MANA Experience: Scholars

He was born in 1939 and is a novelist/ poet who wrote about present-day Samoan life. Perhaps the best-known writer in the South Pacific, Wendt sought to counteract the frequently romanticized, often racist literature about Polynesians written by outsiders.

Lani Wendt-Young (born in Apia, Samoa) is an Author living in New Zealand. She is married to Darren Young and have five children. She is also the niece of well-known Author & Writer – Albert Wendt.

Tuatagaloa became the first woman Judge serving in Samoa.As a result of the court process and community engagement, the number of alcohol related cases dropped from 61% to 55%

She currently works as a lecturer at Piula Theological College in Samoa and as a postdoctoral fellow and research affiliate at the Centre for Theology and Public Issues, University of Otago. Mercy does research on gender issues and in particular violence against women from a public theology perspective.

She was the second woman to serve on Samoa's Supreme Court.During her time as a judge on District Court, she presided over Family Court and Family Violence Court

Dr. Kaholokula's research involves developing community-based and culturally relevant health promotion programs to address diabetes and cardiovascular disease inequities in Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders using community-based participatory research approaches. His research also examines how biological, psychosocial, and sociocultural factors interplay to affect their risk for and management of chronic diseases. He serves on several community boards of organizations with a mission to improve Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander health and is co-Chair for the Native Hawaiian Health Task Force.

She was born on Oʻahu and am of Kanaka Maoli descent. She earned her bachelor’s in Hawaiian language, and immediately began teaching Hawaiian there at UH Mānoa. She pursued her master in Library and Information Studies and earned her PhD in political science. She works as a University professor and teaches courses in Hawaiʻi, Native Hawaiian, and indigenous politics, as well as Hawaiian language, including three courses that are cross–listed in political science and Hawaiian.She is interested in developing theory from within Hawaiian epistemologies and worldviews.

Dr.Lilikalā K. Kame’eleihiwa is a senior professor at Kamakakūokalani.Trained as a historian, expert in Hawaiian cultural traditions, and in the Hawaiian sovereignty movement. Her books include Nā Wāhine Kapu: Sacred Hawaiian Women, He Mo’olelo Ka’ao o Kamapua’a: A Legendary Traditional of Kamapua’a, the Hawaiian Pig-God, and Native Land and Foreign Desires: Pehea Lā E Pono Ai?

Reverend Dr. Sione Lātūkefu (1927–1995) was a Tongan historian.
Lātūkefu obtained the degree of Bachelor of Education at the University of Queensland in 1962. He later obtained a doctorate. He was the first professional historian in Tonga, and, in 1989, founded the Tongan History Association to encourage studies of Tongan history.

A Fiji islander, writer and anthropologist, he was born in what was then the Territory of Papua. His parents were of Tongan Missionary, who worked in Papua New Guinea. He went to school in Papua New Guinea, Tonga, and Fiji. He attended three different universities and gained a PhD in Social Anthropology at the Australian National University in Canberra. He taught at the University of Papua New Guinea and was part of a research team at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji.

Konai Helu Thaman is from Nukuʻalofa, Tonga. She is the author of five collections of poetry: You, the Choice of My Parents (1974); Langakali (1981); Hingano (1987); Kakala (1993); and Songs of Love: New and Selected Poems (1999). She earned a BA from the University of Auckland; an MA in international education from the University of California, Santa Barbara; and a PhD in education from the University of the South Pacific (USP) in Fiji, where she is a professor. Thaman is a fellow of the Asia-Pacific Programme of Educational Innovation for Development and has served as the UNESCO chairperson in Teacher Education and Culture.

Since 2012, she has been the Queen consort of Tonga, and her husband is King Tupou VI of Tonga. Her book "Songs and poems of Queen Salot" was published in 2004.