Seamus Fitzgerald "What is the Most Important Thing in the World?"
Gather with Seamus Fitzgerald to explore Polynesian traditions of peacebuilding and how this ancient wisdom can lead to modern peace
I met Seamus Fitzgerald more than two decades ago while he was serving as the “chief” of the Māori Village at the Polynesian Cultural Center (PCC).
Someone who worked for Seamus had been going to some peacebuilding workshops we offered at BYU-Hawaii on the weekend, and he had noticed a significant change in how he was interacting with leadership, co-workers, and guests.
Seamus came to my office to try to understand not only what changed but how it happened. At the end of the visit, he asked me if I’d spend a Saturday morning with his whole staff at the Māori Village.
We gathered inside Hawaikiroa, the Māori ancestral meetinghouse, and spent four hours together thinking about how changing the way we see each other impacts our ability to be peacemakers.
At the end of the workshop, Seamus stood up and recited this Māori proverb.
He aha te mea nui o te ao?
He tāngata! He tāngata! He tāngata!
What is the most important thing in the world?
It is people! It is people! It is people!
In all my years of peacebuilding, I’m not sure I’ve ever heard a proverb that so simply and powerfully sums up the key to transforming conflict. And it reminded me of a disturbing conversation I had with a professor years before.
In my first year of graduate school, I mustered up the courage to walk into my professor’s office to ask him for some advice about a family conflict I was enmeshed in.
I had been studying conflict for a full semester and realized I had more problems than I cared to admit. I knew I needed help. The problem was that I didn’t want my professor to think poorly of me. I had to find a way to explain the conflict to him without looking like the bad guy.
I carefully thought about how to tell my story. I even wrote it down to make sure that at no point in the story would it look like I shouldn’t be in his class.
I was nervous walking into his office that day. I knew he was a conflict expert. I was afraid he was going to see right through me.
I spent roughly 10 minutes explaining the conflict to him. He listened without saying a word. When I was done, there was silence.
“So … what should I do?” I finally asked when it became clear he wasn’t going to say anything.
“I’ve found that we can either be right or we can have peace. It’s pretty hard to have both. My question to you is, do you want to be right? Or do you want peace?”
I was annoyed. Of course, I wanted both.
It took me a while to understand that I can be right and wrong simultaneously. I might be “right” on the facts but still deeply “wrong” in the relationship.
The “He tāngata” proverb tells us the most powerful form of “right” — being right with each other.
Seamus would go on to create a new training at the PCC that focused on how to live by core values from each Pacific tradition. It transformed the company and the customer experience and led to him being hired away to run cultural training at DoTerra.
I’ve found that the Māori, the Hawaiians, the Tongans, the Samoans, the Tahitians, and the Fijians, all the people of the Pacific that I’ve had the opportunity to get to know, really focus powerfully on this concept above all others.
The people of Oceania have multiple words for this process. In Hawaiian, it’s ho’oponopono. Pono means “to make right.” Ponopono means “the most right,” which in Hawaiian is to restore the relationship. In Tonga, the idea of tauhi vā is about the maintenance of social spaces and “the value and practice of keeping good relations with kin and friends.”
The people of Polynesia and Melanesia are among the best peacebuilders I’ve ever met. They have deeply influenced my work and my life, and I think they will have a powerful impact on yours as well.
In Seamus’s Workshop entitled "Wayfinding on Waves of Peace" (SATURDAY, OCT 26 @8:30 am) you’ll discover Polynesian traditions that offer timeless pathways to peacebuilding — grounded in seeing the inherent mana in every person, nurturing relationships (tauhi vâ), and caring for land and sea as kin. Through stories, values, beliefs, and practices from across the Pacific, this workshop explores how ancestral wisdom, and incorporating ancestral traditions into our lives, can inspire sustainable peace in our modern world.
Here’s Seamus’s Workshop Outline. I believe it will be a transformative four hours:
1. Setting your waka (Introduction)
Welcome and Polynesian worldview: people, land, and sea as one
The proverb: He aha te mea nui o te ao? He tangata, he tangata, he tangata (What is the most important thing in the world? It is people, it is people, it is people.)
2. Wayfinding (Core Values for Peacebuilding)
Mana Tangata — Honoring the dignity and spiritual authority in others
Mālama (Hawaiian) & Tauhi Vā (Tongan) — Caring for relationships and the spaces between people
Talanoa — Restorative dialogue grounded in openness and trust
Aloha — Love as an active force
Tatau Pounamu — Establishing a lasting peace agreement and mutual understanding
3. Waka in Motion (Practical Application)
Using these values to repair
Applying Polynesian peace principles to environmental stewardship
Building bridges to repair relationships across cultures and borders
4. Landfall (Outcomes)
Participants will:
See peacebuilding through an indigenous Polynesian lens
Learn relational and environmental care practices rooted in mana
Gain tools of understanding for applying talanoa, tatau pounamu, and Tauhi vā in diverse contexts
Understand the deep connection between caring for people and caring for the Earth
BIO: Seamus Fitzgerald is a seasoned facilitator in Arbinger’s Outward Mindset and Crucial Conversations, with a strong background as a lecturer in higher education, leadership, and cultural development. He holds an MPhil in Māori Studies and a BA in Pacific Island Studies, with additional qualifications in Māori Performing Arts. Currently serving as the Senior Manager of Global Corporate Culture at dōTERRA International, Seamus brings deep expertise in Polynesian culture having worked in the senior leadership of the world renowned Polynesian Cultural Center for approx 20 years specializing in cultural transformation, communication, and cultural engagement. He is passionate about helping individuals and organizations create meaningful, lasting change through empathy, cultural identity and connections.