The Festival of Pacific Arts & Culture (FestPAC) is the world’s largest celebration of indigenous Pacific Islanders. The South Pacific Commission (now The Pacific Community – SPC) launched this dynamic showcase of arts and culture in 1972 to halt the erosion of traditional practices through ongoing cultural exchange.

3-day event that will offer an opportunity for us to move past virtual conversations and connections into the real world. In line with our mission and vision, this will be a celebration of the Black+PI experience inspired by the Black organizational tradition of welcoming the return of its membership “home”. This in-person event will include a keynote speaker, panels on various topics, community building activities, and Africana/Pasifika vendors from respective communities that reflect the interests of the group

“We need stories. And not just stories about the stakes, which we know are high, but stories about the places we call home. Stories about our own small corners of the Earth as we know them. As we love them.”

– Julian Aguon, To Hell With Drowning, 2021

The 2023 AAPS conference theme “To Hell With Drowning” emphasises the need to resist and reframe fatalist and narrow representations of Oceania. From the highlands to the islands, the conference aims to advance multiscopic understandings of Oceanic people’s relationships and relationality of places through storytelling rooted in a trans-disciplinary, critical and creative Pacific Studies. Endorsing Indigenous human rights lawyer and writer Julian Aguon’s call for “stories about the places we call home”, we seek stories and conversations that illuminate fierce attachments to place and the immense beauty, magic and abundance of Oceania.

Register here: https://events.humanitix.com/to-hell-with-drowning-2023