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TERESIA TEAIWA 12 August 1968 - 21 March, 2017

Pacific

loses “In calm or storm
I could always float
With you
Breathe
In you
Until
gifted You met fresh water
and then
I would sink, sink, sink
If I were a coconut
and you were salt water
icon I would sink, sink, sink
When you met fresh water
I would sink, sink, sink
But, the wise ones say,
I will not drown.”

- Excerpt: Fear of an Estu-
ary by Teresia Teaiwa

Teresia Teaiwa Photo: Victoria University of Wellington

by Sian Rolls well as synergies between her own not been exposed to the writings
intersecting identities and discover- of Pacific authors before coming to
“ACADEMIC space is so precious ing new ways of knowing through university, and our introduction to
because it allows us to ask questions such a balancing act. Pacific Studies course helps them
that sometimes we’re punished for “I’m a feminist scholar but I’m trace an intellectual history of the
asking off campus and what univer- also committed to indigenous ways Pacific that many of them did not
sities are supposed to uphold is that of knowing and sometimes feminism know was there.”
freedom - that freedom to question, doesn’t fit in with the indigenous “Our loss is very great,” shared
that freedom to think beyond normal way of knowing… (but) doing gen- Vanessa Griffen.
boundaries.” der research is so important in the “It is wonderful to have at least
Teresia Teaiwa was a Pacific icon pacific for helping us understand these many records that will emerge
build through her unique thought inequality in our societies,” she of her contribution to Pacific re-
and action through academia, the explained. search, scholarship, art, creativity
arts and social movements – this in- At the time of her passing, she was and teaching.”
cludes being involved with Women’s the director of Va’aomanu Pasifika “She was committed to Pacific
Action for Change (Fiji), the Fiji at Victoria University in Wellington feminist research and Pacific writ-
Young Women’s Christian Asso- where she taught the world’s first ing. She enabled a great deal. The
ciation, the Nuclear Free and Inde- undergraduate major in Pacific stud- rest is up to the next generations,
pendent Pacific Movement and the ies in 2000. and her students, and readers, and
Citizens’ Constitutional Forum (Fiji). “Pacific Studies helps a lot of Pa- communicators, to really read what
Her own work examined milita- cific students to experience for the she wrote and said, and be inspired,
rism, colonisation, gender and con- first time how academic learning and write our own.”
temporary arts and culture - ground- can be dynamically engaged with She passed away following a short
breaking not just in its focus but also who they are, where they are from battle with cancer. Dr Teresia Teaiwa
in the spaces she opened for others. and where they live,” Teaiwa said was born in Hawai’i to an I-Kiribati
Speaking to femLINKpacific in in an interview with E-Tangata in father and an African-American
2016, she reflected on clashes as 2015. “Many of my students had mother in 1968.

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