This paper has discussed the politics of money being made to stand in place of traditional wealth, textile koloa. Yet, the argument has also been presented that koloa continue to be indispensable to ritual and their role in connecting families. Koloa can only stand for themselves, and money is an inadequate stand in. As reflected on above, koloa are integral to the aesthetics of gifting cash. As explained earlier, sila pa’anga are often formally presented resting on a folded bed of koloa. Thus, money requires koloa in order to be gifted in ways that provide a further visual index for anga faka-Tonga. Perhaps this is one reason why gifts of cloth, as well as composite gifts of cloth and cash, have persisted almost 200 years into the existence of the monetised Tongan economy and with the increasing global spread of Tongan transnationalism.

For analytical neatness, I have presented a somewhat dichotomised view of cash and cloth wealth in the diasporic Tongan economy. In lived reality, however, cash and cloth are far more intertwined forms of wealth, bleeding into each other, but never fully eclipsing one another. Likewise, I have also separated the diaspora from the homeland as nodes of social experience, knowing full well that these practices are dialogic—mutually-constituting and carried out by social agents who negotiate the performance of traditions in their interactions and confrontations (Matory 2006). Tongan ceremonial culture in diaspora probably will continue to strongly affect ceremonial culture in the homeland. With this in mind, I have examined how a homeland-based fāmili sought to make the politics of their own grieving process more bearable in material terms by vying for one form of value in a now thoroughly mixed economy of cash and cloth wealth.

Seen in an ethnographically nuanced light, we might re-think Cohen’s second major feature of diaspora. Where Cohen cites ‘expansion from a traditional homeland in search of work, in pursuit of trade’ (Cohen 2008:161), I suggest we consider both permanent and temporary expansions from a homeland as well as the obvious intensification of relationships of emigrants with people still resident in that home land. Another feature of diaspora might also be the rights that emigrants maintain to negotiate a sense of tradition with their homeland-based counterparts. The (extra-local) search for work and the transnational performance of tradition have become basic features of Tongan modernity as well as basic assumptions about how diaspora contributes to the longevity of Tongan culture writ large.

In concluding, I make no predictions about how Tongan diaspora and notions of modernity will affect the intertwined roles of cash and cloth in Tongan exchange. For example, no one can accurately predict if cash gifts will indeed replace cloth gifts in the future. While the relationship of these two categories of valuables has been historically established in Tongan culture, my discussion here has shown that the relationship is subject to much negotiation, especially as life crisis rituals, and decisions around them, may be bi-territorially planned and executed. To see cash and cloth as equivalent forms of value such that one form (money) might replace the other (koloa) in ritual exchange, would be to ignore just what is at stake in contemporary transnational identities: good social relations.

This chapter is dedicated to the loving memory of the late Henry Kilifi Quensell and his entire fāmili. Na’a ne haka he langi, Mālō.