Ko te tama a te manu e fafaga i na ika, ka ko te tama a te tagata e fafaga i na kupu.
“Birds feed their young with fish, humans feed their young with words.”
Just as a bird sustains its chicks with food, people sustain their children with language, teaching and stories — knowledge is the nourishment that is passed from elders to the young.
— Traditional Tokelau Wisdom, Tokelau
Source: Alagakupu Tokelau (Tokelau Wellington Leadership Group, with the New Zealand Ministry for Pacific Peoples, 2011), a published collection of over 200 Tokelauan proverbs
More Proverbs from Tokelau
Tokelau: the north wind.
The territory's own name is the traditional Polynesian word for the north wind, the direction from which the atolls' Samoan ancestors are believed to have sailed roughly 1,000 years ago.
Share the catch by inati: every household its portion, whether it fished or not.
Describes the inati system, in which the day's fish catch is brought to a common landing place and divided among every household by family size and need rather than by who caught it.
Let the taupulega decide as one.
The taupulega, or council of family elders, governs daily life on each atoll by consensus; matters affecting the village are settled together rather than by a single chief.
Fatele keeps the whole village singing and dancing as one.
Fatele, the communal song-and-dance form shared with Samoa and Tuvalu, is performed at village gatherings with chant, clapping and drumming, carrying history and language from one generation to the next.
The canoe finds the way toward self-government.
Tokelau's national flag, adopted in 2009, depicts a traditional canoe beneath the stars of the Southern Cross; officially the canoe symbolises Tokelau's ongoing journey toward the governance arrangement that best serves its people.
Tomorrow the wind changes.
A saying for a good wind to sail on — used to express quiet confidence that, whatever today's difficulty, the way forward will open and the journey will bring the community home stronger.