2 December 2025
To celebrate World Futures Day, the Pacific Community (SPC) proudly announces the winners of the Pacific Futurists Writing Competition 2025 – a regional celebration of imagination, futures foresight and Pacific-led future-making.
Launched on 19 August 2025, the competition invited storytellers, thinkers, artists and emerging futurists from across the Blue Pacific to envision thriving, resilient and interconnected futures for our sea of islands. The competition’s four categories – poetry, essays, short stories and visual narratives – received an impressive 74 submissions from 66 participants across 16 Pacific Island countries and territories.
Entries were assessed by a panel of judges on creativity, cultural resonance, foresight literacy, clarity and relevance to the theme ‘Futures of our Sea of Islands’.
The winning entries demonstrate the power of Pacific storytelling as a tool for development, systems thinking and collective future-building. These works will be featured in a Pacific Futures Compendium, and the Overall Winner will participate in the Asia Pacific Futures Network Conference in Bangkok in 2026, representing the Pacific in global futures dialogues.
Overall Winner and poetry: Monique Liatana Pitasua (Solomon Islands)
We Are the Future the Ocean Dreamed, A Memorable Andi-Andi, Ocean’s Future
Poet, storyteller, and educator Monique Liatana Pitasua received the competition’s highest honour, earning the Overall Winner award for her trilogy of visionary poems. Her work is distinguished by its grounding in Pacific knowledge systems, environmental ethos, and a resonant intergenerational voice – each poem offering a hopeful vision of Pacific futures shaped by wisdom, innovation and care.
A language and literature teacher at Solomon Islands National University, Pitasua is currently completing postgraduate studies in Melbourne. Firsthand experience of climate impacts in her parents’ villages in Solomon Islands’ Western and Choiseul Province, combined with conversations with university peers about global trade politics and Pacific self-reliance, inspired her to imagine futures where the region draws strength from its ancestral past.
Her lead poem, We Are the Future the Ocean Dreamed, envisions a Pacific where “the ocean no longer threatens us, it empowers us.” Here, ancestral knowledge coexists in harmony with advanced technology: holographic elders preserve oral traditions, digital tattoos carry genealogies, and smart speakers resound with ancestral chants. For Pitasua, technology is not an eraser of culture, but a vessel that safeguards Pacific memory, identity and environmental stewardship.
Her poem offers striking imagery of an empowered future Pacific:
“Students study tides and algorithms side by side, learning to balance coral ecosystems with data economies.
“Our elders lecture through holograms, retelling oral histories once lost—now preserved in cloud memory, spoken in every dialect of the ocean.”
Her second poem, A Memorable Andi-Andi, reflects on her personal journey through evolving educational landscapes – from overcrowded classrooms in Solomon Islands to modern, well-resourced learning environments in Melbourne. Through a three-part conversation between her imagined 15-year-old self, her present self, and her imagined future self, she explores how Pacific pedagogies adapt across generations without losing their spirit.
“Children learn under the sky and in digital clouds. They study stars as our ancestors did, and map coral reefs with drones and data.”
Rich with sensory detail, the poem incorporates references to Choiseul Province and language such as andi-andi, kuza, and Zai, anchoring her futurist vision firmly in place and lived memory. Her closing reflection captures the heart of Pacific foresight:
“The future is not something that happens to us, it’s something we remembered into being.”
Essay (non-fiction) Winner: Dr Laiseni Fanon Charisma Liava‘a (Tonga)
From Roots to Stars: A Felupe Vision for Pacific Unity and Transformation
Dr Laiseni Fanon Charisma Liava‘a, Research and Development Lead at Pacific Trust Otago, won the essay category for his profound exploration of how Pacific knowledge systems, ancestral wisdom and futurist thinking can intersect to shape a thriving, resilient region. His futurist manifesto reflects on the Pacific as both a living archive of knowledge and a laboratory for innovation, centring ancestral practice while looking toward technological and social futures.
Drawing on his own experience and deep understanding of Tongan and regional genealogies, Dr Liava’a emphasises the interconnections between communities, ecosystems and cultures. He envisions a Pacific where cultural practices, such as the Tongan concept of felupe (to hold things together), inform contemporary governance, education and sustainable development. His manifesto positions the Pacific not as a vulnerable periphery, but as a place of knowledge, ingenuity and leadership.
“From roots to stars, we must rise. Guided by felupe, fueled by unity, and inspired by ancestral voyaging, we can transform vulnerability into victory. We can show the world that Pasifika is not the last frontier but the first horizon of a new global future.”
Through this vision, Dr Liava‘a demonstrates how intergenerational knowledge can anchor decision-making, inspire innovation and guide climate-resilient and socially just futures. The essay underscores that Pacific values – reciprocity, respect for land and sea, communal responsibility – are not relics of the past, but essential tools for future-making.
Envisioning a Pacific with climate-adaptive floating ocean villages, integrated renewable marine energy and even a united space programme, DrLiava‘a’s work resonates as both a call to action and a blueprint for imagining a Pacific future where technology, cultural identity and environmental stewardship coexist in harmony.
Short Story (Fiction) Winner: Aisan Navales (Resident in Republic of the Marshall Islands of Philippines descent)
The Mo Remembers
From her small island roots in Camiguin, Philippines, to her current home in Majuro in the Republic of the Marshall Islands, Aisan Navales blends speculative fiction with Marshallese cosmology to explore the deep bonds between people and the ocean. In The Mo Remembers, the young protagonist, Isla, navigates an AI-enhanced va‘a (traditional canoe) capable of advanced coral monitoring and star-guided navigation, yet she learns that technology alone cannot ensure survival. Through the wisdom of her ancestors she learns it is her relationship with the Mo – the living ocean – that guides her through storms, restoration and renewal.
“The sea remembers. Her breath is life.
The mo is our relative, her tides our guide.
Ewor an eo mour – The ocean carries life.”
Inspired by the resilience of the Marshallese and her own grandmother’s love and respect for nature, Navales’ narrative celebrates the interweaving of ancestral wisdom, environmental stewardship and emerging technologies. Through Isla’s journey, the story highlights that the Pacific’s future depends on both honouring the past and embracing innovation, offering a vivid, imaginative roadmap for sustainable and culturally grounded oceanic futures.
Visual Narrative Winner and High Commendation – Overall: Gillian Dueñas (Guam/Hawai‘i)
Community Mural, A Climate-Just Future, We Rise With the Seas
Rooted in her CHamoru identity, Gillian Dueñas is a Pacific artist and graduate student in Pacific Islands Studies at the University of Hawai‘i whose work blends bright tropical palettes, traditional motifs and aesthetics and contemporary digital forms. Her practice centres cultural continuity, gender justice, and the collective resilience of Pacific communities. Each of her three visual submissions emerged from her direct engagement with Pacific Islander families, youth and elders in Hawai‘i – relationships she describes as essential to helping communities “feel seen, represented and hopeful for the future.”
Her community mural, was created in collaboration with middle school students at Kamaile Academy in Wai‘anae. Together, they explored climate resilience through artmaking, resulting in a mural that captures their shared aspirations: a hula dancer honouring ancestral practice, contrasting images of polluted and healthy oceans, paddlers navigating their futures, and symbols representing their Chuukese and Marshallese heritage. Students anchored their vision with the phrase “i ka wā ma mua, ka wā ma hope” – a reminder, that we look to the past as a guide to the future. The process left them feeling empowered, inspired and hopeful.
Her two digital pieces – A Climate-Just Future and We Rise With the Seas – extend this community-centred vision. Both explore the interconnected struggles and hopes of Pacific peoples: climate justice, nuclear justice, demilitarisation, gender equality, youth leadership, and the enduring strength of indigenous knowledge. Through layered imagery and movement, Dueñas positions the Pacific not as a site of crisis, but as a cradle of creativity, resistance and possibility.
High Commendations:
- Poetry: Chrislyn Julai, Vreny and Kayel Meandu (New Caledonia, Papua New Guinea), The Flight of Three Voices
- Essays: Kerinina Leaupepetele (Samoa), Reweaving the Mat: Integrating Ancestral Wisdom and Modern Science
- Short Stories: Arieta Faaulu (Samoa), A Letter to the Future
- Visual Narratives: Angelica Raza-Furtudo (Hawai‘i), A Story of Connection, Memory and Future-Making
Moving forward: Pacific futures in action
The Pacific Futurists Writing Competition 2025 highlights the creative power and foresight intelligence of Pacific peoples across generations. Through storytelling in all its forms, our communities continue to imagine futures that are climate-resilient, culturally grounded in ancient intelligence, technologically empowered and globally influential.
We congratulate the winners whose creativity, imagination and futures-thinking perspectives reflect how our communities envision the Blue Pacific in 2050 and beyond. From climate-resilient islands and green technologies to honouring identity, community, and the enduring strength of our ocean heritage, these futurists demonstrate that Pacific futures are defined not by vulnerability – but by vision, innovation, and collective strength.
