Principal Faculty

Research Interests

Tongan Studies, Oceania:Pacific Islands Studies, Indigenous Studies, Native California, Indigenous Feminisms, White Terror and Setler Colonial Violence, Religious Studies, Protection of Indigenous Sacred sites in Oceania and California

Biography, Education and Training

Fuifuilupe Niumeitolu is a Tongan, Pasifika/Oceanian, story-teller, scholar and community organizer. She received her PhD at the Univerity of California, Berkeley and was a 2021 University of California, President's Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Native American Studies at the University of California, Davis. During her time at Davis, she received the 2023 UC Chancellor's Award for Diversity and Community for Chairing the "Oceania: Pacific Islands Studies Research Working Group" sponsored by the Department of Native American Studies.

Her research and community work are interconnected and centered on ending violence against the bodies of Native and Indigenous women and girls and she draws connections to the cycles of violence committed against the bodies of Indigenous Lands and Waters, with a focus on Tonga, Pasifika/Oceania and Native California. Her book project is titled The Mana of the Tongan Everyday, The Refusal of Empire.

She is on the organizing committee for the Pasifika Planting Collective at Filoli Historical House & Gardens. This project is a collaboration between; Filoli Historical House & Gardens, Pasifika Planting Collective and Critical Pacific Islands and Oceania Studies at San Francisco State University. The goals of this project are to work with Pasifika communities to grow traditional Pacific Islander plants—taro, kumala, and si, for the purposes of reconnecting our relationships with the natural world and the garden space supports with learning Pasifika languages,histories, cultural protocols, traditional ecological knowledges, and the importance of food sovereignty. In addition, this project supports Pasifika communities to build good relations with the Indigenous stewards of the land--the Ramaytush Ohlone and other California Indian tribes and peoples. This project, and other projects like this that are currently being organized, highlight many of our core objectives for creating new pedagogies and curriculum for grounding and teaching Oceania: Pacific Islands Studies here in the Bay Area, California. 

Fuifuilupe is on the 2023-2024 Mellon Advisory Board for the Pacific Islands Studies Initiative at the University of Utah working on a Trans-Indigenous collaboration called “Planting Good Relations” with Prof. Maile Arvin, Prof. Kehaulani Natsuko Vauhgn and Corrina Gould, Tribal Chair for The Confederated Villages of Lisjan Nation, the Indigenous peoples of the East Bay, California, and Co-founder of the Sogorea Te Land Trust.

In Spring 2024, she will be teaching two courses--an undergraduate seminar and a graduate seminar that are both titled, “From Pasifika/Oceania to Native California. Indigenous Environmentalism.” These courses will be connected to the “From Pasifika/ Oceania to Native California, Talanoa and Film Series” that will be held on campus.