AIM: This study aims to investigate the relationship between experiences of discrimination (ethnic/race-based, gender and sexuality-based discrimination) in a healthcare setting, and healthcare services avoidance in Pacific Rainbow+ in Aotearoa New Zealand. METHODS: This study draws from a sample of Pacific Rainbow+ (Pacific cisgendersexuality minorities [n=239] and Pacific transgender and non-binary [n=126]) individuals taken from the Manalagi Survey. Multivariate logistic regression analyses were performed to test for a relationship between predictors based on respondent self-reported experiences, within a healthcare setting in Aotearoa New Zealand, of discrimination (race/ethnic discrimination or racism, sexuality and/or gender diversity-homophobia/transphobia and heterosexism) and outcome variables (avoiding healthcare and mental health services). RESULTS: Discrimination based on ethnicity/race was more highly reported by both cisgendersexuality minorities and the transgender and non-binary groups in our sample, with this typology of discrimination also associated with increased odds of healthcare services avoidance. Discrimination based on race/ethnicity was further associated with increased likelihood of mental health service usage. On average, cisgendersexuality-diverse respondents reported 1.15 instances of listed forms of discrimination, and this nearly doubled for transgender and non-binary respondents. Notably, when the overall number of discriminatory exposures increased by a single point, respondents had an approximate 60% odds ratio (OR) of healthcare avoidance. CONCLUSION: This study affirms findings of much research that describe discrimination (multiple forms) as a common experience for Rainbow+ individuals while seeking out healthcare services. Further, it reveals that these experiences have a predictive impact on the likelihood of Pacific Rainbow+avoiding healthcare services. While this study's cross-sectional nature limits the ability to infer causality, these findings do underscore the importance of undertaking more intersectional research into the drivers and inhibitors of healthcare-seeking behaviours and healthcare service usage of Pacific Rainbow+ in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Positionality is central to Pacific research, shaping its ontological and epistemological foundations. It requires researchers to remain critically aware of how their identities and social positioning influence research design, implementation, analysis, and outcomes. Reflexivity, as an ongoing process of self-awareness, is essential to ethical, inclusive, and culturally grounded Pacific research. Drawing on roundtable talanoa, this paper shares insights from 12 Pacific researchers in Aotearoa New Zealand on how positionality shapes their research. We explore the central role of reflexivity in navigating the complexities, challenges, and ethical responsibilities of Pacific research. Reflexive praxis is shown to influence research design, motivations, and engagement with Pacific communities. We also discuss the anxieties and sensitivities of conducting Pacific research, alongside a shared commitment to approaches that empower Pacific peoples and honour Indigenous knowledge systems.

Sāmoa and the Pacific region has become an area of intense geostrategic importance of late. With a rising China expressing interest in the Pacific and a reposturing US, Australia and New Zealand, the success of all sustainability efforts in the region will be mediated through the lens of geopolitics. This paper intervenes in this conversation by focusing on the commitment to culture and cultural diversity articulated as part of the framework that guides the New Urban Agenda through the question of language. We explore potentiality in the recent rise of Chinese interest in Sāmoan language learning and studies as part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) for the preservation of Indigenous Pacific languages like Sāmoan. To answer this question, we use a blended research methodology (Sāmoan fa’afaletui framework with Situational Analysis) to map the factors that have led to the rise of Chinese interest in the Sāmoan language. In doing so, we critique the present geostrategic explanation for the BRI through presenting a nuanced model of factors and explore what space there is for Sāmoan to be promoted in places like China. This is important, the Sāmoan language, like all Pacific languages, is intrinsic to the understanding and embodiment of cultural knowledge systems that bear major significance on the sustainability and diversity of Pacific world views and ways of knowing.

“Uplifting Moana Perspectives: Emerging Pacific Researchers and New Directions in New Zealand-Based Pacific Research” presents a shared vision for the future of Pacific research by Pacific early career academics (PECA) primarily based in Aotearoa–New Zealand. The task of charting new directions in imagining possibilities for Pacific research is a critical one, which speaks to our communities’ long and storied history in Aotearoa: a reality incongruent with the lack of Pacific scholars employed in permanent positions in New Zealand universities.[i] This special issue challenges the idea that there is a dearth of Pacific research, asserting rather that our underrepresentation in academia is a structural issue, not necessarily one of scarcity. As special issue editors, we intentionally draw in a cross-section of emerging Pacific researchers in our country to confidently write with emerging Pacific scholars on the other side of our Moana-Oceania region, writing back to the exclusionary nature of conventional disciplinary norms and divides that we are forced to navigate. In doing so, our contributors challenge and transcend disciplinary boundaries and push against the Eurocentrism of our tertiary education system. This work is crucial, as the ability to build an academy that prioritises and centres our ways of knowing, doing, relating, and being is a key component of addressing cultural safety and inclusiveness in university lecture theatres, curriculums, and epistemological norms for both PECA and Pacific students in Aotearoa–New Zealand.

During New Zealand’s unprecedented level-four lockdown, opportunities to practise Pacific pedagogies in New Zealand universities required creative and innovative solutions from Pacific academics. This paper brings together the experiences of teaching during this lockdown from a cross-section of Pacific Early Career Academics (PECA) across a wide range of disciplines and schools at New Zealand’s largest university. This paper argues that despite the challenges, PECA found ways to adapt Pacific pedagogical concepts through online delivery methods; however, their ability to effectively do this was severely influenced by existing socio-economic inequities that disproportionately impacted Pacific students. PECA continued to nurture the vā/wā with students in innovative ways, but they still encountered major challenges that will require more careful consideration of equity issues by New Zealand universities moving forward.

For Pacific early career academics (PECA) in Aotearoa, there is a tension between the Indigenous knowledges inherited from our Pacific ancestors and those we have been taught within the western education system. As Pacific educators teaching an increasingly Pacific student-body, we have sought to define our own spaces within the lecture theatre where we can prioritize our knowledges and counter standard didactic western pedagogical practices. This paper is a collaboration from six PECA who use as a framework of analysis Andreotti et al.'s [Andreotti, Vanessa de Oliveira, Sharon Stein, Cash Ahenakew, and Hunt. Dallas. 2015. "Mapping Interpretations of Decolonization in the Context of Higher Education." Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society 4 (1): 21-40.] Cartography of Decolonization to discuss their decolonizing pedagogies. It will explore the successes and challenges faced in making this pedagogical shift, including stories from PECA who have struggled due to disciplinary concepts of what constitutes 'knowledge'. It involves critical reflection on pedagogical praxis, asking throughout what can be considered decolonizing and whether it is indeed possible within the system of higher education in Aotearoa.

The proportion of Pacific academics in permanent confirmation path positions at New Zealand universities (1.4 percent) continues to lag far behind the Pacific share of New Zealand’s population (7 percent). In this paper, we use a thematic talanoa to explore the experiences of Pacific early career academics (PECA) at the University of Auckland to highlight the key themes, challenges and features of our daily lives in the colonial, Western, and Pākehā institution that is the university. This paper sheds light on the systemic and structural barriers that impact PECA journeys through higher education and suggests actions that universities in New Zealand can take to further support, nurture, and develop PECA pathways into and upward through the academy.

Although the power of social media to bring people together across borders is acknowledged, very little has been written about the potential of social media sites for emerging Pacific scholars living transnationally across our region and beyond. We deploy thematic talanoa to demonstrate how emerging Pacific scholars engage Twitter as a platform where routes and relationships are established and teu/tauhi in the digital vā. Furthermore, we argue that emerging scholars of Pacific heritage are building an augmented reality founded on Pacific-specific ways of relationship building, forming external to, and in response to, marginalising dominant narratives inside and outside Pacific worlds.

한국은 2010년 OECD-DAC 가입을 계기로 개발원조 수원국에서 공여국이 된 첫 국가이다. 그러나 한국의 개발원조 배분 방식은사업의 효과, 수혜국과의 협력에 집중하기보다 현실주의적 측면인 외교수단이나 정치적 이익을 중시한다는 비판이 꾸준히 제기되어 왔다. 본 논문은 심층면접을 통한 1차 자료와 2차 통계 자료를 사용하여 남태평양지역, 특히, 사모아독립국에 대한 한국의 개발정책이 상술한 비판점에서 자유로울 수 있는가, 또한 나아가서 한국의 기존 개발원조 배분방식의 패러다임을 확장하는데 기여할 것인가를 고민하였다. 본 논문은 사모아독립국과 같은 소규모 섬나라와의 개발원조 관계는 작은 규모로도 큰 효과성을 낼 수 있는 잠재력이 있으며, 공여국의 정치·경제적 이익을 우선적으로 고려한다는 비판으로부터 비교적 자유로울 수 있을 것이라는 점을 논의한다.In 2010 South Korea became the first country to graduate from aid recipient to aid donor status in the OECD DAC framework. However, since its entry into the development assistance fray, South Korea’s development aid program has been criticized for following realist, self-interested goals, as well as a lack of coordination and effectiveness in aid efforts. In response, the Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA), the South Korean development aid agency has focused on select countries and regions to better enhance the effectiveness of its program. This paper uses a mix of primary (interviews) and secondary data to make the case for a wider South Korean development paradigm that looks to the Pacific region in expanding its assistance to Samoa. It argues that fostering an expanded development relationship with the small island nation represents a real strategic opportunity to enhance South Korea’s reputation in the region. Additionally, due to its size, increased investment in small amounts can help to improve aid effectiveness from an impact perspective and presents an ideal development partner by way of synthesized development goals.