Teresia Teaiwa, IFjP co-editor from 2008 to 2011, died after a brief illness on 21 March 2017 at the age of 48. She was a fierce pacifist, beautiful writer and compassionate teacher, friend and colleague. Teresia touched many lives and all of us who knew, worked with, and loved her are devastated by her loss.
Teresia Teaiwa. Copyright: Victoria University of Wellington; Credit: Robert Cross, Image Services.
Teresia received her PhD from the University of California, Santa Cruz and her research focused on gender, militarism and feminist activism within the South Pacific. A highly regarded poet and award-winning teacher, Teresia also wrote and spoke about art, literature, pedagogy and the culture and politics of the Pacific, perspectives and influences that brought a richness to her work on the journal throughout her term as editor.
Born in Hawai’i of African American and I-Kiribati heritage, Teresia was raised in Fiji and was the director of Va’aomanū Pasifika at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand at the time of her death. In 2009 the Guardian described her as one of Kiribati’s living national icons. Signaling her importance to many Pacific communities, her body was welcomed onto Victoria University’s Te Herenga Waka marae (Māori meeting ground) for a lying in state, an event that is considered a rare privilege for a non-Māori. Teresia leaves her parents and siblings, her partner Sean and sons Mānoa and Vaitoa.
Memorial scholarships are being established at Victoria University of Wellington,
please contact Melissa Fiu for further details: [email protected]
No matter how hard Wellington blew the light cotton of the tibuta and sulu, Teresia would wear it every year to welcome the new PASI101 cohort, climbing up from 6 Kelburn Parade with her water bottle and box of papers. The throngs of naïve freshies (in both senses of the slang) she has welcomed onto the metaphorical va’a that is Pacific Studies, all claim to have a special connection with her – the craziest thing is that we all do (how did she remember all our names?).
We, her students, sat in a circle fighting back those infamous salt tears, from that ocean within us, and shared memories of her: how she’d stuffed a whole packet of tamarind lollies from Fiji in her purse, how she had the best connections and a knack for knowing exactly who needed to be connected, how she’d text Jamie every morning so he’d get to class on time. How she’d push us to stop selling ourselves short, how she’d laugh at us and herself in equal measure. And in between the little drips of the much needed laughter there was silence. The type of silence that comes when the grief is still too raw to be made sense of.
But when one is mourning, when one is mourning, when one is mourning … one welcomes silence.
Teresia Teaiwa – “The Thing Is … ” from Essays for Epeli Hau’ofa.
In her native language of Gilbertese a goodbye is roughly translated into “We will see you again” – ti a boo. And we will see her again. We’ll see her in every poem that could’ve only been written cause the poet was pushed by her, we’ll see her at every West Papua protest filled with people who were introduced to their struggle for independence because of her. We’ll see her when our ideas of Pasifika and Oceania are explored, expanded, and reframed, because that is what she taught us. And in typical Teresia form, we’ll see her again in her words, this is where the greatest comfort is. You can hear her laugh when you read her essay eulogizing Epeli Hau’ofa, you can feel her warmth when you listen to the recording of Fear of Flying in Broken Gilbertese.
Karlo Mila’s poem and the prose pieces are from presentations and conversations at “Each Poem a Prayer: Poetry for Our Fiery Canoe” an event held on 14 March 2017 at Victoria University of Wellington for Teresia the week before she died. Reproduced here with permission of Karlo Mila and the editors of Salient, the VUW Student Association’s magazine, available here: http://salient.org.nz/2017/03/for-teresia/
Lagipoiva Cherelle Jackson is a Huffington Post Writer and aspiring poet touched by the spirit of Teresia. This poem appeared originally in the Huffington Post, 21 March 2017, reproduced with permission of the author, available here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/a-tribute-to-teresia-teaiwa_us_58d1077ce4b07112b647317d