Transcript
With over eight million people, Papua New Guinea is the largest and most populous country in the Pacific.
It is also one of the most culturally diverse places in the world.
Julia Mage'au Gray says there over 800 languages so trying to find one word to fit something is a very Western idea.
The dancer and skin artist says there's no one way of doing things because there are many.
"It's nice to hear how important it is for this word to make everybody feel something united, writing about something. I understand it but at the same time it means not a lot to me. The word Moana I just don't relate. I understand the importance of needing a label. But I'm tired of labels."
Pacific scholars and artists gathered in Auckland last month for a panel discussion on Va Moana Talanoa or Ocean Stories.
The group wants the name Moana to replace Oceania as they say Moana identifies all Pasifika people, their lands, their waters and their cultures.
But Ms Gray says this is not the case.
"PNG is a massive island. While it's small, it's massive because of the amount of people and languages and where we are is 20km from the coast. And even though 20km doesn't sound very far, in PNG 20km is a completely different language grouping."
Ms Gray says there's a lot of code-switching, constantly passing into different countries and nations and islands.
And that's awesome, she adds.
"But hearing these thoughts and words makes me itchy because I'm restless. Because it can't just be about the damn word. It's more than that. It's not the words that give the meaning. It's the connections and the visual understanding of how that connects you from this place to this to this. So I'm having difficulty understanding that people need this word Moana."
However Tongan academic Hūfanga 'Okusitino Māhina maintains there is a need for change.
"The moral here is for us to change from a condition of imposition to a state of mediation. The latter has always been the problem because we seem to be freely submitting ourselves to the palagi (white man) with this superiority complex or inferiority complex. And we accept it as a fact - whatever they impose on us."
He says Pacific people need to free themselves from a "condition of industry" as in the case of the word Pacific.
"Which means peaceful on the ocean of moana which is both peaceful and powerful. And I think to call it Pacific is an insult to our daring warriors and navigators. It is an insult because they braved their way through the intersection of the peaceful and the powerful. Hence the word moa."
Hufanga says Moa in the Tongan language can refer to powerful, destructive and forceful seas.
Hawaiian academic Vincente Diaz, of the University of Minnesota, says he understands how Ms Gray feels.
The professor of American Indian and Indigenous Studies says he is from a part of the Pacific that often gets overlooked or not considered at all.
"Even in Pacific studies that tends to be Polynesian-centric. One of the things that has emerged over the last decade or so is a movement to adopt more indigenous terms to replace Pacific or Pasifika. And Moana and other possibilities have come up. One of the problems had been using one term from one part of the Pacific to speak for the whole."
Professor Diaz says to help, more people from Micronesia and Melanesia are needed at these talanoa sessions.
