Hilda Halkyard-Harawira

Conference Keynote Speaker

Hilda Halkyard-Harawira is a grandmother, Kaiako (teacher) and Kaihoe (paddler). A founding member of the Pacific Peoples Anti Nuclear Action Committee 1980, she co-organised the first Te Hui Oranga o Te Moana Nui a Kiwa in 1982, as well as subsequent meetings in 1984 and later. Te Hui Oranga o Te Moana Nui a Kiwa were reciprocal conferences where Māori and Pacific Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific activists gathered to address the consequences of nuclear imperialism and nuclear colonialism in the Pacific. 2022 marks forty years since the first meeting.

Hilda is also the former Secretary of the Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific Movement. She moved to the Far North in 1985, the same year the French government bombed the Rainbow Warrior in Tāmaki Makaurau. Hilda is a member of Te Kawariki - Tiriti Activist and serves as an advocate for Te Kōtiu, 9 Kura Kaupapa Māori in Tai Tokerau. She is also co-founder of Aniwaniwa Kohanga Reo, Te Kura Kaupapa Māori o Rangi Aniwaniwa, Rangaunu Sports Club, and Te Wānanga o Te Rangi Aniwaniwa.

Hilda is a new Māori Ward Councillor in Far North District Council and supports Constitutional Transformation in Aotearoa before 2028.

Alayna Ynacay-Nye

Alayna Ynacay-Nye is currently a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Economics at Kyoto University. Her more recent research interests lie in illuminating inequitable power dynamics in fisheries governance structures amidst privatization processes. Alayna’s previous work as an Assistant Project Coordinator at Portland State University, involved organizing field trips for disaster management practitioners in Oregon to learn directly from the experiences of local people in Tohoku after the 3.11 ‘triple’ disaster. Motivated by her experiences, Alayna discovered her passion for ensuring the voices of local people are prioritized, respected, and celebrated in decision-making processes. Upon graduation, Alayna plans to pursue a career in academia aiming at encouraging a more inclusive and caring society. In her non-academic time, Alayna loves spending time with her partner and her dog, Lulu, exploring local coffee shops, and enjoying a craft beer in the beautiful autumn weather.

Commissioner Ariana Tibon Kilma

Ariana Tibon Kilma is a newly appointed Commissioner at the Republic of the Marshall Islands National Nuclear Commission where she joins Chair Alson Kelen & Co-Commissioner, Dr. Holly Barker. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Political Science from the University of Hawai’i at Manoa and currently resides in Majuro where she works with students and youth to encourage engagement in nuclear dialogue. She is a descendant of survivors of the catastrophic Bravo Shot that was detonated in the Marshall Islands and is a strong advocate for nuclear justice. Ariana has also been working closely with the RMI's Public Schools System where she helped create a curriculum that would teach k-12 students the nuclear legacy.  She also co-taught a Nuclear Issues in the Pacific course at the College of the Marshall Islands.

Bedi Racule

Bedi Racule hails from the Marshall Islands and Pohnpei in the Federated States of Micronesia, with links to Hawaii and Fiji. She has just completed her postgraduate degree in Development Studies at the University of the South Pacific where she was serving as the former president of MISA4thePacific - a youth led grassroots movement to raise awareness for nuclear issues and the safeguarding of our oceans. Bedi is also engaged as an Interning Ecumenical Enabler for Climate Justice at the Pacific Conference of Churches and steering committee member of the Nuclear Truth Project. Her work on nuclear advocacy has been to raise awareness about the impacts of the Pacific testing legacy through faith based organizations, communities and young people.

Bulou Alanieta Vereivalu Uluitavuki Wavu

Alanieta is a passionate climate justice advocate with over 6 years of experience in related field of work and studies. She is a core member of C-EASEY, a youth-led initiative in Fiji whose advocacy work stems around the empowerment of youths on environmental and socio-economic issues that directly and indirectly impact Pacific islanders. She believes that with the watchful guidance of our matua (elders), youths are the key catalysts in our societies, today. Alanieta is also a member of Pacific Youth for TPNW and strongly affirms the notion to ban all nuclear activities and give no leeway for further exploitation of our revered Pacific Ocean and vanua (land).

Duncan Currie

Duncan Currie has practised international environmental law for 35 years. He was involved in designing the legal case to end France’s nuclear weapons testing program in the Pacific, and played a key role in persuading the New Zealand government to take the case against France to the International Court of Justice in 1995. He has also been advising Greenpeace on nuclear matters throughout his 35 years of working as a lawyer. He currently advises Greenpeace Korea on legal matters related to the wastewater discharge at TEPCO's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

Edwina Hughes

Edwina Hughes been involved in peace, disarmament and human rights research, education and advocacy for at least forty years, both here and overseas. She is currently the Coordinator of Peace Movement Aotearoa, the national networking peace organisation, and a member of the Public Advisory Committee on Disarmament and Arms Control. Peace Movement Aotearoa's education and advocacy work is in two main areas: peace, te Tiriti and human rights; and building peace through disarmament and demilitarisation. Peace Movement Aotearoa coordinates six national NZ humanitarian disarmament campaigns on behalf of the respective global campaigns, including ICAN Aotearoa NZ, as well as campaigns on landmines, cluster munitions, killer robots, military spending, and EWIPA; and the national networks on child soldiers, and women, peace and security.

Emily Simmonds

Emily Simmonds (she/her) is a PhD candidate in Science and Technology Studies at York University, and a Researcher at the Centre for Wise Practices in Indigenous Health at Women’s College Hospital, Toronto, Canada. She is a Métis researcher with mixed ancestry working at the intersection of critical anthropology and Indigenous science and technology studies. Her doctoral research uses ethnographic modes of analysis to explore how the injurious effects of the colonial nuclear infrastructure in the context of Canada are made permissible and challenged by diverse groups of social actors.

Eroni Donumaitoga Wavu

Eroni Donumaitoga Wavu is a son of Oceania and an adamant advocator for Climate Justice, Self-determination and Anti-nuclearism. Originally from the Fiji Islands, Eroni actively and primarily works in the Indigenous peoples space that strives to ensure the rights, wellbeing and good governance of Indigenous people and their Vanua. His expertise lies in Monitoring & Evaluation, Learning, Research and Strategic Planning in the thematic areas of Governance, Wellbeing-Sustainable Livelihood, Climate Change and Resilience, Vanua Stability and Institutional strengthening. Eroni has served as the President of Creating EASEY, a youth led organization that focuses on empowering young people through Environment Advocacy and Social Empowerment. Eroni is also a member of the Pacific Youth for TPNW as well as a member of the Youngsolwara Pacific movement.

Futoshi Aizawa

Futoshi Aizawa is a local fisherman in Higashimatsushima city, Miyagi prefecture, Japan. Futoshi is a third-generation of seaweed (nori) fisherman, has been working in the fishery field for over 20 years now. He grew up in an environment where he was close to the ocean and nature in everyday life. He has always had a passion for marine education and ocean conservation, presenting in many conferences and workshops both in Japan and internationally to share his experiences as a fisherman. Futoshi’s dream is to encourage a sustainable future in which the next generation can be more connected with nature.

Georgina Oroi

My name is Georgina Oroi and I come from the beautiful Solomon Islands. Apart from being formally employed as a Legal Officer, I have chosen to dedicate a life-time commitment to advocate for a better and brighter Pacific. A Pacific where there is self-determination, better ocean protection, more climate-change resistance, and a nuclear-free region. But one person or one country cannot do this alone. We are more stronger and more powerful together so let us all work unitedly in combating these issues.

Hinamoeura Cross

Hinamoeura CROSS is a Polynesian women and also a mom. She fights for recognition and to draw attention to the legacy impact on French nuclear testing in the Pacific. Between 1966 and 1996, there were 193 nuclear tests in so-called French Polynesia. Since 1980, her family has been affected by thyroid cancer, first her great gradmother, grandmother, and in 1990 her aunty and her Mom. In 2000 her Auncty go a breast cancer also. In 2013, it was her turn: leukemia. In 2019, she spoke in front of the United Nations 4th Committee to denounce the nuclear legacy on her people. She shares the story of her family as an example of what thousands of Polynesian families face as a result of nuclear weapons. In June 2022, she was one of the to Polynesian invited to participate to the first Meeting of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Vienna, Austria. In October 2022, she was in New York to to denounce France's nuclear legacy and its failure to address the disastrous health and environmental consequences. She realises that the nuclear fact in Polynesia is inseparable from colonial history. This is why she wishes to alert the international community to what is happening in her country.

Joey Tau

Joey Tau is the Deputy Coordinator with the Pacific Network on Globalisation, a regional watchdog advocating for Pacific peoples right to ikonomik justice and self-determination. He is also part of the regional movement Youngsolwara Pacific.

Joy Lehuanani Enomoto

Joy Lehuanani Enomoto is a mixed Kānaka Maoli scholar, community organizer and  visual artist,. She currently lives in Honolulu, Oʻahu and is the executive director for Hawaiʻi Peace and Justice, which focuses on demilitarizing and de-occupying Hawaiʻi and the Pacific. Her scholarship has been featured in several publications including Contemporary Pacific: A Journal of Island Affairs, Detours: A Decolonial Guide to Hawaiʻi, Routledge Postcolonial Handbook & PostModern Culture Journal. Her artwork engages issues currently affecting the peoples of the Pacific and has been featured in the exhibitions “Inundation: Art & Climate Change in the Pacific”(2020) and the traveling exhibition, “Exposure: Native Art and Political Ecology”(2021) at the Institute for American Indian Arts.

Karly Burch

Karly Burch is a Research Fellow at the University of Otago’s Centre for Sustainability and co-lead of the MaaraTech Project’s Community Technology Adoption Team. She will transition to a new position as Lecturer in sociology at the University of Auckland in February 2023. Karly specializes in feminist and anti-colonial science and technology studies (STS), ethnographic methods and collaborative research strategies, and her research agenda addresses questions of social and environmental justice related to health, food and technology (in both disaster and design). Her current research projects explore the material politics of nuclear pollution, artificially intelligent robotics in agriculture and collaborative research for sustainable technofutures. Karly is an active member of the Science and Technology Studies Food and Agriculture Network (STSFAN) and co-convener of the Feminist, Anti-Colonial, Anti-Imperial, Nuclear Gathering (FACING Nuclear).

Katherine Aigner

Katherine is interested in the ongoing and inter-generational impacts of resource colonialism. With Greg Young, she made the award-winning documentary, 'Australian Atomic Confessions' about the 12 British atomic bomb tests in Australia, told through eyewitness accounts of Aboriginal custodians and atomic ex-veterans. Based at the Australian National University, her area of study is sociocultural, combining oral and ethno-history and biography, with a focus on the inter-cultural space of cultural heritage, environmental politics and activism. Since 2009 she has worked with the Vatican Museum's: Anima Mundi – Peoples, Arts, Cultures, reconnecting their Indigenous collections with source communities around the world to produce catalogues and exhibitions. 'Oceania and Island Southeast Asia: The Vatican Museums Collections' was published in 2022.

KDee Aimiti Ma'ia'i

KDee Aimiti Ma'ia'i is a Pacific historian from the villages of Fasito'o-uta and Sāpapāli'i in Samoa. She was the first Pacific woman to win a Rhodes Scholarship and is undertaking a doctorate at Oxford, looking at the intersection of international development and decolonisation.

Lisa Villamu Jameson

Lisa Viliamu Jameson is a Sāmoan Australian community campaigner and creative producer.

She is a campaigner for 350 Australia, a non-profit organisation moving Australia beyond fossil fuels. Lisa is currently a campaigner for the landmark UN Torres Strait Climate Justice case ‘Our Islands Our Home’. She is also the co-founder and creative director of ‘Conscious Mic,’ a collective of artists, cultural practitioners and creative producers based in Brisbane who identify as Indigenous, Pacific Islander and culturally and linguistically diverse.  In 2021, Lisa co-authored the article 'Climate Justice: A Pacific Island Perspective,' published through the Australian Human Rights Journal. Lisa continues to merge activism, the arts and culture through innovative methods of campaigning.

Marco de Jong

Marco de Jong is a Samoan New Zealander, and a Pacific historian. He is completing a doctorate at the University of Oxford on the history of the environmental movement in the Pacific with a particular focus on anti-nuclearism and climate change. He is a member of Te Kuaka - New Zealand Alternative and the Aotearoa #CancelRIMPAC Coalition and an advocate for a progressive, demilitarised foreign policy for Aotearoa to advance a Free and Independent Pacific.

Matt Fuller

Matt Fuller was born and raised in Virginia in the USA. He majored in International Relations for his BA and Ethics, Peace and Global Affairs for his MA. After that he worked for the Corrymeela Peace and Reconciliation Centre in Northern Ireland, the Democracy Development Programme in South Africa, the Pew Charitable Trust and the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, DC, USA. He was Lecturer in Philosophy and Ethics for St. Philip's College in San Antonio, Texas, USA, for five years and then was accepted as a PhD student to the University of Otago in 2020. His research is about Disarmament Campaigns with a specific focus on Depleted Uranium. In 2022 he became a certified Explosives Ordnance Disposal (EOD) technician with Mines Action & Training in Kosovo (MAT Kosovo).

Mere Tuilau

I am Mere Tuilau, an anti-nuclear advocate, human rights defender, facilitator and youth leader from Fiji. My professional engagement in advocacy spaces comes with over seven years of experience. As an advocate, I believe in the value of a people-centered approach where by we connect people and build movements to determine the direction, autonomy and integrity of our region and global development, particularly regarding our strength to weave our struggles together on self-determination, socio-economic, climate change resistance and nuclear justice. In 2017, my role expanded to coordinating and strengthening the Youngsolwara Pacific movement — a regional movement made up of Pacific students, artists, poets, writers, academics and activists, who are passionate in safe-guarding our Oceans and self-determination. Additionally I continue to support other youth groups such as the yDisarm Pacific (Fiji chapter) with ICAN Aotearoa/ New Zealand through the strengthening of our collective work on a free and independent pacific. In 2022, I initiated the forming of the Pacific Youth for TPNW and led the conversation on our collective implementation paper at the 1st Meeting of State Parties’ in Vienna. I am also involved with Youth for TPNW and Reverse the Trend Pacific.

As stewards of the vast Pacific Ocean, I believe that we are called to safeguard, guide and determine our destiny, as well as to navigate our narratives until we the people of Oceania are fully free.

Miku Narisawa

Miku Narisawa is originally from Miyagi, Japan, is currently a graduate student majoring in peace and environment studies at Meiji University in Tokyo. She also serves as an educational facilitator at Lōkahi Foundation where she coordinates global youth programs. Experiencing the Great East Japan Earthquake at the age of 12 made her explore different aspects of peacebuilding in the natural disaster and ocean conversation. After graduating from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, Miku is now involved in local development projects both with governments and communities to promote aquaculture in her hometown where they are facing challenges of preserving culture, natural landscape, and people from climate change.

Mino Cleverley

Mino Cleverley (he/him) is a New Zealand born Samoan.  He is a PhD student at the Centre for Sustainability at the University of Otago, where his thesis focuses on indigenous responses to climate change and forced retreat due to sealevel rise.  Mino postulates that climate change is ‘slow violence’, being harm and damage that is sufferred over years, decades and even longer.  Nuclearism is another form of colonialist violence in Oceania, where the insidious consequences of nuclear testing and waste storage by the Global North persist and continue to cause harm to the indigenous inhabitants through no fault of their own.  Mino has a strong affinity for education and the empowerment of individuals and underserved communities.  He is a strong advocate for supporting marginalised people and communities, especially giving voice to peoples of Oceania.

Olivia Shimasaki

Intern in the Department of Safeguards at the International Atomic Energy Agency. Olivia had the privilege of travelling to Japan in 2019 to interview Hibakusha and capture their oral histories in the 75 years which had passed. Through autoethnography she was able to consider how hibakusha remember this tragedy and capture their hopes for the future. As part of the research Olivia was also given the opportunity to interview a hibakusha from Nagasaki, as well as a New Zealand nuclear test veteran and veteran's wife. Olivia recognises the importance of capturing oral histories and challenging dominanat narratives of histories by giving individuals a voice. She intends to share some of the stories she collected, and consider their importance for today.

Ronny Ato Buai Kareni

Ronny Kareni is a Canberra-based Free West Papua activist, musician, cultural diplomat and bilingual health educator. He graduated in diplomacy studies at the Australian National University, and a honorary fellow at the University of Wollongong West Papua Project. He is also the co-founder and collaborator of Rize of the Morning Star, a musical and cultural movement, and Pacific representative for the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP).

Reiko Tashiro

Second-generation A-bomb survivor, Cross-cultural trainer

Reiko grew up watching her mother's devotion for peace through art. In 1983 while studying in the U.S. as an exchange student, she was shocked to find out that the consequences of the atomic bomb were not taught in schools. She was determined to pass on the survivors’ voices as a second generation hibakusha.  

Currently Reiko supports her mother Toshiko Tanaka’s peace activities, including her testimonies at high schools in the U.S. and her participation in the series of events in Oslo, 2017 relating to the Nobel Peace Prize Award ceremony for ICAN and hibakusha.  

As chapter president of an exchange program, Reiko has implemented peace education programs for high school students coming to Japan. Realizing the substantial influence of ‘culture’ in promoting peace has led her to the field of intercultural education. She is currently a cross-cultural trainer with AFS International, a global educational NGO, for students as well as general audience and businesspeople in Japan.

Sina Brown-Davis

Sina Brown-Davis is of Te Roroa, Te Uri-o-Hau, Fale Ula Samoa and Vava’u Tongan descent. she/her/ia pronouns

Sina is a long-time activist and commentator on Indigenous rights at local, regional and international forums. She has a lifelong commitment to fighting for the rights of Indigenous peoples, climate justice and racial justice.

Sina recently has been focused on fighting the growth of white supremacy and fascism in Aotearoa.

Follow her on twitter @uriohau

Sonja Mueller

Sonja Mueller (she/her) is a PhD candidate at the Centre for Sustainability at the University of Otago. Sonja has a passion for GIS and the power of maps to tell a story. Her research explores community resilience to natural hazards, using participatory mapping and a community-based approach to consider present and future resilience to a major earthquake on the West Coast of Aotearoa New Zealand.

Steve Abel

Steve Abel is from Tāmaki Makaurau. He is Senior Campaigner for Greenpeace Aotearoa. Abel is a long-time environmental activist who has worked on native forest and urban ngāhere protection; climate change, and the campaign to end offshore oil and gas exploration; and the impact of nitrate contamination in drinking water from dairy intensification.

Sylvia Frain

Sylvia Frain earned her PhD with the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies from the University of Otago in Aotearoa New Zealand in 2017. She published her doctoral thesis on women’s resistance to United States militarization as a free e-book on the website Guampedia.

In 2021, she received The Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands Governor’s Award for Research and Publication in the Humanities. Currently, she is a New Zealand Science Whitinga Fellow in the School of Art + Design at Auckland University of Technology focusing on visualising nuclear legacies in Micronesia and is a producer for the documentary film, Tip of the Spear. She also curates the research-oriented Facebook page, Oceania Resistance.

Talei Mangioni

Talei Mangioni is currently a Pacific Studies lecturer and PhD candidate at the School of Culture, History and Language at the Australian National University. Talei is of Fijian and Italian descent, was born and raised on Gadigal land of the Eora Nation and now lives and works on Ngunnawal, Ngunwal and Ngambri lands. Her current scholarship aims to chart the Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific (NFIP) movement across Oceania through historical ethnography and creative works, weaving archival records and material objects with oral histories of activists and artists.  She is also a board member of ICAN Australia, member of Youngsolwara Pacific and is the secretary for the Australian Association for Pacific Studies.

Tomoki Fukui

Tomoki Fukui is a Japanese American anthropology student from the occupied lands of the Atfalati-Kalapuya people. They are a Ph.D. candidate at Columbia University researching how Japanese nuclear reconstruction uses patriarchy and ableism to further Japanese capitalism, and how it submerges imperialist histories of exposed labor and disposability in Japan.

Toshiko Tanaka

A-bomb survivor, Enamel mural artist

Born on October 18, 1938, in Hiroshima City, Japan. At the age of six, Toshiko was exposed to the atomic bomb while on her way to school, 2.3 km from the hypocentre.  

Devising a new art form of large mural combining enamel with stainless steel, Toshiko’s artwork has been exhibited and awarded at numerous prestigious Japanese and international exhibitions and installations for nearly 50 years. Using this and other forms of art, Toshiko has been actively involved in peace activities, education, and exhibitions around the world. Examples of Toshiko’s peace work include her visits to 80 countries on Peace Boat (a Japan-based international NGO) and her visits to high schools in New York City between 2009 – 2015 with Hibakusha Stories (a U.S. based NGO).  

Toshiko’s work has been recognised with receipt of the 12th Donne Per La Solidarieta (Women of International Contribution) Award from the City of Pisa, Italy, in 2015. This year Toshiko has been involved in the Gardens for Peace project in which 17 gardens across the U.S. participate. Toshiko’s ‘pattern for peace’ will be raked on a Japanese rock garden commemorating the United Nations International Day of Peace.

Wayne Kijner

Coming soon

Revd Dr Wayne Te Kaawa

Ko Putauaki te maunga
Ko Takanga i o Apa te wai
Ko Tūwharetoa te iwi
Ko Ngāti Umutahi te hapū
Ko Hahuru te marae
Ko Revd Dr Wayne Te Kaawa tōku ingoa

An ordained minister and former Moderator of Te Aka Puaho, the Māori Synod of the Presbyterian Church. Currently a lecturer in Māori Theology at the University of Otago who specialises in Māori engagement with Christianity.

Yumi Chiba

Chiba Yumi resides in Iwaki city, Fukushima prefecture. After the nuclear accident of 2011, she established the Network to Protect Children from Irradiation, also known as the Mother’s Group to Pursue the Issue of Initial Radiation Exposure in Iwaki. Her organizing efforts focus mostly on measuring the radiation levels in air and soil in children’s environments. She is also involved in issuing demands, petitions, sharing information, and organizing events about the contaminated water issue.