The edge the centre: Some Pasifiqueeredisabled comments on tauiwi Pasifika climate activist music and performance in New Zealand

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.