Epeli's Quest: Essays in Honor of Epeli Hau'ofa

Abstract

The news of Epeli Hau'ofa's passing on the morning of n January 2009 spread rapidly. It first came to me in the form of a somber weekend phone call from Tarcisius Kabutaulaka, followed shortly by an e-mail from Vijay Naidu, Epeli's longtime colleague at the University of the South Pacific. Tributes soon flooded in from across the great Ocean he loved so much. They spoke of a person who touched many lives, a man open and inclu sive in his embrace. They testified to the profound influence of Epeli's ideas, and, perhaps above all, to the inspiration he provided for Oceani ans everywhere, including scholars, creative writers, artists, students, and activists. As Ratu Joni Madraiwiwi put it, Epeli Hau'ofa was finest Pacific Islander of our times. It will long be a matter of regret that Epeli was too ill to travel to Honolulu in April 2008 to attend a book launch in his honor. We were eager to host again this towering figure in Pacific studies, to honor the newly published volume of his selected works, We Are the Ocean, and to celebrate his long-standing connections with this part of Oceania. It was, after all, the volcanic grandeur of the island of Hawai'i that inspired Epeli's seminal essay Our Sea of Islands, versions of which he delivered at the Hilo and Manoa campuses of the University of Hawai'i in the spring °f1993-1 sat in the back and off to the side when Epeli delivered the talk to a hushed audience at Manoa. It was a profound moment for all of us in that crowded room in Burns Hall, and a turning point in the scholarship of the region. The idea of a collection of short essays to honor Epeli Hau'ofa was enthusiastically embraced by the editorial board of The Contemporary Pacific (tcp). All of us on the journal team have been influenced by his work, and many had interacted with him over the years. Three of Epeli's