Words from the Wise-- Dr. Konai Helu Thaman

Dr. Konai Helu Thaman is a Tongan native Scholar and Professor at the University of South Pacific (USP) in Fiji. She holds a BA in Geography from the University of Auckland, an M.A. in International Education from the University of California at Santa Barbara, and PhD in Education from the USP.

Dr. Thaman's PhD Dissertation entitled ‘Ako and Faiako: Cultural Values, Educational Ideas and Teachers’ Role Perceptions in Tonga was based on studies of the relationships between cultural values and educational ideas and how these were reflected in teachers’ perceptions of their professional role. She has conducted research, consultancies and published widely in the areas of teacher education, curriculum development and culture and education and has held senior administrative positions in the USP including Director of the Institute of Education and Pro Vice Chancellor and Acting Deputy Vice Chancellor.

She is a Fellow of APEID (Asia-Pacific Programme of Educational Innovation for Development) and a member of several international and professional organisations including the UNITWIN/UNESCO Asia Pacific Higher Education Network and the Joint ILO/UNESCO Committee of Experts on the Application of the Recommendation on the Status of Teachers (CEART), and the Asia Pacific Regional Scientific Committee on Research in Higher Education. She serves as the UNESCO Chairperson in Teacher Education and Culture. She is also a widely published poet. Read more HERE



The following is a quote taken from her keynote address at the Center for Pacific Island Studies Conference in 2003. Her talk was entitled "Decolonizing Pacific Studies: Indigenous Perspectives, Knowledge, and Wisdom in Higher Education"

"...my western education has not caused me to shift from a belief and reliance in the supernatural...I am a Tongan woman of the commoner class, and although schooled in western ways, I continue to see myself as part of an organic unity, not as a chance result of natural selection at work in a world devoid of supernatural guidance..."

you say that you think
therefore you are
but thinking belongs
in the depths of the earth
we simply borrow
what we need to know
these islands the sky
the surrounding sea
the trees the birds
and all that are free
the misty rain
the surging river
pools by the blowholes
a hidden flower
have their own thinking
they are different frames
of mind that cannot fit
in a small selfish world
(Konai Helu Thaman, “Thinking”)

I have always loved Dr. Thaman's work and how her words articulate a reality that is based on indigenous Tongan thought that claims knowledge existing and arising from the supernatural. It claims multiple ways of knowing and thinking! It aims to deconstruct the western thought and idea that literacy equals intelligence. Her words have helped me to expand my thinking beyond the walls of my classrooms and to envision and redefine education in a broader sense. It ruptures the idea that formal education is the only space where knowledge is created and produced!