“Austronesian” has evolved beyond a linguistic concept into an identity through which people explore and articulate questions such as “Who am I?” and “What is my relationship to the world?” Yet constructing such an identity also means navigating the intersections and tensions between indigeneity, ethnicity, nationhood, colonialism, and decolonisation.

Taiwan is regarded as an important point of origin for Austronesian migrations that began more than 5,000 years ago. Since the 2000s, “Austronesian” has become a framework through which Indigenous peoples in Taiwan have sought to rediscover themselves and reconnect with the Pacific world.

At the other end of this migratory history is the lesser-known Norfolk Island, an Australian territory located northwest of New Zealand’s North Island. Its inhabitants are descendants of 18th-century British sailors and Tahitian women, whose descendants relocated to the island in 1856. In a sense, this relocation can be seen as one of the final waves of migration of the Austronesian peoples. Although they are not “Indigenous” in the conventional sense, today they draw on their Tahitian matrilineal ancestry, as well as song and dance traditions, in an effort to establish a place for themselves within the Pacific community.

From an early point of departure to a modern endpoint in this migratory history, these two islands raise a shared question: Is identity rooted in ancestry, language, history, or culture—or can it also be reinterpreted and reconstructed in other ways in the contemporary world?

For the second public talk of <u>#TaiwanAcrossCities</u> in Nowhere Aotearoa, Hao-Li Lin, Associate Professor at National Tsing Hua University, whose long-term research focuses on contemporary Austronesian issues, will take Taiwan and Norfolk Island as two seemingly distant yet resonant case studies. He will explore how the idea of an “Austronesian world” has been continually imagined and redefined at the intersections of colonial history, ethnic identity, and contemporary Pacific relations—and how an Austronesian identity can transcend ethnic and national boundaries to become a bond connecting communities across the Pacific.

Event will be in Mandarin.