Futa Helu / "The ocean of humanity is fed by the rivers of many cultures."

Scott Hamilton It is twelve years this week since the sudden death of Glenn Jowitt, who was only fifty-nine. Jowitt took hundreds of photographs that documented the worlds Pasifika peoples made after migrating to Tāmaki Makaurau and other New Zealand cities, and he also journeyed to societies like Tonga and Mangaia to photograph the worlds that the migrants had left behind. But Jowitt's career began in his native Canterbury, and there is a seldom-noticed continuity between th

Scott Hamilton This statue of Manilal Doctor stands in Port Louis, the capital of Mauritius. In Mauritius and later in Fiji, Doctor acted a lawyer and advocate for indentured workers. Working with guidance from Mahatma Gandhi, he played a vital role in freeing thousands of Indo-Fijians from a system not far removed from slavery. After being deported to New Zealand, Doctor became a tenacious advocate for Indian independence here, before returning to his homeland. Doctor deserv

Murray Edmond RS: Reef Shark will be running an interview next week with the important Aotearoan poet, scholar, fictioneer and dramaturge Murray Edmond. This is a new work by the author of Fool Moon and Shaggy Magpie Songs. A Ballad of 2026 Nostalgic for the mess we made and have now lost mud deep water brown white skins kauri logs floating down the little town’s beginnings materialized at 2am as if the 1970s were back in sepia in the motel of dreams my eyes pirouette a drown

Scott Hamilton This image appears on the back cover of Chris Boylan and Jessica Lindsay Phillips' The Man Who Cannot Die. The book was published by JM Fogel Media in 2021. When I am in Auckland Museum's Pacific Masterpieces gallery with kids I like to ask them a question: can you spot the superhero? The gallery hosts one of the many shields that artists in New Guinea have adorned with the figure of the Phantom, a comic book superhero created by American Lee Falk in 1936. Chri

Scott Hamilton I was excited to find Hongi Hika in the list of characters at the beginning of Clifton Crais' acclaimed new book The Killing Age. But Crais gets the Nga Puhi warlord wrong, and his error points to a wider problem with his book. The Killing Age ranges across the world of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, and describes the immense violence violence that accompanied European colonialism, the industrial revolution, and the export of guns. Crais

Keiji & Archipelago of Fire This photograph from August 2025 appeared on the website of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. It was taken in Jakarta. Young women were an important part of the uprising in Indonesia. RS: Keiji was involved in political and social activism in Indonesia in the 1990s and the 2010s. This is an edited email, in which she discusses the 2025 Indonesian uprising and the texts she has supplied from the Indonesian revolutionaries calling thems

Scott Hamilton RS: Reef Shark wants to champion the art and lifeways of Oceania, which preserve ways of thinking, acting, and being that have been marginalised or abolished in the 'wealthy' countries of the northern hemisphere, where capital and technology rule. But as well as documenting Oceania we will publish analyses and excoriations of the failed civilisations of the West and China. 1: 'All that is solid melts into air' I can't stop looking at this photo, which has been