With Dame Meg Taylor, Tuiloma Neroni Slade, Michelle Bender, Katerina Teaiwa, Joy Enomoto moderated by Lelei Lelaulu.

A clarion call for the recognition of the ocean as a legal person was issued at the 2017 United Nations Ocean Conference in New York by Prime Minister Henry Puna of the Cook Islands currently serving as Secretary General of the Pacific Islands Forum and as the Pacific Oceans Commissioner. Prime Minister Puna asserted it was time to explore the universal rights of the ocean since Ecuador gave nature legally enforceable rights in 2008; Aotearoa New Zealand giving the Whanganui River its legal rights in 2017 and India granted the Ganges and Yamuna rivers the same rights as a human being in the same year. With these developments starting to generate serious international attention, the online talanoa brings together a panel discussion featuring artists, policymakers, and legal experts to explore what ethical, cultural, and legal frameworks need to be considered in giving personhood status to the Pacific Ocean, especially how it impacts the social, cultural and geopolitical divisions in a region at the frontline of Climate change.

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This online talanoa is part of the Talanoa Forum: Swimming Against the Tide, an artist-led gathering that aggregates artists, curators, scholars, activists, community leaders and policymakers to extend the themes from ‘Paradise Camp’ by Yuki Kihara into a series of critical talanoa/conversations under the entitled ‘Swimming Against the Tide’ lifted from a quote by the late Māori New Zealand filmmaker Merata Mita, whose work explored the political tensions in Aotearoa New Zealand during the 1970s and the 80s which brought issues such as Indigenous sovereignty and gender equality to the fore. Mitaʻs words orient the talanoa to explore how localized strategies including art, activism and policy are being developed to address the global concerns of our times.