The English language came to our islands as a tool of trade, religion, and control. It’s the language that many from my parents’ generation were forced to speak at school, lest they get hit by the teachers. It’s the language that, from my own experiences and observation, seemed to be the marker of intelligence. It’s also the language that, through literature, I came to enjoy and even fall in love with. It’s a language that I have bouts of resentment towards, for taking my attention away from my gagana Samoa. But it’s also the language that I’ve been building my future career on: studying English literature at university, publishing articles whenever I can, reading as often as possible. It’s now my language; it’s a part of me.

My middle name, Laura, comes from Laura Ingalls Wilder — the American author known best for her Little House on the Prairie series, which my family enjoyed so much that it gave them the idea to call me Laura. English literature was embedded into my being, before I spoke my first word. Names in Samoan myths and legends are most of the time related to important historical or local events; people’s names become markers of a place’s history. I like to think Laura acts in the same way — signifying the importance of literature in our family and in my upbringing.

The authors I grew up with include Roald Dahl, Ann M. Martin, Paul Jennings, and, of course, J. K. Rowling. When we moved to New Zealand, my access to books was burst wide open by our regular visits to the Clendon Library; the unaffordability of books no longer a boundary. However, I hardly read books by Pasifika writers in my youth. I visited my old high school recently and my English teacher told me they study Karlo Mila now. I’m jealous.

***

When I first read Sons for the Return Home by Albert Wendt, I didn’t like it. I didn’t get it. It was weird. The plot moved at a pace unlike what I was used to in a novel. The characters felt unfamiliar, unreal. I didn’t understand their motives, or I didn’t believe them. But I so badly tried to like it. I knew Wendt’s status as a pioneer of Pasifika literature. Who was I, undergraduate and unlearned wannabe writer, to say his work wasn’t good? What kind of literature student would I be, a Samoan one even, if I didn’t appreciate Wendt’s work?

To not enjoy his book felt like a failure and a betrayal. He’s the Samoan author. You’re going to dislike the work of the Samoan author?! I’ve come to realise that these anxiety-inducing questions were based on my misguided perception that Samoan literature was a narrow and restricted category. I expected Laughing Samoans humour, Christian morals, and a deep, unshakable obedience to parents. Sons for the Return Home did not give me that. With my miniscule sample population, disliking one book, one author, would mean I’d dislike most of the Pasifika literature I’d read. That didn’t sit right with me, so I looked for more.

Some of my favourite things to read, during these relatively early steps (that I’m still taking) towards discovering more Pasifika writers, are anthologies and collections. I like to read things that contain a multitude of voices. Because I’ve read so little Pasifika writing, I want to be exposed to as much as possible, within one text. In reflecting on her experiences of putting together the Pacific Studies program here at VUW in 2000, the late Dr Teresia Teaiwa writes:

“With over 1200 indigenous languages — one fifth of the contemporary world’s linguistic and cultural diversity — the region commonly known as the Pacific Islands is so huge and so varied, and the pedagogical tasks consequently so complex, that the notion of a single, all-knowing teacher delivering knowledge from the front of the classroom is ludicrous.”

Likewise, expecting one Pasifika author, curator, or editor to deliver an all encompassing product, that reflects the diversity within the great sea of islands and the diaspora, puts pressure on the work to do more than it can (or should).

***

Black Marks on the White Page is a collection of printed work edited by Witi Ihimaera and Tina Makereti. Reading it was the first time I didn’t feel the pressure, the obligation, the expectation, to like work by Pasifika writers (a group, the editors note in the introduction, that includes Māori, stating that they “want to remember our kinship in the wider Pacific” — another aspect I hadn’t considered in my Pasifika art and writing). In the book are short stories, excerpts from longer texts (some yet to be completed), photographs, and even poetry created from blacking out Wendt’s Pouliuli, something new created from the darkness. Ihimaera and Makereti write in the introduction, “none of us should be constrained by any sense of what we’re suppose to look or sound like. Creativity doesn’t live there.”

I was so excited to devour this collection, but I found I couldn’t just chomp right through. There was no seamless transition between each story. There was a break/ A sharp break after each story/ Oh, you thought our stories can be blurred into one homogenous voice?/ One form?/ Think again. Courtney Sina Meredith and Sia Figiel wrote in forms that didn’t immediately click with me. I left, tried another story, then returned. I wanted to understand. I no longer felt like I had to like it, or get it, to prove my literary intelligence. But I was just curious about new forms of storytelling. Figiel’s still doesn’t click with me, after three attempts. I don’t like it. But that’s okay; I have many other stories.

Black Marks is the kind of writing community I’d like to be a part of, or create — a collection of people who want to tell stories, brought together by circumstances related to the creative world and beyond it. It’s an example of what happens when we put our resources, talent, and voices together.

***

A monumental experience this year was interviewing the artists Witch Bitch from FAFSWAG. I wasn’t entirely sure how to conduct an interview with artists, and I stressed out trying to come up with questions they haven’t been asked before. (But we really are curious who inspired you!). I messaged a friend the night before (sorry Lote) to do the interview with me, because she was the perfect person, who would appreciate the weight of the experience, but also because I couldn’t go alone. The interview became more conversational as it went on, my questions becoming prompts more than anything.

There was so much laughter. Sometimes it was the kind that you do instead of crying, or hitting something. It was also laughter that signalled that I was safe and understood. Laughter that felt like home. Even though the interview was definitely not about me, I benefited so much from it. One comment that kept me glowing was when they thanked us for interviewing them in a way that didn’t make them feel like an Other to be studied — they didn’t have to explain parts of their worldview that, to us, were common sense, a feeling novel for them at the time (they’ve since gone on to be interviewed by many other Pasifika publications — slay). I felt myself relaxing.

This year I was also lucky enough to talk to artists Quishile Charan and Salome Tanuvasa, who I wrote about in Issue 13, about their experiences of belonging, indigeneity, and connecting to a sense of home. After a while the dynamics moved away from media and artist to just three brown girls sitting on the floor, talking about life and how ordinary and extraordinary it is. In the same issue I wrote about the Polynesian Panthers who were generous enough to talk to me, answer my questions, and let me tag along to their visit to Manurewa High School.

I’ve tried to expose myself to as many Pasifika narratives I could within the confines of this underfunded student publication I’m lucky to be at the helm of (alongside Tim). But I’m certainly not the only one who’s been writing about things Pasifika: Hanahiva, our Visual Arts Editor, has written about many exhibitions and works in a way that didn’t frame them within reductive genres, ethnic or otherwise, instead addressing more engaging questions around what the works were doing. Jasmine, Dexter, and Luka have all written features addressing topics they cared about. They’re writers who inevitably write from a Pasifika perspective — it’s a part of who they they are — but they only ever claim to write from their own perspective, never speaking on behalf of all (who even is this “all” that people think we speak for?).

***

“Do you feel the burden of being a Māori or Pasifika writer?”

This question, posed by an audience member to the e-Tangata Storytellers forum on October 2, echoes a question I’ve asked myself a few (thousand) times. I’m often too preoccupied with this question to even get words on paper (or screen). Tusiata Avia writes in an article published in e-Tangata:

“Whether we are fully conscious of it or not, whether we create in response to where we have come from, or whether we create in reaction to it, or whether we are trying to ignore it altogether — we are always creating as Pacific women. How can we not?”

Sometimes I feel like my mind is stuck at the time school children were surprised that I knew how to speak English when I first moved here; or when they asked, in a mystic voice, if Samoa had roads or electricity. They were kids without the internet, so whatever — but I’ve grown accustomed to explaining myself. I’m used to people asking me questions about myself that I find dull. I’m used to speaking to an audience to which I’m Other.

Writing for Salient is a strange experience, not really knowing who my audience is (lol no one reads Salient). I assume most of them are Pākehā, based on the student population at this university. But I’m used to speaking to an audience with a different contextual background to me. I was used to speaking to people I feel like an Other to — I’ve been training my whole life to learn how to exist in a world that I have to fit into, not one that fits around me, and the people I belong to. I’m still learning the rules.

In an interview with Vogue, Lupita Nyong’o was asked: “What was it like growing up in Kenya?” She replied, “…normal.” That blew my mind — you can just say that?! It’s that easy?? You don’t have to explain your entire background, give a comparative history 101 session, and draw conclusions?? I want to start seeing my own ordinary details as normal too. I want to stop Othering myself.

When mother speaks, she doesn’t ask for permission, or apologise for taking up space, or worry how people might attribute her words to a larger (arbitrary) group she’s a part of. She simply speaks her truth. I want to imitate her confidence. My words are my own — I will use them as best I can, but I don’t want the burden of representing others.

The public hearings for Samoa’s National Public Inquiry into Family Violence, led by the National Human Rights Institution (NHRI, also called the Office of the Ombudsman), began on September 18 and are scheduled to run until October 6.

Violence, as understood by the NHRI, includes “physical, sexual, emotional, verbal, financial, or any other form.”

This is the first national inquiry ordered under section 34 of the Ombudsman Act 2013, which states: “If the Ombudsman becomes aware of widespread, systemic, or entrenched situations or practices that violate human rights, the Ombudsman may initiate an inquiry.”

The Commission of Inquiry is chaired by Ombudsman Maiava Iulai Toma.

Prime Minister Tuila’epa Sa’ilele Malielegaoi appointed the four other members of the Commission: Falenaoti Mulitalo Kolotita June Ailuai Oloialii, the current President of Vavau Women’s Committee; Agaloatele Peggy Fairbairn-Dunlop, a Professor of Pacific Studies at the Auckland University of Technology; Leasiolagi Malama Meleisea, the current Director for the Centre of Samoan Studies at the National University of Samoa; and Tolofuaivalelei Falemoe Leiataua-Lesa, former Minister of Women, Community and Social Development and secretary for the Congregational Christian Church in Samoa Leulumoega since 1989.

Prior to the Inquiry’s launch, Maiava told RNZ that it “will foster a national conversation on violence on the Samoan aiga” to acknowledge family violence as “the shameful thing that it is.”

Maiava highlighted the necessity for multiple sectors of Samoan society to participate in the inquiry — including churches, village councils, educators, volunteers.

The public hearings have thus far displayed a range of presenters.

On September 20, in a public hearing, Lani Wendt Young, survivor of child sexual assault, spoke about her personal experiences of abuse and the culture of “shame, secrecy, and silence” that prevented her from speaking about it for over 30 years.

Young states that “the more light we shed on this issue, the harder it is for abusers to hide. It is easier for perpetrators to abuse and rape when they can trust that their victims will not tell.”

Secretary to the village council of Lotofaga, Maumaalii Samuelu Tili Mulipola, also presented on September 20, informing the Commission of village laws which provide that the penalty payable by women who get pregnant out of wedlock is 20 cartons of tinned fish.

Maumaalii told Newsline Samoa that “our village rule is in support of the teachings of the Bible,” and stated that it was “done out of love.”

“The Bible clearly states that everyone should live a pure life. This means that people should marry and not have relationships outside of marriage.”

Tuiloma Sina Retzlaff, a survivor and researcher of intimate partner violence, presented a study at the September 19 hearing showing that the perpetrators of 50% of reported cases from 2007–2014 were the victim’s spouse or partner.

At the official opening of the Inquiry Maiava stated, “The time has come for the Samoan community to face squarely the fact that the Samoan home is not the safe place it is supposed to be, by virtue of the cultural and Christian values we claim to cherish.”

Associate Professor Teresia Teaiwa, who passed away in March 2017, had been working for two years to launch a scholarship fund to support Pasifika students in their academic pursuits in the field of Pacific Studies.

Acting Director of Va’aomanū Pasifika April Henderson told Salient that since it was established in 2000, the Pacific Studies program has produced “an extraordinary network of successful graduates working across Aotearoa New Zealand, across Oceania, and across the world.”

The launch is largely organised by the Pacific Studies Alumni Association, including Alexa Masina, Jenny Taotua, Rachel Pahulu, Tupe Lualua, and Mandy Rawiri.

Henderson told Radio New Zealand that “quite generous” donations have already been made, and would currently be enough to fund three years of undergraduate study.

Henderson confirmed with Salient that one such donation, of over $1000, came from the proceeds from the show Purple Onion, directed by Lualua, that was a part of the Kia Mau Festival in June.

The Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences has also donated $5000 towards the fund.

The details of the eligibility for the scholarship are yet to be confirmed, but the university “hopes” to offer one undergraduate and one PhD scholarship each year from 2019 onwards.

Is the (possibly) unhelpful sentiment I keep coming back to whenever I try to “engage” with or “get informed” about a system that is the legacy of shitty colonial violence/administration, and am left feeling exhausted from trying to understand. It’s difficult to know if my participation reinforces those foundations, or if meaningful change is possible by voting.

My sister asked me why I hadn’t voted — didn’t I notice the sharp increase of homelessness, especially in Manurewa, my home???! And I answered, honestly, I hadn’t.

Under the current government, I hadn’t noticed drastic changes in my daily life. It felt like business as usual.

And my sister, ever so lovingly (I could tell she wanted to yell, but didn’t) pointed out the privilege I had, to be ignorant of the urgency of such political effects. I have the luxury of disengaging with some issues; when the tears won’t stop, I step back, refuel, then return. Some don’t have the luxury of stepping back.

The general election is a nail biting race for some, a boring or exasperating bureaucratic requirement for others. But for others still, the immediate effects of who is in power is a frightening and urgent matter. People’s lives are (quite literally sometimes) on the line. I don’t know how effective the change I’ll be voting for will be or the philosophical significance of my political participation. I just know things can’t not change.

In an article published on the VUW website, you mentioned that urban marae and urban papakāinga are ways of creating a sense of place-identity. Can you give me some examples of what these look like?

Cities tend to be made up of two groups of people, at least in the Māori community — there’s mana whenua, who are from that place, this is their tūrangawaewae; and then there’s mātāwaka or taurahere groups, who are Māori, like me, living somewhere which is not my tribal roots. And “urban marae” is really the name assigned to the marae that mātāwaka or taurahere groups have established in the city.

So an example in Wellington would be the Ngāti Pōneke marae down in Thorndon and Tapu Te Ranga in Island Bay. Those types of marae were established when there was this urban migration to the city post World War Two and Māori whānau were looking for ways in which they could carry out their tikanga, or cultural practice. I think it really centered around things like tangi, or funeral, needing spaces that could hold people, that could be a place where people could carry out tangihanga tikanga. But they’re used for all sorts of things — hui of different kinds, kapa haka practice, parties, weddings.

[…] Papakāinga is a more established idea of a traditional Māori settlement, and urban papakāinga had [come to be] seen by government and Māori communities themselves as potentially a response to housing needs. You see around Greta Point, Te Āti Awa have recently developed a modern, medium density papakāinga there.

Moving on to IDC — can you give us a bit of background of how that project/movement began and how you came to be involved in it?

So it really began over a glass of wine with my colleague, Amanda Thomas, who’s a Pākehā lecturer in geography and environmental studies, and her work aims to be decolonising in the way that she does it, and in terms of the outcomes. And we struck up a discussion, thinking: how do we make cities a reflection of the indigenous people that have always lived there? I think it goes back to another idea that often indigeneity is understood to be a rural construct. So people understand Māoriness to be a rural thing, in general not entirely, and cities are not really understood to be indigenous places. But they are, and they always have been and they always will be. We just don’t celebrate that enough. So we were thinking, how do you change the urban realm to be an indigenous urban realm?

What you need is some kind of decolonisation process. [So we thought] okay so how do you do that? And it really was an experiment to open up this public competition where we say, here’s a site — public, give us your ideas: what does decolonisation mean, and secondly, what does it look like in relation to place? Often decolonisation is talked about in relation to other things, social things, like poverty or incarceration rates. But we were particularly interested in place — what is the tangible outcome for our cities?

There’s lots of us in the team now [including] Derek Kawiti, Morton Gjerde, Ocean Mercier, Mike Ross, and of course we’ve collaborated with Ngāti Toa — Bianca Elkington and Jennie Smeaton.

To go on to the symposium that IDC had, how did that go, from your perspective?

I think it was great! We had a great lineup of speakers, all from very different backgrounds — artists, [a] lawyer, Ngāti Toa, we had planners, architects. We had an Aboriginal architect come in and talk about his work. It was a really great mix of people just thinking about what does this look like for our cities. More generally, but also particularly for Porirua.

On the topic of decolonisation, what are important aspects around that very big and loaded word that you think should be addressed before we can even think what it would look like in our cities?

I think that’s a really good question and it’s a really tricky question to answer. I think one of the key things we found, [as] Moana Jackson said, how do you have these conversations if people don’t really understand what colonisation is or what the impact of colonisation is?

Because it was a public competition, it was very hard to sit everyone down who wanted to be involved and say, look this is what colonisation is, if you didn’t already know. So we did try, in the background information that we provided people, to give them a sense of that. Quite a tricky job.[…] So that is something we will try and improve in the future if we were doing something similar. To have a discussion of decolonisation, you have to understand what colonisation is and what the impact of that is on Māori.

There needs to be an understanding of social justice, a broad understanding of what that means and why that is important for [de]colonisation. I think there is a need to recognise the role of mana whenua in our society, our cities, our places, and recognise the mana they have over than whenua in that particular area. I think those are the keys things that need to be addressed before you can move on to thinking about decolonisation.

In the article on the VUW website you mention globalisation in cities around the world and how they are starting to look the same, that there’s this call for a focus to develop unique places and unique place-identity, [and that] Māori identities are unique to New Zealand and something we should embrace. I took that word globalisation, and I was thinking about it for ages. In the broader sense of the moving across borders of ideas, people, and constructions, how do you see immigration and refugees as part of this globalisation, in relation to this larger movement of decolonisation?

It’s a great question and it’s a question that we need to explore in a bit more detail actually. I think yes, immigration and refugees are a part of the globalisation movement in some ways. New Zealand has long been part of a globalisation of movement of people. I think there needs to be a discussion and I think that actually [from mine and my colleagues’ experiences] refugees, in particular, are often pretty open and empathetic to this idea of decolonisation because they’ve either been indigenous people in their own lands and they’ve been persecuted because of it, or they’ve been minorities in their own land and been persecuted because of it. So I think that discussion is almost an easy one to have with refugees and new migrants because they’re kind of coming from a clean slate. […] I think we need to think through it a bit more.

One of the interesting experiences I had doing this project was [when] we were working with some young people in Porirua and we were talking about what decolonisation is. I was in a group with four young men — one from Malaysia, one from China (both quite recent migrants), a young man whose family was from Samoa, and another man whose family was from Vietnam. I was saying to them, what does decolonisation mean to you? And they were a bit baffled to start with, because they hadn’t had to think about it so much in relation to their lives.

Often we talk of this as being a Pākeha–Māori thing but actually, there’s more people involved in this conversation than Pākeha and Māori, but often that conversation doesn’t move past that dichotomy or binary.

How do you deal with or think through this tension of indigeneity and colonisation, and thinking of “urban” itself as a colonising or modern movement? With working within institutions that don’t stem from indigenous structures, to what extent can you indigenise that?

I think it’s very tricky, but I think it’s possible. I think there’s a danger of thinking of indigeneity as being an old thing, something in history. But actually, what we’re really interested in is contemporary indigeneity and future indigeneity and what all that means. I was at a symposium yesterday where people had done a 3-D scan of the marae over the road and I was thinking wow, that’s really forward-looking, to take marae and think about them as learning spaces [and] digitise them so that the learning can be broader than just those who are able to physically access that marae. I think it’s possible, it just has to be done in quite creative and interesting ways. But I do think it’s difficult working within institutions that don’t stem from indigenous structures and values.

Within that, what are some challenges that you’ve seen for Māori who have little connection to rural papakāinga, or rural marae, if they’ve grown up in urban settings?

There are lots of challenges and I experienced them myself, growing up away from our marae. I think a sense of belonging is often really a thing that people get worried about or concerned about, because it relates to identity. Who am I ? Am I Māori? Am I not Māori? What does it mean to be Māori? What does it mean to be Pākeha? And most of us are a mix of a whole range of different things, so that identity and belonging issue is a big deal.

[Other questions are]: Where do we belong? Where is our place? Where is our tūrangawaewae? Is it where we grew up? Is it our marae? Those kinds of things are really tricky.

And I think the third thing is about how do we reconnect? […]  Lots of young Māori and students that I’ve had want to reconnect and I think the university has a real role in encouraging that. How do we as lecturers and teachers encourage that reconnection for our students, so that they’re not having to rely on their own steam, [and] we’re helping to facilitate some of those connections.

To run with that sense of finding those connections, what are some examples that stood to you, perhaps even your own, of asserting that belonging and finding that sense of identity following that sense of removal?

The obvious one, and there’s a lovely book written on it called The Silent Migration, is the Ngāti Pōneke group [post World War Two]. So they banded together and had kapa haka groups […] and they’ve got a marae down in Thorndon, which I’ve already talked about, they’ve established a sense of belonging in Wellington.

Another example which is more contemporary is from my own whānau where my aunt recently passed away, and she was from Ruatoria up the east coast which is where she’d grown up and been most of her life, but her children were in Palmerston North. She, and her husband, wanted to have the tangi in Palmerston to be with her family. So there was lots of negotiation about turning this three bedroom house into a marae essentially.

My cousins got army tents, and gas cookers, tarpaulins, and set the deck up as a wharekai, and tables, and we had a hangi cooker that you can get from the Warehouse. So a real kind of contemporary adaptation of a three bedroom house in the suburb to create a marae. And I thought wow, this is a really amazing transformation. This is such a great assertion of this whanau, [saying] this is their place, their home, and that’s where she wanted to be.

That’s beautiful, going back to the creative ways of thinking about place and belonging. To go on from the article [on the VUW website], you’ve mentioned that this not just a Māori-Pākeha conversation. Everyone needs to be involved.  One of our writers who wrote about the IDC Symposium also wrote about this. He was struggling as a Pākeha writer and attendee of the symposium, thinking, where do I come into this?  How much do I listen? Where does my voice come in? Could you give us an example of what this discussion has looked like, could look like, in a way that’s fair and balanced, and being respectful to Māori as tangata whenua, and as voices that haven’t been a part of largely mainstream or governmental conversations of this? How do you negotiate these voices?

I think Māori or mana whenua have to be in charge of those conversations, because they’ve been most impacted by colonisation. So I do think that still stands true. But I think that Pākeha need to be involved. And to be involved respectfully is kind of just common sense. It’s about making sure you read the situation. Are you understanding what’s going on? Have you prepared and do you know the background to some of these situations? Have you built the relationships with mana whenua to be able to be at the table?

The competition that we held was quite unique in that it did blow open the door for anyone to be involved. I think that’s really important because lots of people said to us, “oh, I’ve never thought about this before.” In fact, one of the winners at the prizegiving [at the IDC Symposium], said “can I please say something?” And he stood up and said, “I’ve grown up in a town where there were no marae, and I’d never thought about it. Never had any Māori around me and I’ve never had to think about these issues and this is the first time, and I’m really grateful for the opportunity of being part of the conversation.”

So, that felt good, but I also think that also needs to tempered with making sure mana whenua are in charge because you don’t want a situation where, again, their mana is stood on by people, well meaning people, who are wanting to get this conversation going, but who haven’t understood the nuances of that history of that place or the relationships.

That reminds me of how our writer opened up his article saying how he had just wanted to pop in later in the day and posted on Facebook about this, and they said if you haven’t been powhiri’d onto Takapūwāhia Marae, you have to be there for the 10.00am powhiri. And for him, that was when he realised that how he understood the whole setting needed to change before he could even be an effective participant in it. And I thought that was really cool how he admitted these parts of his experience.

Yeah, it was a great article!

What are other sites/groups/projects that you’ve seen have an active involvement in thinking about decolonising our urban spaces, in a public or more local scale?

I think there are few projects going on. I don’t think they’ve constructed them as “decolonisation projects” but I think effectively that’s what they are.

Ngā Aho Tikanga Māori Co-Design Network have developed, a few years ago now, a set of principles called the Te Aranga Principles, which are essentially to guide urban design thinking in New Zealand. Some of them are process-driven, how you do the design, and some of them are higher level ideas or concepts, that allow people to draw down and think about what that means for the built environment. So that’s been a really interesting project. So that is now part of Auckland Design Manual. They’ve now got a Māori design lead in the design team at Auckland City Council so quite a big project going on there.

The Christchurch rebuild has been a really interesting time for Christchurch to rethink their place-identity. As most people would know, Christchurch was know as a “garden city”, that was its identity pre-earthquake, and to some extent still is, and very much modelled on an English city. Despite it being a completely destructive and horrendous set of events, [the earthquakes] has given Christchurch a chance to rethink that.

And what has happened has been a really interesting process, whereby Ngāi Tahu have set up a group called Matapopore and their role, [as] mandated by Ngāi Tahu, is to feed into all of these new design proposals for new buildings and spaces the Ngāi Tahu identity. I’m simplifying, but that’s basically what happens. […] The Tākaro ā Poi Margaret Mahy Family Playground, in the centre of Christchurch, is this lovely demonstration of Ngāi Tahu identity woven into this contemporary park.

They have a set of urban design guidelines as well, that are a set of narratives. They’re stories about different parts of Christchurch that designers have to take into account when they’re designing for that area or context.

Narratives as the form of guidelines are a really cool way of looking at it. Like, here’s the context, now design from that point…

It’s pretty innovative actually. Often guidelines are very much just concepts, as opposed to narratives. So yeah, it’s a really cool idea.

Who do you think still needs to get involved, in this conversation, in this larger movement?

Pākehā middle New Zealand. So we will never, well, not easily, get involved people who are racist. But I think there’s a group of people who are middle New Zealanders who are educated in certain things and they’ve just never had to think of these things or never had the opportunity to think about these things, and they often [think] this is not to do with me, this is not my area of interest, I have nothing to do with this. It’s those people who I think are important to bring into the conversation […]. They’re educated and they’re open to ideas but they hadn’t had the opportunity to talk about this kinda stuff before. […] I think one of the things opening up the competition to everyone did was allow people to think, okay, even as a Pākehā New Zealander, I’m allowed to be part of this conversation. I think that was a useful thing.

And now our final question, always the most challenging — what is your favourite colour?

I think I like green… almost an aqua green…

Almost-blue green?

Yeah, that gives me two colours perhaps!

The Polynesian Panthers (officially The Polynesian Panther Party) were a group that pioneered collective, organised, Pacific activism. Founded in 1971 by Pacific youth (averaging at 20-years old), the group created services to support their communities who were victims of the government’s systemic racial discrimination, and no help was available. The Panthers started programs and advocated for causes that have affected New Zealand’s history, though they are not known widely around the country, even among Pacific communities.

Five years after leaving, I found myself back at my old high school, sitting in on a class listening to four of the Panthers, Will ‘Ilolahia, Tigilau Ness, Alec Toleafoa, and Dr Melani Anae, sharing their experiences with students. The students’ excited expressions and questions showed enthusiasm about a history subject that I’d never seen in my time at Manurewa High. Indeed, the teachers confirmed that the pass rate in this topic soars in comparison with other units.

Worried about widespread complacency in those who benefit from privileges granted to them by the sweat and blood of previous generations, the Panthers were encouraged by the enthusiastic engagement from the classes they spoke to at Manurewa High. It’s amazing what happens when the subject you teach connects with students on a deeper level, not just a means to pass an assessment.

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During the 1960s, New Zealand looked to the Pacific to source cheap labour to grow the economy. The government waived strict immigration regulations for Pacific immigrants coming to work in factories and other labour-intensive industries to perpetuate growth. Government and manufacturers turned a blind eye to the expiration of work permits, because it was beneficial for production of goods and the delivery of services. However, when New Zealand’s economy took a hit following the 1973 oil crisis, the demand for cheap labour dropped, and immigrants became the scapegoats for the country’s economic and infrastructural failings.

Pacific migrants were subsequently the target of “dawn raids” — spontaneous police raiding of their homes, demanding proof of legal residency or citizenship. The failure to produce the required documents on the spot meant an instant arrest. Carrying these invasions out at dawn ensured that police were able to catch people off-guard and cornered. Nevermind if people didn’t have proper clothes on, if children were woken up and crying, if the elderly were disturbed, or if people had no idea what legal processes and fair treatment meant. Nevermind that the number of overstayers from Australia, the United Kingdom, and South Africa were higher than those from the Pacific Islands, which only made up about 5% of those found guilty of illegal residence.

“When we had a discussion about the dawn raids, by that time [the Panthers] were five years old, and the community were starting to see that we were not a gang… That was probably the first action that we were told by the community to do something about.” Will described how some of the members wanted to sort the problem out in a big physical altercation, while others wanted to write letters to politicians against the raids: “It was a leader of one of our youth chapter who said, ‘Why don’t we raid the ministers?’” In a documentary created for Māori Television, Will recounts one of their reciprocal dawn raids of a minister: “We had the lights blaring, in our black gears, loud hailers saying, ‘we’re members of the Aotearoa Liberation Movement, you have 24 hours to prove that you are rightfully allowed in this country.’ Fortunately enough, I had a friend working at Radio Hauraki at the time who rang up the minister on air, asking him what was happening. And he said on live radio, ‘How dare these people come at an ungodly hour!’” It took just under three weeks, following this, that the dawn raids ceased.

If officers weren’t barging in at the crack of dawn, there were still issues with landlords and the substandard housing given to Pacific migrants. There was no Tenancy Tribunal at the time for anybody to raise legitimate complaints about unfair treatment by landlords and living conditions, which were “just derelict. Ordinary Kiwis wouldn’t live here.” So the Polynesian Panthers set up the Tenancy Aid Brigade (TAB). The TAB gathered legal information about what the standard of housing ought to be, and conducted rent strikes with tenants — refusing to pay rent until adequate maintenance work was done on the houses. The TAB resulted in the creation of the Tenancy Protection Society and, later on, the Tenancy Tribunal. This is one major instance where the Panthers’ action resulted in a change in the system that now benefits people across the country.

There were many times when people didn’t understand the legal processes they were going through, the appropriate channels to get assistance, and legal aid was not readily available from the state. Together with lawyer David Lange (who went on to become Prime Minister in 1984), the Polynesian Panthers created and distributed a Legal Aid booklet outlining the rights that their communities weren’t aware of due to language barriers and a general lack of accessible legal information and support.

Polynesian Panthers Legal Aid Brochure. Cases Rebelles. 2015.

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When speaking at Manurewa High, the Panthers drew attention to two cultural values they saw growing up with their migrant parents: respect for authorities and respect for hosts. When you go into someone’s home or village, you follow their rules, respect their authority, and you are grateful for the hospitality you receive. However, in the context of immigration, and particularly the circumstances Pacific families faced in the 1960s and ’70s, people weren’t treated with reciprocal respect and dignity. Pacific workers were sources of cheap labour and not much else.

The cultural gaps between the generation who were born and grew in New Zealand, and their parents who’d come from the island, often led to disagreements about what doing the right thing meant. For their parents, fighting for your rights seemed to be a form of disrespect for authority and ingratitude to hosts. To have been allowed into the country at all, and having some sort of job and some sort of shelter, was all that you should need. The idea of challenging official authorities, protesting, and risking getting arrested in a fight against social injustice was seen as causing unnecessary trouble. “[Our parents] only hoped for our protection, only fought for our good,” Tigi tells the class.

Those who grew up in New Zealand were aware early on that life in New Zealand meant living under unfair treatment based on racial biases. Once the young Polynesian Panthers were able to demonstrate and highlight that the New Zealand government’s treatment of Pacific migrants and their children was unfair and dangerous, the older generation began, slowly, to understand where their children were coming from. The Panthers were always trying to find the balance between “informing ourselves about who we are, and dealing with a racist government, and educating our parents.” Alec Toleafoa described a mass arrest at a social hosted by the Polynesian Panthers; people were held in jail without charges, and with no knowledge of why they were arrested. When Alec explained to the parents of those unfairly arrested what was going on, and that their children weren’t in the wrong, “…they saw for themselves, that these things do happen, that authority does make mistakes, and they’re not always right. That’s when I think, at least for those parents, something changed for them.”

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The Polynesian Panthers drew initial inspiration from the Black Panther Party, as a group who organised and built solidarity among communities being systematically discriminated against under public and private laws and regulations. However, Will stresses the differences between the oppression faced by Black Americans and the Pacific communities in New Zealand. The term “Polynesian” sought to encompass not only the Pacific migrants but also tangata whenua, to show the necessary solidarity across the Pacific Ocean and the shared identity, at least to that extent, with Māori. Will remembers that “there was a little bit of friction between Māori and Pacific” due to the differences they perceived of each other, created by the perpetuation of stereotypes of immigrating Islanders coming to take land and jobs, and of Māori as lazy indigenous people who couldn’t do the jobs the Islanders were brought in to fulfill. “We needed to come together, as Polynesians.”

Although the Polynesian Panthers worked heavily in supporting their Pacific communities — in legal areas, education, housing, and making available transport for families to visit loved ones in prison — they realised the importance of standing alongside other groups fighting systemic racism and the oppressive structures of power that had been cemented in the process of colonisation.

They stood alongside Ngāti Whātua in the 18-month occupation of Bastion Point, protesting against the selling of their land to property developers. Will recalls his father asking him, “Why for you go up there? You’re not a Māori.” Will replied by asking him how he would feel if the same situation was happening to their land back in Tonga. “Three weeks later [his father] convinced his church group, and they sent up six trucks of food.” The Polynesian Panthers had been building relationships with Māori communities and activist groups such as Ngā Tamatoa and, when it came to the march and occupation of Bastion Point, there was a strong sense of solidarity between them and tangata whenua.

One of the biggest and final protests the Polynesian Panthers participated in was during the Springbok Tour of 1981. For the Panthers and many others, South Africa’s racially selected team was an extension and reinforcement of Apartheid. Led by the Panthers, Hone Harawira, and other close allies, people mobilised a large group of protesters against the tour outside Eden Park, showing solidarity and support for those facing much harsher realities than being excluded from a sports team. “It wasn’t just a venting of frustration and anger. No. Apartheid was the beast we had to slay,” Tigi reflected in 2010. Following those protests some people were arrested and charged with unlawful assembly, assault on police, destroying government property — among them Will and Tigi. Tigi and others were sentenced to some time in prison. Will and Hone endured two-year trials. It was a character testimony by South African Bishop Desmond Tutu that was the pivotal move in Will’s trial, and he walked free, after fighting for the freedom of others.

Springbok Tour Protest. Cases Rebelles. 2015

Will commented that, though Pacific communities face new issues nowadays, old ones continue too, such as crime recidivism and education failing rates. Ongoing racism and xenophobia have continued the rhetoric that minorities are the causes of social and economic disparities, despite the fact that they are the ones who bear the brunt of negative effects. Pacific migrants were the scapegoats of the 1970s, and today immigrants from other nations are blamed for New Zealand’s problems. Tigi warns, “there’s always the chance of this happening to them, and we can’t let it.”

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Talking to the Panthers, one of the biggest messages they promote, especially for Pacific youth, is the importance of education. Knowledge is power and people can use what you don’t know against you.

Dr Melani Anae took to academia as her way of continuing important work that started with the Panthers. As the Director of Research of Pacific Studies at the University of Auckland, her research and teaching tackles issues of history, language, and identity of the Pacific diaspora, as well as research methodologies and how knowledge is valued, gathered, and passed on. Some of her students, inspired by the work of the Polynesian Panthers, created the student initiative I, Too, Am Auckland, a campaign promoting the collaboration of Pacific Island and Māori students at the University of Auckland to address issues of racism still prevalent within the university context and beyond.

Will found that “something that’s very influential — outside of government and people in power — in making a change is media. We had our own little Panther Rapp newspaper and that was my first example of seeing how effective having a newspaper was in getting the word out.” He currently works in media encouraging Pacific people to take control in crafting the narratives about themselves, not leaving it to the hands of those who can only brush general images based on uninformed stereotypes.

This is particularly important, as education doesn’t happen solely in the classroom or tertiary institutes. Tigi emphasised, “I was politicised by the Polynesian Panthers… something I never got in school.” He read lot of books, from the Black Panthers, socialist philosophers, and other texts that analysed patterns of social structures that he recognised in his own realities. Tigi also learnt about his heritage and language from his family, encouraging the class to “look deeper in your history.”

“A lot of people still don’t know, because it’s not the kind of group that anybody in power would like to promote. But since last year, or the year before, it’s now an NCEA topic — the dawn and the Polynesian Panthers. That’s why we’re getting an increase in the number of schools wanting us to talk, and we’re telling everybody, ‘hey, use us while we’re still alive.’ Soon, you’ll be having to read articles from the Salient.”

Quishile highlighted the functionality of cultural creativity as a way of organising communities, interacting within these communities, and passing on family and cultural history. “I’m interested in colonial shame and how that’s affected my [Indo-Fijian] community and myself. […] So I work with visual narrative through textile making that relies on flora and fauna, and one element of our textiles is telling our stories, the traditional knowledge systems. But I also want to offer a place of grieving, healing, because it’s not something my community has been offered and it’s something we’re still trying to work through.”

In preparing for this exhibition, Salome highlighted feelings of isolation during art school that is carried through into the wider art industry. Engagement with colonial and postcolonial disruption of a sense of self and belonging are few and far between. Working on this has “heightened the lack of support and a space that’s been safe to have these discussions. There’s a lack of space for people who are going through similar issues either in their art practice or daily lives.”

Salome describes going to university and being told to value only a certain kind of knowledge from a certain group of academics, and slowly losing a sense of value of the knowledge passed down from her ancestors. “Institutions need to help — earlier on — and communities need to help promote the value of different structures and sites of knowledge”

“When we were talking about the name of this exhibition, it was nice to acknowledge and think about where we come from, and how our names are pre-conceived by family members who have good relationships with their great-grandmothers and great-grandfathers, and it’s a connection I wish I had. So ‘Salome’ is from my mother’s mum’s name, and she lives in Vava’u in Tonga, where my mum grew up.  And ‘Ofa’ is  my dad’s mum’s name, and dad’s from Samoa in Nofoali’i. To have these names given to me, and knowing these connections, is very humbling”.

Quishile explains where her hybrid name comes from: “Around the ’80s, parents gave their children names that were different, and sometimes squished a bunch of names together, or alternative spellings of Hindustani names… With my name, it starts off with a boy’s name — Kushaal — and it means ‘the happy one’. My family always tells me stories that my father took a really long time deciding my name, and he thought it was important to have my aaji’s (grandmother) name, Shila, in mine.”

Quishile’s aaji told her one day, “in your name, that’s where I lay. This way I know, someone will never forget me.”

Namesake is currently showing at Enjoy Gallery until July 22, free entry. On July 22, 11.00am, there will be an artist talk with both artists.

The annual conferences allows students across the country to celebrate cultural identity and discuss issues affecting their communities.

The Cook Islands Students’ Association (VUWCIA) hosted this year’s Taokota’ianga from July 6–9. There were over 60 students in total from University of Auckland (UoA), Auckland University of Technology (AUT), Waikato University, Whitireia, and VUW.

The central theme, Te au tu kai akamatutu i te kopapa e te manako — food that strengthens the body and mind, was inspired by the Mental Health Foundation of New Zealand’s Five Ways To Well-Being.

Co-President of VUWCIA Bethany Mataiti said of hosting the event, “my biggest lesson learned was to just roll with the stress and kind of immerse myself in the process.”

The VUW Samoan Students’ Association hosted this year’s So’otaga from July 4–8, with over 200 students in total from UoA, AUT, Waikato, University of Canterbury, and VUW.

The central theme for So’otaga, Tautuanā ne’i vale tu’ulima le tofi — be wary of the privilege passed down by hand, lest it be in vain, was carried through the lāuga, debates, and cultural performances.

The Tongan Students’ Association (Victorious Stallions) travelled to Hamilton for their conference, Amatakiloa, hosted by Waikato University from July 6–10. There were around 200 students from UoA, AUT, Waikato, Otago University, Manukau Institute of Technology, Auckland Institution of Studies, and VUW.

The theme, Filihia moe ‘elili, is a Tongan proverb. Stallions Vice-President Mateaki Ahio explains that it derives “from a story of the fishing trail for a particular sea snail called ‘elili, found on rocky shores in the higher intertidal zone, an environment of harsh extremes and tidal excursion.”

The theme “encapsulates our journey in our academia world” and “is a great reminder to our Tongan students that… our sacrifices are worth it in the end.”

So’otaga and Amatakiloa also double as competitions in the four categories of sports, academic, cultural performances, and Christian-based performances. This year, both groups from VUW won their respective overall prize.

The Stallions dedicate their win to a beloved member who recently passed away. “To our dearest Palei Tuiano, who will forever be remembered as the joyful and goofy member who never failed to keep the group smiling.”

Directed by Andrew Wakefield, Vaxxed aims to “[bring] to the public a dark and uncomfortable truth” of the alleged causal link between the Measles-Mumps-Rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism.

In 1998 Wakefield, alongside 12 other authors, published an article in the medical journal The Lancet making the claim about the MMR vaccine. However Wakefield’s research has been largely refuted for its unethical methods and the inability of his results to be verified by other scientists and doctors.

The article was fully retracted in 2010 with support from ten of the original authors. In the same year the General Medical Council found Dr Wakefield guilty of “serious professional misconduct” and removed him from the Medical Register.

A year after the retraction, The BMJ (formerly the British Medical Journal) observed that “the damage to public health continues, fuelled by unbalanced media reporting and an ineffective response from government, researchers, journals, and the medical profession.”

According to O’Sullivan, Vaxxed continues the spread of misinformation that began with the 1998 paper.

In his impromptu speech before the screening, O’Sullivan said that “this idea of anti-immunisation has killed children around the world” and this would continue if “parents are put off immunisation because of misinformation […] based on lies.”

O’Sullivan has been criticised for having such a strong opposition to a film he has not seen. When asked if no good really could come from watching Vaxxed, O’Sullivan told Salient, “there is no science behind it, we know that it’s widely discredited […] It’ll be, for me, like watching a video on a dummies guide to racial harmony made by Donald Trump.”

The Māori Party have publicly declared their support of O’Sullivan. Māori Party President Tukoroirangi Morgan said “he is a man of great mana and we all should be listening to his message.”

O’Sullivan expressed his frustration, noting that “it shouldn’t take an angry doctor from Kaitaia” for political parties to address the issue of the low immunisation rates in Aotearoa.

“The rates of immunisation, in my opinion, should be close to 100% and they’re not. And because they’re not, children will die, children will be maimed. […] And campaigns like this are contributing to that.”

“I’m very passionate about this. There are not many things that I’d get arrested for, but I’d get arrested to protest against this.”