'Impulse to narrate': Salesa shares the deep motivations behind his award-winning work

There is never a dull moment in Professor Toeolesulusulu Damon Salesa’s busy schedule, and the Pacific scholar, author and AUT Vice Chancellor would not have it any other way.

This Sunday, Toeolesulusulu is adding the Auckland Writers Festival (AWF) into the mix, joining Susana Lei’ataua in a keynote conversation on his career-spanning An Indigenous Ocean: Pacific Essays.

A collection of 15 mostly published essays, An Indigenous Ocean was recently granted top honours in the hotly contested General Non-Fiction category at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards 2024.

Speaking ahead of the AWF event, Toeolesulusulu says the essay collection focuses on the Indigenous Pacific and is divided into four sections which explores ways of seeing the Indigenous Pacific through a global scale, examines New Zealand’s relationship with the Pacific, analyses the histories of race in the Pacific, and deep dives into Samoa’s indigenous histories.

“In one sense I have been working on this collection for years, but refreshing, editing and finishing off a couple of new pieces was more recent work, in stolen moments away from my job and my passion, being VC at AUT,” Toeolesulusulu says.

The driving force behind An Indigenous Ocean is the return of the Pacific, again, to its unique predicament, he adds.

“Once again, the Pacific is central to the geopolitics of the world, at the same time its peoples and their voices are pushed into the margins.

“Knowing my own work is about putting indigenous voices at the centre, and using indigenous Pacific angles of vision as platforms of critique and analysis, I decided this was an opportune moment to put together a collection of my essays.”

Toeolesulusulu’s work raises the profound question of what role do the peoples of Aotearoa New Zealand see themselves playing in the Pacific, and he says it will be this country’s actions that provide the most meaningful answer.

Throughout the writing process, the author says he was presented with deep challenges of thinking, understanding and sharing to a wide-ranging audience.

“When writing about a subject—the Indigenous Pacific—which is at once marginalised, often overlooked, and yet frequently misrepresented, many of these challenges are amplified.

“The challenges are heightened when you have to deliver both content and ways of seeing; trying to broaden peoples’ understandings and to share stories which are unfamiliar, but which also do not easily sit within the narrative frames that people hold and which structure their understanding of the world, and themselves.

“It is difficult to be both authentic to indigenous ways of telling and to scholarly practice, while engaging readers.”

Despite the challenges, Toeolesulusulu says he has experienced great joy to learn people have been reading and enjoying An Indigenous Ocean.

“You don’t write to speak to yourself, you write motivated by the familiar, indigenous—perhaps universal—impulse to narrate, to tell stories.

“It is deeply rewarding to know that your words have reached readers, that your stories have made shore.”

Looking ahead, Toeolesulusulu says while he has many more stories to share, his focus is on leading AUT.

“It is the centre of my world and more than a full-time job.

“Our commitment to knowledge is my mission and my passion, and that means other things, including my research and writing, will be on a break for the time being.”

What: Auckland Writers Festival, Event 115 Damon Salesa: An Indigenous Ocean: Pacific Essays
Where: Hunua Room, Aotea Centre
When: Sunday, May 19, 2024 (2:30pm – 3:30pm)
Buy tickets at Ticketmaster.