Abstract:
Climate activist research has largely focused on the shifts in biodiversity, experiences of frontline
communities, and how further extinctions and threats to life can be limited. However, in recent
years, there has been increasing focus on Indigenous climate activism. As this is a relatively
recently established field in academia, there are numerous absences, such as in examinations of the
ways in which music and performance, gendersexuality, and disability play out in these contexts.
The thesis concentrates on tauiwi (non-Māori) Pasifika climate activist music and performance in
Aotearoa New Zealand, specifically focusing on disability and gendersexuality-divergence: the
findings explain how Pasifika disabled and/or gendersexuality divergent communities are
marginalised in these spaces, and how they subvert hegemonic communal narratives through other
forms of connection, ethics, and action. The research found that hegemonic notions of “Pasifika”
are heavily gendered, abled, and raced, and that these have significant impacts on the kinds of
performance that are used in Pasifika climate activism. The research also found that certain
thematic patterns are present in Pasifika climate activist music: these include images of warriorhood
and dutiful resistance, and notions of universality predicated on binary categories that comprise the
whole. By using Pacific Indigenous methods and theory such as TāVāism and su‘ifefiloi, and
through reviews of current literature, the roles, purposes, and consequences of music and
performance in Pasifika climate activism are discussed. The research ultimately concludes that ‘afa
music (the music used by Pasifika disabled and/or gendersexuality-divergent communities to form
communal links) is more important to the networks comprising Pasifika climate activism than the
music displayed in hegemonic Pasifika climate activist contexts. This work is relevant to the areas
of Indigenous self-determination, climate activism, intersectionality, decolonisation, and Pacific
Island and Pacific regional studies.
