Remigrants
Remigrants (migrants who return home) and their offspring face many challenges – they may have lost the native language, lost the taste for native food, forgotten the protocols and native ways, and sometimes the challenges they face upon their return have to do with the reason why they had left home. In biblical literature, Jacob left home because he cheated his brother (Genesis 27); Naomi and her family (Ruth 1) left in search of food and survival; Jacob and his family migrated to Egypt in search of food as well (Genesis 46); the prodigal son left to enjoy his inheritance (Luke 15:11–32); and Israel’s elites were taken into exile (forced migration; 2 Kings 24:1–25:21). The reception of the remigrants varies: Esau came to meet Jacob, but the latter turned to a different place (Genesis 33); the town “stirred” when Naomi returned, but she was “bitter” because the Lord had dealt harshly with her and she lost her husband and sons (Ruth 1:19–21); the older brother was bitter when the repentant brother returned (Luke 15:25–30); and in Ezra there was opposition to the rebuilding projects of the exiled elites who returned from Babylon (as noted above).
Since the 1960s, Pasifika (Pacific, Oceania) natives migrated to Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia, and the United States, in search of greener pastures and better lives. The situations that Pasifika migrants left behind were not as harsh as those of political and economic refugees in modern times—which are presented in Khaled Hosseini’s novel Sea Prayer (2018) and Sharon Bala’s novel The Boat People (2020)—but they all share the pains of dislocation and homeless-ness.
A few Pasifika migrants have since returned home – some to stay (and to reclaim their ancestral lands and rights), and some to reconnect [their descendants] with their home(is)land. The remigrants had privileges when they migrated (no poor person could afford the migration processes), and they returned with more wealth and wider recognition.
The novel by Samoan Albert Wendt, Sons of the Return Home (1973), narrates the joys and pains that remigrants face. The novel is autobiographical, and Wendt privileges the perspectives of remigrants (so Ezra).
Still lacking are creative and critical engagements that celebrate the worldviews of natives who did not migrate, whether because they could not afford to migrate or because they felt that they could survive their lot. The voices of opposition in Ezra from the mixed “peoples of the land” are suggestive in this regard.
Natives
Indigenous studies tend to romanticize, and assume homogeneity of/among, native peoples and their cultures. Postcolonial and decolonial studies tend to present natives as victims of western and religious expansion projects. These academic trends are also evident in children’s literature, as Xu Daozhi explains in her Indigenous Cultural Capital: Postcolonial Narratives in Australian Children’s Literature (2018).
Among the movies that (re)present native peoples, Dances with Wolves (1990) affirms the Lakota (Sioux) people on Turtle Island (North America) during the US Civil War and, from Oceania, Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002) draws attention to the family separation policy that was forced on the “stolen generation” in Australia while Once Were Warriors (1994) spotlights the snags that trap modern Māori people due to dominant pākeha/white society treating them as outcasts. The natives are not subjects of past history, or of anthropology, but living people in modern times. In other words, there is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to native identity and reality. Across time and space, natives exist in many realities.
Natives too have civilizations – this assertion is affirmed by the responses of the peoples of the land to the rebuilding projects in Ezra (decreed by a foreign empire) as well as by the recent superhero movies Black Panther (2018) and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022). While the movies are fictitious – based on the Marvel comics – they invite another way to represent and relate with native peoples. Native peoples and their cultures are not just muted, naïve figments of scholarly imaginations, nor just victims of colonial powers, but creative and resourceful agents as well.
Polyculturalism
Mixing of races is condemned and rejected in the book of Ezra, but this reality is unavoidable when people migrate. Polyculturalism (having many cultures) or multiple belonging is inevitable. Purity of race and culture—the idea that a race or culture can be immune from mixing with another race or culture—is a lie of biblical proportion.
Polyculturalism is not a new phenomenon. It is one of the upshots of migration and displacement, which are as old as the families that construct houses and communities “east of Eden” (Genesis 4:16). This is to say that polyculturalism is normal.
