Finding Our Way to the Island: Critical Reflections from Two Emerging Pacific Legal Academics in Aotearoa

Abstract

This article offers critical reflections regarding legal scholarship on Pacific peoples in Aotearoa from two Pacific early career academics in the legal academy. It explores why very little legal scholarship focusing on the issues facing Pacific peoples in Aotearoa exists by examining and illustrating the systemic barriers that prevent Pacific legal academics from producing such scholarship. It then examines the detrimental impacts this lack of legal scholarship on Pacific peoples in Aotearoa has on both Pacific law students and Pacific communities in Aotearoa. Lastly, it imagines a Pacific jurisprudence for Pacific peoples in Aotearoa located within Pacific communities, committed to fulfilling the obligations that Pacific peoples have to Māori as Tangata Whenua of Aotearoa.