Pacific Thought Symposium

Notes from the Mau forum - Pacific Thought Symposium held at Waitekere on March 7.





Keynote speaker was His Highness Tui Atua Tupua Tamasese, Head of State of Samoa, he gave a wonderful, eloquent and provocative paper -- basic thoughts triggered in my mind, about his premise that in a samoan cosmogeny (?) citing an oral tradition that sense of smell was the 2nd order of the heavens' creation, and positing that smell central to samoan/oceanian sense apparatus. very Kantian! and challenges the cartesian/scientific "heirarchy" of the sense of eyesight.

I learned that in academic speak, kaupapa would be 'methodology'.

Dr. Mahina talked about noa being the correlative for Maori kore, which is "mistranslated" in ethnographic lore as void or nothingness. When really it is a form of "subtraction" in a way, and "resides in the giving" not in the giver or the receiver. Emphasis of the complementarity of the concepts in Moanan peoples, noa-tapu. Tapu is "a form of equilibrium", negotiated at the interfacing between tapu and noa. Moanan ways of thinking and doing - thought and practice...

Talanoa as a model for education/research (Dr. Mahina): Must ask first WHAT IS TALANOA, rather than describing what does talanoa "do"....

"tala means to 'tell', noa is a state of harmony of equilibrium, neutral, is a PROCESS and an OUTCOME, sorting stories, differentiate fact from fiction and ARRIVE at a common ground to be ennabled to feel the equilibrium that is knowledge"..."rounded, secular, plural, holistic....

A model applied to research...enter into talanoa get in by circling the talanoa, then enter, "once in you're in for the long haul", criss-cross, once you enter its forever, an eternal experience...

-Grammar of rhythm/music: Reductive (subtract, parameter) vs. Discursive (mode that adds on)