World Ocean's Day: Remembering Why We Sweat and Cry  Salt Water  - Teresia Teaiwa

In the words of our matua, Teresia Teaiwa, we remember why we sweat and cry salt water. The late Teresia Teaiwa inspired us to reimagine our ocean as an OCEANIC continent, a continent that is the source of our poetry, our life-force, our mana and mauri. 

On June 4, 2021,  Youngsolwara and the Pacific Blue Line hosted an intergenerational sharing that acknowledged our trail blazers who have paved the way for our Pacific people (our ancestors); reconnecting our ocean of struggles from different places and spaces through our art forms of storytelling, and challenges us to remember us why we sweat and cry salt, a reminder that the ocean is in our blood and why we are all called to act as its guardians.

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Tagata Fōlau I le vasa

My dearest children, 
Hear my plea.
As days have flown into the orifices of the now, you have forgotten to honor me as your
mother, 
Must a crippled greed hunt your limbless feet my children, a peril so dawning you see not of
my pain, 
Must you be so silent now,
Be not still my children you have a voice to share, 
I gave you wings and a mouth, 
The teeth of a sharp cry 
A heart of stone and a mind of gold,
Weep my tireless weep, 
The years have come to haunt the beauty that I once was and as I fight to stay a floating 
My organs fail me still,
Forget me not my dear children, your mother fights a tiresome war to thrive a tailless spine
of unwanted poison 
Beware my children this cancer I fight, and I fight for you, though if you must know this
cancer grows I cannot bare to fight alone,
I write to plea with you my children, cry for me I'm slipping away,
I plea you spare me the poison I still bare scars of, 
Strong I am not, but forgotten and neglected I feel, summers that glazed my gleaming face
and rains that gave me youth are now painful to touch,
Weep my tireless weep
Though the shores are now sour and my lips of salt forgive me I still fight for you
A call of caution my children, I plea to live
Must they sail to open my slowly shut wounds and retouch my broken scars
My bones so frail my time stolen, 
But a time has now come, where you must fight for me too, 

Thrifting sifting and unchanging winds that once strengthened me are weighing heavy on
these shoulders I carry
Voyages once brought fruit my children, yet so sweet, so benevolent the fruit has been
poisoned, 
Like the waves that count the tides and to the mountains who wait the suns touch, 
This kinship of mother and child
Children to grandchildren and grandchildren to the ground
Hear my plea;
Now that I write without voice to a croaking hand, hear me now I have my hopes written in
the grains of sand,
You have forgotten who I am and therefore forgotten who you are,
Have you ceased to watch the tree bend a narrow bend, my estuaries a treasure you have
gone blind,
Fear not of what must happen but will come, I write that you raise your voices, stand beside
your brethren and fight this fight 
I call for I see not, I cry that one day it could be the way it should be
Weep my tireless weep,
Reconciled with the forests beneath your feet a day where you and I become one again,
I once told you my dearest children that I'd protect you still, 
But the time has stripped my baring arms my children I bare to stand not,
Might I take the time to remind you the beauty you once knew is losing its ties, and for you
my children 
A thought, a cry a hope will keep me alive, 
I've stretched a bed of deep comfort for you across a million stars under a thousand skies, 
Abandon me not, 
For I am you.
And for you to lose me, would be to lose you.
Sending my love,

Your mother, Magellan.


- Written by Krystal Selwood Juffa