirljeanne/status/1259519391474958340
I’m not going to let this go, but is Bregman really that stupid or is it a false naivety/ignorance in order to sell more books to dumb pākehā. How can you write a story about how some Tongans end up in the service of a white dude at sea and NOT see the colonial erasure in that?
It’s just so deeply insulting and crass to write about this story in this way when wayfinding is such an important part of Polynesian culture. FFS he could have even learned that from Moana but then he’d have had to listen to a woman of colour so...
