As a diasporic multi-cultural, international Kanaka Māoli (Native Hawaiian) mother, academic, artist and activist, I bring my whole self to the classroom to share my intellect and ancestral knowledge. I do this purposefully so that I might be a living example of the diaspora where disconnections AND connections to AND from homeland to homeland CAN and do co-exist within a transnational Indigenous reality. I believe that expressing these complexities within the classroom gives the students the permission to do the same. 

I believe in fostering a Pedagogy of Aloha focused on love, compassion, and nurturing deep relationships with people, places, and the past relevant to the students and broader community centralising Indigenous concepts of reciprocity and respect toward oneself, others, and the environment (Kahakalau, 2022). I strive to indigenise the classroom by acknowledging the intellect and experiences of my students as we engage in aʻo (teaching and learning) founded on critical engagement and asking challenging questions about complex identities, cultures, diverse worldviews, and the future. 

I strive to create an atmosphere where everyone in the classroom has a voice, perspective, story to tell, and that their contributions are valued above all else. The majority of my students self-identify as Māori and/or Pasifika so the lectures, readings, key concepts, and learning draw from the genealogies and lived experiences of the students (Wilson-Hokowhitu, 2019). Within this dialectic of teaching and learning there is a necessity to shift from teacher to learner and back again facilitating deep learning (Teaiwa, 2011). 

I have led the organising, hosting, and facilitating of an exhibition and performance every year for Pacific Studies 101: The Pacific Heritage called AKAMAI. This innovative final assessment option involves running workshops and rehearsals, seeking external funding from the Ministry of Pacific Peoples, budgeting, report writing, and leading the event in Week 11. Cumulatively for AKAMAI’24, ‘25 & ’26, I have hosted over 600 guests and featured 65 student creative final projects consisting of spoken word, visual art, dance, film, music compositions, screen-printing, jewellery making and fashion design.

I hosted and collaborated with leading dance scholar Dr Ojeya Cruz Banks  which resulted in students singing at a dance eulogy in honour of Teresia Teaiwa held at Te Pātaka Toi Adam Art Gallery on 5 March 2026. I have also expanded PASI 201 in critical and innovative ways by changing the name of the course from Polynesian Comparative History to Moana Nui Comparative History in 2025. This name reclamation is a decolonial assertion that has shifted the indigenisation of the curriculum. 

In the course we now work with Wai-te-ata Press and participate in the printing press contributing our own original, bespoke printed texts into the archives. Other innovations that I have made to PASI 101 and PASI 201 include the indigenisation of how we view "the archives" as texts by taking the students to Zealandia and Te Kumutoto Wāhi Tupuna as sites of resistance where we engage the natural world as ancestral archives and storytellers.