Terisa Siagatonu @terisasiagatonu Twitter profile | Pikagi

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Terisa Siagatonu

@terisasiagatonu

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Sāmoan⎮Poet⎮Speaker⎮Educator⎮Organizer⎮Demilitarize Oceania • Free West Papua • Free Kanaky • Free Palestine #Landback ⎮She/They

Ohlone land⎮Oceania⎮Diaspora

https://t.co/GLXWw2p4TQ

Joined May 2009

Don't wanna be here? Send us removal request.

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@terisasiagatonu

Terisa Siagatonu

@terisasiagatonu

2 months

It’s one of the deepest honors of my life/career to finally be able to share this news now that it’s PW official: my debut children’s book, The Vastness of Us, will be illustrated by Tongan artist Lucyola Langi and published by Dial: an imprint of Penguin. Coming Fall 2025🫀🌊

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@terisasiagatonu

Terisa Siagatonu

@terisasiagatonu

4 years

Rest In Peace Oscar Grant. Killed 12 years ago today, January 1, 2009, hours after midnight right here in Oakland at Fruitvale BART Station. It was announced in October that the DA is re-opening his case. Send light to the family that justice will be afforded to them.

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9 months

“The United States of America is a death country. It gives death to native people.” Not everyone agreed with Kumu Haunani’s 1993 speech. A reminder that sometimes things are said to our people long before they’re ready to hear it. But we say it: in our hearts and when we sleep.

@SilverSpookGuy

Silver Spook

@SilverSpookGuy

9 months

The US banned Hawaiian language, overthrew our country, let us die in Maui fires, devastated our universal healthcare, & illegally occupies Hawaii to this day. My mother's hands were broken for speaking Hawaiian in school. The US is not a beacon, but the destroyer of independence

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Terisa Siagatonu

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3 years

My name is in the email and my name is the email, so why are you spelling it wrong: a memoir

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4 years

For those not keeping track, so far President @rihanna has: - covered the cost of ventilators in her home country of Barbados - donated $5 million to fight #COVID19 in Haiti, Malawi, Barbados & the U.S. - donated personal protective equipment for the state of New York

@NYGovCuomo

Archive: Governor Andrew Cuomo

4 years

I want to thank @rihanna and the Rihanna Foundation for donating Personal Protective Equipment to New York State. We're so appreciative of your help and that of so many others who have stepped up. 5/5

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3 years

“Wherever I go...I’m an immigrant. I think people forget that a lot of times. I think they see Rihanna the brand. But I think it’s important for ppl to remember, if you love me, everyone out here is just like me. A million Rihannas out there, getting treated like dirt.” - @rihanna

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BET

3 years

Rihanna joins the #StopAsianHate protest in NYC ❤️ || 🎥 teacuptina

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4 years

Getting a new president is one thing but have you ever been hyped about getting a new Secretary of Education

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@terisasiagatonu

3 years

Y’all don’t respect native Hawaiians, the land, the history, the resources, the animals. Y’all fly to Hawai’i with your own personal agendas and act like pieces of shit. Fuck y’all

@AnnalisaBurgos

Annalisa Burgos

@AnnalisaBurgos

3 years

A Louisiana woman faces backlash for this video of her touching an endangered monk seal in #Hawaii and it’s prompting calls to educate tourists. Disturbing a seal is illegal w/ hefty fines. Report violations 800-853-1964, email pix/videos RespectWildlife @noaa .gov @KITV4 @KLAXTV

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4 years

“We are NOT American! We are NOT American! We are NOT American! We are NOT American! Say it in your heart! Say it when you sleep! We are NOT American! We will DIE as Hawaiians! We will NEVER be Americans!” — Haunani-Kay Trask 🤎✊🏽

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Terisa Siagatonu

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3 years

Land back/indigenous sovereignty scares some of y’all because you think that once indigenous people get their land back, they’re going to do to you what was done to them/their land. Even if that were true, that notion only highlights that what was done to them was vile/wrong

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@terisasiagatonu

4 years

On the eve of #IndigenousPeoplesDay , let us all watch this iconic clip of Aunty Haunani-Kay Trask collecting a white woman one time

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@kycarrerolopez

4 years

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Terisa Siagatonu

@terisasiagatonu

4 years

Last Monday, my cousin Zarrie was shot and killed while visiting a cemetery in Sacramento. Zarrie was 18 years old, headed into her second year at Sac State with her entire life ahead of her. Our family is in desperate need of answers. Please share and #SayHerName : Zarrie Allen

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3 years

In two weeks, police in Chicago, Honolulu, and Minneapolis have shot and killed: Adam Toledo, 13 Travon Chadwell, 18 Anthony Alvarez, 22 Iremamber Sykap, 16 Daunte Wright, 20 All Black and brown boys. Killed by a police state that is irredeemable, let alone capable of reform.

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@terisasiagatonu

3 months

I am in tears. Free Mumia. Free Palestine. "Do not let go of this moment. Make it bigger. Make it more massive. Make it more powerful. Make it echo up into the stars. I am thrilled by your work. I love you. I admire you. On the moon." --Mumia Abu-Jamal

@TheIndypendent

@TheIndypendent

@TheIndypendent

3 months

“Brothers and sisters and students at City College, it is not enough to demand ceasefire. How about this? Make your demand cease occupation!” says still incarcerated Black Panther and journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal from a timed prison call that was amplified from someone’s phone.

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Terisa Siagatonu

@terisasiagatonu

6 years

Note: if you’re not Kānaka maoli/Native Hawaiian but you live in Hawai’i, you will never be considered Hawaiian. And it is not the same as when someone calls themselves things like “a Californian”. Hawaiian is an ethnicity. Hawai’i was a sovereign nation, stolen by the U.S.

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Terisa Siagatonu

@terisasiagatonu

3 years

Hawaiians killing Captain James Cook on Valentine’s Day really is the greatest act of love: love for your people, your land, your culture. Love as resistance. Love passed onto future generations of Kānaka Maoli who live in the legacy of their ancestor’s resilience. True love.

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Terisa Siagatonu

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4 years

California has the 6th largest economy in the world. Not the U.S.: the world. Their largest employer? Is the University of California. CA's community college system is the largest in the U.S., with 115 community colleges. All I'm saying is that if y'all ready to revolt....

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Terisa Siagatonu

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5 years

To ppl in my mentions who keep saying Hawai’i couldn’t survive if it wasn’t a state: Pacific Islanders didn’t just pioneer voyaging/navigation: we had cultural infrastructure systems for governing & ties to the land that sustained our ways of life CENTURIES before colonization.

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Terisa Siagatonu

@terisasiagatonu

3 years

There’s nothing you can tell me, as a colonized person whose island was cut in half & colonized by Germany & the U.S. (with one half still being a U.S. territory today) that would make me think that what’s happening to Palestinians is “too complicated to understand”.

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Terisa Siagatonu

@terisasiagatonu

5 years

I keep thinking about how many of our ancestors died at the hands of imperialism, colonization, genocide, etc. and we have the audacity to survive in their legacy and say, with our chests, that their wildest dreams for us....is to go to college lol

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Terisa Siagatonu

@terisasiagatonu

5 years

I gave up a long time ago on being uptight about people’s misspellings or grammatical errors when I see them or when we’re talking. It’s classist & unnecessary. If I can understand you, I can understand you. Me correcting you says more about me than it does about you.

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@terisasiagatonu

3 years

I’m blocking folks who defend tourists who are in Hawai’i touching endangered species. “She didn’t know”…yeah that’s the entire problem with tourism and why Hawaiians keep telling y’all to stop traveling there. Y’all don’t know, don’t care, and gaslight when we point it out

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Terisa Siagatonu

@terisasiagatonu

5 years

Right now, all eyes should be on Hawai’i and Puerto Rico: two U.S. territory island nations, from the Pacific to the Atlantic, resisting/rising in the name of their country, their people, and their collective power.

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4 years

“Wherever I go...I’m an immigrant. I think people forget that a lot of times. I think they see Rihanna the brand. But I think it’s important for ppl to remember, if you love me, everyone out here is just like me. A million Rihannas out there, getting treated like dirt.” - @rihanna

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Terisa Siagatonu

@terisasiagatonu

5 years

As of yesterday: 48 ppl have died in Samoa from the measles outbreak (all are children except one). Samoa is only a population of 200,000 ppl. The scale of that would be as if: 960 people died in Aotearoa (New Zealand) or 72,000 people died in the U.S. Let that sink in.💔

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Terisa Siagatonu

@terisasiagatonu

3 years

The fact that there's flooding here in Santa Cruz, CA due to the underwater eruption in Tonga is why Epeli Hau'ofa regarded Oceania as a sea of islands vs. simply islands in the sea. We're defined by the Pacific, not by the smallness of our islands. Look at the impact

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Terisa Siagatonu

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3 years

Ppl who are skeptical of abolition tend to demand that those of us who are working towards it show them step-by-step how we plan to get to what abolition promises. Yet they can’t explain how a centuries old carceral system w/ the most $ & resources fails to be the better solution

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Terisa Siagatonu

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5 years

The island of West Papua has been illegally occupied by Indonesia since the 1960s. Since then, the Indonesian military has systematically murdered, raped, and tortured 500,000+ indigenous Papuan people. We don't hear/know about this b/c Indonesia has banned foreign journalists.

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Terisa Siagatonu

@terisasiagatonu

4 years

Oakland. Nia Wilson. We say your name forever. #SayHerName

@e_baldi

Erin Baldassari

4 years

#NiaWilson #SayHerName

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@terisasiagatonu

3 years

The Oakland Chinatown Coalition held a community call tonight w/ coalition members, organizers, local artists, Chinatown's council member & city council president Nikki Bas, Black allies & longtime residents to update us on community safety efforts. None of them were this.

@latimes

Los Angeles Times

3 years

Actors @danieldaekim and @danielwuyanzu are offering a $25K reward for information that leads to an arrest. @christicarras explains.

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5 years

When you want to build a telescope on a sacred Hawaiian mountain in the name of science, on the land of people who helped pioneer voyaging/navigation. We literally read the stars centuries before your telescope did. Colonization makes you mis-trust indigenous knowledge. #MaunaKea

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Terisa Siagatonu

@terisasiagatonu

4 years

How Far I'll Go is a banger, but we don't talk enough about Moana and grandma's song where grandma's spirit is like "Moana, do you know who you are?" and Moana is like "Who am I? *contemplates*...I am a girl who loves my island...a girl who loves the sea...it calls me."

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Terisa Siagatonu

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3 years

Just a reminder that cultural change always precedes political change. As we all know (I hope), politicians don't lead our most impactful social changes: they follow them. They follow the lead of organizers, artists, community members, educators, etc. That's our power.

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3 years

Deep love to George Floyd's family right now and always

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@terisasiagatonu

4 years

@shutterdove My brain can’t even wrap my head around the leadership

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3 years

“We are not American. We are not American. We are not American. Say it in your hearts. Say it in your sleep. We are not American. We will die as Hawaiians. We will never be Americans.” —Haunani-Kay Trask Oct 3, 1949 - July 3, 2021 💔✊🏽🌊

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Terisa Siagatonu

@terisasiagatonu

3 years

Same goes for Black liberation. People think that Black power = they’ll lose power. Yeah, sure, but also you’re scared that Black people will do to you what this world has done to Black people for generations. Which, again, shows how you know that their mistreatment is vile/wrong

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Terisa Siagatonu

@terisasiagatonu

5 years

If you're reading this and have ever vacationed in Hawai'i or ever wanted to go to Hawai'i: I urge you to pay attention/educate yourself on the kānaka maoli who are protecting #MaunaKea and resisting the (continued) development on their sacred land right now. #ProtectMaunaKea

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@terisasiagatonu

5 years

On behalf of the Asian (Pacific Islander) community: we did get mad at you @HereIsGina . Definitely not enough of us, but you're consistently not listening to what black folks are saying about your anti-black remarks/behavior. This interview is aggravating.

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Terisa Siagatonu

@terisasiagatonu

3 years

Happy anniversary to my parents who met over a wrong number. My dad was trying to reach his cousin, and accidentally reached my mom. A year of phone calls and letters later, and they finally meet for their first date. 34 years later: they’re still tying up the line ☎️❤️

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Terisa Siagatonu

@terisasiagatonu

4 years

The only U.S. land that has no COVID cases/deaths is American Samoa. The island halted incoming flights early enough. This isn’t a victory. This is us remembering the measles epidemic that killed our kids last Christmas. The 1918 influenza that wiped out 1/5th of our people.

@Indigenia

Dr. Twyla Baker is on Threads - @indigenia

4 years

If your people had a history of dying from infectious diseases brought by settlers, you would protect your lands and people too.

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Terisa Siagatonu

@terisasiagatonu

2 years

It is always such an insult to organizers, activists, and people who’ve been doing this movement work on behalf of all of us for so long, to fuel apathy and doomsday fears in the moments where they need our commitment and support the most

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Terisa Siagatonu

@terisasiagatonu

3 years

Anyways. Black liberation and Indigenous sovereignty are our only hope moving forward. You can’t say that it’s not since we haven’t tried it yet, and if I’m wrong, let’s find out and see, winner gets a chance at being liberated

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Terisa Siagatonu

@terisasiagatonu

5 years

I’m tired of friends on IG (who don’t have twitter) sending me things I already laughed at here months ago

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Terisa Siagatonu

@terisasiagatonu

3 years

If you’re in the Bay and are witnessing the violence against (elderly) Asian folks in our community, here are community-initiated ways to support that don’t involve an increase in policing that we know will fail us (and our Black community). Police don’t keep us safe: we do.

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@terisasiagatonu

4 years

If you live in California and posted a photo/video of how red the sky looks right now, you have to now fight for the land rights and sovereignty of Indigenous people like never before, I don’t make the rules #LandBack

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Terisa Siagatonu

@terisasiagatonu

5 years

Imagine being an indigenous woman looking into the eyes of your indigenous people in law enforcement uniforms, and asking them to remember that they come from this sacred land too. #ProtectMaunaKea #K ūKiaiMauna

@bigislandnews

Big Island Video News

5 years

Pua Case talks to police #MaunaKea

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@terisasiagatonu

3 years

Lol

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@terisasiagatonu

19 days

Say it in your heart. Say it when you sleep. Haunani-Kay Trask October 3, 1949 — July 3, 2021

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@terisasiagatonu

2 years

White people in Australia.....with the audacity to tweet from their moral high ground about their opposition to deadly violence...while they're white in Australia??? K

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Terisa Siagatonu

@terisasiagatonu

1 year

Going to Maui right now is unconscionable. You check into your hotel as they’re trying to shelter residents who just lost everything. You go & swim in the same ocean that folks jumped into the other day to escape the fires that just swallowed their town. Vile. Go to hell instead

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Terisa Siagatonu

@terisasiagatonu

4 years

Like this tweet if you remembered American Samoa is a U.S. territory. RT if you remember that territories can't vote in the primary election for President, but can be enlisted in the U.S. military and sent to war on behalf of one #DemConvention

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Terisa Siagatonu

@terisasiagatonu

4 years

Gonna mute this tweet. Immigrant/Black women get shit done, per usual. For a country that barely legitimizes their existence and value, no less. Thank you @rihanna ❤️

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Terisa Siagatonu

@terisasiagatonu

3 years

Haunani-Kay Trask is the reason I started critiquing empire & militarism in the Pacific & will be one of the reasons I’ll never stop. Her poetry & writing taught me to reframe the question “am I allowed to say this?” to “if I can’t say it here on my own page: where can I say it?”

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Terisa Siagatonu

@terisasiagatonu

3 years

A toxic work environment is more likely to change you than you’re able to change it

@angelamavalla

𝕋𝕙𝕖 𝕊𝕜𝕚𝕟𝕗𝕝𝕦𝕖𝕟𝕔𝕖𝕣

3 years

What is the biggest lesson that employment has taught you?

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@terisasiagatonu

2 years

Teachers just want (and deserve) more money, man. They didn’t ask for their school district to create subsidized housing so they can live with their coworkers

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Terisa Siagatonu

@terisasiagatonu

5 years

Malo Uncle Rocky for making it to the mauna. Cultural protocol: greet the kūpuna first. #K ūKiaiMauna #ProtectMaunaKea

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Terisa Siagatonu

@terisasiagatonu

3 years

There is no such thing as ethical billionaires. Not even your favorite celebs. That money is systems money. It requires exploitation and extraction. No, we’re not jealous or being fake woke or whatever folks say to keep from waking tf up and realize they’re defending billionaires

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Terisa Siagatonu

@terisasiagatonu

3 years

I don’t speak for any other/all Pacific Islanders, but folks don’t need to lump us into what’s distinctly happening to Asian people right now just because we’re in the AAPI community together. Languaging this violence is important. It’s happening specifically to Asian folks.

@nguyen_amanda

Amanda 🚀

3 years

Please check on your Asian American Pacific Islander friends tonight. Let them know you are here for them.

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Terisa Siagatonu

@terisasiagatonu

2 months

Malcolm X: The greatest mistake of the movement has been trying to organize a sleeping people around specific goals. You have to wake the people up first, then you'll get action. Interviewer: Wake them up to their exploitation? Malcolm X: No, to their humanity... Happy Bday 🖤

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Terisa Siagatonu

@terisasiagatonu

4 years

A lot of y’all don’t actually give a shit about Indigenous people because the moment Hawai’i gave the green light to travel, 7000+ of y’all jumped at the chance to go with zero regard to your impact, COVID’s impact on kānaka, & your selfish desire to vacation.

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Terisa Siagatonu

@terisasiagatonu

5 years

True story of how my parents met: my dad dialed the wrong number & my mom answered. They kept in touch for a year before their first date. They married 32 years ago today, and I am quite literally a honeymoon baby of fate🍯🌙✨ Happy Anniversary to my favorite love story ☎️❤️

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Terisa Siagatonu

@terisasiagatonu

4 years

‘This is ecofascism’ doesn’t seem to work as well in response to these takes, so I’ll just remind folks that Indigenous people protect over 80% of the world’s biodiversity, yet make up less than 5% of the population. Earth is healing from systems (capitalism), not its protectors.

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Terisa Siagatonu

@terisasiagatonu

1 year

To have what it takes to shuffle visitors instead of sending them home/using those relocation resources to help Maui recover is a snapshot of how disposable Hawai’i is: to the State, to tourism, to everyone who visits. Kānaka keep saying stay home for a reason: look at their home

@LynnKawano

Lynn Kawano

1 year

BREAKING: up to 4000 visitors expected to be flown from Maui to Oahu. They will likely be put up in the convention center. Security and food service is being prepared. #HawaiiNewsNow #MauiFires

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Terisa Siagatonu

@terisasiagatonu

3 years

Names are sacred. Ancestral family heirlooms type of sacred. They should always be treated as such. It's highkey triggering to watch media butcher the Atlanta victims' names in an attempt to report on them first. Straight up cultural violence. Vile.

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Terisa Siagatonu

@terisasiagatonu

2 months

Actually Joseph: my bio signals that my work speaks for itself & that Google is free. It also signals that white poets who I've never heard of & who galvanize other white people to make a racist spectacle out of me only ever have the audacity to critique me, but never the range.

@jmasseypoet

Joseph Massey

2 months

These days, it’s not enough to be a poet who writes interesting work. Look at this poet’s bio. What does any of it have to do with poetry? Nothing. It’s signaling to the reader: take me seriously because of my identity, not because of my (terrible) poetry.

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Terisa Siagatonu

@terisasiagatonu

5 years

So to insinuate that Hawaiians, Chamorros, Sāmoans, or any other island nation that is under U.S. occupation couldn’t survive without our colonizers stealing our land & resources: it’s the other way around. Our colonizers couldn’t survive without us. They still can’t.

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@terisasiagatonu

Terisa Siagatonu

@terisasiagatonu

3 years

I understand settler colonialism and militarism just fine. I didn’t even have to be from a colonized land to understand it because it’s not complicated. It’s just insidious, as evident by the amount of people who keep trying to say this is too complex. It’s not. Free Palestine.

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Terisa Siagatonu

@terisasiagatonu

3 years

At least once a day I think to myself: "people just made all this shit up"

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@terisasiagatonu

Terisa Siagatonu

@terisasiagatonu

5 years

My biggest regret was not considering going to community college first, and instead struggling like hell through my first year at a 4-year university as a first-gen student of color. I wish I would’ve at least looked into it. Instead I just did what I was tracked to do.

@Iamdenia_

Nia ❤️

5 years

Sco Pa Tu Manaa ?

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Terisa Siagatonu

@terisasiagatonu

6 years

When you make a video about why “we need” Asian American & Pacific Islander Heritage Month, but don’t include ANY Pacific Islanders in your video. You don’t even list any of our islands. Disgraceful. And a huge reason Pacific Islanders don’t identify with the AAPI community.

@nowthisimpact

NowThis Impact

6 years

‘I am not exotic. I am a human.’ — This is why we need Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month

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@terisasiagatonu

Terisa Siagatonu

@terisasiagatonu

4 years

I CANNOT with this news of Oakland PD shooting and killing Erik Salgado last night. They shot him 40 times at a ‘routine traffic stop’ and injured/shot his pregnant girlfriend in the passenger seat.

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@terisasiagatonu

Terisa Siagatonu

@terisasiagatonu

4 years

Been re-reading the homie @ClintSmithIII ’s work today. This poem is from his book Counting Descent.

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@terisasiagatonu

Terisa Siagatonu

@terisasiagatonu

4 years

Love to the 5 U.S. territories tonight. All colonized islands, including mine. One of the many groups of people who are American enough for the military, but not American enough to vote for president. I love you & wish you decolonization/liberation, not citizenship #ElectionNight

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Terisa Siagatonu

@terisasiagatonu

3 years

“All this time I told myself we were born from war – but I was wrong, Ma. We were born from beauty. Let no one mistake us for the fruit of violence – but that violence, having passed through the fruit, failed to spoil it.” —Ocean Vuong, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous

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@terisasiagatonu

Terisa Siagatonu

@terisasiagatonu

3 years

I can’t stand the “how far back do we go, everyone was colonized at some point” people. Y’all are annoying as hell

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@terisasiagatonu

Terisa Siagatonu

@terisasiagatonu

3 years

Yesterday the Pacific Islands Forum-- the Pacific region’s most important political body and a powerful voice for the Pacific on the global stage-- made a decision that is already causing a crisis for the future of PIF, & Polynesians are a huge reason why. Thread:

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@terisasiagatonu

Terisa Siagatonu

@terisasiagatonu

5 years

healing healin heali heal hea he h ho hoe hoei hoein hoeing Now we are reflections of each other with no slutshaming. Ooo go us! lol✨🥰😍❤️🥳🥳🥳🥳

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Terisa Siagatonu

@terisasiagatonu

3 years

The violence we see (physical assault of Asian folks) vs. the violence we don’t see (poverty, houselessness, unemployment, the hoarding of resources on a city/state/federal level that’s led to an increase in crime & an intra-community turmoil rooted in white supremacy)

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Terisa Siagatonu

@terisasiagatonu

3 years

That piece of shit who tested positive for COVID and got his friend to take a COVID test for him so he could show a negative result in order to go to Hawai’i? Yeah I hope he runs into the wrong kānaka on island and they rock his shit.

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Terisa Siagatonu

@terisasiagatonu

3 years

Nothing to promote, I’m literally just telling you to spell my name right. Spell all of our names right! Or else!

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Terisa Siagatonu

@terisasiagatonu

3 years

“…the history of indigenous people cannot be written from within Western culture. Such a story is merely the West’s story of itself. Our story remains unwritten. It rests within the culture, which is inseparable from the land.” —Haunani-Kay Trask #RIP

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Terisa Siagatonu

@terisasiagatonu

2 years

Haunani-Kay Trask transitioning the day before 4th of July last year is sacred. She made herself very clear: she is not American. Was not American. She lived Hawaiian and died Hawaiian. Her conviction changed our lives. I know it changed mine.

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Terisa Siagatonu

@terisasiagatonu

9 years

Polynesia= the "many" islands Micronesia= the "small" islands Melanesia= the "black" islands Colonizer who named us= Jules Dumont d'Urville

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Terisa Siagatonu

@terisasiagatonu

4 years

Children, young people, students, teachers, educators, school admin/staff are my president. Lots of work to do, but young people are our pulse. “How we treat children is the kind of culture we get.”

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@terisasiagatonu

Terisa Siagatonu

@terisasiagatonu

4 years

Before we leave, I want to remind everyone that when we say “Eat the Rich”, we do not mean Rihanna. Okay, meeting adjourned

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Terisa Siagatonu

@terisasiagatonu

3 months

USC going from not letting Asna speak to not letting any speakers speak to cancelling the main stage graduation all together is deep. Especially since for many undergrads: this is a class who didn’t have a HS graduation ceremony due to COVID in 2020. All for what? Israel?

@wawog_now

Writers Against the War on Gaza

3 months

‼️ BREAKING: USC just canceled their entire commencement ceremony under pressure to reinstate Asna Tabussum as commencement speaker:

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Terisa Siagatonu

@terisasiagatonu

2 months

A white man calling my poetry terrible. Lol nothing-- and I truly mean this from the depths of my marrow-- could matter less

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Terisa Siagatonu

@terisasiagatonu

4 years

I don’t want to hear anyone from California or who lives in California talk about how racist the South is when we couldn’t even pass Prop 16. Affirmative action in a country built on white supremacy shouldn’t even be on a ballot left to a vote. That’s how racist it is here.

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Terisa Siagatonu

@terisasiagatonu

2 years

I cannot breathe

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Terisa Siagatonu

@terisasiagatonu

3 years

“I have never known the police of any country to show an interest in lyric poetry as such. But when poems stop talking about the moon and begin to mention poverty, trade unions, color lines, and colonies, somebody tells the police.” —Langston Hughes, 1947

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Terisa Siagatonu

@terisasiagatonu

2 years

Don’t believe folks who say that locals (esp from islands) depend on tourism. The fact remains that there was once a time before tourism meaning there can be a time after. Doesn’t matter if they don’t believe that…it doesn’t make it untrue. In fact: we’ve yet to try. #LandBack

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Terisa Siagatonu

@terisasiagatonu

5 years

It’s true that it’s your body and not every tattoo has to have a deep meaning, but for those non-Pacific Islanders who got our sacred tribal tatau markings on you: if it starts to itch & turns your skin bumpy red in a few years, don’t trip that’s just our ancestors laughing 🌊💙

@linaabinnaa

boogie

5 years

sco pa tu manaa?

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Terisa Siagatonu

@terisasiagatonu

4 years

I’m crying. A unanimous school board vote tonight just eliminated the Oakland Schools Police Department. Many districts have contracts with their local police departments, but Oakland has its own schools’ police department. Or had. Until tonight.

@OaklandEA

Oakland Education Association

4 years

Congratulations @BlackOrgProject ! @OUSDNews just voted to eliminate the Oakland Schools Police Department. Now our work turns toward dismantling white supremacy and racism in our schools and classrooms. Let's get to work. #WeAreOEA

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Terisa Siagatonu

@terisasiagatonu

5 years

Me explaining how artists are the real threats to the 1% b/c we have the power to change culture faster than anyone has ever changed laws, policies, or the constitution, & how that contributes to why art isn’t funded well, schools cut the arts first, artists are undervalued, etc.

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Terisa Siagatonu

@terisasiagatonu

2 years

That’s why so many Puerto Ricans, Chamorros, Hawaiians, and others who are current colonies of the U.S. are unwavering about #landback and sovereignty of their islands in this lifetime. They’re not suffering b/c they don’t have statehood. They’re suffering b/c of U.S. imperialism

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Terisa Siagatonu

@terisasiagatonu

3 years

On this day, March 1, 1954: the U.S. conducted its largest ever nuclear weapon test, Castle Bravo, at the Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands. It was 1000x bigger than the one dropped on Hiroshima. 67 nuclear bombs have been tested on MI by the U.S. #NuclearVictimsRemembranceDay

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Terisa Siagatonu

@terisasiagatonu

3 years

Not just weird: it’s violently ignorant & highlights the shallow understanding Asian folks have of their anti-Blackness. If we as AAPI ppl truly understood the function of anti-Blackness as the fulcrum upon which white supremacy depends on: we’d never make this vile comparison.

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Terisa Siagatonu

@terisasiagatonu

7 years

Ppl keep theorizing a/b climate change. Islanders don't have that luxury. We see the water rise & we prepare for something we don't deserve.

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Terisa Siagatonu

@terisasiagatonu

3 years

Haunani-Kay Trask transitioning the day before 4th of July is….whew. Yeah. She made herself very clear: she is not American. Was not American. She lived Hawaiian and died Hawaiian. Her conviction changed our lives. I know it changed mine. Rest in Peace Aunty. #HaunaniKayTrask

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Terisa Siagatonu

@terisasiagatonu

5 years

We had our own gods and deities. Our own education systems. Our relationship with the land was one where land and water were life (and still are), and we took care of both of them so that it could take care/nourish us. Again: this was centuries before our colonization.

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