Rex Halafihi is a third year Anthropology student at San Francisco State University. His research interests include Pacific Studies and indigenous methodologies to Archaeology. As a Pacific Islander, self-determination is pivotal to his understandings of representation. His work focuses on the basis that Asian-Pacific Islander (API) is a damaging social rubric that further marginalizes and invisibilizes Pacific Islander communities.

Rex Halafihi

Driven by DIY ethos learned from growing up within the punk community, Rex Halafihi curates a zine called Our Sea of Islands, inspired by Tongan Anthropologist Epeli Hau’ofa. The zine, written for and by Pacific Islanders, brings focus to Islanders as indigenous peoples, away from the API umbrella, in order to highlight their intersectional identities within their contemporary realities.

He is drawn to expanding the narratives of Pasifika peoples, beyond bodies for entertainment to sites of resistance and decolonization.