Queer Pacific Indigeneity: Constructing Our Archives

The below is quoted directly from an email circulated by UH's Center for Biographical Research. In addition to his other biographical data listed below, D. Keali'i MacKenzie also currently serves as a part-time reference librarian in the Hawaiian and Pacific Collections.

"Queer Pacific Indigeneity: Constructing Our Archives"
D. Keali‘i MacKenzie and Tagi Qolouvaki
Thursday, September 26 • Noon to 1:15 pm
Center for Biographical Research • 1800 East-West Road, Henke Hall 325
In this talanoa/talk story panel, David Kealiʻi MacKenzie and Tagi Qolouvaki, both queer-identifying, Pacific Islanders (Native Hawaiian and Fijian-Tongan) discuss how their respective genealogies, including as activists, scholars, and writers, have informed their journeys to find and construct archives of queer pacific indigeneity. Along the way we hope to share a few poems, photographs, memories of community, and some of the many questions that guide and accompany us.

D. Kealiʻi MacKenzie is Kanaka Maoli poet, librarian, and scholar who was originally born and raised in Western Massachusetts. He received his Master of Library and Information Science in 2012 from UH Manoa is currently a graduate student with the Center for Pacific Islands Studies. His poems have appeared in Flicker and Spark: A Contemporary Queer Anthology of Spoken Word and Poetry, Assaracus: A Journal of Gay Poetry, Mauri Ola: Contemporary Polynesian Poems in English, and The Yellow Medicine Review.

Tagi Qolouvaki is Fijian-Tongan on her mother’s side and German-English on her dad’s side—altogether a very mixed, queer and feminist P.I. Born and raised in Fiji by a few beautiful men and many powerful women, she is currently a student of Pacific literature at UH Mānoa, and has had poetry published in Diasporadic 2, Mauri Ola: Contemporary Polynesian Poems in English, and The Yellow Medicine Review.
Co-sponsored by the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa Center for Pacific Island Studies and Center for Biographical Research.

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