Day 30. Teresia Teaiwa The Mother of Pacific Studies.

As we near the end of our celebration of Asian and Pacific Islander Heritage, Day 30 honors Teresia Teaiwa, a groundbreaking I-Kiribati and African American scholar, poet, and activist, widely considered the mother of Pacific Studies. Her work illuminated how the Pacific is not just a place of paradise but also of complex histories, colonial struggles, deep wisdom, and powerful resistance.

📚 Reimagining the Pacific Through a Decolonial Lens

Teresia Teaiwa was a professor, poet, and cultural theorist who transformed academia’s understanding of the Pacific Islands. She helped establish Pacific Studies as a formal field and served as the director of the program at Victoria University of Wellington in Aotearoa New Zealand.
Her writing explored militarization, gender, identity, and indigeneity, with particular focus on how colonialism and tourism affect Pacific peoples.
“We sweat and cry salt water, so we know that the ocean is really in our blood.” — Teresia Teaiwa
This now-iconic quote from her poem “Amniotics” reminds us that Pacific Islanders are not separate from their land and sea — they are embodied expressions of it.

✊🏽 Activism Through Poetry and Presence

Teresia didn’t just analyze systems of oppression — she wrote poetry that healed, organized for social justice, and mentored a generation of Pacific Islander scholars and activists. Her work on the Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre and critiques of colonial militarization in Oceania remain deeply influential.
She helped the world understand that the Pacific is not a passive or peripheral region, but one at the heart of global justice movements.

🌺 Learn More and Carry Her Legacy

📖 Read Her Work:
– “Searching for Nei Nim’anoa” (poetry)
– “The Calm Before the Storm? Five Interventions in Defining the Militarized Academic”
– “What’s in a Name? Women as Wives and Workers in Fiji”
🎧 Listen & Watch:
– Teresia Teaiwa’s poetry readings
– The Teresia Teaiwa Memorial Scholarship at Victoria University
🌐 Explore:
– Oceania Centre for Arts, Culture & Pacific Studies
– Teresia Teaiwa Legacy Project

🧡 Why She Matters

In a world that often romanticizes or erases Pacific peoples, Teresia Teaiwa demanded visibility, dignity, and agency. She challenged us all to see the Pacific not as empty space, but as a vast and vital network of stories, struggles, and soul.
“The body remembers what the mind forgets. And in the Pacific, the body of the ocean remembers everything.”
Let us honor her by centering Pacific Islander knowledge and futures, and by listening deeply to the voices that rise from the sea.

📲 Share and Reflect

Hashtags: #TeresiaTeaiwa #PacificStudies #DecolonizeThePacific#PasifikaVoices
#APIHeritageMonth #IslandFeminism #OceaniaRising #31DaysOfAPIHeritage #PoetryAsResistance #SaltWaterWisdom
#IndigenousScholarship#FiercePacificLove

Asian and Pacific Islander heritage is not monolithic. It stretches across dozens of nations, languages, histories, and spiritual traditions. In honoring these figures, we also honor the beautiful plurality of cultures, family traditions, and lived experiences that make up API communities in America.

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