Esteemed storyteller and creative producer Dr Aaron Salā encourages YPL to pay attention to the details around them which helps to shape their story. Photo credit: Gitty Yee/YPL.
Growing up in American Samoa, Dr Aaron Salā says listening to the songs his grandmother sung in church over and over, shaped his life story.
So much so, he began training as an orchestral conductor in New York City, before deciding his heart remained in his mother’s homeland of Hawai’i nei, and his life trajectory took a different path.
Of Samoan, Hawaiian, Chinese and Portuguese heritage, Aaron returned to Hawai’i where he earned his Master of Music Anthropology and a PhD and has since worked on projects such as Disney’s Moana and Cirque du Soleil’s ‘Auana, as a creative cultural producer.
Based in Kailua, Oahu, Aaron is currently the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Hawai’i Visitors and Convention Bureau (HVCB), following a stint as Festival Director for the 13th Festival of Pacific Arts and Culture (FestPAC), in Honolulu.
An accomplished creative and storyteller himself, Aaron was invited to be a keynote speaker on day one of the Navigating the Digital Landscape Conference in Auckland, hosted by Pacific Cooperation Broadcasting Limited (PCBL), which is funded by the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
As a champion of the Young Pacific Leaders (YPL) program, he also tailored breakout sessions for a United States Department of State-hosted YPL workshop component of the conference, with a focus on truth, transparency and technology.
Intergenerational learning
In his role as FestPAC Festival Director, Aaron says he welcomed more than 3,000 delegates from 27 Pacific countries and territories to Honolulu, including Young Pacific Leaders, which was the catalyst to his affiliation with the program.
“We were very lucky to be able to engage with the YPL program, and I’m very thankful for the funding out of the State Department through the US Embassy in New Zealand,” Aaron says.
“That partnership was key for us because what we did was reaffirm and follow through on intergenerational learning.
“We brought YPL together with traditional leaders from the Pacific region…bringing elders and youth together to create learning platforms and learning opportunities.
“If we are able to thread the needle of continued engagement—in this case with FestPAC—we’re using a cultural practice to bring people together.
“It’s not so often that traditional leaders—the likes of Kiingi Tuheitia, the Head of State of Samoa, or the Royal Family from Hawai’i—are sitting with these youth leaders.
“The opportunity for inter-learning to happen is a once-in-a-lifetime thing, and that could only have happened through the support of the YPL program.”
Connecting with the current cohort of 30 YPL from 20 Pacific countries, gathered in Auckland for the four-day workshop, Aaron says it feels like a spiral of engagement, rather than coming full circle.
“I don’t know that we ever complete the circle, but I do know that the spiral continues to move forward.
“Pacific Islanders are storytellers and story-carriers in a myriad of industries that infuse energy and provide platforms for Pacific worldviews to be imparted upon the world.”
He says participating in a workshop such as this one, is invaluable for Pacific current and emerging leaders and storytellers in their chosen genres.
“Bringing Pacific youth together in a concerted effort to consider the work they do in context to each other, and then in context to the world, is key to the success of the Pacific moving forward.
“As much as our ocean connects us, we are far apart—that is the reality of our world.”
Aaron adds YPL ensures youth from across the entire Pacific region can come together and share their experiences.
“We’re learning from each other because our environments are absolutely diverse, dynamic, and different politically and culturally.
“YPL creates a platform to bring all this thinking together and to create a network.
Clear need for next generation of Pacific leaders
Recently, Aaron attended the The Pacific Agenda: Investment, Security, and Shared Prosperity Summit at the East-West Center, supported by the US State Department, where the importance of cultivating the next generation of effective leaders in the Pacific was made evident, he says.
“It brought senior government officials together with private funders and Pacific leadership,” he explains.
“The goal is to find opportunities for private funding to engage with public U.S. funding in Pacific projects led by Pacific leadership in partnership.
“That work is dependent on how the youth of today plan their tomorrow.
“If our current leadership sees what is happening in the present and youth leadership is future-focused, then we’re always living in that spiral of engagement—seeing forward and planning where those future resources come from.”
Pay attention
When asked what advice he would offer to the YPL at the workshop, he says it is advice he gives to his 12-year-old self, his 18-year-old self, and his 40-year-old self.
“Pay attention…just continue to pay attention to how your grandmother makes whatever she makes in the house, whether it’s lu’au or palusami.
“Pay attention to the kinds of groceries we buy.
“Pay attention to the geopolitics of your nation, of the ocean, and of the globe.
“Pay attention to everything you can possibly pay attention to and connect it to your distinct individual life.
“Understand how your life contributes to the success of your community, and how your community contributes to the success of the globe.
“Continue to pay attention.”
Visit the Young Pacific Leaders website for more information about the US Department of State program.