Lagipoiva Cherelle Jackson

Indigenous Climate Journalist I Pacific Island Scholar

Dr. Lagipoiva Cherelle Jackson is a Samoan climate journalist, scholar, and traditional leader from Savai‘i, Samoa. For more than two decades, she has reported from the frontlines of the climate crisis across the Pacific Islands, documenting how Indigenous communities adapt, resist, and reimagine their futures in the face of environmental change.

She is the founding editor of The New Atoll, a digital magazine dedicated to elevating Pacific voices and advancing Indigenous perspectives on climate, culture, and sovereignty. As a writer for The Guardian, her reporting amplifies the lived realities of Pacific Islanders and bridges global climate discourse with grounded, community-based storytelling.

Lagipoiva is the inaugural Professor of Pacific Island Studies at Portland State University, where she leads work that integrates Indigenous knowledge systems, environmental justice, and decolonial journalism into academic and community practice. Her teaching and research emphasize cultural protocol, land-based epistemologies, and the role of Pacific storytelling as environmental documentation and resistance.

A former Reuters Fellow at the University of Oxford, she has held editorial roles with the Associated Press, Newsline Samoa, Samoa Observer and has reported for Al Jazeera, BBC, AFP, Wall Street Journal, The Economist and CNN, among others.

Lagipoiva continues to mentor and collaborate with journalists across Oceania, ensuring that Indigenous knowledge remain central to climate Journalism.

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