NEW CALEDONIA

• Allonnia , the bio-ingenuity company dedicated to extracting value where others see waste, today announced the establishment of their Mining Advisory Board.
• Consisting of mining industry experts from academia, mining majors, and private institutions, the Board will support Allonnia with developing and delivering transformational biological solutions tailored to the mining industry.
• “The mining industry is at a critical inflection point, and biotechnology offers a range of new solutions,” said Chuck Price, Chief Commercial Officer of Allonnia.
• “This Mining Advisory Board brings together some of the most experienced minds in mining to collaborate on new approaches for the industry’s most pressing challenges.

• The Indigenous Embassy Jerusalem hosted by Friends of Zion Heritage center in center of Jerusalem.
• Naturally, the Indigenous Embassy which opened in Jerusalem would operate in its campus.
• Hassan-Nahoum thanked the Friends of Zion and Dr. Mike Evans "for being a visionary of what a Friend of Zion actually means."
• Friends of Zion Heritage center was established in 2015, in the center of Israel's capital Jerusalem, by founder Dr. Mike Evans.

• They announced the way forward as the “Blue Pacific – Our Sea of Islands, Our Livelihoods, Our Oceania”.
• It’s a revealing example of how the study of the Pacific and the practice of Pacific politics often intersect.
• Rapidly, the Blue Pacific – a story about a place – had become a new place.
• Regional organisations connected through the Blue Pacific, and it became a cornerstone of diplomatic and national language.

New names, old stories

• Holding together the new movement – which was launched at a moment of considerable difficulty for the region – was an old story.
• The Forum leaders and others around it explicitly referred to the Blue Pacific as a narrative.
• As the Samoan Prime Minister put it, “[t]he Blue Pacific provides a new narrative for Pacific Regionalism and how the Forum engages with the world”.

The Indo-Pacific as geopolitical construct

• The Indo-Pacific is now a geopolitical construct said to encompass the Indian Ocean, the South China Sea, and shifting, unspecified parts of the Pacific Ocean.
• In other words, it both marginalises and co-opts the Indigenous Pacific of which I write.
• Read more:
  Australia has long viewed the Pacific as a place of threats that must be contained.
• Such is the power of this particular narrative and construct that it is central to many of the most vital geopolitical discourses and activities globally.

An unequal ocean

• Though there is a vibrancy to Indigenous traditions and narration, they do not have the same access and circulation; the Pacific remains an unequal ocean.
• In very few areas is this not apparent, but I wish to draw attention to one specific way in which the colonial, and particularly the decolonising experience, shaped the unequal oceanscapes of the present: mobility.
• The terms and conditions of formal decolonisation – what I think of as the decolonising bargain – was a bargain struck in profoundly unequal times and in unequal ways, where much of the power lay with former colonial rulers and international players.

‘New blackbirds’

• The Pacific diaspora, so deeply conditioned by the decolonising bargain, has not mattered equally to Pacific nations recently.
• In smaller islands and nations these opportunities have seen mobility on remarkable scales; Niue is perhaps the most striking.
• Since the 1970s the number of Niueans in Niue has declined by around two-thirds, falling from over 5,000 to less than 2,000.
• As elsewhere in the former (or, as some might contend, currently) colonised world, the visible benefits of colonialism are not readily evident.

Mobility and sovereignty

• In each of these places, Indigenous Pacific migrants experience outcomes that more closely match their Indigenous neighbours than those of Pākehā/Papālagi/white populations.
• There are also other costs that these Indigenous Pacific people confront — paid in language, culture, well-being, identity, independence and sovereignty.
• The transnational dimensions wrought by those Indigenous folks afforded mobility are profound.
• As Epeli Hau‘ofa so powerfully put it, these Pacific peoples can craft lives that resonate with the mobility of the ancestors.
• But the majority of Pacific peoples do not have access to transnational mobility.

Damon Salesa does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

• Five-time MLS Cup champions, the LA Galaxy, have launched a wide-ranging new partnership with Fiji’s national airline, Fiji Airways.
• View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20231003401024/en/
  The newly named LA Galaxy Sports Complex Powered by Fiji Airways (Photo: Business Wire)
  “We are thrilled to say 'Bula' to this exciting partnership with the LA Galaxy, a club that embodies the same values of warmth, community, and teamwork that Fiji Airways holds dear,” said Andre Viljoen, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Fiji Airways.
• As part of the agreement, Fiji Airways will also have a significant brand presence at Kinecta Soccer Center, Powered by the LA Galaxy, which is conveniently located across the street from the LA Galaxy Sports Complex Powered by Fiji Airways.
• “The LA Galaxy is proud to partner with a best-in-class airline like Fiji Airways,” said Tom Braun, President of Business Operations and Chief Operating Officer of the LA Galaxy.