Two Tokelau Fishing Texts

Abstract

There is a considerable anthropological literature on fishing in tropical Polynesia, but by far the greater part of it is scientific and comparative in emphasis and written from the perspective of outside observers. Very little has been published by the fishermen themselves. The greater part of this paper is taken up with two texts, written in Tokelauan with English translation, based on audiotapes of speeches occasioned by a fishing ceremony on the atoll of Fakaofo in 1971. The texts reveal a wholly different perspective from the scientific, comparative concerns that have guided outside observers. By comparison, the perspective of the texts is a wholly cultural one, embracing an imaginative order that is at once economic, social, political and moral - very transparently 'the native point of view'.

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