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"Tell Them" by Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner at Southbank Centre for London 2012 Poetry Parnassus

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Poet Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner surveys her island home.
By Joe Lowry
We are shocked to find
the rising waters have displaced
our grave sites
The land crumbles away
beneath rows of skywhite tombstones
The crashing sea swallows up
our ancestors
We watch
as it devours
our histories
The sea is angry with us…

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Environmental Politics Journal response: Tell Them

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Environmental Politics Journal response: Tell Them

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Brianna Fruean (Pacific Climate Warriors)

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Brianna Fruean (Pacific Climate Warriors)

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s I travelled on the train to Glasgow for Cop26 a few days ago, I felt the enormous power of my people and my ancestors around me. I am a Samoan, from one of the regions most threatened by climate breakdown, despite contributing little to emissions. I am at the climate summit to represent the voices of our communities, and of those who could not travel here due to Covid-19 and continuing vaccine apartheid. I bring with me the voices of a Pacific that refuses to give up.

Time is fast running out for my islands, and we will accept no more excuses or failures from world leaders. We know they're not doing enough - the most recent scientific report by the IPCC has shown us that. Cop26 must deliver concrete solutions urgently, and we are here to force them to act.

On Monday, I told world leaders at the start of the summit "to remember that your meeting rooms and drafting documents are not just black and white objects; to remember that, in your words, you wield the weapons that can save us or sell us out for profit and power". All that talking could have a real impact across the world. Will the negotiators in Glasgow have the political will to do the right thing, to use the right words and follow them up with long overdue action?

If not, then we have to keep fighting. As a Pacific islander, one key part of my history is the canoe. And you can think of the climate talks as a compass for a journey, indicating directions in the form of ambitious goals and detailed plans that would guide our canoe to safety.

The compass is helpful, but we're not dependent on it. My ancestors didn't use compasses to navigate the ocean, and if the summit in Glasgow fails then we, the people, can move the canoe to safety by pushing those in power towards a real course of action.

For hundreds of years my people have been resilient. We fought back against our colonisers and we have made them change. As the rest of the world begins to suffer from the climate emergency as we Pacific islanders already are, we can teach you how to fight back like us.

From the moment the US, Germany and Britain began trying to colonise Samoa, they tried to strip us of our culture. In some sense the colonisers recognised that our knowledge, our beliefs and our way of doing things were where we draw mana - our power - from. That's why one of the main things we want to say with the Youth4Pacific declaration that we're bringing to Cop26 is that indigenous knowledge must be respected as a form of climate science.

We fought against the colonisers who tried to burn down our culture and achieved our independence. But now we're living through a different revolution: we're resisting climate colonialism, where rich dirty corporations profit from our destruction.

For a decade now, the storms in the Pacific have been getting more violent, the droughts have been longer and the floods deeper. Fishers cannot feed their families. Family-owned shops that are flattened in a cyclone are rebuilt, only to be destroyed by rising water.

All these fights are connected. The climate crisis and social inequities are all symptoms of a world shaped by colonialism and then by capitalism, both of them ways of organising society that value the comfort of one group over the lives of another.

We know that if one part of a canoe is damaged, the whole thing sinks. What is happening now to the Pacific islands is a warning to the rest of the world.

We can show you what is coming, but we can also show you how to survive it. Our resilience means we adapt. When there are hardly any fish, our boats take the risk and go further out. When the winds destroy homes and businesses, the village stops what it's doing and gets together to fix everything.

But we cannot go on like this, allowing the climate crisis to make our islands uninhabitable. The declaration we're bringing to Cop26 says that we refuse to leave our islands. Forcing an entire people to migrate so the world's super-rich can continue burning oil and coal is not a solution. And if world leaders allow this to happen to the Pacific, the rest of the world will be next.

We all know we should be punishing the politicians who fail us. Of course, next time we must tick different names on our ballot papers. But there's so much more we can do. Join your local grassroots environmental group, a students' climate association or volunteer programme. This is the kind of organising that can hold those in power accountable after this Cop has ended.

One of the Pacific climate warriors in our group at Glasgow is a dancer - that's how she spreads the message. Another is an educator doing this work through his students. Another entered a beauty pageant to use it as a platform for talking about climate justice. How you can protect the world depends on who you are.

We are not just victims to this crisis. We are not drowning, we are fighting. Now the world needs to hear us and follow our lead.

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Pacific islanders aren't just victims - we know how to fight the climate crisis | Brianna Fruean

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s I travelled on the train to Glasgow for Cop26 a few days ago, I felt the enormous power of my people and my ancestors around me. I am a Samoan, from one of the regions most threatened by climate breakdown, despite contributing little to emissions.

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Pacific Climate Warriors - Matagi Malohi

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Pacific Climate Warriors - Matagi Malohi

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Matagi Mālohi tells the story of our journey to uplift our people and shape a narrative that paints us not as victims of the climate crisis but as the leaders, the healers, the nurturers, the artists, the gardeners, the growers, the seafarers and the navigators we are.

We need to be the strong winds that have carried our ancestors across the seas. We need to be the strong winds pushing our leaders forward as they come up against the might of these big bullying nations. We need to be the strong winds, that Matagi Mālohi, that bring the change our people need to see.

- Pacific Climate Warriors

Watch

"Brown bodies moulding brown minds. Moving between healer and warrior, you are future ancestors carving visions of liberation we can't even imagine."

"You are matagi mālohi. "
Read the poem

Subtitles available in Français, Português, Español. Click on CC button

Pacific Islanders: Take Action

This September 20-27, Pacific Climate Warriors from across the region will mobilize online and offline to show the world that a Just Recovery is about planting the seeds today that we know our future can harvest tomorrow.

Message 350 Pacific on Facebook to join an action near you!
Message [For non-Pacific Islanders: you can find more ways to show your solidarity. click here]

About the Team

About the Pacific Climate Warriors

350 Pacific is a youth-led grassroots network working with communities to fight climate change from the Pacific Islands. 350 Pacific works with organizers across 17 Pacific Island nations and diaspora communities in Australia, New Zealand and the United States of America to highlight the vulnerabilities of our island countries to climate change while showcasing our strength and resilience as a people. We work through existing networks and with a range of partner organisations who share in our vision for the Pacific and the planet. 350 Pacific has organised and facilitated workshops to educate and empower youth in the region, and through our many campaigns have had the opportunity to amplify the voices of frontline communities of this climate crisis.

About the Filmmakers

Strong Winds is a collaboration between US based filmmakers/brothers Forest Woodward and Canyon Woodward and director/editor Aidan Haley. Together we have spent the last decade working on issues relating to climate and social justice, and are deeply grateful for the chance to share this latest collaboration, an homage to the front line communities of the Pacific Islands and beyond. The seeds of this film were planted 4 years ago on a trip to Fiji and Tuvalu at the invitation of the Pacific Climate Warriors.

We are deeply grateful to the Climate Warriors and the families of Tuvalu, to Fenton Lutunatabua for his guidance throughout the project and for the poem which served as original inspiration for the film, as well as to Kevin Aipopo for their leadership and spoken word, and to all of the youth around the world who are organizing, marching, and standing up for a better future for our planet and each other.

Kevin Lionga Aipopo

Kevin Lionga Aipopo is a community advocate, storyteller, and student leader based in Traditional Kalupuya lands (Tigard, Oregon). Their work centers around the intersections between their ethnic identity as a Black American and Samoan person and their gender fluidity. Through interpersonal connection, community organizing, poetry, and education, they have found space as an emerging voice for Black, Indigenous, Queer, Trans, and Climate liberation.

Matagi Mālohi
By Fenton Lutunatabua
You are matagi mālohi. Strong winds. A symbol of our movement blurring identities, validating purpose and strengthening stewardship over this vanua we are called to protect.

You are stained bark cloth for skin, saltwater chants dancing with the moon and reimagined dreams pacing with the tides.

You are matagi mālohi. Strong winds from sacred places and revered spaces.

A spiral kaleidoscope of broken coral and memory called to collect, curate and reconcile.

You are matagi mālohi. Strong winds rising up and villaging children.

Brown bodies moulding brown minds. Moving between healer and warrior, you are future ancestors carving visions of liberation we can't even imagine.

You are matagi mālohi. Strong winds seeking frontline truths in this transcendent talanoa of knowledges.

Masculine culture, feminine consciousness, woven together, lose'd together- wai....donu....

You are matagi mālohi. Strong winds from the four pillars of our fale.

The same ancestors that are calling you to belief will also call you to unbelief, so your faith can take a new form. So you can return to the source and be reminded of the commonality of our plurality.

You are matagi mālohi. Strong winds listening, nourishing, transforming.

We are stewards of gifts from our old people. Noqu wasawasa, era sa vura, era sa vura, era sa vura (my ocean, they have emerged)
Learn More

Take Action: Show Global Solidarity
Here are campaigns that people around the world can get involved in to support climate justice.

GLOBAL: Demand a Just Recovery: Join the call for a united global response to this COVID-19 pandemic that ensures a just recovery and transition to a better future for those most in need in the wake of this crisis.

Global: On September 25, join the youth-led global day of climate action. Join in whatever way is safe for you and your community.

U.S.: The financial sector is funding, insuring and investing in the climate crisis. Stopping this money pipeline is one of the most important ways we can address the climate emergency. Learn how you can Stop the Money Pipeline

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"Matagi Mālohi tells the story of our journey to uplift our people and shape a narrative that paints us not as victims of the climate crisis but as the leaders, the healers, the nurturers, the artists, the gardeners, the growers, the seafarers and the navigators we are."

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Pacific Climate Change Leader Brianna Fruean's full Speech at COP26

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Aged just 18, Aigagalefili Fepulea'i-Tapua'i has founded a Pasifika advocacy group, won awards and spoken with Government ministers - and had a camera document her climate activism for months, for new documentary High Tide Don't Hide.

The independent Kiwi film follows five young people campaigning for climate action.

Fili (as her friends call her) focused her activism into 4 Tha Kulture, a South Auckland collective fighting for the environment and indigenous rights.

"At the time the film was made, we were a bunch of high schoolers, with no funding, no adults - just 20 kids in a McDonald's trying to make things work for us and trying to do the best for our community in terms of climate change," she said. "All we're really asking for is for our homelands to still be there by the time our children are there."

READ MORE:
* Climate change action and policy needs to centre Māori, Pasifika, disabled communities - advocate
* Tourism report: add $6-155 tax to long-haul flights to pay for climate fixes
* Climate crisis won't take a summer break, say activists
* Climate change examined in art and through indigenous voices

Fili made waves in 2019 when she appeared on TV3's The Project. The then-16-year-old called out the lack of diversity in the climate change arena: "Why are there no brown voices in these conversations, on these committees, when this issue is affecting us?"

Pasifika living in Aotearoa are seeing climate change hit their homelands right now. Fili wanted this perspective reflected in the growing School Strike 4 Climate NZ movement, which culminated in an estimated 170,000 people marching on September 27, 2019. It was one reason she agreed to be part of the documentary.

"A lot of us - especially being from the schools we were from, in South Auckland - we weren't really used to people wanting to hear our stories," Fili told Stuff. "It was kind of weird, getting used to having that platform and having that responsibility, doing that on behalf of our community."

The importance of climate action helped her to overcome her nerves about being in front of a camera, she added.

The AUT law and engineering student sees a chance for young Pasifika to have a greater impact. "The generations before us were immigrants... Our parents only learned how to survive, and we want to learn how to live and to thrive."

Fili won the Young Leader prize at the 2020 Women of Influence awards (which is sponsored by Stuff, and Westpac).

At the moment, 4 Tha Kulture is fundraising to support annual balls at South Auckland schools.

Fili also has a task for everyone: to be aware that while Western views have become dominant, these aren't the only ways of thinking. "We need to be open and aware to a different perspective that exists, not just the ones that have taken reign over centuries and decades."

The former head girl of Aorere College took a similar message to Climate Change Minister James Shaw last year, reminding him of the exploitation of the Pacific Islands and the devastating future residents face.

She believes the Government is heading in the right direction - though there's room to improve climate communication, so it's accessible to a diverse range of demographics. She also hears a lot of talk with little corresponding action, though the Pacific is running out of time.

"New Zealand has a very Euro-centric way of looking at climate change, when they ignore the perspective of the surrounding islands," she said. "We are in the Pacific. In the movie, we say: Save the Pacific, save the world. One island sinks, every country after that follows."

High Tide Don't Hide is premiering at the Doc Edge film festival, with showings in Auckland and Wellington and is also screening online.

Stay on top of the latest climate news. The Forever Project's Olivia Wannan will keep you in the know each week. Sign up here.

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Pasifika voice takes focus in climate doco

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Aged just 18, Aigagalefili Fepulea'i-Tapua'i has founded a Pasifika advocacy group, won awards and spoken with Government ministers - and had a camera document her climate activism for months, for new documentary High Tide Don't Hide. The independent Kiwi film follows five young people campaigning for climate action.

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Every morning, we wake up and the ocean is there, surrounding our island. But now the ocean, driven by climate change is creeping ever closer. Unless something changes, many of our Pacific Islands face losing everything to sea level rise.

For 20 years we've asked world leaders to take action to stop polluting the atmosphere. We cannot wait longer. Now, warriors of the Pacific are rising peacefully to protect the Pacific Islands from climate change. Our message: We are not drowning. We are fighting.

This October, we stood up to those blocking action on climate change. We've been building traditional canoes across the Islands. Pacific Climate Warriors will journey to Australia, where they will use the canoes to peacefully lay down a challenge to the fossil fuel industry.

We must act now to protect our culture, our land and our oceans, and we need people all around the world to stand with us.

Who we are

Five years ago, our network of young Pacific Islanders began to form under the name of 350 Pacific, to join with the global climate change movement, 350.org.

Active in 15 of the Pacific Island Nations, we have a unique approach of empowering young people to understand the issue of climate change and to take action to protect and enrich our islands, cultures, and oceans.

We know we cannot deliver this project on our own. We don't have big bank accounts, big funders, or big email lists. That's why we're asking the international community to stand in support with the Pacific Warriors.

What we do have is the network of courageous young Pacific Islanders - from Niue to Tuvalu - that have been learning the skills of canoe building from their elders, are clued up about how climate change is affecting their Islands, and are ready to stand up peacefully but powerfully to the fossil fuel industry in Australia as warriors for their Islands.

The Pacific Warrior Journey

As Pacific Warriors we will journey to Australia to tell the fossil fuel industry in person to stop their radical plans that are destroying our island homes.

This journey will be epic. From across 13 Pacific Islands, our Pacific Warriors will travel to Australia, carrying with us traditional hand-made canoes decorated with symbols of support from our homelands. We will use these canoes to lay down a challenge to the fossil fuel industry, and to highlight what we will lose if their reckless contribution to climate change continues. This will be a means of telling the industry, the Australian public, their Government, and the global community that climate change is having a real impact and is threatening the culture, health and environment of our Pacific Islands.

Following this, our Pacific Warriors will travel the country, bringing our story of struggle directly to the Australian people. This will be a call-to-arms, a request that Australians take up the fight to the fossil fuel industry to save our homelands.

We know that many Australians are ready to stand with us. As we arrive, Australians around the country will stand in solidarity because our fight is their fight too. From those fighting against the construction of new coal mines at Maules Creek and in the Galilee Basin, to those working on essential policy changes, Australians will collectively stand up to say "we will not let our neighbours drown."

This is a huge undertaking. We can't do it without you!

Donate Stand with the Warriors Hear our Story

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Every morning, we wake up and the ocean is there, surrounding our island. But now the ocean, driven by climate change is creeping ever closer. Unless something changes, many of our Pacific Islands face losing everything to sea level rise. For 20 years we've asked world leaders to take action to stop polluting the atmosphere.

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Climate Documentary follows Samoan Activist Aigagalefili Fepulea’i-Tapua’i — thecoconet.tv - The world’s largest hub of Pacific Island content.uu

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In 2019, students in more than 150 countries launched strikes to demand action to avert cataclysmic climate change. In Aotearoa New Zealand, filmmakers The Rebel Film Collective started shooting seven months before what became the world’s biggest ever climate change strike.

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Award-winning poet and indigenous activist Aigagalefili Fepulea'i Tapua'i is a young woman making waves. And, as Justin Latif reports, a new film focused on her fight for climate change shows she will not be silenced.
As I wait for Aigagalefili Fepulea'i Tapua'i on a bitterly cold Sunday afternoon outside her central Auckland dorm hall, I'm expecting to meet a fairly typical teenager, albeit a highly intelligent, outspoken one.

I suspect she will display a mix of hubris, idealism and passion, typical of her generation.

But after our two-hour interview, my preconceptions have been proved wrong. Aigagalefili Fepulea'i Tapua'i - Fili to her friends - who shows wisdom beyond her years, is far more interesting than that.

We're meeting to discuss her appearance in the award-winning documentary High Tide Don't Hide, which screens this Thursday at the Māngere Arts Centre .

But naturally our conversation veers into reflections on 2020.

What was a year to forget for most was a memorable time for Fepulea'i Tapua'i' as she emerged as one of South Auckland's leading voices advocating for indigenous and Pacific youth.

Her withering Instagram posts decrying how Covid-19 had affected her peers were followed by multiple interviews , , speaking requests and , plus an appearance on TVNZ 1's general election leaders' debate . In September, she was profiled for The Spinoff by Michelle Langstone, who wrote of her "mesmerising" spoken word poetry performances.

This year has been quieter. While she says she still receives around 30 appearance requests a month, life has "slowed down a lot", despite the added pressures of life as a environmental engineering student at AUT University. She plans to also begin a law degree next year.

"I've been exploited so many times that I had to develop some boundaries," she says of her decision to temporarily pull back from public life.

"I've had some experiences where I was the only one on a panel not getting paid or sometimes I realised they didn't really want me - they just wanted a brown face.

"It starts to feel microaggressive when people want you to share your traumas just so they can clutch their pearls and wipe their tears and then go back to their privileged lives.

"But at the same time I also don't want to stop - because climate change isn't going to stop."

'It breaks my heart'
Before Fepulea'i Tapua'i was challenging Jacinda Ardern and Judith Collins on educational policy on live television, she was a climate change activist.

High Tide Don't Hide follows five young people campaigning for climate action, including Fepulea'i Tapua'i and the group she founded, 4 Tha Kulture.

As the film shows, her greatest challenge isn't convincing politicians that climate change action is necessary. Rather it's ensuring the voices of young South Aucklanders are respected by the other activists within the movement.

"None of us really realised that we'd have to be fighting for climate change and fighting against racism in the climate space as well," she says now.

When the first School Strike 4 Climate took place on March 19, 2019, few South Auckland pupils took part as it coincided with Polyfest, one of the most important cultural events for young people in the region.

Fepulea'i Tapua'i says this was initially not seen as a problem by the school strike movement's organisers, but when she highlighted this lack of diversity on The Project, the organisers changed their tune.

"It seemed like they only took me seriously because I called them out on national television - and then they were like 'oh we've got to have you here'."

The film also reveals that some of her fellow activists did not feel the risks to Pacific peoples from rising sea levels was an issue the steering group should focus on.

"I fear my island will become nothing but a story to tell," she says in the film. "But how do people talk about our genocide like it's nothing? It breaks my heart."

However over the course of the film her concerns are addressed. By its conclusion, a united front has been established as the disparate groups prepare for an extra large school strike event.

"It was definitely jarring - that I would come into these spaces and they weren't interested in actually supporting those living through climate change," says Fepulea'i Tapua'i of that time.

"But in the end I came to see it as an opportunity to give attention to the things that are being left out of the conversation, which is pretty much what the documentary captures."

'We should never feel ashamed'
I ask her where she finds the confidence to stand up to her bullish and equally confident peers, and her response is typically matter-of-fact: "Indigenous activists all over the world are being murdered by their governments just for speaking up, so I can't say it's brave for me to speak up here - it's just the right thing to do."

When the third school strike was held on September 27, 2019, the more inclusive approach proved highly effective. The event became the largest single-day strike in New Zealand history, with 170,000 people taking part.

Fepulea'i Tapua'i hopes her fellow South Aucklanders will find inspiration in High Tide Don't Hide to speak up for themselves more often, and more loudly.

"When you're from South Auckland, we're expected to leave our community at the door when you come to these palangi [western] institutions and spaces, but actually our story enriches these spaces.

"It gives these spaces more depth and more substance and ensures bigger changes, rather than just doing what we've been conditioned to do, which is to be ashamed at the back of the room that we're from southside.

"We should never feel ashamed and we should want to see our people on screen - paying it back and paying it forward."
High Tide Don't Hide screens at the Mangere Arts Centre, Thursday, August 12, from 7pm. Tickets are only $5 so bookings are essential.

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How Fili Fepulea'i Tapua'i's fight for climate action became a battle against racism

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Award-winning poet and indigenous activist Aigagalefili Fepulea'i Tapua'i is a young woman making waves. And, as Justin Latif reports, a new film focused on her fight for climate change shows she will not be silenced.

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Jo-Jikum (organisation co-founded by Kathy)

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Jo-Jikum (organisation co-founded by Kathy)

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Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner

Co-Founder and Director

Kathy is an internationally acclaimed poet, artist, and educator, who helped co-found Jo-Jikum alongside her cousins. She is known for her poetic performance at the United Nations Climate Summit in 2014. She has continued her artistic practice which you can learn more about at her website. She currently runs Jo-Jikum in Majuro, Marshall Islands while also serving as Climate Envoy for the Marshall Islands government.

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Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner Co-Founder and Director Kathy is an internationally acclaimed poet, artist, and educator, who helped co-found Jo-Jikum alongside her cousins. She is known for her poetic performance at the United Nations Climate Summit in 2014. She has continued her artistic practice which you can learn more about at her website.