Before taking this class, I had never heard of Tokelau or its language. I find it very sad that once again, colonialism takes precedence over the rights of the native people. How do you take something that doesn’t belong to you? It’s just not right to subjugate an entire culture of people and remove them from their lands because you have money and the power to do so. The lands belonged to them first, long before the onset of colonialism.
One thing I found interesting in today’s discussion was the difference between Standard Tokelauan and Olohega Tokelauan. Many speakers of Standard Tokelauan remarked on the fact that Olohega Tokelauan sounds more “Sāmoan” than the standard version of the language. However, both versions of Tokelauan have roots in the Sāmoan language.
One argument that the Jenning family made about their claims of Olohega was that there weren’t any occupants of the island. However, linguists can prove that Olohega Tokelauan is significantly different from Standard Tokelauan. This proves that people inhabited Olohega long before the onset of colonialism.
The documentary we watched in family involved many Tokelauans asking for the Jenning family to do the right thing and return Olohega to its rightful owners. It will be a difficult battle, since there are only a few thousand Tokelauans going up against a very wealthy family, as well as the entire US government. However, I do hope that some actions can be made to eventually return the island of Olohega to the Tokelauan people.
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ReplyDeleteLike JMW, I had never heard of Tokelau prior to learning about it in this class. While watching the film and hearing the Tokelauan language, I was surprised to hear some similarities between the Tokelauan language and the Hawaiian language. I was not able to decipher whether the structures were alike, but I did hear a few words that Tokelauan may share with Hawaiian. While the definitions behind the words may differ between the two languages, the pronunciation of a word I heard in Tokelauan sounded identical to the pronunciation of the word “ola” in Hawaiian. After hearing a few more similar sounding words being used by the Tokelauan speaker, I listened more intently to see if I could hear any other parallels. As I tried to match the subtitles to what I was hearing, it seemed as if there were a few words in Tokelauan that were pronounced the same in Hawaiian and also shared the same meaning. Discovering these similarities between the two languages affirmed even further how far reaching and yet connected the members of the Austronesian family of languages are to each other.
ReplyDeleteI like both JMW and Leah's comment. Yes why people have power and money always try their best to take away something that doesn't belong to them. Reasonable agrresiveness is good but over-agressiveness will bring disaster to the world. Like Jenning's family, they took away Olohega which in fact did not belong to them and made indigenous people live a miserable life. Gradually they lost their language and their culture. Colonism cause a lot of problems in Pacific Islands. I know like Hawaiians, Olohega people want to "EA. They would like to return not their own land and have rights over it. It is involved politics between nation. It is really a hard and long battle. I hope Olohega people and all people with their land stolen can get back what belonged to them, because they deserve it.
ReplyDeleteIndeed it is not acceptable to remove people and a whole culture from their homeland for the sake of trying to claim an island as a private family get away. Before this class I had never heard of Tokelau either, and the endangerment of land rights, language and culture makes me wonder how many other little islands that many people have never heard of are dealing with similar problems?
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