The ways that colonial powers map and describe Pacific island locations have enormous environmental, social, and political effects on Oceania’s populations and communities, including non-human ones. Representations of islands as small, empty, and isolated and as places to be explored or used as research sites are directly linked to the ways they have been exploited by colonialism and militarism, exacerbating the destruction of their lands and contamination of their waters, and contributing to how world governments ignore Indigenous peoples and their calls for political recognition, demilitarization, and urgent climate action. In this seminar, I will show how contemporary Indigenous authors use poems in particular to tell their own stories in different protest contexts that challenge colonial stories about the ocean, specifically those that circulate through and reinforce US militarism.