Aigagalefili Fepulea’i Tapua’i is a Samoan-New Zealander award winning published poet/orator, Pacific youth advocate and indigenous environmental activist. Her work centres around topics such as climate change, educational inequality, Pacific identity and the South Auckland identity. An accomplished spoken word poet and winner of the New Zealand Storytellers competition for her piece Waiting for Water. Her work has appeared in the 2019 Poetry Yearbook New Zealand. During the COVID-19 pandemic she spoke out about racial inequality in education and how the pandemic had forced Pasifika students to leave school to support their families.
Born in South Auckland, she was Head Girl at Aorere College in 2020, co-founded and is Chairman of indigenous youth environmentalist group 4 Tha Kulture and is a member of Pacific Climate Warriors. She has been a guest speaker at the UN General Assembly and the Aotearoa Social Impact Summit New Zealand. In 2020 she was a guest speaker at the UN General Assembly.
In March 2020 she was selected to represent New Zealand at the Global Young Leaders Conference in New York City. In 2020 she won the New Zealand Women of Influence Young Leader Award, SUNPIX Pacific People Emerging Leadership Award, GirlBoss Leadership Award and the Pacific Corporation Forum Supreme Award for Youth Advocacy, and she was a 2021 finalist for the New Zealander of The Year Local Hero Award.
She is a student of Environmental Sciences and Law at AUT and is currently participating in the WorldStrides Gap Year Program studying sustainability and contemporary environmental issues in Europe.
