FOUNDATIONS
Mauatua Fa’ara Reynolds (she/they; Samoan Ti’avea & Lalovaea) “I’m Mauatua.” My name feels like home in my mouth. My own whare. A hoem that holds so much history, meaning, mana. A fare owned by my ancestor, the daughter of a chief, who helped begin a new Pacific civilisation and culture. Now, this is mine. And I care for this house with so much aroha, arofa, and aloha because it was passed down to me and is my legacy. But it’s not my name when the white girl repeats it. “Mow-a-too-a? Makatonga? Mowatushka? Moana!” her serrated shark teeth (not my special ma’o or mango teeth) crush my house. She tears through the foundations. Our foundations. Because she doesn’t know that the powerful atua seated at the end is omnipresent throughout our sea of islands. And when I reach my left ear to Samoa and Aotearoa, they chant the same word spoken in my heart. Atua. She doesn’t know that our atua journeyed across the largest living body on this earth And morphed And transformed. Because when I reach my right ear to Hawai’i, I hear them cry akua. While our people, words, and vaka have voyaged far and wide, stretched to the ends of the earth and evolved, our hearts and mana remain the same. But she doesn’t know that. All she knows is that “Bora bora is so pretty! It’s all over my insta feed”. She doesn’t know that my grand-père was put on a big industrial boat (not our strong wooden wa’a) and shipped to the Tuamotu islands where he had to assist the nuclear testing.
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Past
