Tei te Akau Roa: An Ocean of Metaphor in Pacific Research Methodologies

Abstract

Pacific methodologies have often drawn inspiration from metaphorical interpretations of our natural environment. Pacific theoreticians and researchers have attempted to use key cultural practices and iconography, ancient ritual and ceremony, oceanic topographies and the significance of island geomorphology and ecosystems (including the role of the human) to critically map research approaches and designs and carefully draw correlations between Pacific lives and the creation of Pacific worlds. These methodological innovations are powerful because these conceptualisations of key aspects of the Pacific world speak so clearly to lived Pacific experience. In this article, I explore the significance of metaphor in Pacific research with a focus on oceanic topography in the Cook Islands context with discussion of the reef. This discussion is inspired by Elizabeth Wright-Koteka’s use of the reef in the critical framing of her thesis, “Te U‘u nō te Akau Roa: Migration and the Cook Islands” (2006). With consideration of this text, and a brief survey of creative and critical texts in Pacific scholarship, I encourage reflection on the construction and use of the metaphor in Pacific research practice and describe how useful this can be with reference to te akau roa—the long reef—as both a metaphor and powerful topographical feature in the social imaginary and life of Cook Islands peoples. I conclude with a brief discussion of where I see the reef (and conceptualisations like it) situated in the growing body of writing and research about Pacific methodologies.