Tracing the Pacific at UBC: kinship,representation,and vakaturaga in public health research in Vancouver,Canada

Abstract

Pacific Research Methodologies have been used to acknowledge relationality and responsibilities to research participants. In the context of the University of British Columbia where Pacific peoples are not represented, vakaturaga (a Fijian methodology about practicing chiefly obligations to others) can be applied to support the assertion of Fijian epistemology in diaspora, invite the tracing of kinship to place the researcher in a lineage of those who have come before, and challenge the reader and researcher to actively envision long-term responsibility to participants. Vakaturaga can be practiced using collaborative poetry that outlines kinship and reminds the reader and researcher of their responsibilities, alongside outlining explicit commitments to the application of the research findings. Overall, vakaturaga can support the continued practice of obligations to participants’ shared stories and can support the work of representing the Pacific at the University of British Columbia.

Introduction

Pacific Research Methodologies (PRM) are a necessary intervention in public health research to address ongoing health inequities faced by Pacific communities at home and in the diaspora. PRM have previously been used in healthcare contexts as holistic and culturally-informed approaches to engage with and understand how diverse Indigenous populations in the Pacific conceptualize their relationships to their physical and mental health (Akbar et al., 2022; Goodyear-Smith & ‘Ofanoa, 2022; Haitana et al., 2020; Tamasese et al., 2005; Umali et al., 2021; Vaka et al., 2016; Warbrick, 2014; Warbrick et al., 2016). Examples of PRM used in these contexts include Kaupapa Māori (Māori (the Indigenous peoples of New Zealand) principles or customary practices) research methodologies (Haitana et al., 2020; Warbrick, 2014), the Sāmoan fa’afaletui (ways of weaving together the deliberations of different levels of knowledge) framework (Goodyear-Smith & “Ofanoa, 2022; Tamasese et al., 2005), the pan-Pacific methodology of talanoa (a formal or informal exchange of conversation between two or more people) (Akbar et al., 2022; Naepi, 2015; Vaioleti, 2016; Vaka et al., 2016), and the Fijian vanua (land) framework (Nabobo-Baba, 2008) and masi methodology (Naepi, 2019a). Indigenous methodologies, like PRM, consider cultural protocols, values, and behaviours as an integral part of how research is carried out and view the exchange of knowledge as a long-term relationship, rather than a one-off exercise (Bishop, 1998; Kovach, 2009; Nabobo-Baba, 2008; Smith, 2021; Vaioleti, 2016). As such, PRM are a way for Pacific peoples’ persepectives to be centered within research (Naepi, 2019a; Suaalii-Sauni, 2008; Suaalii-Sauni & Fulu-Aiolupotea, 2014).

However, integrating Indigenous research methodologies cannot be separated from violent, ongoing colonial histories that, as Trask (1991, p. 162) describes in the Kānaka Maoli (the Indigenous people of Hawai’i) context, “seek to take away from us the power to define who and what we are, and how we should behave politically and culturally.” Even when the “human carriers of research” (Smith, 2021, p. 3) are Indigenous, fighting for space in academia among uneven power dynamics limit truth to ways of knowledge within a “Eurocentric espitemic canon” (Tamdgidi, 2012, p. viii) and can result in the assimilation of Indigenous knowledge (Ahenakew, 2016). Yet, this epistemic dominance has not gone unchallenged by Indigenous researchers in the Pacific. Those who have come before me have challenged the premise of a singular written truth (Hereniko, 2000), called for a moratorium on non-Indigenous anthropological work (Trask, 1991), asserted that Indigenous research must “talk back to” or “talk up to power” (Smith, 2021, p. 282), asked the question: “To whom are we proving ourselves? And for what?” (Teaiwa et al., 2021, p. 217), and proposed methodologies created by and for Pacific peoples (Goodyear-Smith & ‘Ofanoa, 2022; Haitana et al., 2020; Nabobo-Baba, 2008; Naepi, 2019a; Smith, 2021; Suaalii-Sauni, 2008; Suaalii-Sauni & Fulu-Aiolupotea, 2014; Vaioleti, 2016).

This article uses an expansive definition of the Pacific from the perspective of the diaspora informed by Māori academic and poet Alice Te Punga Somerville, who is from Te Āti Awa (a Māori tribe whose homelands include Taranaki, North Island, New Zealand). Tapa (a barkcloth made in many islands of the Pacific Ocean) is described in Once Were Pacific (2012) as “simultaneously regional and specific” (Te Punga Somerville, 2012, p. 4) where it is argued that by using a singular word like tapa or Pacific, we are provided with an opportunity to “reflect on cultural . . . and genealogical continuities across the Pacific and simultaneously observe local specificities” (Te Punga Somerville, 2012, p. 4). I use the term Pacific in a way that draws on Te Punga Somerville (2012), Hau’ofa (1994) and others (McGavin, 2014; Teaiwa, 2001) that see the Pacific as connected and not isolated islands. Therefore, when I use Pacific, it is inclusive of Māori. However, I am not ignorant of how in Aotearoa, officially New Zealand, there exist terms like Pasifika—“New Zealand-based non-Māori Pacific people” (Te Punga Somerville, 2012, p. xxii). Second, I write, born in diaspora, on the easternmost coast of the North Pacific Ocean on the unceded and occupied homelands of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam) (a First Nation whose traditional territory includes the western half of Greater Vancouver, in British Columbia, Canada). By virtue of my geographic position, the Pacific I evoke is a regional one.

In this article, I describe my process of incorporating the PRM of vakaturaga (a Fijian methodology about practicing chiefly obligations to others) into my thesis research. Documenting this process will demonstrate how I used the PRM of vakaturaga to acknowledge the role that my positionality as an academic with Fijian ancestry played in my research design in the context of the lack of Pacific representation at the University of British Columbia (UBC). I begin by describing my genealogy and connection to Fiji. Then, drawing on Sara Ahmed (2012) and Steve Edmund Winduo (2000), I describe the ways that Pacific peoples are present or absent at UBC and how, through relationality, my work was reconnected to the Pacific Islander academics who came before me. Finally, I describe vakaturaga and how I applied it in my master’s research. Throughout the course of this article, I weave in excerpts of my collaborative poem “Not the Pacific We Know (But Still the Pacific)” (Stehr, 2022, pp. 96–105).

My genealogy

As a Fijian scholar, genealogy and tracing my own connection to the Pacific is important and I model the practice after other Pacific scholars (Anae, 2010; McGavin, 2014; Naepi, 2019a). I am of mixed heritage: my father is from Lithuania, and I am connected to the Kai Dewala (members of the Dewala tribe, Fiji) through my mother, who is from the village of Nagigi in the province of Cakaudrove located on the northern island of Vanua Levu in Fiji. I was presented to my grandparents and clan when I was two years old alongside offerings of kerosene, fabric, masi (barkcloth), yaqona (traditional drink consumed during ceremonies and recreationally in Fiji), tabua (polished tooth of a sperm whale used in ceremonial gifting), and boxes of soap as part of kau ni matani gone—a ceremony which marks a child’s introduction to a parent’s village for the first time (Sinavaiana & Kauanui, 2007). In the diaspora, I have been taught using stories shared of how my grandparents treated and cared for those around them in the village throughout my life. I observed how my mother carried out her responsibilities to the village and how she helped support her family. I absorbed their examples of leadership and responsibility, but I could not entirely envision how I could fit them in my thesis work.

My struggle to bring my mother’s stories into my research had to do with a lack of Pacific scholars around me. There were no Pacific scholars or activists teaching or appearing in my undergraduate or graduate courses and so I was, as Sāmoan academic Melanie Anae (2010, p. 222) wrote, a “brown fish out of water.” The limited or complete absence of Pacific peoples in both the curricula and its instruction is not a phenomenon that is unique to UBC. In Aotearoa, significantly low numbers of Pasifika and Māori academics points to an “ongoing culture of structural exclusion” (Naepi, 2019b, p. 222) that has long ensured that Pasifika and Māori are excluded from universities (McAllister et al., 2019; Naepi, 2019b). The systematic, structural exclusion of Pacific peoples in universities like UBC has had profound impacts not only on my own personal trajectory as an academic but broadly implicates the ability of Pacific peoples to be included in diversity efforts within the University.

Naming the absence of the Pacific

In Ahmed’s UK and Australian account of diversity practitioners in the higher education sector, she argues that for diversity to become a given it requires material and symbolic institutional recognition of its value in a process that requires “time, energy, and labor” (2012, p. 29). How time, energy, and labor is invested also impacts how diversity “surfaces” (Ahmed, 2012, p. 29). Pacific peoples are left out of the geography of UBC in two main ways: first, in how Pacific is used to name buildings on campus. Second, in how Pacific is used as a descriptor of UBC’s international partnerships where the Indigenous Pacific is absent. Understanding the absence of the Pacific at UBC is a key part to understanding how vakaturaga became an important moment of speaking up and speaking back to the academy.

The politics of place-naming in Vancouver

The naming of places can be seen as an “ideologically innocent” act, but it is a “power-charged semiotic dynamos” (Vuolteenaho & Berg, 2009, p. 7). Place-naming is an exercise of power that can replace Indigenous presence, like Indigenous local naming practices, with an imperial history (Carter, 2010; Vuolteenaho & Berg, 2009). Power makes names stick and place-naming becomes an act of “place making” (Vuolteenaho & Berg, 2009, p. 9). Historically, the Pacific has been constructed in Euro-American narratives as an “empty space upon which to act” (Matsuda, 2007, p. 232). The legal fiction of terra nullius (the land of no one) is one way that the emptiness of the land is codified as “customary, normal, and natural” (Moreton-Robinson, 2015, p. 66). Another way to reinforce emptiness is to ignore how landscapes and toponyms are historically constituted and “imbued with social values” (Matsuda, 2007; Olwig, 2002, p. 226). The word Pacific means more than just water and it is constituted by Indigenous communities whose geographies of land and sea are “defined by spoken, danced, carved, and moving yet deeply localized navigational expressions” (Matsuda, 2007, p. 241).

The city of Vancouver was able to displace Indigenous rights holders from reserve lands and rename and remake the landscape through the introduction of Federal policy that made it illegal to raise funds to pursue land claims and municipal mechanisms that justified the expropriation of reserve land (Stanger-Ross, 2008). Under these conditions, Sen̓áḵw—historical home to the Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) (a First Nation located on the North Shore of Vancouver and at Squamish, British Columbia, Canada) was eventually surrendered to the Federal government in 1946, and 42 acres of the land eventually became Vanier Park (Stanger-Ross, 2008). Likewise, UBC’s ability to claim xʷməθkwəy̓əm lands is wrapped up in its own 1920s organizational saga of displacement that focused on the advocacy efforts of students to expand the university to a permanent campus, leaving out xʷməθkwəy̓əm, and remaking the land as the university’s (Metcalfe, 2012; Stein, 2022). The absence of xʷməθkwəy̓əm from UBC’s settler imaginary also extends to how it approaches the Pacific.

The politics of place-naming at UBC

In spring 2021, xʷməθkwəy̓əm gifted hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓ (hun’qumi’num’) (the Downriver dialect of Halkomelem (one of the Coast Salish or Salish (language spoken by several First Nations peoples of the Pacific Northwest region of Canada and USA)) family of languages) names for a housing complex that had previously been called Pacific Residence, including tə šxʷhəleləm̓s tə k̓ʷaƛ̓kʷəʔaʔɬ (tuh shxwhuhleluhms tuh kwatlkwuh’a’l) (the houses of the ones belonging to the saltwater) (University of British Columbia, n.d.). The generic use of Pacific by UBC reveals how normalized it is to separate the Pacific from how it is socially constructed. Yet, when Pacific peoples move through UBC, the word Pacific is not assumed to be a generic geographic marker—it is culturally imbued. Fijian scholar Dr Sereana Naepi described how disarming it was to come to UBC and realize that its use of Pacific did not mean what it meant in Aotearoa: “That sign [Pacific] means something else, that sign means: ‘Walk on in. Get something to eat, get something to drink. Meet some people that speak and think [like you]’” (personal communication, May 24, 2023). Separating the word Pacific from the ways it is culturally imbued by Pacific peoples reinforces the notion that the Pacific is empty and reveals a contradiction: while UBC does not meaningfully acknowledge Pacific peoples in its toponyms, it does situate itself as a Pacific university.

UBC is not ignorant of its place bordering the Pacific. In 2018, in an Office of the President communiqué (official statement) UBC President and Vice-Chancellor Professor Santa J. Ono (2018) described UBC as a Pacific Rim university. UBC’s status as a Pacific Rim university is as a member of the Association of Pacific Rim Universities, which includes many of the countries with colonial presences in the Pacific like the USA, Australia, and China (Dirlik, 1992; Ono, 2018). Furthermore, the term Pacific Rim is often a “euphemism for the powers that dominated the [Pacific] region” (Dirlik, 1992, p. 61). Likewise, when it celebrated strengthening its Indo-Pacific ties (Office of the Vice Provost International, 2023), once again these partnerships are with countries on the rim of the Pacific, like the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation or the Group of 20. Both examples substantiate that UBC is aware of its position as a Pacific university, and that it intentionally aligns itself with countries that have historically held colonial power in the region.

The Pacific is absent in UBC’s toponymies and absent in its international collaborations that align it with the historic, colonial powers of the region. The consequence of this is that Pacific peoples are assumed to be absent. Despite this assumed absence at UBC, the act of tracing can reveal the historical presence of Pacific peoples.

Tracing the presence of the Pacific

Corner of a Zoom screen I shuffle

Try to be seen

(I can’t believe my eyes)

I google her name.

Airini.

I text my friend (screaming in caps).

We have been here! Here!

(Stehr, 2022, p. 99)

UBC is a Pacific university, but the presence of Pacific peoples and their influence on the shaping of the institution is not always evident. Winduo (2000) described how through writing and scholarship Pacific writer scholars trace what and who were erased in the hegemonic practice of “leaving out” (p. 600). Benjamin’s comparison of how traces of the storyteller cling to the story just as “the handprints of the potter cling to the clay vessel” (Benjamin, 1968, as cited in Winduo, 2000, p. 600) is how Winduo (2000) proposed tracing the presence of Pacific peoples in scholarship. Thus, in my own project of tracing to find the handprints of those who came before me I look to the historic migrations of Pacific peoples and other populations to Canada, and to the anthropology department at UBC to highlight how the Pacific can shape an institution and be simultaneously left out. Second, I use tracing to describe how kinship ties and the mentorship from Pacific academics who have come before me were key to my ability to trace the presence of the Pacific at UBC and, ultimately, integrate the methodology of vakaturaga in my research.

Tracing the Pacific in British Columbia, Canada

Historically, Pacific peoples, namely Kānaka Maoli, have been in British Columbia since beginning of the cordilleran fur trade (Barman & Watson, 2017; Calnitsky, 2017; Chang, 2021; Harris, 1996). Immigration data of Pacific peoples migrating to the Pacific Northwest can be traced to as early as 1787, and it is estimated that over a thousand Kānaka Maoli landed by 1898 (Barman & Watson, 2017). Kānaka Maoli were either brought over by missionary families they worked for (Calnitsky, 2017), were recruited as seamen, were hired for the fur trade, or came as sojourners (Barman & Watson, 2017). Contemporary Fijian immigration numbers have largely been dominated by the mass exodus of Indo-Fijians fleeing multiple coups, who made up approximately 88 % (n = 80,744) of emigration between 1987 and 2004. By contrast, Indigenous Fijians only made up 7% of the country’s total emigration numbers (Mohanty, 2006).

Canada is one of several traditional destinations of Fijian migrants, and recent census data numbers indicated that there are 23,020 people who identified as either ethnically or culturally Fijian (Statistics Canada, 2021). British Columbia is home to the largest diaspora community of Fijians (n = 16,120) of whom 2% (n = 345) have Fijian as their mother tongue and 6% (n = 1,020) have some knowledge of the Fijian language (Statistics Canada, 2021). However, the inability of existing census data to be disaggregated into more granular subgroups, like Indo-Fijian, makes it difficult to identify the exact size of the Indigenous Fijian population in British Columbia. As such, the lack of existing data limits the ability to trace the presence of Indigenous Fijians in British Columbia.

Tracing the Pacific at UBC

The Pacific shaped UBC since its inception and has particularly influenced the anthropology department. Early figures, like its first professor, and director of the Museum of Anthropology, Harry Hawthorn, were trained in the Pacific and studied Pacific peoples (Whittaker & Ames, 2006). Consequently, the South Pacific was one of the regional concentrations of the department (Whittaker & Ames, 2006). The Museum of Anthropology was formed around a core collection donated by Frank Burnett, which included many ethnological specimens that he had admitted in his published works to have stolen from their Indigenous owners during his trips throughout the Pacific (Burnett, 2010; Clapperton, 2010). In each instance, the fingerprint of the Pacific’s influence is clear, yet the presence of Pacific peoples remains abstract in the form of study subjects or stolen ethnographic specimens.

I began my process of tracing the Pacific presence at UBC by complete coincidence. I first met Dr Airini, Provost and Vice President Academic at the University of Saskatchewan, on an advisory board Zoom call during the early pandemic. She was one of many boxes on the screen and I immediately googled her name. I recall suddenly being hit with the realization that others had come before me, and I was keen to find out if other Pacific peoples had lived at Green College. In the process of tracing our presence in this institutional space, I was introduced, by the then Principal of the College, Mark Vessey, to a Fijian academic by the name of Dr Sereana Naepi who had also lived at the residence. After a few meetings, I had recruited her to my master’s thesis supervisory committee. The following year, I reached out to her with a proposal to collaborate on a poem. Dr Airini had previously acted as Dr Naepi’s master’s supervisor, and so Dr Naepi suggested that we also invite her to collaborate on this poem. A few months later, we found ourselves gathered over Zoom and sharing stories that we would later shape into poetry.

My introduction to Dr Naepi and Dr Airini marked a significant reimagining of my research. Through Dr Naepi, I was able to envision how I could be a Fijian academic in my research. My introduction to Pacific literature and research fed my eagerness to incorporate what I was reading into my own research, but I was confronted with a new question: could I meaningfully apply PRM in non-Indigenous contexts? I found the confidence to do this by engaging with the Sāmoan academic Seuta’afili (a chiefly title from the village of Tauese in Sāmoa) Dr Patrick Thomsen’s research on Korean gay men’s coming-out experiences in Seattle. In his research, he drew on Sāmoan social customs and the concept of the vā (Thomsen, 2021). He described the vā (the space of relationality between different entities) and argued that his positionality as a researcher meant that it was “impossible for me not to be foregrounded by the vā” (Thomsen, 2021, p. 1019). This signaled for me that I could incorporate PRM into my research because Fijian epistemologies had, similarly, always been foregrounded in my work and I had not disambiguated it from institutional practices of research ethics.

Applying vakaturaga

Now that you know:

You will remember what we

Have shared.

Now that you know:

You know we were here.

Now that you know:

You know a little more

About who I am.

(Stehr, 2022, p. 105)

My thesis research focused on the mental health experiences of queer youth, between the ages 18 and 25, living in Metro Vancouver, Canada, during the early COVID-19 pandemic (Stehr, 2022). I initially drew solely on the theory of social constructivism because it saw meaning-making as a subjective process embedded within historical and cultural norms which required the rejection of “essential or natural givens” (Schwandt, 2007, p. 3) that present social outcomes as inevitable (Burr, 2003; Gergen, 1985). This was meaningful to me as a queer researcher who had previously worked closely with queer youth in community-based settings, but I did not know how to talk about being Fijian. Through Dr Naepi, I was introduced to the work of Fijian academics like Dr Unaisi Nabobo-Baba and began to get a sense of how to articulate what had been taught to me by my mother and grandmother in the context of academia.

Vakaturaga is also how one carries themselves in a chiefly manner, which includes knowing one’s position in society and acknowledging and acting on their obligations to others of different social stations (Nabobo-Baba, 2015). Vakaturaga is a gender-specific, masculine-oriented relationship to chiefly actions. My choice to use only vakaturaga in this article is informed by my positionality and gender identity. Broadly, vakaturaga has been described as being made up of actions and characteristics that include “veidokai (respect), vakarokoroko (deference), vakarorogo (attentive and complying), [and] yalo malua (humble)” (Ravuvu, 1983, p. 103, emphasis in original work). How these attitudes and behaviors are articulated depend on veiwekani (kinship) which is governed by a “grand narrative” of inter-relationality based on social considerations not limited to age, gender, yavusa (clan), mataqali (sub-clan lineage), and i tokatoka (family unit) (Nabobo-Baba, 2015, p. 15). Veiwekani is reinforced through acts of service and reciprocity which demonstrate “love and respect for kinship ties” (Ryle, 2016, p. 132). Acts of service and reciprocity also show veikauwaitaki (care and concern for the welfare of relatives and others) (Nabobo-Baba, 2015).

For those born away from the vanua, the associated values of respect, deference, and humility can ensure connectedness and accountability to our homelands—they are not simply buzzwords. The practice of vakaturaga reminds us of our role to amplify those who live on the vanua and other Pacific scholars who may not have the same institutional access to resources, especially when there is limited representation, and it is easy to be made into an unofficial spokesperson or token. When applied alongside other Fijian epistemologies that understand knowledge as a gift, vakaturaga also imbues a deep sense of cultural and ethical commitment to the researched people’s welfare (Nabobo-Baba, 2008). However, the primary goal of evoking vakaturaga was to explicitly acknowledge how my Fijian identity shaped my research and bring attention to the lack of representation of Pacific peoples at a university that quite literally borders the Pacific. Thus, my application of vakaturaga in my research took two forms: first, through my use of poetry to both position myself and communicate obligation to acting on the stories shared by research participants. Second, in my active envisioning of my long-term obligations to the research participants.

Poetry can allow for “other possibilities of knowing and being” because it disrupts sense-making processes that fixate on reproducing notions of security and certainty (Ahenakew, 2016, p. 336). This disruption frees interpretation of the data “beyond the control of any single authority” (Clifford, 1988, p. 53). Poetry’s capacity to disrupt also lies in its ability to help illuminate and name experiences and concepts that “until the poem [are] nameless and formless [but] already felt” (Lorde, 2007, p. 25). Poetry has been present in the Pacific since time immemorial (Clarke, 1999), and its incorporation alongside PRM has precedence given oral poetry’s role in community life and its ongoing written role drawing attention to “phenomena and processes in the world” (Clarke, 1999, p. 189). For example, Matapo and Allen (2020) write how poetry helped them enact the Tongan concept of Tauhi vā (taking care of relationships and connections between two or more people or among groups) and as a performing art that needs to “meet the needs of the audience” (p. 210).

Poetry, for Matapo and Allen (2020), allowed for the exploration of the self while also providing an opportunity to connect with the reader. Similarly, my application of vakaturaga draws on poetry as a tool to engage with the reader and explore my identity as a Fijian scholar. In “Not the Pacific We Know (But Still the Pacific)” (Stehr, 2022, pp. 96–105), I end the poem with the lines: “Now that you know: / You will remember what we/ have shared./ Now that you know:/ You know we were here./ Now that you know:/ You know a little more/ About who I am” (Stehr, 2022, p. 105). These lines challenge the reader by letting them that know that having heard stories about Pacific peoples at UBC, they know that we were here and cannot claim that we do not exist at UBC. Likewise, the incorporation of this poem into my thesis challenges the reader and myself to “remember what we/have shared” (Stehr, 2022, p. 105). The poem reminds the reader that Pacific peoples have been here and can also represent the participants. If we treat participant stories as a gift, then now that we have heard their stories we are obligated to act.

The desire to carry out my long-term obligations to research participants is guided by my awareness of the consequences of research that entrenches inequities and the legacy of colonialism. Dr Charles Menzies’ (2004), who is a member of the Gitxaała Nation located in the North Coast of British Columbia, Canada, writes that in consultations with Indigenous peoples, researchers often aim to “master the form of respectful research, but not follow it through in any meaningful way” (p. 17). Menzies (2004, p. 22) argues that when researchers believe that simply soliciting a letter of support from Indigenous communities is enough or begrudgingly follow community wishes, they “continue the legacy of colonialism.” Treating ethical and relational obligations as boilerplate has repercussions that harm the participants, potentially ostracize the researcher from a community, and result in policy that does not reflect the priorities of the community. As a Pacific person, I am aware that when research is done poorly on the vanua it can have long-term consequences for the researcher and their family (Meo-Sewabu, 2014). In my thesis, I quoted a conversation with my mother who described how researchers interacted with her village: “They come, they do their work [often researching marine life]. And then they leave. We all know this. There have been many researchers like this” (Stehr, 2022, p. 19). It is drawing from her stories, and my understandings of the social and ethical implications of poor research, that I shaped my ongoing obligations set out for me by vakaturaga.

My ability to practice vakaturaga within the context of my research has challenged me to see respectful research as lived, and not a series of tasks to be completed. It is necessary for me to relate to my research and my obligations in this way because the participants are sharing stories of ongoing phenomena. For example, one of the stories shared by participants highlighted emergent mental health experiences of the early pandemic that indicated that there were within-community discrepancies in the ability to return to normal (Stehr et al., 2023). Participants who identified as immunocompromised or as disabled or both faced increased social isolation due to the end of mandatory masking and a return to in-person programming (Stehr, 2022). I envisioned practicing my obligations in two ways: first, by following standard practices of research dissemination, and then, second, by explicitly stating commitments to actively incorporating the findings in my day-to-day practices and life.

I turned my research findings into a peer-reviewed publication and a book chapter, delivered public talks and conference presentations, and created a report summarizing my findings that was co-developed with members of the youth advisory committee I ran that was widely disseminated. However, I knew this was not sufficient and in my submitted thesis I made sure to set out for the reader how I would also apply these findings in my own personal practices. I outlined how I would apply findings to future community events I organize, in my future policy and program recommendations, and ensuring digital or remote methods are a part of my future research to ensure accessibility (Stehr, 2022). Finally, I also committed to applying the findings to my personal life, like wearing a medical mask, and how I ensure there is always spaces for those who are immunocompromised or otherwise vulnerable to infection (Stehr, 2022). In combining these two approaches, I believe that I have begun to practice my commitment to the long-term wellbeing of the research participants beyond data collection, but I am not ignorant to my limitations. I have not been in contact with the research participants since the end of my master’s program, and beyond the honoraria provided to participants for completing intake and follow-up interviews and opportunities provided to shape the research, I now predominantly only work with their stories. Furthermore, I was not able to integrate into my research design many of the practices associated with reciprocity and care on the vanua because in-person research was prohibited during the early pandemic (Meo-Sewabu, 2014). Therefore, I actively acknowledge how the pandemic and my resulting research design also created barriers to practicing vakaturaga. Part of these barriers are institutional in nature, and part of writing this article is about challenging UBC to do better in supporting Indigenous and Pacific students to do Indigenous research.

Conclusion

By acknowledging how vakaturaga has always informed how I carried out my research I am able to assert my Pacific heritage in an academic context where we are underrepresented. The absence of Pacific peoples from the toponymies and the international relationships that UBC seeks to foster is constructed. I was able to find Dr Naepi and Dr Airini by tracing the Pacific peoples that came before me at Green College at UBC. In turn, my poetic and thesis-based collaborations with them allowed me to surface Fijian methodologies in my own research highlighting the importance of having Pacific academics involved in Pacific graduate research.

It also allowed me to build on the theoretical framework of social constructivism to think about my ongoing obligations to the research participants and their stories. The COVID-19 pandemic limited my ability to enact vakaturaga because I was not able engage in in-person practices of reciprocity and care beyond providing honoraria during the data collection phase. However, I believe that my use of poetry, how I disseminated the research, and my explicit stating of how I planned to incorporate the findings in my own work communicated how I acted on my obligations to the participants and their stories. Ultimately, I hope that the journey of my incorporation of vakaturaga into my research can show how relationality and tracing can open new possibilities that surface the researcher and participant alike.