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Meet The Team
MARY MASELINA HARM
🇼🇸🇫🇯
Mary Maselina Harm is a proud Samoan, Chinese-Fijian born in Canada and raised on Turrbal country, Meanjin (Brisbane) Australia. She is passionate about storytelling and how storytelling can create social change.
What does identity mean to you?
All that I am and all that I do is an extension of my natural environment - I am shaped and moulded by the ocean that hugs our shores, the coconut tree whose palms hold me in every season and the night sky whose darkness provides a vā (spaces between spaces) that allow me to hear the songs and whispers of my ancestors. Like the land, the sea and the sky identity is always always moving, shifting and evolving but always grounded in where we feel most at home.
What does your heart work look like?
My heart work looks like an island feed - everyone’s welcome, there’s always enough and there is always some to take home.
What do you love most about being Pacific Islander?
I love our diverse ways of storytelling in particular though the art of song, dance and visuals. I believe our ancestors gifted us these ways of being and doing to keep us connected no matter how far away we are from each other and the ocean that connects us all.
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MICHAEL GOROGO
Michael William Gorgogo, known by many as Mikey, is a proud Papua New Guinean and Indigenous Australian man from Central Province, Kairuku and Broome, Western Australia. His purpose is grounded in the hope that every young person can be the best version of and genuinely believe in themselves.
What does Community mean to you?
Community is a bilum - and each of us are the fibres that strengthen it. When everyone plays their part in weaving the bilum it becomes the solution to how we carry challenges.
What does your heart work look like?
Just like the bilum, I carry with me all the learnings and experiences of my life into whatever space I am in to share and strengthen those around me.
What do you love most about being Pacific Islander?
The love I have for my culture and community as a Pacific Islander is evident in my name - It was gifted to me to carry the love and values of those who have past. When I speak my name I introduce my ancestors too. We are spiritual people who move as a collective. I am never alone. My name is a manifestation of that.
IREE CHOW RADCLYFFE
🇫🇲 🇸🇧
Iree Chow Radclyffe is a proud Chuukese and Chinese-Solomon Islander currently residing in Ōtepoti (Dunedin), Aotearoa. As a new mum, being a future ancestor has taken a deeper meaning and reinforced her passion to nurture social change at a local, state and federal level with community-led solutions.
What does Culture mean to you?
Having grown up in diaspora and now currently residing in a completely new place, culture is all the things that I have carried with me to make me feel more at home. It is a magical blend of identity and community that helps us see and navigate the world in a unique way.
What does your heart work look like?
Heart work is hard work. Sometimes it is having difficult conversations, resisting systems that no longer serve us and creating space for others to join you. It is also building meaningful relationships so at the end of the day we can all still sit on the kieki (woven mat) and make more informed decisions together.
What do you love most about being Pacific Islander?
Our big appetites! Not just for food but also for wanting to share our stories and cultures. Whether it be through dance, song, food, artefacts or traditions – this act of sharing is an act of love. It is how we continue to stay connected to the places and people we call home.
