Sacred Shores, Shared Seas: Reframing National Universities in Moana Oceania as Sites of Epistemic Sovereignty and Indigenous Futures

• In Event: Human Rights and Decolonial Perspectives

Proposal

This paper examines how national universities in Moana Oceania, specifically in Samoa, Tonga, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and Fiji, negotiate the interplay of national priorities, regional collaborations, and global academic pressures while re-centring Indigenous epistemologies in higher education. Drawing on narrative and participatory methodologies (talanoa, tok stori, storian), the research foregrounds Indigenous dialogic practices that privilege relationality, accountability, and collaborative sensemaking. Fieldwork with academic leaders, staff, and policy actors illuminates how these universities are re-imagined as culturally rooted places of belonging, responsibility and reciprocal exchange, rather than passive recipients of external models.

Anchored conceptually in motutapu/‘sacred place’ (Johannson-Fua, 2020) and wansolwara/‘shared ocean’ (Johannson-Fua, 2022), the study illustrates how universities embed cultural values into governance, curricula, and partnerships, thereby disrupting neoliberal, individualistic, and hierarchical models of higher education. Findings highlight examples where Indigenous philosophies and ethics not only resist, but also reframe dominant academic structures. These include aligning governance with ancestral stewardship, fostering curriculum design rooted in Moana Oceania philosophies, and building academic networks on reciprocity, rather than competition.

This paper argues that national universities are key sites for enacting epistemic sovereignty and advancing Indigenous futures in the face of ongoing colonial legacies and asymmetrical global knowledge economies. By reclaiming universities as sacred spaces of cultural resurgence and collective responsibility, this research contributes to comparative and international education debates on institution identity, positionality, and the futures of higher education.

In alignment with the CIES 2026 theme, Re-examining Education and Peace in a Divided World, the paper highlights how universities in Moana Oceania foster relational ethics, cultural resilience, and epistemic justice amidst global divisions and inequities. It demonstrates how higher education can be mobilised not only to bridge divides, but to nurture peace grounded in Indigenous values of interdependence, reciprocity, and care for both land and ocean. In so doing, the study positions Moana Oceania national universities as exemplars of how higher education can generate pathways for cultural resurgence, political self-determination, and more just and sustainable futures.

Author

• Ben Levy, Institute of Education, University of the South Pacific