Panels & Presenters: Day 2

The iTaukei (Indigenous Fijian) worldview is constructed through epistemological knowledge that ties in people, land and the spiritual. Loloma (love, innate care, respect) is an intrinsic iTaukei value that finds its centrality in the ways of being, connection, relationship building and depths of Indigenous relational spirituality through the connections with the Vanua (encompasses land and people). The concept of Vasu is used here to frame the understanding of Loloma through the sacred and relational. A look into the sacred in- between created by the brother and sister bond in the iTaukei culture. Through this lens, Loloma is theoretically based and is argued as being so much more than the Western conception of love. It is a grounding of Loloma through respect, relationship and reciprocity and most of all honor. This argument uses storied perspectives through autoethnography and talanoa. Grounded Normativity is used here as the theoretical framework to showcase the practice based knowledge that is innately connected to the Vanua when it comes to talking about the Vasu and its mana. It is an illumination of the decolonial praxis through the penning of iTaukei epistemology for alternative futures. 

Ulamila Monica Cagivanua is a proud iTaukei woman, carrying the hopes and dreams of her ancestors from the provinces, islands and villages of Ekita, Yawe, Kadavu, Nasilai, Rewa, Yaro Village, Malolo Island and Qeleni, Taveuni. Ulamila earned her undergraduate degree in Sociology and Social Work and her postgraduate diploma in Sociology at the University of the South Pacific, Laucala Campus in Fiji. She attained her Master’s in Pacific Islands Studies and Advanced Graduate Certificate in Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies from the University of Hawaii at Manoa in spring 2023 and is currently a second year PhD student in the Political Science Department with a focus on Indigenous Politics at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Apart from academia, Ulamila is a poet who uses her platform to raise Indigenous Pacific voices especially those of her people. She is passionate about the use of Indigenous epistemologies as framework for solutions against some of the heavy issues within the Pacific today. 

Communal fishing is a longstanding practice found throughout the Pacific Islands of Oceania.  In French Polynesia’s coastal communities, these practices predate colonial impositions and radical shifts in land and sea tenure from local village to district to island wide practices. Communal fishing practices were held for celebrations including chiefs arriving from other islands to the rising of the Pleiades to mark a new season. Collective actions feeding community continue to illustrate the value of sharing a common source. Fishing rituals and practices, amongst many other aspects of coastal indigenous culture in Oceania are sites of traditional knowledge because they necessitate an action of doing but also rely upon numerous specific knowledges. In this article, we describe stone fishing, a place specific fishing technique that illuminates past knowledge, present practice, and future adaptations. Through this ethnographic unpacking of a resurgent traditional practice, we aim to understand how the practice is an act of environmental and cultural resilience, as well as one of indigenous sovereignty in a seascape that is increasingly being carved out for Western advised marine management. This article strives to contribute to the record of traditional ecological knowledge and the practices that come from these knowledges in Maupiti, French Polynesia for a cultural practice that occurs once every ten years. With these communal events and the encapsulated knowledges therein becoming rarer, is it essential to not only establish a record of them in the literature, but also to acknowledge the role they play in maintaining community relationship with place.

I am a PhD candidate in the Anthropology Department. My research includes working with Mā'ohi communities throughout the Society Islands of French Polynesia to understand how traditional and local knowledge can be elevated and appropriately incorporated into marine management. My focus is on traditional medicine, rā'au, and fishing rituals and how these knowledges adapt into contemporary understanding of place.

The colonial region known as French Polynesia has long been subject to colonial structures that sought to define who we are as a people. Among the most enduring tools of this control has been the education system, which, from missionary schools to the present French curriculum, has worked to erase ta'ata tumu epistemologies and impose foreign ways of knowing. Today, colonial education continues to marginalize Indigenous knowledge by prioritizing the French language, Eurocentric narratives, and state-centered definitions of identity and success. But this thesis asks a deeper question: Who are we as a nation? Unlike other Pacific nations, such as the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi, where the Kanaka Maoli share a common narrative about the illegal overthrow of their kingdom, Te Ao Mā’ohi  lacks a unified story of sovereignty. This project seeks to articulate such a narrative, grounded in genealogy, land, spirituality, and the oral transmission of knowledge. Drawing on Indigenous theory informed by postcolonial critique, I employ historical analysis, literary interpretation, and interviews with ta’ata tumu youth across the archipelagos to examine how colonial structures have shaped identity. More importantly, I explore how storytelling, memory, and everyday acts of resistance offer a foundation for reimagining ta’ata tumu nationhood beyond colonial frameworks. This thesis is an Indigenous project grounded in lived experience, and it will be shared in English and French to engage my community across multiple spaces. It offers not just critique, but a call: to return to our voices, our ancestors, and our shared understanding of what it means to be from te ao mā’ohi.

Teavanui Teiefitu from Tahiti, is a Graduate Assistant at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, pursuing a Master’s degree in Pacific Islands Studies. His research focuses on Mā'ohi sovereignty, colonial education in French-occupied Tahiti, and the reclamation of Indigenous epistemologies. Drawing on scholars such as Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Frantz Fanon, and Epeli Hau'ofa, his work weaves together history, literature, and personal narrative to challenge colonial frameworks. Teavanui is deeply committed to Indigenous resurgence and the restoration of cultural knowledge systems. He plans to continue his academic journey with a PhD in Indigenous Politics, contributing to Pacific scholarship and advocacy.

Through the era of Hawaiian language revitalization, little attention has been given to the linguistic needs of the Niihau community of Niihau and Kauai, those whose families have never lost the language, in the public sector. While those engaged in Hawaiian language retrieval and revitalization through formal education initiatives, the Niihau community have not been afforded the same attention and protections via public policy.

Keao NeSmith, PhD, is a freelance researcher, translator, and consultant and has extensive experience living and working in Aotearoa and French Polynesia, with extensive contacts and experience in other areas of Polynesia. A native of Kauai in the Hawaiian Kingdom, Keao is heavily engaged in restoration and maintenance initiatives of sacred sites there.

For access to the research paper, please click here.

During the Second Hawaiian Renaissance, there was not a clear consensus on who the movement was for. Many multi-ethnic organizations and resistance movements disagreed on who should be included. Tensions often arose when harmful systems of domination were recreated in the leadership or structure of these organizations. Chapter One focuses on the history of resistance movements in Hawai’i and analyzes what aspects of past resistance movements influenced structures of the modern Hawaiian Renaissance. Chapter Two focuses on specific movements: Save Our Surf (SOS), Hōkūle’a, and the Kalama Valley Occupation. I explore how recreations of systems of domination bred tensions and resentment in these movements. Chapter Three focuses on the creation of the Ethnic Studies Program and Center for Hawaiian Studies at the UH at Mānoa. I discuss the creation of Ethnic Studies Program and Center for Hawaiian Studies, and examine the tensions in the early days of these programs.

My name is Kenna McCauley, I graduated from Reed College in May, 2025. I majored in Comparative Race and Ethnicity Studies, concentration in History. For my senior thesis, I explored racial and ethnic tensions in social movements of the Hawaiian Renaissance. I was awarded the Undergraduate Research Fellowship to travel to the UH at Mānoa to conduct research in the Hamilton Library Archives. This research greatly informed my thesis, and provided crucial primary sources. In April, I presented my thesis research at the Asian and Pacific Islander Symposium at Reed College. I received top marks on my undergraduate thesis. 

One of the main reasons for Tongans immigrating to the United States (U.S.) was to enter tertiary schooling and further one’s knowledge within colleges and universities. As this has been an aspiration for many Tongan people entering the U.S. for themselves and/or their posterity, another location of knowledge attainment and financial sustainability has become a prevalent force amongst Tongan U.S. diasporic community, the airlines. The study takes place in the Ano Māsima, or known as the Salt Lake Valley, because the Tongans per capita in Utah compared to other parts of the U.S. The purpose of this study is to explore the phenomenon of how Tongans in the U.S. utilize the airline industry to maintain connections to the sources of Tongan knowledge, which is people (our relationships), and place (where they reside, and our homelands). Also, to better understand reasoning of the influx of Tongans within the airline industry.

Inoke Hafoka is the son of Tongan immigrants and raised in Glendale of Soonkahni (Salt Lake Valley in Utah). Hafoka is currently an Assistant Professor and Program Lead of Pacific Studies at BYU–Hawaii. His research interests includes: diaspora, identity, migration, race, education, knowledge production, revitalization / re-imagination, sports, talanoa. Hafoka has published in AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples, Pacific Studies, Oceania, Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, Journal Committed to Social Change on Race and Ethnicity, and more.

The COFA Workers Association of Hawaiʻi (COFAWAH) is an independent association that works to address, educate, and empower workers from COFA nations such as The Federated States of Micronesia, The Republic of Palau, and The Republic of the Marshall Islands. In an assessment led by the Hawai’i Workers Center (HWC), COFA workers were identified as a community to be organized due to their overwhelming representation within the categories of “low wage” and “non-unionized” workers as well as their cultural and political connections. While the COFWAH was established in 2021 to address wage theft, immigration, housing, and discrimination, it was disbanded in 2023. Empowered by recent workers rights and wage theft trainings, a new association is on the rise. This presentation will cover the COFAWAH progress, challenges, and opportunities as well as the HWC’s organizing approach that enables workers to become the most powerful at addressing the issues they face.

The Hawaiʻi Workers Center (HWC) launched on May 1st, 2020, the first and only workers center in Hawai’i. We envision a Hawaiʻi in which all workers are empowered to exercise their right to organize for their social, economic and political well-being. The Hawaiʻi Workers Center provides information, education, training and organizing. It offers workshops on workers’ rights, safety and health and protection from wage theft, labor trafficking, abuse and harassment and other workplace hazards and issues. The HWC model is creating workers' collective power through organizing workers' associations in the workplace, along industry lines, or in communities wherever is applicable.

Individuals living in the United States from the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), the Marshall Islands and Palau under the Compacts of Free Association, or COFA citizens, are routinely subject to arbitrary and unorganized governance at the federal, state and local levels. This manifests in barriers to accessing benefits like Medicaid, Food Stamps and in-state resident tuition (ISRT). Drawing on the author’s work with the Embassy of the Federated States of Micronesia examining the implementation of new ISRT regulations, this presentation seeks to explore how these barriers manifest as part of a larger thesis surrounding the legal precarity of COFA citizens in the United States, the state’s policy framework surrounding their status and their navigations of these turbulent systems. It also dives into the issues with legal categorizations and other gaps in benefit implementation for COFA citizens. Finally, it will provide policy recommendations for how these communities can be better respected and integrated into the U.S. legal framework of care.

Alec Weiker is a current MA student at the Center of Pacific Island Studies. His research focuses on the implementation of the COFA agreements' clauses for citizens at the federal, state and local levels. Alec is a Jewish settler originally from Indianapolis in Potawatomi and Miami land who has previously worked as a teacher at Xavier High School in Chuuk. More recently, he has been affiliated with the Embassy of the Federated States of Micronesia in Washington D.C. and served as an intern with the Pacific Islands Development Program at the East-West Center. He is passionate about decolonial and reciprocity-based policy solutions.