ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the ambiguity of the term resilience in the field of disaster risk resilience, management and climate change, and provides a Pacific-Indigenous perspective to the context through two case studies, one based in Samoa and the other in Tonga. The case studies illustrate the catastrophic effects on vulnerable islands. The chapter provides a transnational focus to disaster response from a Pacific-Indigenous lens. The cultural-elder advisors of Samoa Umbrella of Non-Governmental Organisations describes and captures the psycho-social response work undertaken by many local and overseas volunteers, support workers and professionals brought together by the sudden Mala Faanatura that struck Samoa on September 29, 2009. The social worker, Emeline, the founder of Affirming Works, a social service based in Auckland, New Zealand, was residing in Kolonga, Tongatapu when Cyclone Gita swept through the Kingdom of Tonga in 2018.
