Unutea Hirshon
Tahitian politician and activist
Unutea "Tea" Hirshon (born 1947) is a Tahitian politician and activist known for her support of French Polynesian independence and her opposition to French nuclear weapons testing in the Pacific. From 2001 to 2013, she served as a member of the Assembly of French Polynesia.
Biography
Unutea Hirshon was born in 1947 in Papeete, French Polynesia. Her mother was from Papeete, and her father was from New York. She was baptized as Séverine but preferred to go by Tea, short for her Tahitian name Unutea.
As a young woman, Hirshon was inspired to fight for Pacific independence and against nuclear activity there after meeting the Tahitian independence leader Pouvanaa a Oopa while visiting France in 1966. As a peace activist, she worked with the Tahitian branch of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. She became deeply involved in the fight against nuclear testing in French Polynesia via France's Pacific Experimentation Center, joining the Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific Movement, with historians describing her as part of a coalition of "radical antinuclear activists" in the 1970s. Decades later, she has been described as an "elder in the independence movement of French Polynesia."
Hirshon also became active as a politician, joining the pro-independence Tavini Huiraatira party. She was later described as a "leading political figure" in the party's Union for Democracy coalition.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q75359008. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1947, 2001, 2013 and 1966.
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This entry incorporates text from “Unutea Hirshon” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.