Katerina Teaiwa: Climate Change, Cultural Vulnerability and Social Resilience - The Case of Banaba

Professor Katerina Teaiwa is a Pacific scholar, artist and teacher of Banaban, I-Kiribati and African American heritage. For 80 years, the island of Banaba was mined for phosphate by Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand and the United Kingdom. Mining devastated the landscape and, after World War Two, the whole population was moved to what is now Rabi Island in the northern part of Fiji. Professor Teaiwa explains the narratives around displacement of the population, and the way that inhabitability of the island and extraction impacted not just the landscape and the environment, but the culture, the language, the sense of identity, land rights, protocols, genealogies of the Banaban people. This very personal connection and experience forms the basis of much of her academic research which is shared in ways that include exhibitions, art and dance.Interview recorded 28 November 2023.