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Vā and Veitapui as decolonial potential: ongoing Talatalanoa and re-imagining Doctoral being and becoming
Abstract
Ko e taumuʻa ʻo e tohi ni ke tau talatalanoa fekauʻaki moe vā moe veitapui. This chapter is centered on vā and veitapui, Tongan concepts grounded in Indigenous Pacific philosophies linked to relational spaces. I articulate how the decolonial potentialities of doctoral being and becoming require intimate navigation and negotiation, highlighting the fluid, rich, and nuanced knowledges within vā and veitapui. Doctoral writing, as understood within vā and veitapui, provided a critical space for me to legitimize and value Indigenous Pacific thought in relation to dominant western knowledge. By employing Tongan concepts, I share how, through doctoral learning and writing, the encounters and experiences strengthened and affirmed my fatongia— an obligation and responsibility to honour and safeguard our cultural knowledges. For me, engaging in my own doctoral writing project was a matter of socio–political struggle and epistemic disobedience, because the academic traditions linked to perceived “proper” writing conventions were not what I adhered to in my own doctoral writing (McDowall & Ramos, 2017). In this chapter, I share how the concepts of vā and veitapui aided me in uncovering time-spaces within doctoral learning and education, and I re-imagine how Tongan ideas, language, and practices could be re-presented through writing.
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Chapter in Book
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Date
2021-08-23
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Rights
Copyright © 2021 Cecile Badenhorst, Brittany Amell, and James Burford and the authors of the individual parts of this book. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.