95bFM Pacific empowerment and collaboration in Aotearoa
11 February 2026
Interviews by Theo Hayden, adapted by Sara McKoy
With Waitangi Day commemorations bringing together representatives from across the Pacific including Ka Lāhui Hawai’i to kōrero on indigenous collaboration, Public Health Medicine specialist Dr Sainimere Boladuadua delves into a recent academic report “re-imagining” health systems in the Pacific.
Last month, a team of all-women researchers across the Pacific region and Aotearoa New Zealand published an article in The Lancet Regional Health – Western Pacific calling for a fundamental shift in health policy and practice in the Pacific.
Re-imagining Global Health: Perspectives from the Next Generation in the Pacific Region describes four focus areas — Sovereignty, Integrated Worldviews, Connectivity, and Equity — through which the health sector can work to “dismantle colonial legacies and embed Pacific leadership, knowledge systems and values”.
Speaking to 95bFM’s The Wire, Public Health Medicine specialist Dr Sainimere Boladuadua, lead author on the report, explains why the interdisciplinary field of ‘global health’ was central to their research.
“In public health, we talk about the socioeconomic determinants of health — so how health is influenced by things like access to clean water, safe housing, income, politics, the environment…
“It's also about looking at systems that keep our communities healthy, like strong health services, health systems, workforce, trained workforce, reliable supplies, good policies, all these things that can help countries respond not only to emergencies… but also just ongoing challenges.”
Boladuadua says that a variety of influences have shaped health outcomes in the Pacific region, including colonisation, globalisation and climate change.
“Currently in the Pacific, we are facing some of the biggest challenges in the world… we disproportionately bear the brunt of [issues] caused by forces outside the Pacific region.”
She also addresses the “power imbalance” between community leaders and external influences regarding whose perspectives and priorities determine the health agenda in the Pacific.
“Too often, when decisions about Pacific health are made, it's made outside the region, and this plays out in terms of inequities in funding, in remuneration, in leadership.”
The report articulates these issues by ‘re-imagining’ what health policy could look like in the Pacific region if it were centred on indigenous knowledge systems. Currently, policies follow the assumption that a Western model, which is ‘evidence-based’ and adopted broadly across international literature, will more effectively suit Pacific community needs.
“We're just pushing for more Pacific-led solutions, greater sovereignty, self-determination, that we determine what our own priorities are, and make a shift towards integrating Indigenous with Western approaches.”
She says collaboration and connection are “a real strength” in the pursuit of better outcomes for Pacific peoples in all sectors.
As indigenous leaders from across the motu and throughout the Pacific region come together to facilitate discussions with New Zealand’s political leaders, indigenous self-determination and community resilience are at the top of the agenda.
Ka Lāhui Hawai’i, a Kanaka Maoli initiative calling for self-determination in Hawai’i, is one group attending Waitangi Day events in solidarity with iwi Māori.
Spokesperson for the initiative, Healani Sonoda-Pale, told 95bFM’s The Wire, that collaboration between indigenous people in Aotearoa and the Pacific remains essential to counteract colonialist disintegration of indigenous sovereignty and leadership.
“In order for us to be successful, we need to build power outside of these colonial structures and in the community with each other…
“We should all be standing in solidarity with each other for all of our different struggles, because it's the same struggle.”
Especially in the face of growing climate challenges, the overall message from indigenous leaders is that partnership across Aotearoa and the Pacific region is crucial for all indigenous communities.
As Boladuadua puts it:
“If we practise manaakitanga, not just within New Zealand, but everywhere we go, the approach [will be] mana enhancing, it will lift up respectful ways of working, and it will improve everything that we do.”
