“ I only learned about this amazing and lovely gentleman Roger Hau'ofa over the years from his dear and most academically beloved brother the late Professor Dr Epeli Hau'ofa, certainly Tonga's and perhaps Moana Oceania's first and foremost anthropologist (and artist).
I suppose Roger did, in all respects, represent the 'old-school' type media iconic, which was well-said and duly-described by Mr Namorong, as truly transcending "those partisan boundaries and represented the institution of media as it's supposed to be."
The late Professor Hau'ofa did exactly and I am sure more of the same, when he, with style and grace, transcended Moana Oceania scholarship beyond all disciplinary and regional boundaries, putting it on the world map.
This is the case with one of his seminal essays "Our Sea of Islands," where he called for a radical change in thinking and practice from seeing Moana Oceania as "our islands in the far seas" to viewing it as "our sea of islands."
That is, that we consciously yet reflectively shift from thinking "small" to thinking "big," thereby critically yet readily liberating ourselves from the bondage of perpetual dependency to fulfilling life of sustaining and ongoing autonomy.
Although you two have both physically passed on from the world-of-the-here-and-now to the world-other-than-this-world and from life to legends yet your eternal souls are intertwined and entwined in the legacies you have left us behind us, lingering on to the future behind us, both taking place in the present.
'Ofa atu fau moe 'anau ma'u Roger pea 'ofa keke ma'u ha folau lelei 'oku mohu he melino, nonga moe fiemalie mo fonu he 'ofa, kelesi moe tapuaki. ”