In response to the climate crisis, the international community continues to advocate resilience-based solutions in the Pacific. While often well-intentioned, these external interventions rarely meet expectations. One reason for this lack of implementation lies in a disconnect between underlying value systems between the global north and the Pacific. This article questions this straightforward dichotomy by exploring the extent to which climate resilience can become legitimate and locally owned. Through a critical post-colonial perspective, we consider the possibilities of Indigenous-based learning in tertiary education and how this can be integrated with the imported concept of resilience. Even if Indigenous-based resilience practices served communities for generations prior to the universalizing practices of western-centric epistemes via colonization, this does not necessarily require a rejection of western-centric understandings of climate resilience. Instead, scientific facts and Indigenous knowledge can co-exist to strengthen local climate resilient capacities and yield the possibility for novel climate solutions.
Plange et al. (Sat,) studied this question.