Pacific islands offer the world stunning biodiversity, millennia-old models for sustainability, and uniquely rich indigenous cultures. These ‘paradoxical paradises’ are also globally-relevant sentinel locations for the ravages of climate change, food insecurity, health inequity, wealth gaps, migration and erosion of indigenous culture. Science and technology offer important components of the solutions to these problems, particularly as the era of ‘big data’ arrives. However, data science has the potential to become the latest in a series of colonizing Western scientific paradigms from which Pacific indigenous peoples are largely disenfranchised. Tensions between science and culture are an emerging threat to health, sustainability and prosperity in the Pacific. This presentation discusses innovative data science research projects and educational approaches that embody principles of democratization (an inclusive STEM pipeline that transcends barriers of privilege), decolonization (inculturation of indigenous knowledge within a Western scientific paradigm), and (re)-discovery (export of Pacific-based models to address global challenges). Theolelo no’eau of the title tells us that ‘not all knowledge is learned in the same school’. A discussion will be offered of gaps in the Pacific educational ecosystem for science and technology, and the necessary fusion of science and culture in STEM educational approaches.
