Te Hui Oranga o te Moana nui a Kiwa 2024

A meeting for the wellbeing of our ocean.

An intergenerational movement for Pacific solidarity from Aotearoa.

Te Hui Oranga o te Moana nui a Kiwa 2024 will bring Pacific activists together with movement leaders and organisers in Aotearoa to build regional awareness and address threats to our ocean.

For generations, communities and campaigners in Aotearoa have acted in solidarity with Pacific whanaunga. Forty years have passed since the first Te Hui Oranga o te Moana nui a Kiwa. These were local versions of the Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific conferences, where Māori, Pasifika, and Pacific-minded allies contributed to a grassroots Pacific regionalism and resisted nuclear colonialism. In the context of new, entwined ecological and political crises, we are revitalising this initiative for today.

Te Hui Oranga will build awareness on regional issues, including: Indigenous rights and independence struggles, anti-nuclearism and demilitarisation, as well as environmental threats like climate breakdown and deep sea mining.

Aotearoa must again find a voice on issues that concern us, as peoples of the ocean, in the knowledge that our regional environment is our heritage, the foundation of our unique cultures, and our only basis for a liberated future.

Manuhiri/Guest speakers who will be presenting at the conference weekend include Viro Xulue, Epeli Lesuma, Joy Lehuanani Enomoto, Hinamoeura Morgant-Cross, Reverend Billy Wetewea, Sheila Babauta and Rosa Moiwend.

Learn more about Te Hui Oranga.

About the guest speakers:

Viro Xulue is from Hanawa, Lifou Island, Kanaky. A community organiser and independence activist involved with cultural, youth and environmental associations in Kanaky, Viro is currently serving as the Deputy Secretary General of the Customary Senate and is a member of the Caledonian Union political party.

Epeli Lesuma is iTaukei from Valelevu in Cakaudrove, Fiji. He is a nuclear justice campaigner for the Pacific Network on Globalisation and Secretary of the Pacific Collective on Nuclear Issues, a collective of national and Pacific regional CSOs, academics, trade unions, feminist, church, indigenous and community groups who have been vocal opponents of legacy and emerging nuclear issues in the Blue Pacific.

Joy Lehuanani Enomoto is of Kanaka Maoli, African American, Japanese, Scottish and Caddo Indian descent. Currently resident in Honolulu, she is a Pacific Islands scholar, community organizer and visual artist and is currently the Executive Director of Hawaii Peace & Justice and hope pelekikena of Hui Aloha ʻĀina o Honolulu. Her work focuses on the demilitarization and de-occupation of Hawaiʻi and the Pacific.

Hinamoeura Morgant-Cross is a French Polynesian in her mid thirties, whose realisation that her own leukemia was a legacy of the French atomic tests in the South Pacific led her into activism. Hinamoeura works to ensure that the stories and expériences of the victims and their families will not be forgotten and to pressure the French government into both acknowledgement of responsibility and medical and financial support. She was elected to the Polynesia Assembly of Representatives in May 2023 and shepherded through a unanimous Assembly vote supporting the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in September 2023. Hinamoeura received the Nuclear Free Future Award 2023 during the 2nd meeting of the States parties of the TPNW in New-York.

Reverend Billy Wewetea is Atsai from Iaai Island, Kanaky. An ordained minister of the Protestant Church and member of the Pacific Conference of Churches, Billy works to decolonise theological education and connect urban youth with their culture through the transmission of traditional knowledge through dance, tales and legend, songs, hymns, and creative expression.

Sheila Babauta is community organiser, environmental justice advocate, and former politician from the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. As secretary of Our Common Wealth 670 Sheila raises awareness about the impact of militarism in the Northern Marianas and is a member of environmental groups Friends of the Marianas Trench and Micronesia Climate Change Alliance. While serving as a member of the House of Representatives of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, she tabled a resolution opposing nuclear testing, storage, and waste disposal in the Pacific.

Rosa Moiwend is a West Papuan human rights activist, feminist and researcher. She is a member of the Pacific Feminist Community of Practice and current Pacific Movements campaigner for the Pacific Network on Globalisation. She seeks to raise awareness about the human rights violations and political issues plaguing her homeland and works for women’s liberation in a free West Papua.