Marking Indigeneity: The Tongan Art of Sociospatial Relations

Tongans, the native people of the Kingdom of Tonga in the South Pacific, are a highly mobile indigenous group. Like their seafaring ancestors, they are constantly on the move across ta (time) and va (space). Carrying their traditions with them, Tongans living in Maui, Hawai‘i, actively mediate those dimensions by extending the time-space structure of certain activities and places in order to practice tauhi va—the marking of time to sustain harmonious relations and create bea…