I am a transnational, mixed-raced Pacific Islander living in Rarotonga for 7 years. My mother is Fijian with connections to the Wausomo clan and Lomani Koro, Lovoni, on Ovalau Island, and my father is an American anthropologist who trained at Stanford in the 1960s. I completed a PhD in Anthropology at the University of Hawai'i where I looked at the implications of World Heritage as development on Ovalau Island; an M.A. in Asian Studies with a focus on intersections of Japan & Pacific Studies, particularly Japanese tourism in the Pacific, also at the University of Hawai'i and I received my B.A. in Japan Studies with an anthropology/sociology focus from Earlham College in Indiana. I have worked for the Cook Islands Government and the Japanese Government in Fiji doing research, policy work, and program/project management.  

About your qualifications, where you studied and your mentors:

I’m so fortunate to have had some powerhouse mentors and thesis/dissertation committee members along the way – Dr. Geoffrey White, Dr. Ty P. Kāwika Tengan, Dr. Terence Wesley-Smith, Dr. Katerina Teaiwa, Jun Kawabe, Teiji Takeshita and Drew Arthur, to name some of them.

What are your research interests?

I am interested in the anthropology of development, Indigenous anthropology, economic anthropology, theories of value and Indigenous exchange, anthropological methods and Indigenous research methodologies.  I am particularly interested in interrogating assumptions about development as progress, and the ways in which so much of our

worldview in the Pacific Islands is framed by ‘development’ – including in the Cook Islands. As Epeli Hau’ofa astutely pointed out, Pacific Islanders were never “poor” until we had “development.” I don’t romanticize pre-modern Indigenous lifestyles by any means, but there are lessons to be taught about how Pacific people once lived, and the continuity of that with the present.

What new work have you got coming up? What research collaborations interest you?

Right now I am working for the Cook Islands Government to help with the COVID-19 economic response, but I do need to try to publish some (or all) of my dissertation. I am interested in any kind of collaboration that might look at alternative indicators for development (or how to retire this concept of development altogether), and more broadly concepts of no growth and indigenous Pacific systems of value. Of course this is all connected to the critical goals of addressing climate change and environmental and social exploitation, and having a more equitable economic system.

Share a favour quote and why it’s particularly meaningful to you:

What did the Native say to the anthropologist, “Enough about you, let’s talk about me.” – Gary Larson, The Far Side. This cartoon was on my father’s office door in the department of anthropology and I think it really just captures a lot about my academic journey, and approach to research. The first layer of which is about being of Indigenous descent and also having anthropological heritage, and seeing this cartoon often as a child-

the Natives in head dresses and loin cloths and the anthropologist in a pith helmet and safari suit. Then at uni, really grappling with what this cartoon meant when first encountering post-modern ethnographies that were totally indeciperable and focused more on the anthropologist than the people they were writing about. I still have all sorts of unresolved problems with anthropology, but this quote has been a reminder to me that too much academic navel gazing is actually quite useless, and we just need to get out there do the work.  

Final thoughts for the Association?

I’m glad to be on the executive committee and help in whatever way I can. It’s very exciting and cool to be in the room together with the outstanding people and great minds of all different disciplines on the committee.