Melanesians all across Aotearoa are coming together in Auckland this weekend to celebrate their unique cultural heritage.

This is the second time the annual Melanesian Festival Aotearoa is being held and it is an opportunity for community members from Fiji, Kanaky New Caledonia, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu to fully immerse in their culture.

More than 7000 people attended the inaugural event last year which was a huge success.

Cultural performances, musical showcases, traditional food, arts and craft were on display and enjoyed by all.

Festival director Albert Traill said this festival is “something unique for New Zealand because New Zealand is a predominantly Polynesian-based society when it comes to Pacific Islands communities”.

He expressed that sometimes the Melanesian community feel left out or lost in the crowd and their numbers are smaller in comparison to their Polynesian brothers and sisters.

“Melanesian culture and music is really different to Polynesia. Very similar, but it has its own unique feel,” Traill said.

Annual event
The community have been talking about organising their own cultural festival for years, and with the support of Creative New Zealand, it is now an annual event.

“It’s an opportunity for our Melanesian community to come out and have a space for us to share our culture, our food, and just to come together and celebrate each other’s identity and culture.

“We love it here in New Zealand because New Zealand is a country that loves and supports cultural diversity.”

Traill has a smile in his voice as he reflects on the success of last year’s festival, sharing how many of the performances were youth driven.

The young ones spent months researching their countries and consulting with community elders and knowledge holders, to produce outstanding items.

Their pride and passion shone on stage, striking a string in the hearts of their family and friends

‘Everyone in tears’
“And pretty much everyone was in tears hearing them share how special they felt. Normally they get lumped in with Polyfest and, and all the other festivals and stuff. But this one, for the first time ever, they could say, ‘this is my festival. It’s Melanesian’.”

“We’re doing it for the young people,” he says.

“So hopefully one day when we’re not here, they can stand up with the same pride and say, ‘Yeah, you know what? I’m Melanesia. And I’m proud to share my culture’.”

The festival will be held at the Waitemata Rugby Club Grounds in Henderson from 9am onwards with a packed programme.

The cultural performances begin at 10am and there are a few popular reggae artists and bands hailing from the Solomon Islands, Fiji and Papua New Guinea.

Community groups from Christchurch, Tauranga, Waikato and Wellington are travelling up to participate and the entertainment will continue until late in the afternoon.

Cultural activation spaces will also be spread around the grounds showcasing the traditional weaving and tapa printing of Melanesia.

Ancient tatooing style
The ancient style of Papua New Guinea tattooing will also be on display.

It will be a vibrant hub of cultural identity and heritage and the the organizers warmly welcome any interested ones to come along and join in the celebrations.

“Come and have a look, come and see Melanesia,” Traill said.

“Melanesia is like the Tuakana of the Pacific, the older sibling, the older ancient cultures. You’re looking at 10,000 years of history in the Pacific. A lot of these are ancient old cultures and very complex.”

The organisers expect this year to be even bigger and better, and it will only grow each consecutive year.

They are already looking into further expanding the festival for 2024 and are looking to collaborate with embassies to fly across talented local artists and cultural performance groups to join in next years Melanesia Festival.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Pacific leaders fear they will have little or no voice in the new National-led government in Aotearoa New Zealand with the real possibility of not a single Pacific person making it into the new coalition.

Labour had 11 Pacific members of Parliament, then 10 when then Communications Minister Kris Faafoi left. Included was Carmel Sepuloni who became Deputy Prime Minister when Chris Hipkins became leader.

National currently has one possible Pacific MP, Angee Nicholas, but she may lose the Te Atatū seat on special votes, leading with only a margin of 30 over Labour’s Phil Twyford.

• READ MORE: NZ elections 2023: It’s National on the night as New Zealand turns right
• Other NZ election 2023 reports

But even though the race is tight, she said on social media she had been stopped and congratulated by community members.

“It is going to be close but I hope to bring it home now,” Angee said in a post to social media.

National list MP Agnes Loheni has not made the cut as things currently stand.

Pacific political commentator Thomas Wynne said it meant that the number of Pacific people in government might very well go to one or even zero.

Who is it?
“Here’s my question to National, who is it exactly that you’re going to have as the minister for Pacific people? Because if Angee doesn’t get in and neither does Agnes, then who?” Wynne asked.

“Because you don’t have any Pacific people in there.

“Chris Luxon has said he has a party of diversity, well I’m sorry but that’s just not the case.”

At the moment Dr Shane Reti is the Pacific people’s spokesperson for National.

On the campaign trail Dr Reti said “attending to the cost of living” was one of the most impactful things that could be done for Pacific people.

Pacific community advocate Melissa Lama said she did not know how National planned to make decisions on Pacific issues.

“To me that’s really scary to have one person represent a massive group of New Zealand society who are visible which is our Pacific people, I just can’t get over that.”

Disheartened over results
Lama said she felt disheartened after the results.

“If we look at some of the campaigning slogans and narratives that particularly on the right side, National and Act, have had throughout this election it doesn’t necessarily give me hope for what’s to come for my future and my children’s future,” she said on Sunday.

“I’m definitely gutted. I feel a bit low mood today.”

On Saturday, at a Pacific election watch party in Ilam, Christchurch, most attendees opted to socialise outside instead of watching the results.

Views on what’s to come for Pasifika are mixed. There’s some excitement for change but also nerves.

A common thread was concern that the Ministry for Pacific Peoples would be scrapped.

However, just last week the now incoming Prime Minister told RNZ Pacific he would not bow to ACT.

“Our position very strongly is I’ve been supportive of the Pacific Peoples Ministry. I haven’t been supportive of the management of it. When you have a $40,000 farewell I think that’s insane,” Luxon said.

Keeping an optimistic outlook
Deputy Mayor of Waitaki Hana Halalele who is also the general manager of Oamaru Pacific Island Community Group said she was disappointed about the results but was trying to be optimistic.

Despite the drop in Pacific representation in Parliament, Wynne wants to focus on the positives and asks frustrated Pacific community members to hold National and ACT to account on what they have promised.

“I feel it’s time for us to not think about what we’re losing because that day is done — that was yesterday and really we need to start looking at the opportunity of what this new government affords us, because shouting from the sidelines is not going to help,” he said.

Wynne said Act’s vision was for less government and more community involvement could be beneficial.

He also said Act had promised a return of charter schools, which could be good for Pasifika.

Tongan community leader Pakilau Manase Lua, who is leading the charge on fighting for justice for ongoing Dawn Raids said National and Act had been clear on overstayers.

“They don’t support any pathway to residency for people who are overstaying or who may have been stuck here during the lockdowns and had no other option but to try and find a way to settle.”

Pakilau said while there was concern for overstayers, he was still holding out hope the new government would surprise him.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

A Tongan RSE worker, whose case sparked an independent review of Immigration New Zealand’s “out-of-hours compliance visit” practices, is still on edge.

Pacific community members have compared the actions to the infamous “Dawn Raids”.

Keni Malie’s lawyer, Soane Foliaki, said his client’s case should have ended such exercises.

• READ MORE: Ponsonby march highlights Dawn Raids pain and overstayer uncertainty

However, the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment’s (MBIE) Immigration Compliance and Investigations team has only temporarily suspended “out-of-hours compliance visits” to residential addresses.

“At least until this work is completed,” MBIE Immigration Investigations and Compliance General Manager Steve Watson said.

He said the visits would not resume until new standard operating procedures came into effect and staff had been fully trained in the new procedures.

It is uncertain how these new procedures will be different, and what this will mean for migrant workers.

Detained in front of wife, family
In the early hours on April 19 this year immigration officials showed up at Keni Malie’s residence and detained him in front of his wife and children. He was then taken away and shortly after served with a deportation order.

“Four children were in the house, with three sleeping downstairs and at least one woken up by the activity,” the independent review states.

Malie’s lawyer broke the story to the media, out of desperation. The story gained traction and following a public outcry, Immigration New Zealand admitted this was not a one-off incident.

Keni Malie has since been granted a temporary visa while he and his lawyer work though his residency application but he said he was still nervous about it.

Malie explained in Tongan, as his lawyer translated:

“The hardest thing for me was trying to make sure that I can put a loaf of bread on the table for my children. I hope for the day that I can feel secure and get residence,” Malie said.

Immigration New Zealand has confirmed it has been conducting out-of-hours compliance visits — known as “Dawn Raids” — for the past eight years.

Figures released under the Official Information Act show Pacific community members were the third highest after Indian and Chinese nationals of the total number of people located, between July 1, 2015, and May 2, 2023.

Out of 95 out-of-hours compliance visits, which in some cases multiple people were found, 51 were Chinese, 25 Indian and 17 Pacific.

There was one from the USA and one person from Great Britain on the list.

MBIE reviews
An independent review of what Pasifika community leaders have called MBIE’s Dawn Raids-style visits has now been completed.

The review was led by Mike Heron.

Leaders and members of the Pacific, Indian and Chinese communities were interviewed, along with immigration lawyers and advisers and representatives.

One of the reasons given for this review was that the raids of the 1970s were a “racist application of New Zealand’s law”.

“Immigration officials and police officers entered homes of Pacific people, dragged them from their beds, often using dogs and in front of their children. They were brought before the courts, often barefoot, or in their pyjamas, and ultimately deported,” Heron report reads.

Tongan community leaders were outraged to find out Keni Malie, who is Tongan, went through what they see as a similar trauma.

According to the report, Malie was in New Zealand as an RSE worker when he did not turn up to work because he was getting married.

Added to ‘process list’
After being stopped by police for driving without a licence, Crime Stoppers were also sent a notification for another issue. He was then added to Immigration’s National Prioritisation Process list.

In the Immigration Officers’ view, their “compliance visit” to Malie was carried out reasonably and respectfully.

“They stressed that the operation was calm, respectful and did not require any use of force,” the review states.

But his lawyer, Soane Foliaki disagrees that it was “respectful”.

“In the dark of the night they were back at it, you know, without any consideration? Why did the Prime Minister apologise?” Foliaki said.

To him this was reminiscent of the Dawn Raids. Something the former Prime Minister had only just apologised for.

An INZ spokesperson told RNZ Pacific at a Pacific community event earlier this year that in some cases officers sit down with a cup of tea to build rapport with overstayers.

Trauma for community
“I want to again acknowledge the impact the Dawn Raids of the 1970s had on the Pacific community and that the trauma from those remains today,” MBIE’s Steve Watson said.

We know we have more to do as we learn from the past to shape the future. This continues to be at the centre of our thinking as we move forward,” he said.

Lawyer Soane Foliaki who has been fighting for justice for 30 years still has hope, hope for his client and hope that there will be change.

“We always felt that New Zealand was always a decent country, they’ll always give us a fair go. This is also our home here,” Foliaki said.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

From today readers of rnz.co.nz will see a change to the home page, and a new initiative to tell the stories of Aotearoa New Zealand’s Asian community.

RNZ.co.nz has added a lineup of four sections which focus on the growing communities of Aotearoa and are placed right at the top of the home page.

Elevated links have been added to RNZ’s existing Te Ao Māori and Pacific sections.

RNZ has also launched two new sections for Chinese and Indian New Zealanders and added them at the top of the home page as well.

• READ MORE:
• RNZ Chinese
• IndoNZ

The sections are part of a new initiative to speak to and report on issues in the growing Asian communities of New Zealand.

The new Indian section features original stories in English by specialist reporters.

The Chinese section has stories in the simplified Chinese script. Original stories are there as well as translations of RNZ news stories of interest to the Chinese community.

NZ On Air survey
RNZ is starting with the simplified script and will then scope whether it is feasible and useful to translate using the traditional script as well.

The different approaches are a response to a NZ On Air survey which found the Indian and Chinese communities had different language needs and approaches to seeking out news.

This is one of RNZ’s first steps into daily translated news. Before the launch, RNZ put systems in place to make sure it is getting translations right. The stories are double, and triple checked.

RNZ is also asking for feedback to make sure it is getting it right on each story and will conduct regular independent audits to make sure our translations are on track. RNZ is keen for feedback.

The new Indian and Chinese sections are a result of a two-year collaboration with NZ On Air. The unit of reporters and translators is being funded for the first year through the Public Interest Journalism Fund; the second year will be funded by RNZ, with a right of renewal after that.

Stories from the Asian unit will also be made available to more than 40 media organisations across the country and the Pacific.

RNZ believes that it is vital that RNZ supplies news to many different communities within Aotearoa New Zealand.

The Asian population in New Zealand is growing fast, particularly in Auckland.

In 2018, Asian New Zealanders made up 15 percent of the New Zealand population. The two largest groups are the Chinese and Indian New Zealanders, with about 250,000 people each.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

The New Zealand government is investigating the case of a Pasifika overstayer who was detained after a dawn raid in South Auckland last week.

The man’s lawyer, Soane Foliaki, said police showed up at 5am, scaring his children and taking him into custody — and though Immigration NZ has disputed the timing, it has admitted the early morning raid was not a one-off.

Two years ago the government apologised for the infamous Dawn Raids of the 1970s, and Prime Minister Chris Hipkins said he did not expect them to be happening any more.

• LISTEN TO RNZ MORNING REPORT: ‘They were terrified … and crying and very, very upset and scared” – Lawyer Soane Foliaki

“That does concern me. Those aren’t the sorts of tactics that I would expect us to be using in New Zealand.”

Hipkins said he had assurances no ministers were aware of what was going to happen, and Associate Immigration Minister Rachel Brooking is reviewing the man’s case.

In a statement, Immigration said it was rare for officers to show up early in the morning, and in this case the decision was approved by the national manager of compliance.

It said of the 623 “customers” it “interacted with” between last July and the end of April, just 3 percent — about 18 or 19 — were contacted “outside of hours”. The “vast majority” of visits were carried out between 7am and 9pm.

Historic apology
Foliaki was there when then-Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern delivered the historic apology, and said Pasifika would be disgusted to find out the tactics were still being used.

He said the family were still asleep, the children — staying downstairs in the two-storey rental — the first to hear people banging on the door, and covering potential “escape routes” their dad might take.

“They were terrified … and crying and very, very upset and scared,” he told RNZ Morning Report on Tuesday.

“And the parents heard it from upstairs – it was that loud — and they looked out the window from upstairs and saw that it was police. So they ran downstairs to try and calm the children.”

Their father was taken to the Manukau Police Station.

Immigration NZ told RNZ officers had showed up at 6am, not 5am. Early morning visits are paid when Immigration does not believe the person will be home during the day.

“Look, I don’t believe that at all,” Foliaki said. “My instructions from my client was quite clear – it was at 5am. The chap, he works as a construction worker and he said, you know, if it was at 6am he would have left the house by then already…

‘Cover of darkness’
“Early in the morning is one thing – coming in the cover of darkness is another thing.”

Foliaki said at this time of year, 6am would still be “coming in the cover of darkness”.

“This raid was no different from any other raid in the ’70s.”

Manase Lua who remembers as a child the Dawn Raids on his community said the revelations were “absolutely appalling”.

“We need to put a stop to it … it’s impacting children, children are being terrified at police raiding them at dawn.

“We thought those days were over but obviously it’s not.”

When he heard former prime minister Jacinda Ardern’s apology two years ago he was expecting a substantial announcement such as a pathway to residency for overstayers but instead all they got was the setting up of some scholarships.

‘Great opportunity’
“What a great opportunity to do that during a pandemic yet there was no announcement to help people who were already here needing pathways to residency… Some of them are working and contributing to the tax base so that’s what we were looking for. It was a lost opportunity.”

He said the Tongan man who was arrested was not a criminal and all he had done was not fill out a form to extend his visa.

The irony was that Tongans were singled out in the 1970s and they appeared to be the current targets as well.

Hipkins was flying out of the country today to attend King Charles’ coronation in the UK. In his place Deputy Prime Minister Carmel Sepuloni, herself the daughter of a Samoan migrant, told Morning Report she was “deeply concerned” by the lawyer’s claims.

“Dawn Raids were of course a very traumatic experience for our Pasifika communities, and we don’t want our Pasifika communities to have to relive that. So, we do need to ask questions here, and I have confidence in the minister for immigration asking the right questions with regards to what’s going on.”

Immigration’s admission it has carried out about 18 or 19 out-of-hours visits did not render the government’s historic 2021 apology hollow, Sepuloni insisted.

“But what we need to make sure of is that we are not retraumatising the Pacific community by this type of activity, and so we’re asking the right questions and we will be following this closely.”

‘Humbling’ apology
Foliaki said at the time, he thought Ardern’s apology was “very, very genuine” and “humbling”.

The 1970s Dawn Raids overwhelmingly targeted Pasifika — while they made up only a third of overstayers, they accounted for 86 percent of all prosecutions. US and UK citizens made up another third of overstayers, but only 5 percent of prosecutions.

Foliaki said it was not clear if the modern-day dawn raids are racially motivated, but would like to get figures via the Official Information Act.

“Of the 18 raids, if they happened in the dark, how many of them were European and how many of them were Pacific? We don’t know . . .  If it comes out that there is more Europeans and [non-Pasifika] who are illegally in this country and we have a high figure and nothing at all of these rates happening with the Europeans, of course, we’re gonna say that it’s racist.”

He said his client was the family’s “breadwinner”, and has been “in a relationship for some years with a New Zealand citizen, and who is looking after children”, so has a pathway to residency.

“Ministers of immigration have [said] in the past, if they have a pathway forward, let them test their eligibility for residency by granting them a temporary visa . . .

“We have a convention for the rights of the children — we’re supposed to protect the family, protect the children, don’t harm them. You know, removing dads and breaking up family units like this is just absolutely, it’s against a convention for which we are a party.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Many Pasifika families affected by the flash floods and torrential rainfall that have lashed New Zealand’s North Island over the past few days were braced for more bad weather overnight.

With four people dead and hundreds forced out of their homes over the weekend a state of emergency remained in force for Auckland and one has also now been issued for Northland.

The predominately Pasifika neighbourhood of Māngere is among the worst affected areas in Auckland.

• READ MORE: Auckland floods: Hundreds of flooded cars, uninhabitable homes
• Other Auckland flood reports

Streets throughout the suburb were submerged after torrential rain last Friday caused rivers to overflow their banks.

Māngere resident Louisa Opetaia said the water rose so suddenly that it rapidly flooded her entire home while she was still asleep.

“When I got home from work, I took a nap at about 7.30pm. When I woke up an hour later and I got off my bed, I splashed into water,” said Opetaia.

“It was already halfway up my calf and up to my knee, and the three rooms in my house were flooded,” she added.

Emergency centres were quickly set up, providing supplies and temporary shelter over the weekend and even now to the dozens of families displaced by the floods.

One of the busiest centres is the Māngere Memorial Hall in Manukau.

Auckland city councillor Alf Filipaina, who has been helping to organise relief efforts, said many families continued to arrive at the hall on Tuesday, requiring basic goods and household items ruined by the floods.

“Heaps of families have been affected and we’ve been working tirelessly,” said Filipaina.

“We’ve had all the groups here from KaingaOra, the Fono, Ministry of Social Development and others. They’re all here helping people,” he said.

“We’ll be open 24/7 for people who also want a roof over their heads.”

Filipaina said that some families were in a desperate situation, being forced out of their homes and having lost most of their possessions, including even their vehicles.

“There are people who need financial assistance,” said Filipaina.

“Some of them have lost everything, and we can only give what donations and goods that we have,” he explained.

The community response has been swift in Manukau with various agencies and good Samaritans donating goods and providing services, including from local heroes such as David Tua and All Black Ofa Tu’ungafasi.

“People are always offering to help,” Louisa Opetaia said.

“People have been taking our laundry to the laundromat for us, which is really helpful, and we’ve received a lot of food. That’s what I love about our Pasifika community in Māngere, everyone comes together when people need help.

“We were able to talk to Ministry of Social Development at the Māngere Memorial Hall. I’m not on the benefit so I wasn’t sure if I would qualify for any help but I do.”

Opetaia said she was now moving out of her house as it was too hazardous to live there.

She said the biggest challenge for her at the moment was getting rid of damaged furniture drenched and ruined by the floods.

“We are trying to get the council to help us get a skip bin so that we can throw anything that was affected by the flood waters, and we have a big pile of stuff at the moment,” Opetaia said.

“I understand that there a lot of people who are more severely affected than us. We do need help but at the same time we are grateful because we are in a better situation than others.”

Meanwhile, according to the NZ Metservice many Aucklanders living south of Orewa may not see heavy rain last night — but localised downpours were still forecast for some.

Meteorologist Georgina Griffiths told RNZ Checkpoint that the key danger was rain falling on saturated soil making the region flood quickly.

But she predicted some parts of the city would escape a deluge.

Georgina Griffiths said Auckland was nearly out of the woods, with a drier weekend forecast and a dry week from Tuesday.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Twenty four Pacific peoples have been recognised in the 2023 New Year’s honours.

A former Premier of Niue, Young Vivian, leads the list of distinguished Pacific peoples in the list.

Vivian has been made an officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for his services to Niue.

• READ MORE: The full NZ New Year honours list

Fiji-born Dr Api Talemaitoga, a familiar face to Pacific communities during the height of covid-19 in Aotearoa, has been acknowledged for his decades of service in the medical sector.

The first Pacific priest ordained in Rome in 1990, Father Paulo Filoialii of Samoa, has been recognised for services to the Pacific community.

Also on the honours list is Lisa Taouma, the producer and director of Coconet TV, the largest pool of Pacific content on screen in New Zealand.

And the lead singer of the popular band Ardijah, Betty-Anne Monga, has been recognised for services to music.

‘Better things will come’: Niue’s Young Vivian
Young Vivian started his career as a teacher in New Zealand.

He went to a British school based on an English system. He failed English and was told to leave because enrolments were backed up.

He said he “begged the education officer” to stay so he was sent to Northland College and was “very happy” there.

Community members say he has been instrumental in fostering a love for Vagahau Niue, or Niue language, as a respected elder.

Speaking to RNZ Pacific reporter Lydia Lewis in 2022, at the launch of the Niue language app in Auckland, Vivian said:

“A language is a key to your culture and your tradition. It gives you that spiritual strength of who you are and you are able to face the world,” he said.

“That’s very, very important to a small nation like Niue who has a population of only 2500 people, but here in Australia and New Zealand it’s 80,000.”

When he went home to Niue, he was “dissatisfied”.

“I want to be fully independent, but I could see signs that people were not acceptable to that so I gave up, only then we can be real Niueans,” Vivian said.

His message to Pacific leaders is to believe in themselves.

“They must depend on themselves and God, they have everything in their homes, they need guts, stickability and determination, small as they are, they can stand up to it.”

He encourages the next generation to go back to basics.

“You have to depend on literally what you’ve got,” he said.

‘Profound privilege’: Dr Api
Dr Api Talemaitoga has been acknowledged for his decades-long work in the medical sector.

“I see it as a profound privilege, I have this knowledge about health and I find it a real pleasure to do it.”

More than three decades in the job after graduating in 1986, he has a deep sense of pride for the next generation.

“I was really fortunate to be given the opportunity to give the graduation address at the University of Otago for medical students,” he said.

“To see the highest number of Pasifika medical students walk across the stage was really emotional.

“I can happily retire now that I see this new generation of young people, enthusiastic, bright, diverse and they are the ones that will carry on the load in the future.”

Dr Talemaitoga always has a smile on his face and an infectious laugh, he is incredibly hard to get hold of because he is always helping his patients.

When asked how he keeps his charisma day in day out, he said:

“I am not superhuman, some days are just dreadful and you come home feeling really disillusioned and what’s the point of all of this when you see three or four people in a row heading for dialysis,” he said.

“Then you have days where you make a difference to one person out of the 25 or 30 you see that day.

“They feel really encouraged that you’ve been able for the first time to explain their condition to them … you can’t put it in words, it’s such an amazing feeling.”

‘This is for you, not me’: Father Paulo
The first Pacific Priest ordained in Rome in 1990 – Father Paulo Sagato Filoialii is dedicating his medal to the community he has served for decades, that has in turn backed him.

“I want to offer this medal for the Pacific Island people, this is for you, not for me. This medal I will receive is for all of you and I thank you all for your prayers, for your love and your support, God bless you all,” he said.

Father Paulo has contributed his time to the Catholic community in Christchurch and Ashburton.

Upon Father Filoialii being ordained, the Samoan Mass was performed for the first time in the Vatican, resulting in Pope John Paul II decreeing that the Samoan Mass can now be performed anywhere in the world.

‘Proud’: The Coconet TV’s Lisa Taouma
Pioneering Pasifika producer and director Lisa Taouma paved the way for Pacific peoples in media.

She created the ground-breaking site The Coconet TV which is the largest pool of Pacific content on screen in Aotearoa.

On top of that she made the Polyfest series, the long-standing Pacific youth series Fresh, five award-winning documentaries, the feature film Teine Sa and two short films.

Taouma believes you are only as good as the people you bring through.

“I’m proud of having brought Pacific stories to the fore around the world, I am proud of having brought Pacific people with me into that space, that is what I am most proud of,” She said.

Taouma said it was awesome that more indigenous people were being recognised globally.

While she is humbled to receive the honour, she admits not accepting it crossed her mind.

“I felt quite conflicted at the start, you know there are problems with the idea of empire and how Pacific people have been treated under the history of the British Empire,” she said.

“At the same time, it is really important to stand in this space as a Pacific woman and to have more Pacific people recognised by the Crown if you like.

“This is a system that is hopefully more reflective of Aotearoa and where we stand now.”

‘I never looked back’: Sully Paea
Niuean youth-worker Sully Paea has dedicated his life to working with youth, founding the East Tamaki Youth and Resource Centre between the late 1970s and 1986.

Paea said he was lost. He battled alcoholism and pushed through a diagnosis of depression. He had a violent criminal career until he met his wife which changed him completely.

He has dedicated his life to working with youth, founding the East Tamaki Youth and Resource Centre between the late 1970s and 1986.

After 40 years serving the community, he has never looked back

‘We’re getting there as people’: Tafilau Nina Kirifi-Alai
Tafilau Nina Kirifi-Alai has been honoured for her great services to Pacific Development.

Kirifi-Alai has been the Pacific manager of Otago University for more than 20 years.

She has assisted scholarships of Pacific students and has led developments for the University of Otago to support Pacific tertiary institutions in the region.

“Seeing Pasifika communities graduating from university has been rewarding,” she said.

“To see all those colours in the garments and all those families and all that, was like oh yeah we are getting there, we’re getting there as a people. This is why we left our homes to seek greater opportunities, education wise and work wise, and I actually believe that education is the key.”

‘Knowing your culture, knowing your roots’: Rosanna Raymond
Activism is what paved the road for multidisciplinary artist and curator Rosanna Raymond.

Her work has taken her to China, Australia and Britain, where she has built an awareness of Pacific art and fashion.

She draws on her strong cultural bond to artefacts that were taken from their original land and are now displayed in museums throughout the world.

She made a huge written contribution by co-publishing Pasifika Styles: Artists inside the Museum in 2008 and was Honorary Research Associate at the Department of Anthropology and Institute of Archaeology at University College, London.

She said moving forward whilst staying true to several of her roots was what led her to where she was today.

The full list of Pasifika in the New Year’s Honours list are:

To be Companions of the New Zealand Order of Merit:
The honourable Mititaiagimene Young Vivian, former Premier of Niue – For services to Niue.

To be Officers of the New Zealand Order of Merit:
Nathan Edward Fa’avae – For services to adventure racing, outdoor education and the Pacific community

David Rodney Fane – For services to the performing arts

Dr Apisalome Sikaidoka Talemaitoga – For services to health and the Pacific community

Lisa-Jane Taouma – For services to Pacific arts and the screen industry

To be Members of the New Zealand Order of Merit:
Father Paulo Sagato Filoialii – For services to the Pacific community

Sefita ‘Alofi Hao’uli – For services to Tongan and Pacific communities

Lakiloko Tepae Keakea – For services to Tuvaluan art

Marilyn Rhonda Kohlhase – For services to Pacific arts and education

Felorini Ruta McKenzie – For services to Pacific education

Betty-Anne Maryrose Monga – For services to music

Sullivan Luao Paea – For services to youth

Rosanna Marie Raymond – For services to Pacific art

The Queen’s Service Medal:
Kinaua Bauriri Ewels – For services to the Kiribati community

Galumalemana Fetaiaimauso Marion Galumalemana – For services to the Pacific community

Hana Melania Halalele – For services to Pacific health

Teurukura Tia Kekena – For services to the Cook Islands and Pacific communities

Nanai Pati Muaau – For services to Pacific health

Lomia Kaipati Semaia Naniseni – For services to the Tokelau community

Ma’a Brian Sagala – For services to Pacific communities

Mamaitaloa Sagapolutele – For services to education and the Pacific community

Honorary:
Tofilau Nina Kirifi-Alai – For services to education and the Pacific community

Tuifa’asisina Kasileta Maria Lafaele – For services to Pacific health

Nemai Divuluki Vucago – For services to Fijian and Pacific communities

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ. 

Women now make up well over half of New Zealand’s journalism workforce, but they have serious concerns about their safety on the job, a new survey shows.

Conducted by Massey University, the Worlds of Journalism Study 2.0: Journalists in Aotearoa/New Zealand garnered responses from 359 of the country’s estimated 1600 full-time journalists.

Women make up 58 percent of the profession but are seriously concerned about their safety at work due to public discrediting, threats, surveillance, physical attack, sexual harassment, and stalking.

• READ MORE: Worlds of Journalism: Mapping journalism’s hostile environment

Journalists reported threats, bullying, stalking and rape and death threats. One had a faux Facebook page set up in their name.

Sexual abuse included “public speculation or commentary about my body, mental health, sex like, marriage, which political commentators/etc I must have had sex with.”

Since the last survey in 2015, women have closed the pay gap and are now equally represented at all levels.

Pay across the board has increased in real terms since then, adjusted for inflation.

Māori journalists now a tenth
There has been a 20 percent increase in Māori journalists, who now make up a tenth of the workforce. But Pasifika and Asian communities remain under-represented.

For the first time, New Zealand journalists were asked about their attitudes to the Treaty of Waitangi; three quarters said it applied to all or most things they wrote.

Journalists are still committed to the traditional non-biased observer role of journalists, but now feel their most important role is to educate the public.

They are less influenced by commercial considerations than they were seven years ago, and more concerned to uphold journalism ethics.

Their political views are slightly left of centre, on average.

Massey University Associate Professor Dr James Hollings said the survey showed that employers needed to do more to keep their female employees safe.

“Journalists are under a lot of strain due to shrinking newsrooms and other pressures, but they’re doing a remarkable job of holding to their core values despite that.

‘Making great diversity efforts’
“It also shows that profession is making great efforts to adapt to become more equal and more diverse, although there’s some way to go in some areas.”

The survey is New Zealand’s contribution to the Worlds of Journalism Study (WJS). It has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.25 percent and a confidence level of 95 percent.

The first global survey, undertaken 2012-2016, mapped journalists in 66 countries and provided the first statistically robust picture of journalists worldwide ever undertaken.

This second global survey, which is still underway, will extend the coverage to up to 120 countries, mapping changes since 2016. The first global results will be available in 2024.

The widow of the final victim in the 2019 terrorist attack says things have not improved for New Zealand Muslims.

Hamimah Amhat was recently exercising in Christchurch when a passing motorist screamed at her to go back to her country.

“That shook me, I just had to sit down and let myself calm down.”

• READ MORE: Other reports on NZ cultural diversity

Hamimah said she did not stoop to the level of such hatred but found herself feeling bitterly disappointed.

“It was broad daylight and in a university area. That is just one of the recent incidents that has happened to me but I know of plenty of others too which is very discouraging.”

New Zealand’s annual gathering on countering terrorism and violent extremism, He Whenua Taurikura Hui 2022, got underway in Auckland today.

Members of the Māori, Pasifika, Jewish, Muslim, rainbow, and many more communities will unite at the Cordis Hotel for the two-day hui.

Conversations crucial
Hamimah said conversations were crucial to prevent another mass murder.

Zekeriya Tuyan was the 51st victim of the 15 March 2019 terror attack, passing away 48 days after being shot in the chest.

He was survived by his beloved wife and two sons.

“The boys were very young, we lost a great friend, husband and father.”

Hamimah said her husband treated her like a queen and she was still getting used to opening doors for herself as Tuyan always insisted on doing this for her.

“Simple things like that, he put me on a pedestal.”

Hamimah is the chair of the Sakinah Community Trust, a kaupapa created by the daughters, wives and sisters of March 15 victims.

Among the many initiatives the group is involved with is Unity Week, which runs from March 15-22.

“It is about galvanising our allies, and touching the hearts of those sitting on the fence.”

The week acknowledges the affected communities which Hamimah said were not just the people who were directly impacted by the events.

“It’s also the people who pulled up their sleeves and got together even though they were grieving as well and in shock, they made time to help the families and make sure the community continued to function.”

Hamimah said the Muslim community could not sit back and wait for tolerance to come to them.

“People find it hard to approach us, just recently my driving instructor told me, ‘I didn’t know how to react to a Muslim woman,’ and I just had to tell him to smile, we are human beings.”

She said education was key to dispelling fears and myths.

‘Sharing our space together’
“We invite them to share our space together. Cut through our skin and we bleed red blood.”

While we were moving forward as a nation, things could be faster and more effective, Hamimah said.

She cited recent incidents in Aotearoa including the Dunedin student who had her hijab ripped off, New Zealand soldiers linked to white supremacist groups and school board nominees spouting hateful ideology.

Hamimah said anti-Chinese racism was also prevalent during the pandemic.

“It was as if people had forgotten about March 15 and racism actually increased towards the Chinese and everyone else who looked Chinese to those discriminatory people.”

Formalities at the hui began by acknowledging the survivors of the 2019 terrorist attack in Christchurch.

The morning then focussed on the consequences of colonialism and near two centuries of Pākehā dominance in Aotearoa.

‘Colonial entitlement’ still rife
Auckland University professor of indigenous studies Tracey McIntosh opened panel discussions looking at why the country needed to face deep but necessary discomfort over the impact colonisation had for Māori.

This included relocation, confiscation and invasion.

“Of all the times I hear government agencies say Te Tiriti, if there is one word that seems to avoid their tongue, that’s the word colonialism,” McIntosh said.

Those impacts included dishonouring the Treaty with impunity, mass incarceration, immigration policies and racialised myth making, she said.

“The forces that brought us here today are no less than pure, distilled, colonial entitlement.”

There was a responsibility of powers to humbly engage with the issue of racism, McIntosh said.

“You have centrist power mongers who passively protect and maintain colonial privilege while presenting themselves as benign allies.”

Independent body
Māori deserved an independent body to monitor threats, she said.

“While extremists get the most attention, because they are the loudest and most violent, they hold less structural power.”

Both the Crown and government agencies had a lot of work to do, McIntosh said.

“Taking on a Māori name and logo but not sharing power is not equality.”

New Zealand had seen the rise of groups that represented hate and hostility through online emboldenment, she said.

The 2019 terror attack disturbed New Zealand’s complacency, McIntosh said.

Another prominent Māori leader said his people continued to endure terrorism at the hands of the state.

Enduring terror acts
Bill Hamilton of the National Iwi Chairs Forum spoke of the terror acts his people had endured such as invasion and abduction.

“Our children were taken and continue to be taken by the likes of Oranga Tamariki, and those are violent terrorist acts on our people.”

Aotearoa still had very subtle and sneaky forms of racism today, he said.

Hamilton said what was supposed to guarantee protection, equality and a mutually beneficial relationship — Te Tiriti o Waitangi — had instead seen the demonisation of Māori leaders, beatings for use of te reo, and widespread invasion.

“Our grandparents were beaten as kids for speaking their language.”

The state needed to apologise for the terror inflicted on the Māori people, he said.

Hamilton believed there had been a residual effect across society where people viewed Māori as less than equal.

He Whenua Taurikura Hui 2022 continues tomorrow with Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern scheduled to speak about 9am at Cordis Hotel.

The topic will be diversity in democracy, creating safe spaces online and countering messages of hate.

Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN) is represented at the hui by Auckland University of Technology communications academic and Pacific Journalism Review assistant editor Khairiah A Rahman.

• Information about He Whenua Taurikura Hui 2022 and instructions on how to view a live stream are available by clicking on the link.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Pacific health advocate and champion Dr Collin Fonotau Tukuitonga heads the list of Pacific recipients in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List for 2022.

This year’s Queen’s Birthday Honours coincide with the celebrations of Queen Elizabeth’s 70 years as monarch, so have been renamed the Queen’s Birthday and Platinum Jubilee Honours.

Associate Professor Tukuitonga, a Niuean, and the the inaugural Associate Dean Pacific and associate professor of public health in the Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences, University of Auckland, has received the Knights Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to Pacific and public health.

• READ MORE: New Zealand Queens’s Birthday Honours – the full list

“Over the past two years he has been a calm and steady voice for immunisation in the Pacific,” said Pacific Peoples Minister Aupito William Sio.

Sir Collin joins 17 other Pacific people also recognised for their contributions to health, education, sport, the arts and many other sectors.

Sir Collin has been active in the covid-19 response information, particularly for the Pasifika community.

He said he was humbled to have been nominated.

“I wasn’t aware that this was happening, so it’s a humbling experience,” he said.

“I’m thankful to be acknowledged, I should also say that it’s not just myself, I think it’s an acknowledgement of all the people involved and I’m just fortunate to have been nominated — there are lots of people in our community who do the work day and day out.”

Sir Collin plans on celebrating his achievement with his children but hopes to be able to visit Niue soon.

Sports
Leaupepe Luteru Ross Poutoa Lote-Taylor has also been honoured for services to cricket and Pacific communities.

Leaupepe retired from cricket and signed off as New Zealand’s most successful test batsman, with 7683 runs including 19 centuries from 112 matches between 2007 and 2022, with a batting average of 44.66 runs.

“I’ve been fortunate enough to play cricket for the Black Caps for several years and thoroughly enjoyed it, and being able to help others both on and off the field,” he said.

Leaupepe said contributing to the Pacific community is something he wants to continue doing.

“I’m a proud Kiwi and I’m a proud Samoan as well. I’ve been fortunate to have the platform to give back throughout my career and now that I’m retired I look forward to giving back more.”

Having received numerous awards throughout his cricket career, Leaupepe said being honoured by the Queen was “extra special”.

“As a cricketer, you want to do your best to your ability but to be recognised like this — it’s not just for me, it’s my teammates who have helped me out and my family and friends who sacrificed a lot for me.”

Arts
New Zealand-born Samoan opera singer Jonathan Lemalu is in disbelief after being made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for his services to opera.

Lemalu is a Grammy Award-winning bass-baritone who has been performing internationally for more than 20 years.

He said it was a complete surprise to be awarded the honour.

“I honestly didn’t believe it. I thought it was a joke,” Lemalu said.

“Hilarious in a way because it didn’t sound like something that would be happening to me. Mum got a Queen’s Honours in 2006 for services to the Pacific community. It felt cool in a way to follow in her footsteps.”

Education
Mangere College Deputy Principal Melegalenuu Ah Sam was also in shock when she found out she was on the Queen’s Birthday Honours 2022 list.

Melegalenu’u Ah Sam has become a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to Pacific language education.

Beginning in the mid-1990s, Ah Sam established Samoan language teaching at the college, later driving the addition of Cook Islands Māori and Lea Faka-Tonga.

She led the establishment of the Languages ‘L Block’ at the college in 2012, as a hub for Māori and Pacific learning in language and culture.

“I paused — and then I read the email again,” Ah Sam said.

“And then I just said a short prayer. I feel humbled, I just want to thank the people that recognised the work that myself and my colleagues and everyone else in the education sector are doing.

“For me personally I’m not expecting any rewards, I’m not expecting anything like this, I do it because I love working in education and I love teaching. So to be nominated is a privilege and an honour.”

Ah Sam said growing up in Samoa, her parents were her best role models.

“My parents played a huge part in my life. They made sure that we strived to be the best we can be — my mother was a nurse, and my dad was a Samoan judge,” she said.

“I didn’t feel that I wanted to get into nursing, but they allowed me to come to New Zealand on a scholarship and they instilled in my sisters and brothers the importance of achievement and success in whatever field.”

Other Pasifika people recognised in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List for 2022:

• Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit: Bridget Snedden, for services to people with learning disabilities
• Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit: Lesi Atoni, for services to the Tokelau community
• Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit: Sandra Borland, for services to nursing and the Pacific community
• Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit: Matthew (Mataio) Brown, for services to mental health and the prevention of family violence
• Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit: Siaosi Fa’alogo, for services to the New Zealand police and the community
• Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit: Dr Linita Manu’atu, for services to Pacific education and the Tongan community
• Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit: Tolupene Peau, for services to the Tokelau community
• Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit: Bill Urale, for services to music and the community
• Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit: Kiriovea Jasmin McSweeney, for services to the film industry
• Queen’s Service Medal: Gabrielle-Sisifo Makisi, for services to Pacific communities and education
• Queen’s Service Medal: Reverend Salafai Mika, for services to church ministry and the Samoan community
• Queen’s Service Medal: Reverend Hiueni Nuku, for services to Tongan and Pacific communities
• Queen’s Service Medal: Vaipou Saluni, for services to education and the Pacific community
• Queen’s Service Medal: Luther Toloa, for services to the Pacific community

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

By John Pulu of Tagata Pasifika

A trip down memory lane for Tagata Pasifika’s first host, Foufou Susana Hukui as she watches a video clip of an interview she did with former Prime Minister of Samoa, Tupua Tamasese Efi.

“It was just the most exciting journey that we were going to take,” Hukui says.

“Because I have watched the white man, white people, other people but never us telling our own stories. When they were told, they were told from a white man’s perspective.”

• READ MORE: Tagata Pasifika — the Pacific voice on NZ television since 1987

The weekly show first aired on the 4 April 1987, as a pan-Pacific voice on New Zealand television.

“When I got on our first programme, I made sure that we were different. I didn’t deliberately do it — that’s just the way I was,” Hukui says.

“Coloured clothes, summer right through the whole year and flowers in my ear. I just wanted people to know who I was, this is me and this is going to be our people’s programme.”

Hukui switched from working in radio to pioneer storytelling from a Pasifika lens on national television covering a myriad of stories and events.

‘Flooded the market with colour’
“We did suddenly flood the market on the media with colour that we are used to with flowers, with headgear, with cooking, the puaka, hair cutting ceremonies, weddings; and this, you know, even though it’s our culture, we love to see it on TV.

“In those days we didn’t have social media so we were, at the time, just right because that was the strongest medium at the time,” Hukui says.

From the very start, Tagata Pasifika was a news and information show for the community.

Radio broadcasters like the Reverend Maligi Evile played a key role as the first news reader.

“The programme was more or less bifocal in the sense that I was telling our people what is happening out there at home in your country and your home and I was also telling the NZ public, the NZ community that this is what is happening out there in our homes in the Pacific,” Reverend Evile says.

As our people continued to come to Aotearoa, the half hour show played an important role in helping them settle in and feel like they belonged here.

“I was really appreciative to think that, considering the number of Pacific people who were living in NZ at the time, I think it’s about time that we have some small window on the screen on TVNZ,” he says.

‘Transforming a window’
“When this opportunity came along, I thought this was the window that we were waiting for and I was hoping that this window will transform into a door and perhaps into a room and even a big house for bigger things to come for the Pacific people.”

And over the years Tagata Pasifika has moved through different time slots and faces have come and gone, but through it all viewers have remained loyal.

Former researcher and reporter Iulia Leilua says there was a demand for Pacific voices and faces to be seen and heard in the media following major events like the Dawn Raids which happened in the previous decade.

“I thank TVNZ for their foresight, I thank even more so the people who lobbied for this programme. TVNZ really had no option but to showcase the Māori and Pacific voice and faces at that time,” Leilua says.

In 2014, TVNZ announced that the show will no longer be made in-house and the following year production company Sunpix Limited started producing the show.

“Tagata Pasifika is reflective of our Pacific peoples and it’s been there on that journey for many people and their lives. People come to the show to see stories that they are not hearing or seeing elsewhere so the legacy is kind of this, you know, this trusted source of story telling about our people and an important place that documents our people’s lives and history,” Leilua says.

Playing a role online
Now, 35 years on, with a wide variety of media to choose from Tagata Pasifika continues to play a role not just on our television screens but also online where more content is available. But there has always been a dream for more time on air.

“We started off with half an hour, perhaps give us another 15 mins on air or perhaps give us an extra half hour you know we need a bit more frequency on air and we need more support,” Reverend Evile says.

Hukui acknowledges the changing media landscape but adds that it is even more important than ever to have a trusted source of information.

“No matter what, no matter if you have Instagram, your TikTok, whatever, Facebook, the people of our Pacific always go to what’s Tagata Pasifika to see the real, to get the real story.”

John Pulu — “JP” — is a Tagata Pasifika reporter/director/presenter and a Pacific community broadcaster. Republished with permission.

Ninety percent of Pacific people in Aotearoa New Zealand have had their first covid-19 vaccine, while 11 district health boards (DHBs) have reached 80 percent first doses for Māori, the Ministry of Health says.

There were a total of 17,899 doses administered yesterday, including 5679 first doses and 12,222 second doses.

To date, 92 percent of eligible people in New Zealand have had their first dose and 85 percent are fully vaccinated.

• READ MORE: Two cases of Omicron variant of Covid-19 detected in Australia
• 144 new community cases reported in New Zealand today, one further death
• Other NZ covid lockdown reports

The ministry said the country’s Pacific communities had reached “some key vaccination milestones”, with 90 percent having officially received their first dose, and 80 percent fully vaccinated.

Eleven of the 21 DHBs had reached 80 percent first doses for Māori, it said in a statement.

The ministry also highlighted how Capital & Coast DHB is just 1131 doses shy of reaching the 90 percent fully vaccinated milestone.

More than 2.1 million My Vaccine Passes have been issued.

Auckland events encourage vaccine uptake
This weekend is the last chance New Zealanders have to be fully vaccinated with both injections in time for Christmas.

More than 20 vaccination events were held in Tāmaki Makaurau this weekend, ahead of the Auckland border restrictions easing on December 15.

Tāmaki Makaurau vaccination programme director Matt Hannant said live music, free food and spot prizes were offered at events across the city.

People can also now pre-book to get the AstraZeneca vaccine, which is available from Monday, he said.

144 new cases today – one death
In a separate ministry statement today, 144 new community cases of covid-19 have been reported in New Zealand, with one further death.

The new vice-chancellor of the Auckland University of Technology is calling on young Pasifika peoples pursuing their education to stay the course.

Toeolesulusulu Dr Damon Salesa, who is currently a pro vice-chancellor at the University of Auckland takes up his new role at AUT in March.

He is the first person of Pacific descent to head a university in New Zealand.

Toeolesulusulu said the past two years of the covid-19 pandemic have been the most difficult for education in a long time.

He said part of the reason he chose to take up the new role was that AUT provides a pathway to education for people of all ages, backgrounds and races, regardless of the life stage or academic credentials.

“The pressures of the pandemic have forced many young people to have to choose between furthering their education or providing for their families, and institutions like AUT can help.

“Now is a great time to just leave school and get a job,” Toeolesulusulu said.

“But in terms of the future that students’ families need, that our city and our communities need, education still remains the single most powerful way to transform the lives of you and your family and through them our communities.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

New Zealand’s Associate Health Minister Peeni Henare today thanked all Māori providers, iwi, hapū, practitioners, vaccinators and district health board (DHB) staff for their efforts, and warned that “covid-19 is on the doorstep of your houses”.

“Do not let it enter,” he added.

“You’re efforts are indeed seen,” he said as he fronted a media briefing today with Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield.

• READ MORE:  Māori leaders opposed to rumoured covid-19 traffic light system
• Other NZ covid lockdown reports

Henare said that over the past two weeks, prior to Super Saturday, he had travelled to a number of DHBs and saw great work but identified a number of challenges.

He asked those who were not on board for their help.

“Our whānau need you and to many of them you are the trusted person that will be key to them making an informed decision about the vaccination,” he said.

Significant funding had already been provided to Hauora Māori to support and build capability for the vaccine programme, he says.

He said that if they needed support to make their decision, get their information from official sources or they could speak to kaumātua and kuia who were currently leading vaccination rates among Māori communities.

An announcement would be made later in the week regarding support for the Māori vaccination effort.

“We’ve seen the threat that this current covid-19 outbreak is to the wellbeing of Māori communities with a total of 560 Māori cases recorded.

Watch the covid-19 update

Covid-19 update: Video RNZ News

“In the last two weeks, Māori have made up 45.7 percent of total cases vs 28 percent throughout the entire outbreak. Although sobering, these numbers reinforce why vaccinating our communities is so important,” he said.

“So I say to the Māori people, covid-19 is on the doorstep of your houses, do not let it enter and the best course of protection still remains for us to vaccinate our people.”

94 community cases
New community cases of covid-19 jumped to 94 today — the highest total in the current outbreak, the Ministry of Health reports.

Of today’s cases as at 10am, 41 are linked — 26 of which are household contacts — and 53 are unlinked, the ministry said in a statement.

There are 38 people in hospital – eight in the North Shore, 12 in Middlemore, and 18 in Auckland.

Five people are in ICU or HDU.

The total number of cases in the outbreak is 2099. That is made of 2030 cases in Auckland (1360 of whom have recovered); 52 in Waikato (seven of whom have recovered); and 17 in Wellington (all of whom have recovered).

And 183 cases from the past 14 days remain unlinked.

The ministry said there were 2039 contacts.

A total of 16,921 tests were processed around the country yesterday, 12,688 being in Auckland.

As of this morning, there were 439 locations of interest.

Vaccination numbers
In terms of vaccination numbers to date, 6,387,870 vaccines have been administered: 3,582,822 (85 percent) first doses, and 2,805,048 (67 percent) second doses.

Of those, 379,563 (66 percent) Māori have had their first dose and 258,018 (45 percent) have had their second dose.

And 231,295 (81 percent) Pasifika have had one dose of the vaccine while 171,818 (60 percent) are fully vaccinated.

In Auckland, 89 percent of the eligible population has had one dose of the vaccine and 72 percent has had both doses.

Yesterday the ministry reported 60 cases of the virus, three in Waikato and the rest in Auckland.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern yesterday announced Northland would move to alert level 2 at 11.59pm tonight.

Waikato remains in level 3, with a review of the setting on Friday and Auckland will remain in level 3, step 1, for at least two more weeks.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Epidemiologist Professor Michael Baker says his biggest concern is that the spread of the delta variant of covid-19 in New Zealand is an “outbreak of the unvaccinated”.

The country’s largest city Auckland has now been living with tough restrictions for two months.

Asked why the city is still experiencing so many cases (57 today – plus three in Waikato) Professor Baker said “lockdown fatigue” was undoubtedly a factor.

• READ MORE: Northland to move to level 2; Auckland to stay in level 3 step 1 for two weeks – PM
• Other NZ covid lockdown reports
• LISTEN: Top epidemiologist concerned at ‘outbreak of the unvaccinated’ (Duration 6′ :27″)

The calls for New Zealanders to get vaccinated are becoming more urgent by the day as covid-19 embeds itself in the community.

Two people have now died in the latest outbreak, the number of daily cases remains in the double figures and the virus continues to spread outside Auckland.

The government has announced a nationwide immunisation push for October 16 — dubbed Super Saturday — but one of Auckland’s leading Māori vaccinators is questioning what it will achieve.

• READ MORE: Ardern announces covid-19 vaccine certificate for NZ
• Alert level boundary map

Te Whānau o Waipareira runs two mass vaccination centres, and has given tens of thousands of Aucklanders their Pfizer shots.

Chief executive John Tamihere said the first he heard of Super Saturday was when Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins announced it at a media conference, saying it would be like election day, with clinics open all day and into the night

Tamihere said that would not cut it when it came to getting vaccine stragglers.

“They won’t necessarily turn up, the ones they are endeavouring to target. We have to go out into the streets and take each suburb street by street and to do that you’ve got to know where you’re sending and deploying your resources,” Tamihere said.

More resources rather than big show
“We would probably put a lot more resource into that campaign as opposed to big show days.”

The Ministry of Health today reported 29 new cases of covid-19 in the community, including five in Waikato.

Speaking at today’s government briefing, Director of Public Health Dr Caroline McElnay said seven of the new cases in Auckland were yet to be linked to earlier cases, all of the Waikato cases were linked.

Yesterday, the death of a 57-year-old man from covid-19 was reported, along with 39 new cases in the community. Nine of those were in Waikato.

There have now been 22 cases in Waikato in the current outbreak.

One previous community case has been reclassified as under investigation, bringing the total cases in the outbreak to 1448.

There were also two cases detected in MIQ reported today.

7000 receive drive-through dose
But the recent six-day vaccination event at Vodafone Events Centre is being hailed a success after 7000 people received a drive-through dose.

Among them, many church members of the Assemblies of God Church of Sāmoa who know first-hand the harsh reality of the virus.

A father of seven who lost his battle with covid yesterday was a deacon at the church, and his wife is also in hospital with the disease.

Church spokesperson Jerome Mika said the community was grieving.

He said many members had been vaccinated at the drive-through event in the past few days which was a success due to the many community groups that had supported it.

“Community willingness to be able to just support and encourage their family members to come and get vaccinated.”

The experts agree.

Māori and Pacific leaders a must
Victoria University of Wellington immunologist Diane Sika-Paotonu said to be effective, any vaccination campaign must include Māori and Pacific leaders.

“They’re not just being called in right at the end to help make things work but rather they’re involved right from the outset at the design stage of any activities, events and interventions that are being planned.”

But one group argues they need the right information for that model to work.

Tamihere also heads the North Island’s Whānau Ora Commissioning Agency.

It is taking the Ministry of Health to court for refusing to hand over health data for all Māori that he said was vital to closing the “dangerous gap” in the vaccination rates.

It sits at just over 57 percent for a first dose compared with 81 percent of Pākehā.

“Tai Tokerau is way behind, the Bay of Plenty is way behind. These are Māori communities. It’s not that they’re stupid and dumb, it’s that they’re poorer and their priorities are different and it takes time to reach them.”

The Ministry of Health said it could not share the data because many of the people were not enrolled with Whānau Ora so officials were not authorised to hand it over.

The ministry will release information today on the most and least vaccinated suburbs in the country.

Yesterday 63,000 people were vaccinated as rates climb again after a month long dip.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

A youth-led Pasifika mass vaccination event in Auckland has immunised 7000 people over the past four days.

Pacific health provider South Seas’ youth group Bubble Gum ran a drive-through event called “Rally Your Village” at Auckland’s Vodafone Events Centre.

The event has resulted in 4542 people being vaccinated — mostly youth and young adults.

• READ MORE: Attitudes towards covid pandemic vary – Teuila Fuatai
• Other NZ covid lockdown reports

South Seas chief executive Silao Vaisola-Sefo said it was successful because it was community-driven.

He said they wanted to take people on a journey through the process of getting vaccinated and to create a festival atmosphere.

Minister of Pacific Peoples Aupito William Sio said the numbers were impressive.

“A huge congratulations, absolutely proud of the leadership of the Bubble Gum group in leading that,” he said.

“Their efforts alongside other young people who are leading the charge are probably responsible for the huge uptake in the covid-19 vaccine for that age group.”

More than 5000 food parcels, petrol vouchers, 2000 kids packs, and NZ$100,000 worth of incentives were distributed to those attending.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

National Pacific Radio Trust has won a year’s funding from NZ On Air’s Public Interest Journalism Fund to enhance its reporting of Pacific news stories.

Pacific Media Network chairperson Tiumalu Peter Fa’afiu said the funding of up to $275,000 out of the $18 million in grants announced by NZ On Air last week would make for more quality story telling.

“It’s a testing ground for the PMN News team. But everything we’ve thrown at them and the growth of the PMN News team in the last four years has been great and this will be even better so it’s just about consistently testing that quality of journalism that we have and the quality of storytelling,” he said.

• READ MORE: 110 journalist roles funded to provide Public Interest Journalism across the motu
• Trashing journalists is not in the public interest – Gavin Ellis

Pacific Media Network chief executive Don Mann said the funding was necessary as Pacific influence grew in the country.

“There’s considerable reform going on, for instance in the health area,” he said.

“We’ve got the most number of Pacific MPs we’ve ever had and there’s significant spend going into the Pasifika community.

“It’s important that PMN plays our role in holding government to account; the critical part of media and then this investment from the Public Interest Journalism fund allows us to step up the function of our news room.”

According to the NZ On Air announcement, the PMN grant would fund four new staff to work on network news.

110 journalists funded
The announcement was for funding for an additional 110 journalists across Aotearoa with a specific mandate to produce stories that keep New Zealanders informed and engaged, and support a healthy democracy.

The funding is the result of the second competitive funding round via NZ On Air’s $55m Public Interest Journalism Fund. The fund was announced in February to address a deficit in public interest journalism, a key pillar in a healthy democracy.

Combined with the first funding round, $29m has now been committed to a mix of journalism roles, defined journalism projects, and industry development initiatives.

Demand for the fund has been high. Round 2 saw a total of 63 applications applying for 311 roles and seeking close to $47m in funding.

Role-based funding was designed to support the revitalisation of the industry, to address “news deserts” and deficits in coverage of matters of importance to New Zealanders, said the NZ On Air Statement.

Statistics NZ figures show that the number of journalists in New Zealand halved between 2006 and 2018.

“Funding journalists back into newsrooms particularly at regional and local levels will help redress the drastic reduction in journalist numbers over the past few years and ensure the sector has the workforce to deliver strong public interest journalism,” said NZ On Air head of journalism Raewyn Rasch.

The performance of the funded roles is measured on content outputs. Funded roles in this round are geographically spread across the country, and will also go some way to address deficits in reporting for specific ethnic communities or issues.

• The full Public Interest Journalism Fund round 2 grant list

A Pasifika local government politician in New Zealand, the first from Kiribati to be elected to political office, has appealed to “Pasifika friends and family” to get vaccinated now as part of the national covid rollout.

Victoria Short, deputy chair of Auckland’s Hibiscus and Bays Local Board, says not to wait.

“If you are waiting for your personalised invitation to get vaccinated, you might be waiting forever, as it may never come,” she said in a statement.

• READ MORE: Burnout a primary concern for Covid-19 vaccinators, contact tracers, testers
• Covid-19 infections continue to rise in Fiji’s remote communities

“The time to get vaccinated is right now.”

Short, a 30-year-old mother of two, said she had seen first-hand how the delta variant had affected island families after it swept through the Pasifika community in Warkworth, north of Auckland.

“The current delta outbreak is disproportionally affecting our Pasifika community, who are vaccinating at a much slower rate than most other ethnicity groups,” Short said.

“Complex family and social structures, such as our Pasifika people making up a significant portion of our essential workforce, on average having larger households which are often multi-generational, and us being such a social vibrant people are all ingredients which allows covid to thrive and spread.”

Fully vaccinated
Short herself is now fully vaccinated and is an active Pasifika community representative in the covid-19 response planning led by the Ministry of Pacific People and the Ministry of Health.

“Wonderful work has been achieved by MPP [Ministry of Pacific People] in delivering culturally appropriate messaging to our community on the need for coming forward for a vaccination.

“Also, I have received fantastic feedback from numerous families in Pasifika community regarding the vaccination clinics, with someone even telling me, it was like going back to the islands for half-hour.”

However, the problem was that even with the significant resources and planning that had gone into the vaccine rollout programme, Pacific People were still one of the lowest vaccinated ethnic groups in New Zealand.

“If you haven’t been vaccinated yet, don’t wait a day longer. There are drive-through vaccination centres, clinics and pharmacies throughout the country ready and waiting to stick the needle in your arm.

“Current drive-through vaccination centres in Auckland also don’t require a booking and have more than enough supplies to accommodate everyone.

Collective action
“We are a smart, kind, generous, hard-working people, and now is the time to demonstrate this to the rest of New Zealand through our collective action,” Short said.

“When you take yourself to get vaccinated, make sure you load up the car with everyone else in your bubble over 12 years old, whether they are documented or not.

“The best thing we can do for ourselves, our community and New Zealand right now is to get vaccinated.”

“It’s up to us to take action for our health and the health of the loved ones around us.”

More than 65 percent of eligible people in New Zealand have now been vaccinated in the national rollout — half of those so far with double shots.

A Māori political leader has branded opposition neoliberal ACT leader David Seymour’s act this week undermining an indigenous response to New Zealand’s covid-19 pandemic as  “unbelievably irresponsible and cruel”.

Seymour publicly shared a priority vaccine code for Māori so that Pākehā, or non-Māori, could jump the queue for vaccinations against the virus.

“Political differences aside, it’s hard to understand why a leader with whakapapa continuously chooses not to protect it,” said Debbie Ngarewa-Packer, co-leader and whip of Te Pāti Māori.

• READ MORE: Debbie Ngarewa-Packer: David Seymour’s Māori vaccination code attack misguided
• ‘Delta thrives on inequality’: South Auckland strategies needed, experts warn
• Vaccination clinics prioritising Māori ‘swamped by Pākehā’
• Other articles on the Māori, Pasifika vaccination rollout

Writing in The New Zealand Herald today, she said there had been early signs of inequities in the government’s covid vaccination rollout for Māori and Pasifika.

She cited health specialists arguing that the government’s one-shoe-fits-all vaccine rollout was an “overwhelming failure”.

The failure resulted in “just 19 percent of eligible Māori [being] vaccinated by the end of Tuesday, compared to 30.4 percent of eligible people in the ‘European or other’ category,” Ngarewa-Packer wrote.

Fifteen percent of New Zealand’s population 5 million are Māori, the country’s First Nation people.

‘Conscious decision to sabotage’
“This is where David Seymour made a conscious decision to sabotage. He not only underestimated the manaaki our Māori hauora [health] providers have for everyone in their communities, but also the solutions to address vaccination disparity and the success that came with it.”

The very centre that Seymour had launched a full-scale attack on had a vaccination uptake of 85 percent Pākehā, vaccinating five times fewer Māori than non-Māori.

“His poor understanding that a Māori-targeted-approach is not anti-Pākehā, exclusive or segregated shows his absolute desperation to compete for the ‘disillusioned white’ voter,” Ngarewa-Packer said.

“He launched a political missile that fast became a political SOS.”

Ngarewa-Packer said she was just 12 months out of personally leading a covid response and standing up iwi checkpoints.

“I appreciate how much effort logistically and mentally goes into leading a response effort,” she said.

“It takes a team who is prepared to work outside of normal hours to serve their community and one who believes with a passion that they must, and indeed can.

Poor vaccination uptake
“Our pāti [political party] with many other leaders, continually raised concern with how poor vaccination uptake was for Māori [and Pasifika].

“With a third of our population living in poverty and a third under-employed, the luxury of fuelling a car to travel five hours for vaccination versus putting food on the table was not an option.

“I live in a community where many don’t own smartphones or have data access to book vaccinations, some can’t afford to travel over an hour to their closest urban medical facilities.

“Access issues for many whānau are real, as are inequities. But the reality is Seymour’s neighbourhood is vastly different to those he attacked.’

Seymour is MP for Epsom in Auckland, one of New Zealand’s wealthiest electorates, and has been leader of the rightwing party ACT since 2014.

“He is privileged, and rather than empathise to understand some very real-life challenges, he instead chose to appeal to the fascist New Zealander, to the wealthy who have health insurance, to the 35 percent who no-showed to appointments, to the very elite who designed this vaccination system.”

Ngarewa-Packer said the access code had nothing to do with skin colour but rather the systemic issues that Māori “consistently confront as a population – with higher rates of deprivation and mortality”.

Always considered expendable
“And sadly, it doesn’t matter how hard we work to protect the team of five million or put others before our own. The sad reality is, when it comes to addressing our own needs, it is presented as preferential. We are always considered expendable.”

Ngarewa-Packer also referred to the sacrifices that the famous Maori Battalion had made for the protection of the people of Aotearoa during both World Wars.

“The Māori Battalion was a formidable fighting force, highly regarded for all they did on the allies’ frontline to protect our nationhood. Their sacrifice for us is forever treasured.”

That sacrifice had been hoped that it would “give us full respected rights alongside Pākehā, as [the 1840 foundation] Te Tiriti [of Waitangi] intended”.

All covid-19 vaccinations are free in New Zealand.

15 new community cases
RNZ News reports that Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield reported 15 new community cases of covid-19 in the country in New Zealand today.

Speaking at today’s media conference, Dr Bloomfield said there were now 855 cases in the current community outbreak and 218 cases were deemed to have recovered.

There were 21 new cases reported yesterday, and 20 on three days in a row before that.

Apologies have been in the news recently.

Last month, French President Emmanuel Macron told “French” Polynesia (Ma’ohi Nui) that French nuclear testing in the Pacific had not been clean. He pledged truth and transparency in the future.

Earlier this month, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern issued an apology to the Pasifika community for the race-based Dawn Raids of the 1970s.

I was reminded of the need for another apology as I watched New Zealanders competing at the Tokyo Olympics. These Games were a source of enthusiastic enjoyment and pride for many of us. What a contrast to the 1976 Montreal Olympics.

• READ MORE: 1981 Springbok tour protests revisited – and now Palestine is the new struggle
• 1981 Springbok rugby tour protests

Some New Zealand spectators at those Games were so ashamed of the country of their birth, that they pretended to be Australians.

In 1976, the All Blacks were in South Africa. They had left for their tour within days of the South African police killing hundreds of black students protesting in the streets of Soweto against apartheid. Apparently no reason there not to tour.

Around 30 countries from an enraged African continent boycotted the Olympics in protest against New Zealand’s presence. It was the first major Olympic boycott of the modern era, and our country had caused it — well, the New Zealand Rugby Football Union (NZRFU) actually, hugely assisted by Prime Minister Muldoon.

Monotonous claim
New Zealand rugby’s answer to most criticism over this period had been to monotonously
claim that sport and politics didn’t mix. At Montreal, the extent to which they did was
painfully clear.

New Zealanders had just discovered what a selfish sporting body, devoid of any moral compass, could do to the international reputation of a country.

This was not the beginning of New Zealand rugby’s fall from grace. Nor was it to be the end. For more than 60 years, the NZRFU was involved in what many came to recognise as an ugly and intimate pas de deux with South African racism.

From 1928-1960, rugby authorities acquiesced to South Africa’s insistence that it not include Māori players in any All Black team touring South Africa. Racist South Africa was the puppeteer pulling the strings. New Zealand rugby was a compliant puppet.

From the beginning, many Māori saw it that way.

In May 2010, New Zealand Rugby issued a short statement in which it said “sorry” to those Māori players “who were not considered for selection for teams to tour South Africa or to
play South Africa”. “Sorry” had been very slow in coming. Eighty-two years for star Māori fullback George Nepia.

But does this apology, if that is what it was, even begin to cover other major aspects of what it is rugby needs to address? South Africa was an international outcast. Over a period of more than 60 years, the NZRFU had offered Pretoria high levels of support, often at times when it was most needed.

International outcry
In 1960, an international outcry followed the killing of 69 unarmed black protesters at Sharpeville. Within weeks, the All Blacks were flying off for a three-month tour. In June 1976, amid even worse police violence, the All Blacks were off once again to South Africa.

After the 1976 Olympic boycott and all the turmoil and violence which accompanied the 1981 Springbok tour, the NZRFU still felt able to press ahead with plans to tour South Africa again in 1985.

To growing numbers of citizens, rugby’s insensitivity, arrogance and stupidity seemed limitless.

Unsurprisingly, the hand of friendship offered by New Zealand rugby to South Africa became a lightning rod for increasingly large protests. By 1981, communities and families had become bitterly split. News crews from around the world flooding into New Zealand reported on ugly battles for the soul of a nation.

It was the closest we had come to civil war in the 20th century.

It is 100 years since South Africa first toured New Zealand. How timely it would be if we could start the second century of this relationship with an apology and wipe the slate clean.

In 2006, the NZRFU adopted the brand name New Zealand Rugby. Within rugby, has there been more than just a name change? Is there now a recognition that responsibility for past behaviours needs to be accepted?

These behaviours include years of insult to Māori, the unqualified support extended to a racist, pariah state, the resulting hurt and suffering that support caused black South Africans, the pain, shame, and opprobrium inflicted on New Zealand’s international reputation and the deep and bitter divisions created at home.

If not now for such an apology, how long do we have to wait? The need for it is not going to go away.

Trevor Richards was national chair of the Halt All Racist Tours movement (HART) from 1969-1980 and international secretary from 1980-1985. This article is published with the author’s permission.

When the Polynesian Panthers (PPP) activist group began calling for an apology for the Dawn Raids two years ago, we went into the process with eyes wide open. Government lobbyists seldom get everything they ask for, but our intent was honest and real and fuelled by our Panther legacy and love for the people.

We believe that the apology was, and is, a necessary step towards the healing and restoration of trust and relationships between the Pacific peoples and families who were adversely affected by government actions during the Dawn Raids and the Aotearoa New Zealand government.

The prime minister’s emotional ritual entry into Auckland’s Great Hall and her address to Pacific people and communities assembled there last Sunday drastically relived the shameful and unjust treatment of Pacific peoples by successive governments during the Dawn Raids era of the 1970s, when police, hunting for immigrant overstayers and armed with dogs and batons, would burst into the homes of Pasifika families in the early morning hours.

• READ MORE: Other articles on the Dawn Raids and the apology

These experiences and the subsequent deportations have created layers of intergenerational shame and trauma for Pacific victims and families in New Zealand and in the homelands. Studies have since shown that Pacific people made up only 30 percent of the overstayers, and yet almost 90 percent of the deportations.

The bulk of the migrants who overstayed their visas were from the US and UK. Since the apology was announced there has been a flood of victims’ stories –- stories no longer silenced by the guilt, shame and trauma of the raids and random checks.

What was missing from Sunday’s apology was a list of concrete actions the government will take in addressing the injustices. Instead, what was delivered were four “gestures”: some national and Pacific scholarships, and two other educational “gestures” that were really already in place — a publication about experiences of the Dawn Raids and the provision of resources to those schools already teaching about them.

Why has the government remained silent about setting up a legacy fund to allow education about the Dawn Raids — as requested in the petition signed by more than 7000 people and presented to Parliament by Josiah Tualamali’i and Benji Timu — to prevent future generations of New Zealanders from carrying out the same or similar racist actions?

Educate to Liberate
The only programme currently addressing this is an unfunded one run by the PPP for 50 years and more specifically for the past 10 years with their Educate to Liberate programmes in schools.

This was a far cry to what the Panthers were calling for.

In its submission for healing and restoration to the government in May, the Panthers were clear about what they wanted: an apology as well as 100 annual scholarships, and the overhaul of the current educational curriculum to include the compulsory teaching of racism, race relations, the Dawn Raids and Pacific Studies and the significance of the Treaty of Waitangi as the cornerstone of harmonious race relations in Aotearoa New Zealand, across all sectors, and assessed as “achieved standards” across appropriate non-history subjects.

If what we Panthers called for was granted and acted on, it would provide a clear message to all Pacific peoples and communities and to all New Zealanders that the government was ready for a truly liberating education and a world-leading pathway to the best race relations — Kiwi-style — in the world.

Alas, what the apology delivered was a watered-down version of what the Panthers called for. By perpetuating a myopic view of our long-term educational needs, the short term gestures outlined in the apology will not be enough to grow a truly liberated and informed youthful leadership for the future.

This oversight suggests a rocky future for the New Zealand government and the va (the social and sacred spaces of relationships) with Pacific peoples. The Polynesian Panther demands to annihilate racism in New Zealand might seem too revolutionary and drastic, and will probably fuel anti-Pacific sentiments, but is this really the absolute maximum that the government can do?

What we were given in this apology did little to dismantle systemic racism. Much more work needs to be done to decolonise and re-indigenise our education system. Why is the teaching of the Dawn Raids only optional and not compulsory? The Panthers platform of peaceful resistance against racism, the celebration of mana Pasifika and a liberating education is as relevant now as it was in the era of the Dawn Raids.

If the changes the Panthers have fought for over the last 50 years don’t materialise, then we have no alternative but to — as Māori scholar and activist Ranginui Walker puts it — “ka whawhai tonu matou [we will continue the fight]”.

Dr Melani Anae is a foundation member of the Polynesian Panthers and an associate professor and director of research at the Centre for Pacific Studies, Te Wananga o Waipapa, University of Auckland. Her books include The Platform: The Radical Legacy of the Polynesian Panthers (2020), Polynesian Panthers: Pacific Protest and Affirmative Action in Aotearoa NZ 1971–1981 (2015), and Polynesian Panthers (2006). This article first appeared in The Guardian and has been republished here with the author’s permission.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern today offered a “formal and unreserved apology” to the Pacific communities left traumatised by the Dawn Raids in the 1970s

The practice saw immigration officials target the homes of Pacific Islands people in the early hours of the morning, beginning in the 1970s, in a crackdown on alleged “overstaying” on their visas.

The policy followed a period where many people from the Pacific Islands were encouraged to come to Aotearoa to fill roles in growing industries as the nation experienced a boom in jobs after World War II.

• READ MORE: NZ government makes apology over Dawn Raids targeting Pasifika
• ‘Scarred for life’ – ‘Aupito living through Dawn Raids
• Mainstream media must do better after Dawn Raids apology
• Photo essay: Dawn Raids apology at Auckland Town Hall
• More Dawn Raids articles
• More on the Polynesian Panthers

However, during the following economic recession, an Immigration Act amendment in 1968 allowed those overstaying their work permits to be deported and gave police the power to ask people to immediately produce documentation confirming they were legally allowed to be in NZ.

The move unfairly targeted the Pacific community, Māori and other people of colour

“I stand before you as a symbol of the Crown that wronged you nearly 50 years ago,” Ardern said in her opening remarks at the Auckland Town Hall this afternoon.

“We have experienced the Pacific Aotearoa journey shift from one of new settlement to the present day – Pacific diaspora in New Zealand.

Integral part of Aotearoa
“Pacific people is an integral part of Aotearoa’s cultural and social fabric, and are active contributors to our economic success.

“However, in the multiple chapters of Pacific people’s story in New Zealand — the chapter of the Dawn Raids stands out as one that continues to cast a long shadow.”

Ardern said the Pacific peoples were used as “scapegoats” as the economic boom of post-World War II saw a downturn in the 1970s.

Prime Minister Ardern speaks of remorse. Video: TVOne News

“While these events took place almost 50 years ago, the legacy of the Dawn Raids era lives on today in Pacific communities. It remains vividly etched in the memory of those who were directly impacted; it lives on in the disruption of trust and faith in authorities; and it lives on in the unresolved grievances of Pacific communities that these events happened and that to this day, have gone unaddressed.

“Today, I stand on behalf of the New Zealand government to offer a formal and unreserved apology to Pacific communities for the discriminatory implementation of the immigration laws of the 1970s that led to the events of the dawn raids.

“The Government expresses its sorrow, remorse and regret that the Dawn Raids and random police checks occurred and that these actions were ever considered appropriate.

“Our government conveys to the future generations of Aotearoa that the past actions of the Crown were wrong, and that the treatment of your ancestors was wrong. We convey to you our deepest and sincerest apology.”

Apology also for impact on Māori
Ardern also apologised for the Dawn Raids’ impact on Māori and other ethnic communities.

“We acknowledge the distress and hurt that these experiences would have caused,” she said.

“As a nation, we expect everyone in New Zealand to be treated with dignity and respect, and we expect that all individuals are guaranteed their rights without distinction of any kind. Unfortunately, these expectations were not met in this case and inequities that stem from direct and indirect discrimination continue to exist.

“We’re committed to eliminating racism in all its forms in Aotearoa New Zealand, and affording everyone the right to be treated humanely and with respect and with dignity.”

She also outlined a raft of changes as part of the government’s apology as a “way of expressing our deepest sorrow, whilst recognising the wrongs of the past and to pave the new dawn and a new beginning for Pacific peoples in New Zealand”.

As part of its formal apology, the government will provide $2.1 million in academic and vocational scholarships for Pacific communities; $1 million in Manaaki New Zealand Short Term Scholarship Training Courses for delegates from Samoa, Tonga, Fiji and Tuvalu; and for resources to be made available to schools and kura who choose to teach the history of the Dawn Raids.

The Ministry for Culture and Heritage and Ministry for Pacific Peoples will also provide support to enable Pacific artists and/or historians to work with communities in developing a comprehensive historical record of the Dawn Raids period.

Republished with the author’s permission. Read and view Barbara Dreaver’s full TVOne coverage here.

Days after being condemned by the largest Pacific Island capital — Port Moresby, the Economist’s Global Liveability Index has been criticised in Auckland by one of New Zealand’s most respected “green” columnists.

The criticisms come from different ends of the spectrum — Port Moresby was third to last in the 140-nation survey while Auckland, with the world’s largest urban Polynesian population, was top.

Both results were thanks to city responses to the global covid-19 pandemic.

• READ MORE: Auckland is the world’s ‘most liveable city’? Many Māori might disagree
• Parkop challenges ‘least liveable cities’ ranking for Port Moresby
• Auckland has become the world’s most liveable city – The Economist

National Capital District Governor Powes Parkop had roasted the Economist index, criticising the “irresponsible” criteria used in in the index assessment and called for a rethink about his sprawling city of Port Moresby (pop. 391,000).

“This is a harsh verdict on our city, which we have worked so hard to build,” Parkop said.

Leading Māori academic Associate Professor Ella Henry of Auckland University of Technology also criticised the criteria saying few indigenous tangata whenua people would agree with Auckland/Tāmaki Makaurau (pop. 1.6 million, with 11.5 percent Māori) being the world’s “most liveable” city.

“In particular, I would argue that many Māori whānau in Auckland do not enjoy the benefits of this supposed ‘liveability’,” she said, citing negative employment, health, housing, poverty and digital divide statistics.

Global ‘low bar’
However, while New Zealand Herald commentator Simon Wilson, celebrated for his environmentally progressive views on Auckland, today welcomed his city’s success, he also  criticised the global “low bar” that had contributed to the Economist result.

“It sure puts covid into perspective, doesn’t it? Auckland … is now the world’s most liveable city. And it’s all because of our response to the pandemic,” he wrote.

“Britain has just delayed lifting all restrictions by another month. The fast rollout of vaccines in the US has stalled at around 50 percent, because nobody really knows how to persuade the remaining half of the population to get the jab.

“European and Asian countries alike slide in and out of covid crises. The nightmare that is India seems almost beyond redemption. This is a terrible tragedy.

“Here in Tāmaki Makaurau, meanwhile, we enjoy the luxury of debating the future of yachting contests, school zones and cycling on the harbour bridge.

“Yes, for now and at least into the near future, Auckland has every reason to think of itself as the world’s most liveable city. But the bar is very low.”

Wilson also wrote that it was not very encouraging that the Japanese city of Osaka had been placed second on the index.

What to crow about?
“The Japanese city has uncontrolled covid and is set to be half submerged by even a minimal rise in sea levels,” he observed.

“Here [in Auckland], though, setting covid aside, what else have we got to crow, or complain, about?” Wilson continued.

“We’re tremendously liveable, obviously, if you own property – and cruelly not so if you don’t. We’re tremendously liveable if your life doesn’t oblige you to get stuck in traffic, but not so much, etc.

“Some of us have reasonably well-paid future-focused jobs while others of us are precariously clinging to the gig economy, or are on minimum wage, or are not in the productive economy at all.

“The fact is, measuring liveability is a spurious business. The only markers that count should be the ones that acknowledge we’re doing well when we’re all doing well.”

In New Zealand, youth climate change movement School Strike 4 Climate Auckland has declared itself as racist, and disbanded, but young activists say going silent is not the answer.

The group had organised large protests in centres throughout the country, becoming the biggest climate protest movement in the country.

The mea culpa announcement came out of the blue — in it the youth-led group acknowledged being a “white-dominated” space.

• LISTEN TO RNZ: The problem of racism towards Pasifika within climate change  – Pacific Wave (duration 5′:07″)

“School Strike 4 Climate Auckland has avoided, ignored, and tokenised black, indigenous and people of colour voices and demands, especially those of Pasifika and Māori individuals in the climate activism space,” the organisation said in an online statement.

It said it made the move to shut down on advice from people of colour and indigenous people.

But as reporter Mariner Fagaiava-Muller investigated, he found racism within the climate change movement is not new, despite Pasifika being disproportionately affected by the impacts of climate change.

The youth climate protest movement was made notable by Greta Thunberg, the Swedish schoolgirl whose poignant speech to the United Nations even landed her as the 2019 Time Person of the Year choice.

But long before Thunberg’s whimsical cover portrait looking out over the ocean took the world by storm, trouble in paradise was ignited.

Climate change affects every country in the world, but its impact in the Pacific has been so unrelenting and for so long, the region faces a real threat of being wiped off the map. However, it seems the very tagata Pasifika who want to stand up for themselves have long been silenced.

The Greens Party’s Lourdes Vano says: “Here in New Zealand, people are only noticing it for the first time because a lot of white kids have decided to strike in the streets and I feel like a lot of privileged people are able to engage in these spaces more, so inherently that’s just going to be a lot more Pākehā.

“And naturally they centre their own voices, and what that does is further perpetuate the systems that we’re trying to fight back against.”

Vano feels there is a tokenistic, tick box culture, and that some just came on-board for another extracurricular activity, as opposed to embracing environmentalism.

The first of three major strikes in 2019 was held on the same day as Polyfest where hundreds of Pasifika youth who would have otherwise attended were overlooked.

Fellow Pasifika activist Helena Fuluifaga Chan Foung (Amaile, Vaimoso, Luatuanu’u, Lalovaea) says shutting the organisation down and leaving the climate conversation altogether washes their hands of any accountability.

She says they should have had the humility to take criticism and work towards competency.

“To disband and to dissolve is really to me like quitting and copping out, because they’re saying the act of disbanding is the action that they see fit as a reparation for something that they’ve done wrong,” she says.

While it is bad enough that seas are rising across the world, in the Pacific it is happening faster than average.

Lineage and heritage built within the paradigm of the moana is becoming less recognisable. The land is entrenched in cultural tradition and storytelling, as a life source – but is now embattled by increasing damage.

That is why Chan Foung says instead of Palagi being the face of the climate crisis, it is imperative for people from the moana to stand on the frontline.

“It was very eco-centric – a lot of the indigenous ways of living, and so with all of that passed down knowledge and descending from those groups, you would almost think that indigenous groups were leading those conversations,” she says.

Brianna Fruean became a founding member of environmental organisation 350.org’s Samoa chapter at 11 years old, and says racism within the climate change movement was even more rife back then.

She says simply standing back from racism isn’t good enough, and to be anti-racist makes more impact.

She encourages Palagi to undertake to be allies, a role that allows as many hands to help mobilise the climate movement as possible.

“The weight of this crisis is heavy. It will take everyone’s hands and help to carry it,” she says.

“A lot of the times it will be comfortable – because climate change is an intersectional issue, [but] there will be a lot of times when you feel uncomfortable trying to shift and change, and adapt your organising so it’s inclusive and… a safe space.

“But I think it’s important to acknowledge all the hands it will take for us to be able to organise a sustainable future.”

Fruean says it is unfortunate that racism has taken away from the cause at hand.

“Pasifika activists aren’t asking for the climate space to be solely us,” she says.

“We’re just asking for our voices to be valued, and for us to be able to work together in a way that upholds everyone’s dignity and right to their voice to be heard.”

The plea from the Pasifika communities is that they lead the conversation, be listened to, but not be the only ones talking.

School Strike 4 Climate Auckland declined an interview when approached by RNZ Pacific.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Today marks 50 years to the day that six Pacific Islanders grouped together in central Auckland to form the Polynesian Panther Party.

The party was founded on 16 June 1971 by members Will ‘Ilolahia, Fred Schmidt, Nooroa Teavae, Paul Dapp, Eddie Williams and Vaughan Sanft. They were later joined by Tigilau Ness, Lupematasila Misatauveve Melani Anae and Alec Toleafoa.

They took inspiration from the United States civil rights movement Black Panthers during a period of police brutality against the African American population.

• LISTEN TO RNZ: Untold Pacific History: Waking Up to the Dawn Raids here, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts and iHeart Radio
• Other Dawn Raids and Polynesian Panther articles

Similar scenes of racial unrest occurred in Aotearoa, and long before the infamous Dawn Raids too. In the early 1870s, an Evening Post article said: “Bad as the Chinese are, the South Sea savages are worse, and any extensive importation of them would have a most pernicious effect.”

New Zealand faced major economic troubles almost a century on from that report, and Pasifika immigrants brought under the allure of jobs in industrial labour were resorted to as the scapegoat.

“It was a time of revolution,” Associate Professor Lupematasila Misatauveve Dr Melani Anae told RNZ’s Untold Pacific History.

“To heck with authority, to heck with conservatism, to heck with the Vietnam War, that was the kind of climate we were growing up in,” she said.

“We delivered the West End newspaper around Ponsonby and Herne Bay to get money to pay for the office. The work we did as the Polynesian Panthers was conscientising, it was making people aware of who we were.”

Musician Tigilau Ness recalls that they were criticised for “hating white people”.

“We had to put up with that kind of stigma as well, not only from the Europeans, the white people, but from our own people. ‘Why you do this to the Palagi? Why you go fight the police?’,” he said.

The Panthers insisted on peaceful strike and protest action, as opposed to their US counterparts.

They drove in supporters’ vehicles and “dawn raided” the homes of politicians by shining torches and yelling through loudspeakers, to prove why their work was necessary.

Legal rights pamphlets were distributed, homework centres were held in church halls and food co-ops were run. They also provided free transportation for the families of prison inmates who wanted to visit them, and on release free accommodation would be offered.

Fifty years on, the Panthers have concluded a tour of schools and Pasifika communities in Wellington, intending to share the story of the ‘Claw’ to the next generation.

 

The Polynesian Panther Party will hold a three-day fonotaga commemoration event this weekend at the University of Auckland’s Fale Pasifika.

Dawn Raid apology
The Panthers’ golden jubilee couldn’t be more forthcoming, given an announcement made this week of a formal government apology for the 1970s Dawn Raids.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said the time had come for an apology for a Labour Party immigration policy that targeted Pasifika people who had overstayed their visas by mere fact of their ethnicity.

“To this day Pacific communities face prejudices and stereotypes… an apology can never reduce what happened, or undo the decades of disadvantage experienced as a result, but it can contribute to healing for Pacific peoples,” she said.

Ardern was joined at the theatrette lecturn by Pacific Peoples Minister ‘Aupito Toeolesulusulu Tofae Su’a William Sio, who wiped away tears while sharing his own personal story of being raided as a teenager.

“I’m quite emotional… I’m trying to control my emotions today,” he said.

His parents had only just bought a home, taken as an achievement for the family, when a year or two later they’d been woken up to a police officer flashing a torch in their eyes.

“To have somebody knocking at the door in the early hours of the morning with a flashlight in your face, disrespecting the owner of the home, with an Alsatian dog frothing at the mouth,” ‘Aupito recounted.

“The memories are etched in my memory of my father being helpless.

“I don’t think there is any Pacific family who was not impacted on by the events of the Dawn Raids, and there is a strong moral imperative to acknowledge those past actions were wrong. Through an apology, they recognise those actions were unacceptable under the universal declaration of human rights, and are absolutely intolerable within today’s human rights protections.

“Come for the ceremony,” ‘Aupito said, welcoming the Panthers to the government apology.

Ardern added “[the Panthers] will probably remind us to ‘educate to liberate’.”

The Prime Minister will make her formal government apology for the Dawn Raids on June 26 at the Auckland Town Hall, 50 years on from the start of the revolution against racial injustices against Pasifika in Aotearoa.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

In the New Zealand 2021 Budget, a big investment of NZ$108 million has been signalled to support the wellbeing of the Pacific population through the rebuild and recovery from the covid-19 pandemic.

Pacific Peoples Minister ‘Aupito William Sio said this was a significant investment for Pacific communities who have been hard-hit by the pandemic in the past year.

“With the Pacific Aotearoa Lalanga Fou Goals as a guide, the Pacific package puts a strong focus on Pacific wellbeing and continues the government’s commitment to ensuring that Pacific peoples are leading this work to achieve confident, thriving, prosperous and resilient communities,” he said.

“Budget 2021 makes this possible through tailored business, health and education initiatives that bolster the vital holistic work Pacific communities are already doing across the country.”

• READ MORE: Budget 2021: Benefits boost in ‘quest to reduce inequality’
• RNZ coverage of the 2021 Budget

The $108 million Pacific package is made up of the following:

• $99.6 million new operating funding
• $660,000 new capital funding from the Budget 2021 allowances and the Covid-19 Response and Recovery Fund (CRRF).
• $7.8 million in operating funding is repurposed from existing funding in Vote Education.

The package includes:

• $30.3 million boost to assist the Tupu Aotearoa programme to support approximately 7500 Pacific peoples into employment, training, and education across Aotearoa New Zealand, funded from the CRRF.
• Investing $6.6 million to support establishing the Pacific Wellbeing Strategy – a cross-government initiative that will develop ways to measure Pacific wellbeing across government work programmes and initiatives.
• Supporting Pacific businesses through the impacts of covid-19 with $16.2 million for business support services, funded from the CRRF.
• $20.8 million supporting Pacific bilingual and immersion education in the schooling system, made up of $12.4 million of new operating funding and $644,000 of new capital funding from Budget 2021 allowances, with $7.8 million of repurposed funding from Vote Education.
• $5 million operating funding and $16,000 capital funding to deliver sustained professional learning and development to embed Tapasā as a tool to address social inclusion in the education sector.
• $5.1 million for the development of two new Pacific language subjects, gagana Tokelau and vagahau Niue as NCEA Achievement Standards subjects.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

After 23 years with one political party and one prime minister in charge, Samoa’s general election last month delivered a surprise neck-and-neck result. But it was barely reported in most national media outlets here. How come? And what might improve the situation?

For a while, it seemed like Prince Philip’s death was the only news story in the world.

On Saturday, April 10, TVNZ’s 1News set aside the first 40 minutes of its 6pm bulletin for it – after which even the sports news dutifully noted his connection to New Zealand yachting.

• READ MORE: Hayden Donnell’s full Mediawatch item – Samoa election cliffhanger overlooked locally

The Herald, Stuff, RNZ, and Newshub also gave the Prince blanket coverage.

Not everyone was happy with the media’s dedication to the story. In the UK, the BBC had to set up a dedicated form on its website to handle the 100,000 complaints it received over its coverage.

Audiences in Aotearoa weren’t unanimously overjoyed with our newsrooms’ focus on the Prince either.

There were predictable complaints from republicans, but as the weekend wore on more people pointed out the disparity between the coverage of the prince’s death and the Samoan election.

For nearly two days, RNZ was the only major New Zealand news website carrying information about the election results, and analysis of the outcome. Its coverage was carried out by RNZ Pacific, which has a team dedicated to reporting and broadcasting Pacific news and issues across the region.

Hayden Donnell of RNZ Mediawatch talked to Auckland University Pacific studies lecturer Seuta’afili Dr Patrick Thomsen in the wake of the April 9 election and before a fresh ballot due on May 21 (pending court challenges). Here is the transcript of the interview:

Monumental result
Besides the obvious fact that it is a significant political event in one of our closest neighbouring countries, can you explain why this particular Samoan election is so newsworthy and historic?

Since 1982 the Human Rights Protection Party (HRPP) has been in power and the current Prime Minister, Tuilaepa Sa’ilele Malielegaoi, has been prime minister since 1998. There has been almost four decades of continuity in terms of the political leadership of Samoa, and in 12 to 18 months the current government has seen its stranglehold over power unravel. That goes back to the measles epidemic, I think. There was a lot of discontent in Samoa over the way the government handled that. It’s very monumental that we’ve had a political party [opposition FAST Party led by Fiame Naomi Mata’afa] come through so quickly within 12 months to challenge the status quo in many different ways.

It is a dead heat right? It’s 25-all with an independent seat that will decide the election so it couldn’t be more of a cliffhanger [the independent seat and a controversial sixth women’s seat created a 26-all dead heat before the Head of State called a new election on May 21]. You tweeted that you didn’t understand why the New Zealand media pretty much wasn’t covering the election especially in our two biggest websites, Stuff and The New Zealand Herald.

Samoa’s election result still sit on a knife edge. I don’t understand why NZ media aren’t running more in-depth stories about this considering our “connections” to Samoa. The numbers are truly astonishing! https://t.co/FP2faXaGuL

— Patrick Thomsen (@_PatrickThomsen) April 11, 2021

I think about the conversations we’ve been having recently about the lack of Pacific representation in our newsrooms, but I’d go further to also ask ourselves as a country, whose knowledge and whose communities do we value more? And then we can start to think about why our journalists chose to specifically focus on Prince Philip’s death. That was a momentous occasion for New Zealand as a former British colony, so if we have predominantly Pākehā men on our airwaves there will be things that will be emphasised from those particular perspectives.

We’re almost putting the cart before the horse here. We’re asking why the media isn’t covering a Samoan election. Is it that we’re asking them to do this but maybe they’re not even necessarily connected to Samoan and wider Pasifika communities just down the road from them?

Absolutely. I grew up in South Auckland among the Samoan community, which was very connected, and we had our own forms of media. Radio 531pi, which is now the Pacific Media Network, but the only people who are covering our communities are ourselves, so that begs the question around who we value in this country. Why is it our journalists don’t feel comfortable, or don’t have connections to Pacific communities. There’s a bigger question there.

On the subject of commercial media. They’ll say “these stories aren’t being consumed by our audience as much as a story on Prince Philip’s death”. There are 120,000 Samoan people in Auckland, 200,000 in New Zealand, is it a sign that market has disengaged from some of these mainstream sources like the Herald or Stuff?

I think you’ve hit the nail on the head there. I think our communities have disengaged with a lot of these mainstream publications, especially the mainstream outlets specifically because the stories they do report on are quite hyper-sensationalised and they’re not exactly the most flattering stories. A lot of them will depict a lot of the problems within our community as a way in which they can engage their readership, because they have specific readership and we’re not that readership, and I think this also ties to the fact that our communities here in New Zealand generally are marginalised and experience social and economic deprivation in a way that prevents them from being an audience that these commercial outlets would want to pitch to. They can’t make any money off us in their point of view.

But that’s not necessarily true, is it? There are organisations that do serve Pasifika people. It’s not an impossible market to target if you actually have a connection to it?

If you focus on one thing, you tend to miss others, right? And so these commercial outlets probably won’t see the Pacific audience until someone demonstrates the value they can provide for the outlet. For a broadcaster like RNZ that has a mandate that’s sort of broader, it gives you an opportunity to think about this.

A lot of the coverage there was in organisations like Stuff or the Herald or Newshub was actually published through a content sharing agreement with RNZ, so it was RNZ Pacific’s content. Are you worried that these content sharing agreements that RNZ has set up with these media organisations might mean they’ll opt out of doing their own coverage of the Pacific.

It does give a mechanism for organisations to put it in the too hard basket. It’s great that RNZ is willing to share its content but then the Samoan election — we’re using this as an example — there is of course the surface-level reporting you can do where you can just report on what actually happened, but in terms of the different impacts this will have on the different facets of Samoan society, that sort of in-depth reporting goes missing. Having those share agreements in place really removes the incentive for these outlets to seek out those really differing perspectives, that depth, the things that will help generate understanding among its readership of a community. So we’ve got to be careful it doesn’t allow media outlets — even if you’re a commercial entity you have a responsibility to the public in a way other enterprises don’t — it allows them to vacate that social responsibility.

You pointed to TVNZ’s Breakfast as an organisation that got things right. Why do you think things were so different there?

I think it’s because of the efforts of John Campbell and his team. He’s taken the time to come and speak and listen to many people in our community. He’s also advocated for the recruitment of Pacific presenters and staff members within the Breakfast team, so his relationship is one that’s backed by action, which is why he’s respected among Pacific communities. Though there are times that I’ve disagreed with some of the things that he’s covered, it’s always come from a place of understand that our communities are on the same level as he is. He doesn’t assume anything about us, he really tries to understand and listen, and I do know he was instrumental in helping to shape positions for Pacific and Māori women within his team. So structurally there’s a problem, but there are things that we can do as individuals if we are in positions of power.

We’ve also lost a lot of our Samoan language publications and organisations in the last year. The Samoa Times was shut down in June. The Pacific Media Centre is going through a lot of upheaval after the retirement of its leader David Robie. How much of an impact do you think these things had on the lack of coverage of the Samoan election?

When I was young there were a few more Samoan newspapers but the majority of those newspapers were written in Samoan, which is important for the continuation of the language but we do know there are a lot of youngsters in New Zealand who can’t speak Samoan. So they wouldn’t have been able to access a lot of those newspaper articles. The type of political analysis which is quite sophisticated which are written in those newspapers — the type of thing we’d like to see written in the newspapers in this country — there are outlets locally in Samoa that provide that like the Samoa Observer that have a bunch of talented local journalists. It might be developing those relationships with regional outlets, rather than just developing what we are missing here. Our relationship to the Pacific is something that needs to be cultivated here.

If someone put you in charge of Pacific media coverage in New Zealand, what are the big changes you would make?

I would actually go and talk to our communities first and foremost. Pacific ways of doing things means you go back to your communities and you find out what they want, and what they need. Personally the arm of RNZ that looks at the Pacific in particular, I would resource that a lot more. I would institute an internship programme that targets journalists that want to do work in the Pacific, and I’d have Pacific journalists and lecturers be the ones that come in and help to develop that. A third thing I’d do is develop or work with specific training organisations to have a specific training model instituted so reporters are more sensitised to what it means to work and report on Pacific communities.

EDITORIAL: The nation has been plunged into a constitutional crisis and the caretaker Prime Minister has shown himself to be utterly incapable of solving it in a constitutional fashion. https://t.co/2Q3oreXIlN

— Samoa Observer (@samoaobserver) May 12, 2021

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

“No matter how we come to be in Fiji, or how long we have been here …we all part of the land. It is the land of our birth or land of our adoption, the land to which we belong” – The late archbishop Petero Mataca.

When a New Zealand youth, an eighth generation Indo-Fijian, recently spoke out against education policies that exclude some Pacific Island people from Pasifika programmes and scholarships as unfair, he did not realise he was opening a thorny debate that goes back to 1879.

That was the year Indian indentured labourers were introduced to the Pacific with the first forebearers being brought aboard the Leonidas and their descendants have become part of the diaspora, or in the case of Aotearoa New Zealand become part of the double diaspora.

• READ MORE: 141st anniversary of the Girmityas arriving in Fiji
• Fiji Day – birth of a magazine and reflections of the past 50 years

Between 1879 and 1916, 87 voyages were made by 40 ships by the British bringing in the Girmityas or the people of the ”Agreement”.

As the venerable Professor Vijay Naidu of the University of the South Pacific in Suva attests to that: “Indo-Fijians or Fiji Indians or Fijians of Indian descent are descendants of the 60,500 British Indian indentured labourers who were transported between 1879 and 1916 to establish and work on the plantations of sugar, coconut, banana, tea, and rubber and sugar mills owned the Australian Colonial Sugar Refining Company”.

As he says these Girmityas lived in “lines” comprising of single rooms and worked in atrocious conditions in which has been called a new system of slavery, and “narak” or hell.

“In Fiji their roots lay in cultivating the land as small holder tenant farmers in mainly indigenous Fijian owned land. There has been more than a century of this relationship with i’Taukei, mostly cooperative and beneficial, and occasionally conflictual,” as Professor Naidu points out.

Reinforcing their culture
Through the 100 years and more they managed to reinforce their culture and religions while doing away with the caste system and gone too were dhowry for marriages.

Indo-Fijians have migrated to other countries such as Aotearoa NZ, Australia, Canada, United Kingdom and the United States all for a better life.

However, so too have the indigenous i’Taukei, all in search of new opportunities using both military service and rugby as a means to settle abroad.

But it is the better of two pursuits that makes for a good Fijian – i’Taukei or Indo-Fijian.

As children’s book author Ryan Gounder believes, all young people need role models to look up to.

Gounder, who was born and raised in Fiji and now lives in Aotearoa NZ, is writing a new series, starting with Rugby Superheroes Volume One, published in Fijian with English translations this year.

In Fiji, rugby players are like superheroes for many children and the lessons they teach us can strongly impact children in the community, Gounder says.

Developing ‘tangible resources’
“We need to develop more tangible resources for our young Pacific people that resonates with their identity as Pasifika people, and which will empower them and help develop resilience to be the ‘best versions of themselves’ – a famous phrase often using within the Rugby Sevens circles in Fiji,” says Gounder, whose first name resonates with Ben Ryan, the coach of the winning Rugby sevens team in Brazil in 2016.

The irony of Ryan Gounder is that he is a recipient aof the Languages Innovation Fund set up by the Ministry of Pacific People, despite being an Indo-Fijian. I will come back to that later in this article.

However, the i’Taukei, in the process of seeking better opportunities for their children and themselves too have lost their identity as they pursue the dollar.

While language remains one of the strongest senses of identity, so to are culture and religion that makes a person know where his or her Turangewaewae (standing place) is.

“In the Fijian community, it is often discussed at our annual gatherings how language is being lost,” Gounder says of the more serious discussion around the kava bowl.

It is not just the loss of language but traditional culture that displaces the I’Taukei and the Indo-Fijian, who has had to adopt new ways to cope with being in a new environment.

While the proponent of the coups in Fiji in 1987, which caused thousands of Indo-Fijians to emigrate, making them a minority in Fiji once more, Sitiveni Rabuka tried to reconcile with a democratic constitution review with joint sponsorship of the bill with Opposition Leader Jai Ram Reddy in 1997.

Constitution ‘unfortunately unilaterally revoked’
“It was unfortunate that the 1997 constitution was unilaterally revoked in July 2009 by the [Voreqe] Bainimarama-led military regime,” Rabuka wrote in a column in The Fiji Times in the lead up to the 2018 election.

“For me personally I have three reservations about the adoption of the 2013 constitution of “Fijian” as our common name.

“Firstly, the people were never consulted. It was imposed just like the Bainimarama regime’s repudiation of the 1997 constitution and the abolition of the Great Council Chiefs (GGC) – the Bose Levu Vakaturaga – in 2012.”

His second reservation was the allowing of dual nationality which he said diluted patriotism even if it paved the way for the reversing of the brain drain which took place after his 1987 coups.

The third reservation was most concerning for him was that which ignored the group rights of the indigenous I’Taukei and Rotuman people.

To him it was unacceptable that the 2013 constitution presumed there was no differentiation between the people.

“For an indigenous i’Taukei to be called a Fijian means more than being a Fijian citizen. It means being registered in the i’Taukei Vola ni Kawa Bula (VKB) as a member of a customary landowning Mataqali. (Traditionally, each Fijian villager is born into a certain role in the family unit or Tokatoka. Various heads of the family will administer and lead the family unit within the village community. Each chief of the village will in turn lead the people to fulfill their role to the Vanua.)

Mataqali and land rights
Each village will have several family units/Tokatoka  which are part of one clan or Mataqali. Several Mataqali will make up the larger tribe or Yavusa. Several Yavusa will belong to a certain land mass and comprise thereby the Vanua (confederation of Yavusa)..

Fiji social scientist Dr Asesela Ravuvu described the Vanua as:”The living soul or human manifestation of the physical environment which the members have since claimed to belong to them and to which they also belong. The land is the physical or geographical entity of the people, upon which their survival…as a group depends. Land is thus an extension of the self. Likewise, the people are an extension of the land. Land becomes lifeless and useless without the people, and likewise the people are helpless and insecure without land to thrive upon.”

Therein lies the dilemma for the I’Taukei who no longer recognises the Mataqali he or she belongs to in Aotearoa NZ, having been away from the family clan.

With that comes the loss of identity and a reversion and accession to the Western World and hence that brings its own problems.

As Niuean Dr Collin Tukuitonga, who left Fiji after the 1987 coup, assesses: “People feel disconnected from their social norms and traditional values, family connections are disturbed and of course that is almost an inevitable consequence that young people in particular would turn to drugs and crime. That is why I see languages as a protective element for our people.”

The impacts of the loss identity can be devastating, but HOPE party leader Roko Tupou Draunidalo, stepdaughter of the 1987 Prime Minister Timoci Bavadra, has a different take on the subject.

“I am otherwise of the view that every Fijian born in Fiji or anywhere in the Pacific or with Fijian ancestry that lived in the Pacific with Pacific cultures and interactions is Fijian and therefore a Pacific Islander,” she says with conviction.

Culture alive and well
“I’Taukei have not lost their culture, it is alive and well and you need to go any village or I’Taukei home to realise that.”

However, that is not case in Aotearoa NZ. That Ryan Gounder was recognised for his work by the Ministry of Pacific Peoples despite being Indo-Fijian is a rarity rather than the norm.

The Search for the Indo-Fijian identity will require an act of Parliament so that they are differentiated from Southeast Asian Indians.

Currently they have to tick the Indian box in the census and are not recognised by some universities as Pasifika Peoples.

As Professor Vijay Naidu explains: “In response to a letter from Lorraine Pillay in early 2000 which inquired whether Indo-Fijians were ‘Pasifika’, the then PM Helen Clark’s office responded strongly in the affirmative.”

Pillay raised this identity question when she was told in a Wellington workshop for senior teachers and principals of secondary schools that Indo-Fijians were not eligible for scholarships as they were not considered to be “Pasifika”.

In sharp contrast to this standpoint, when I joined Victoria University of Wellington, Pasifika staff and students, and the wider community welcomed me as a “Pasifika” person.

As Professor Brij Lal has stated, generations of living in Fiji have changed our identity and outlook. We are indeed children of the ‘Pacific’!”

This article was first published in Fiji Dynamics, the new magazine for the Fiji diaspora in Aotearoa New Zealand, and has been republished with permission.

Help with living costs while studying and extra support for mental health are two areas Pacific tertiary students want given more attention with the New Zealand general election.

Universities NZ figures show there were 10,000 full-time Pasifika students enrolled in May, an increase of 35 percent since 2010.

The last two national budgets have committed $107.6 million to help Pacific communities over the next 30 years, but tertiary students say there are urgent needs that must be addressed.

“The first one is mental health and well-being,” according to Leilani Vae’au, while for Ali Leota “one thing for sure is introducing a universal education income”.

Vae’au is at Wellington’s Victoria University working towards a bachelor degree in political science, international relations and religious studies.

She is also on the university’s Pasifika student council.

The 20-year-old is not eligible for student allowance to help with living expenses because her parents earn over the threshold. Student allowance begins to drop once parents earn beyond $56,888.52 a year before tax. If parents jointly earn $98,653.52 or more the student is ineligible.

‘Three younger siblings’
“But I have three younger siblings under me who depend on that and other family members who depend on my parents,” Vae’au explained.

“And I can’t get that aid so that I don’t have to work all the shifts I work to be able to study and focus on that because of the fact my parents make money to support my family.”

Instead, she meets her living costs working multiple office shifts, which she balances with full-time study, student council commitments and a busy home life.

During the Level 4 lockdown she was relieved to keep her job, but from home when her bedroom became her office, living room and study. The lines blurred between study, work and family life.

“Over covid, I didn’t have the opportunity to compartmentalise my house which has six people living in it and a hundred different Zoom calls going on at the same time.”

Vae’au found the inability to separate these aspects of life particularly challenging.

“As a child of the Pacific or as a child in a multi-generational home, as the eldest child as well, there are lot of factors that were still impacting mental health-wise and just stability-wise in the home environment.”

University difficult to navigate
Fellow Vic student Rosina Buchanan is a self-described “queer non-binary person of colour with a disability”.

The Bachelor of Health student has found university difficult to navigate without adequate mental health support and would like to see greater equity when meeting the challenges campus life presents.

“Because I would encounter quite a bit of ableism, elitism, classism, homophobia, being misgendered, racism, and that is definitely a lot of barriers to being able to thrive.”

For Ali Leota, the national president of the Pacific student body Tauira Pasifika, financial support is key.

“One thing for sure is introducing a universal education income” he said, challenging the government to help provide a hand up to provide Pasifika students with a level playing field.

“The public health major would like to see student allowance eligibility reconfigured in a way that’s fairer to Pacific families, as the parental income threshold doesn’t adequately take into account the number of dependants.

“And coming from a big family, we’re kind of victims of that,” Leota says.

Universal education income
“So therefore, implementing a universal education income is a way to pave the way forward to making tertiary education accessible and fit for purpose for our Pacific learners.”

Post-graduate students should also be included in the ‘universal education income’ according to Leota, who pointed out the incumbent government had failed to reinstate their financial backing which he said was a barrier to Pasifika achieving masters and doctoral success.

It is also a barrier to Pasifika moving into academia.

“Do they go to work or do they continue to study?” Leota says.

“Of course nine times out of 10 our Pasifika students will opt to work to go and help support families but a universal education income will enable our students to climb up the ladder and make our tertiary spaces a space where we feel like we’re welcomed.”

Leota says Pasifika people are underrepresented in academia, even in Pacific studies, and pointed to studies by Dr Sereana Naepi and Dr Tara McAllister who asked Why isn’t my professor Pasifika?

The incumbent government has committed to “confronting systematic racism and discrimination in education” as part of its five point action plan to support Pacific learners.

More student body support
University of Auckland law student Shaneel Lal says they can help address it immediately by offering more support to Pacific student bodies which in turn provide support to students.

Lal’s family moved from Fiji when he was 14 and he attended Auckland’s Ōtāhuhu College where his hard work was recognised, being named school Dux. The Youth Parliament 2019 MP who represented Jenny Salesa said he had difficulty transitioning from the strong Pasifika and Māori-dominated culture of high school to the University of Auckland.

“I went from a very collectivist community to a very individualist community where I went from being a person to a number, and nothing really prepares a young Pacific person for that transition.”

The 20-year-old said he was overwhelmed with the culture shock at the time and dropped out. Although he is back at university, he would like more attention paid by tertiary institutions to learning priorities and styles from this part of the world.

“For example, Māori communities are underpinned by the fundamental principles of whanaungatanga and we have similar concepts in our Pacific communities that we exist as a community,” said Lal.

“That is missing at university. University is about competing rather than collaborating and working together.”

While Labour has released a five-point action plan to improve things for Pacific students, including “to respond to unmet needs, with an initial focus on needs arising from the covid-19 pandemic”, other parties lack university specific education policy for Pasifika.

This article is republished by the Pacific Media Centre under a partnership agreement with RNZ.

Former Air New Zealand cabin attendant Taaniko Nordstrom, and her sister-in-law Vienna Nordstrom, are the creative duo behind Soldiers Rd Portraits, a photography-based business they set up together in 2011.

Based in Cambridge, they dress their customers in Māori, Pasifika, Native American and First Nations’ clothing and then photograph them to create a vintage-style portrait.

Soldiers Rd have taken this idea overseas to Australia, the US, Europe and India, and in 2016 started a project called Behind the Wire – Rangatahi ki Rangatira.

LISTEN: Presenter Julian Willcox talks to Taaniko Nordstrom

This social enterprise involves them taking portraits of inmates at the Te Ao Mārama Māori Focus Unit at Waikeria Prison in the Waikato as a means of re-connecting them with their cultural identity and whakapapa through portraiture.

This article is republished by the Pacific Media Centre under a partnership agreement with RNZ.

How racially prejudiced is Aotearoa New Zealand? Well, we saw just how racially prejudiced it is a weekend ago when a Stuff reporter showed us pictures of the breaches of alert level 3 at the skate park and basketball court in Victoria Park.

In one photo, there was a group of young Pakeha males, in the other, there was a group of young Asian males playing basketball.

The reporter also mentioned an Auckland councilor who was “gutted” at the numbers of skate boarders in a park on the North Shore and lamented that the skaters and basketballers had removed the yellow caution tapes that ran around the areas.

• READ MORE: Did lockdown end early for this North Shore beach?

During my walk in my West Auckland neigbourhood and around our playgrounds during the same time, and again the next day, there was no one on the playground and not anyone I could see in the skate parks.

My friend who lives in South Auckland said the playgrounds in her area were also empty.

When New Zealand was hit by that first wave of covid-19, there were few Māori and Pasifika peoples who had contracted the disease. Yet almost everyone went into lockdown.

Almost everyone. Māori and Pasifika were nowhere near as affected as Pakeha, yet they understood what community and community transmission meant and went into lockdown, for the sake of Aoteaora.

Disproportionate impact
Now this second wave has disproportionately affected some Pasifika communities in South Auckland. Yet to those on the North Shore and in Ponsonby, they could not give a damn.

To them, people (in South Auckland) are not their people. That community is not their community.

Gutted to see this again. People keep taking the caution tape and signs off our CLOSED playgrounds and skateparks. 400 people have died in Melbourne from their second outbreak. 2000 healthcare workers have Covid in Melbourne. pic.twitter.com/ZPKZPjxtWZ

— Richard Hills (@richardhills777) August 23, 2020

They will flout the lockdown rules because this time it is not their people or community impacted on. South and West Auckland have significant numbers of Pasifika, Māori and ethnic communities.

We understand the concept of community. When one falls, we gather to lift them up.

David Farrier wrote about how easy it is for a rumour to travel. He spoke to the young professional who was the cause of the vile rumour against a Pasifika family in South Auckland and who had erroneously and cruelly linked the family to the cause of the second outbreak.

But Farrier was gentle with this person, almost apologising to him for having to interview him about his “misdemeanour”. Would he have been so sympathetic had the transgressor been a person of colour?

It is time that Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and the government start implementing alert levels to put the country in lockdown due to the ongoing racism and racial prejudice pandemic.

If Ardern can take bold steps to eliminate the virus, even putting the economy into hibernation for the sake of the country’s wellbeing, surely she can do the same for the sake of the country’s humanity.

As for those unempathetic, racially prejudiced dullards in Ponsonby and the North Shore, go to South Auckland and learn what community means.

• My New Zealand: Four women’s unique experience

A New Zealand youth MP Shaneel Lal is speaking out against education policies that exclude some Pacific Island people from Pasifika programmes and scholarships as unfair.

Lal, who is eighth generation Indo-Fijian, applied for a Pasifika scholarship at the University of Otago only to be told he had to prove he had “indigenous” Pacific Island ancestry because Indo-Fijians did not qualify.

He is not the only one to be rejected on the basis of race – even though he was born in Fiji – but he aims to take the matter up with the Education Minister Chris Hipkins.

• READ MORE: Universities excluding Pacific minorities from Pasifika programmes

Lal told Stuff: “I know I’m Fijian. I’m eighth generation Fijian. I have indigenous [ancestry] along the lines I just cannot draw a family tree and say, ‘this person is an indigenous person’.”

Lal said the policies were unfair as Indo-Fijian people experienced many of the same challenges as other Pacific Island groups.

He said that some universities that did not recognise Indo-Fijians as Pacific people “kind of highlights the subtle racism that’s going on in our Pacific community”.

The Auckland-based student said he struck the same problem when applying for Pasifika leadership opportunities while at secondary school and his cousin had a similar experience when she tried to apply for a place in the Māori and Pacific Admission Scheme (MAPAS) at the University of Auckland.

‘Not enough evidence’
He was told his passport and birth certificate were not enough evidence of him being of Pacific descent and he would need to get a Pacific community leader to vouch for him.

He said that would be difficult having come from Fiji to New Zealand in 2014.

The irony in his circumstance was that he was chosen as youth MP for Minister for Building and Construction, Minister for Customs and Minister for Ethnic Communities Jenny Salesa, who was not responding on the issue.

When asked for a response, a spokesperson from her office said: “Yes, but probably not from the minister. It will be around definitions and criteria.”

Meanwhile, Professor Vijay Naidu from the University of the South Pacific based in Suva – where all Fiji citizens are recognised as Fijian and the indigenous people are recognised as I-Taukei – had a historical perspective on the issue.

“Some years ago, Loraine Pillai who migrated to New Zealand many years ago and retired as a senior high school teacher over there wrote to then Prime Minister Helen Clark about Pasifika identity and Indo-Fijians,” he said.

“Her response was that Indo-Fijians were Pasifika. Apparently, Aotearoa had arrived at this decision when [founding Fiji prime minister] Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara had expressed his disaffection with the absence of Fijians of Indian descent at an official reception hosted for him.

“Back to Loraine’s letter. She wrote her letter because, at a workshop for school administrators in Wellington, she had been told by a woman by the surname of Wendt that Indo-Fijians were not regarded as Pasifika people.”

Education Minister Chris Hipkins has said universities set the criteria for Pasifika scholarships, not the government.

Auckland-based Fijian doctor Api Talemaitoga has been made a member of New Zealand’s covid-19 Surveillance and Testing Strategy Group.

The doctor, who is the chair of the Pacific chapter at New Zealand’s College of General Practitioners, had previously called for the group to include a Pacific voice.

The group was created following the second wave of covid-19 infections in Auckland.

• READ MORE: Tahiti churches stay open amid worsening covid-19 pandemic
• Five new NZ community cases of covid – link to church ‘mini-cluster’

Pacific people comprise around three quarters of the cases included in the Auckland cluster so far.

Health Minister Chris Hipkins said the group must ensure Māori and Pasifika gain equitable access to testing.

Following his appointment, Dr Talemaitoga told Radio 531 he would ensure culturally appropriate community interventions.

He previously said Pacific leadership was needed to signal that the Pacific community was valued and to bring it together against the coronavirus.

This week Chris Hipkins said Māori and Pacific communities had been deeply involved in the planning of a testing blitz set in Auckland.

“We’ve been working Māori and Pacific health providers so they are very extensively involved in this,” he said.

“There has been a lot of consultation with Māori and Pacific communities, information is being made available in a variety of different languages for example, including Pacific languages, so we are working very closely with those communities.”

This article is republished by the Pacific Media Centre under a partnership agreement with RNZ.

• All RNZ coverage of covid-19
• If you have symptoms of the coronavirus, call the NZ Covid-19 Healthline on 0800 358 5453 (+64 9 358 5453 for international SIMs) or call your GP – don’t show up at a medical centre.

Frontline Pasifika healthcare teams have been given a NZ$19.5 million funding boost in New Zealand as they work around the clock to fight covid-19 at the community level.

A mobile team from health provider, The Fono, is just one of several critical to stemming the tide of covid-19 in the Pasifika community, which makes up three-quarters of all positive cases in the current outbreak.

Testing in homes has found several positive cases from those unable or too afraid to go to a testing station.

READ MORE: Churches key to stemming spread of covid-19 in Pasifika community

“We had a case where there was somebody on the property that wasn’t actually listed to be tested but we did an opportunistic test on them and we caught a positive case,” The Fono public health manager Emily Hughes said.

Medical staff who can speak the first language of Pasifika households are key to testing.

“Understanding the cultural norms and practises of our families are also quite critical, but also it’s the trust and the relationship with these families that help them during the times that is high anxiety,” The Fono chief executive Tevita Funaki said.

The government has since provided almost $20 million in an urgent response for Pasifika healthcare providers.

Contact tracing importance
“This is important, especially for contact tracing because in order to get the right information, it’s really important that we have people that can speak the different Pacific languages,” Associate Health Minister Jenny Salesa said.

Along with its normal welfare work, The Fono is looking after 230 families who have tested positive for covid-19 or are close contacts currently in isolation.

“It could range from support for the young children, what are their needs, to the elderly to the whole family,” Funaki said. “We also provide a crisis immediate support around utilities and rent and so forth for this short period of time.”

Providing food has also been critical, having provided close to 700 food packages to families in need yesterday. More packages will be going out today to vulnerable Pasifika households and families in isolation due to coronavirus.

“They really appreciate what we do, going and doing that special requirement, shopping for them – things that we might not have available here at our Fono,” team leader Tima Hunt said.

TVNZ’s Barbara Dreaver reports are republished with permission.

A call has been made to members of the Pacific community in New Zealand to check on loved ones during the current Auckland lockdown and to remember there is no stigma or shame in getting tested for covid-19.

Dr Jemaima Tiatia-Seath, co-head of the School of Māori Studies and Pacific Studies at the University of Auckland, said it was important in these extraordinary times to check in on family, friends, colleagues and students.

“Through my work around suicide prevention, it has always been a key message to check in on each other, and that was born from siblings checking in on each other once they have lost a loved one to suicide,” Dr Tiatia-Seath said.

• READ MORE: Vaccine diplomacy heats up in the Pacific

Dr Tiatia-Seath, a specialist in mental health and well-being among Pacific people, said it made complete sense to continue such connection in the covid-19 era.

“Sometimes we get so caught up in our own bubbles that we seem to not realise that other people may not be doing so well, and it is so hard to detect that when you’re not physically near or seeing people on the daily,” she said.

The Auckland family at the centre of the current covid-19 cluster received a lot of negative comments on social media, and Dr Tiatia-Seath said the stigmatisation of that response had not helped with stress levels in the Pacific community.

“Covid-19 knows no ethnicity, so it was extremely unhelpful to point out the ethnicity of the family. The virus is the problem here,” she said.

Negative social media
The Auckland family at the centre of the current covid-19 cluster received a lot of negative comments on social media, and Dr Tiatia-Seath said the stigmatisation of that response had not helped with stress levels in the Pacific community.

“Covid-19 knows no ethnicity, so it was extremely unhelpful to point out the ethnicity of the family. The virus is the problem here,” she said.

Dr Tiatia-Seath pointed out that when people are disconnected from others, it could be hard to pick up signs of distress without being physically present.

“I think when you notice people close down their social media accounts, people that were usually active or engaging online have suddenly gone quiet, I would check up on that person.

“Ensuring families in need have food, checking that our elderly are okay and connected and that our young people are staying engaged after being disconnected from their schools. These are the kind of people we need to look out for,” she said.

The University of Auckland academic said parents needed a lot of support especially if they were having to also be educators for their children.

“We need to be vigilant about our own wellbeing as well as other people’s. Part of that is watching for digital fatigue.

Long Zoom calls
“Zoom video calls should not be so long, and be mindful and respectful of the spaces people are in. It can sometimes be intrusive for some, as you are inviting people into your home.”

She said not spending a lot of time on social media could also be beneficial for wellbeing.

“There’s no stigma or shame in being tested for covid-19”

Pacific union members also encouraged people in the communities to get tested for covid-19 if they were showing symptoms.

Komiti Pasefika, the Council of Trade Unions Pacific Island worker representative group, have learnt through their engagement with Pacific workers that there was fear in regards to taking a test.

“A negative test provides the assurance that you and your family are safe. Where there is a positive result then it is about following the correct procedures to make sure our families are safe and well,” co-convenor Brian Palalagi said.

“We encourage our Pacific families that if they are not well, go and get tested.

Time for GP
“Take the time to go to your GP or Community Based Assessment Centres (CBAC) to get tested.

Palalagi said if people are were concerned about what this means for their work, talk to their union organiser or union delegate in the workplace.

“Our view is that you should be accommodated with full pay to be able to make your contribution to the team of 5 million who are wanting to stamp this virus out of our communities.

He agreed with Tiatia-Seath that people were the solution to the coronavirus.

“We know that covid-19 is a tricky virus, which doesn’t discriminate who it infects. The virus doesn’t discriminate, and neither should we,” Palalagi said.

This article is republished by the Pacific Media Centre under a partnership agreement with RNZ.

• All RNZ coverage of covid-19
• If you have symptoms of the coronavirus, call the NZ Covid-19 Healthline on 0800 358 5453 (+64 9 358 5453 for international SIMs) or call your GP – don’t show up at a medical centre.

South Auckland and its communities, specifically Pasifika, are at the centre of New Zealand’s current covid-19 cluster.

As a result, media coverage, health information and public reaction have taken a significantly different tone to what occurred during New Zealand’s first wave of cases.

Racism and misinformation continue to marginalise the “index” family, Pasifika communities and South Auckland. It is an ugliness that has fed debate around the merits of continually highlighting ethnicity and the region.

• READ MORE: Barbara Dreaver: Should we identify the first covid family as Pasifika? Yes, we should, and here’s why
• South Auckland locals hit back against online hate around NZ covid cases

Questions include the need for the public to know cases are “Pasifika”, and whether they are being treated fairly by health authorities. That then links to the recent requirement for virus-positive households to go into managed facilities.

The answers to those do not come neatly packaged. However, they are important when trying to understand information, including ethnicity data, around the current outbreak. Part of that includes looking at the timing of information being released.

A ‘Pasifika’ family
The current cluster, and subsequent restrictions, were announced a week ago by the Prime Minister and Director-General of Health. At the 9.15pm press conference, Dr Ashley Bloomfield identified the family as being from South Auckland with workplaces in other parts of the city.

According to his timeline, that was about six hours after health officials were alerted to the positive covid-19 tests. Dr Bloomfield and Jacinda Ardern declined to give further detail that night, citing privacy reasons and early stages of contact tracing.

However, less than 12 hours later, the family was identified in the media as Pasifika.

While that information was bound to become public anyway, Pasifika public health experts wanted more time, and evidence of spread via contact tracing before identifying the family as Pasifika.

That was supported by Dr Bloomfield. Dr Api Talemaitoga, a GP in South Auckland who is also part of the Health Ministry’s Pasifika Covid-19 response team, said at that early stage of contract tracing, there was no evidence to show identification of the family as “Pasifika” would be useful.

“It was a supposed outbreak, but nobody knew how large it was,” Dr Talemaitoga said about the first 24 hours.

“We wanted more time to get that information before talking about ethnicity because we were worried about how the family, and even the community at large would be stigmatised.”

And that’s exactly what happened, he added.

Slightly different take
Dr Collin Tukuitonga, Associate Dean (Pacific) and Associate Professor of Public Health at the University of Auckland, had a slightly different take on it.

While “on balance”, more time should have been allowed for contact tracing before the family was identified as Pasifika, he stressed it was “not a clean event”.

“It’s hard to know because when you identify them as Pasifika, the usual nastiness comes out and… racism rears its ugly head,” he explained.

“But you have to balance that across the public’s need to know. If you were just simply contact tracing a small group of people within a limited area, then you could argue you don’t need to identify the ethnicity.

“The problem with this is we already knew the wife worked in Mt Eden, and the husband worked in Mt Wellington, and that company had three sites linked to the airport.

“The GP was also out in Glen Eden, and the child went to Mt Albert Primary.”

Positive families in managed facilities
Dr Bloomfield’s decision to move covid-positive families into managed isolation facilities has been criticised as racist. It was not a policy during the last outbreak, when the majority of cases were Pālagi New Zealanders, aged 30 to 50, returning from overseas.

Notably, both Dr Talemaitoga and Dr Tukuitonga believe this is the best accommodation response. Their evidence: hard lessons from the Marist cluster during the last outbreak. A number of Pasifika families were part of that cluster.

Dr Talemaitoga: “There were families where somebody tested positive and then they isolated themselves. The others in the house were asymptomatic, but say seven days later, someone was found to be positive, and then two weeks later, another person got [a positive test].”

“Some families ended up being in isolation for up to four weeks or more… and that’s really disruptive,” he said.

Pertinent to this is the set-up of many Pasifika households. Families are more likely to live in overcrowded homes compared to Pālagi (about 40 percent of Pasifika households). That makes it more difficult to isolate covid-19 positive individuals effectively. The managed facilities provide a good alternative, he said.

Dr Tukuitonga added he believed the previous approach allowing positive cases to isolate at home was an unnecessary risk.

“From a public health point of view, I thought it was quite lax. That fact that we’re requiring everyone into quarantine is the right thing to do if we want to get on top of the current cases.”

Pasifika-specific stats
On Sunday, Dr Bloomfield announced the number of Pasifika cases for the current cluster would be provided separately.

In the first wave, Pasifika accounted for about 5 percent of cases. In this current cluster, about 75 per cent of positive cases are Pasifika. This data is needed to accurately target resources, culturally specific information, and wider support services in communities.

It is not about assigning blame, Dr Talemaitoga said.

Dr Tukuitonga touched on testing rates as an example.

“One thing we’re struggling with at the moment is testing. If we get the picture that 70 percent of all cases in the new cluster is Pacific, and they say… the Pacific testing is only 10 percent of the total testing, then we can say ‘That’s not good enough’.

“From our point of view, at the very least, our testing rates should be at least 70 percent [so it’s comparable to case numbers],” he said.

“Instead of guessing, it means we have information to make our case more intelligently.”

So far, there’s been a torrent of misinformation and vitriol directed at victims of covid-19. It has been particularly tough for Pasifika.

As Dr Talemaitoga and Dr Tukuitonga have shown, one of the best ways to combat that is by understanding how decisions are made about our health and communities.

Teuila Fuatai is a freelance journalist specialising in social and cultural issues. This article was first published in The New Zealand Herald and is republished here with the author’s permission.

• New Zealand Herald covid-19 data updates

Some South Auckland locals are hitting back at online hate directed at the area and its Pasifika community, after a local family was the first to test positive for covid-19 in the current New Zealand outbreak.

Four positive cases ballooned to a 58-case cluster after 102 days of no community transmission.

Auckland City’s Manukau Ward councillor Alf Filipaina was disgusted by the unfair vitriol directed towards South Auckland and it’s Pacific community.

• READ MORE: Barbara Dreaver: Should we identify the first covid family as Pasifika? Yes, we should, and here’s why
• Guam confirms 42 new cases of covid-19

“Everybody knows this virus doesn’t pick on colour. Because we’re in the lower socio-economic area and we have bigger families, it actually goes through the whole family very quickly,” he said.

Aside from the threat of the virus, Filipaina said job security was a concern for people in the area.

“Some have said, ‘look, we don’t know – even though [the level 3 lock down] is until [August] 26 – whether we’ll have a job to go back to,” he said.

“That’s not a very good feeling.”

Negativity not representative
Otahuhu College principal Neil Watson did not think those spreading negativity online represented most people.

“The South Auckland and the Pasifika community here is a fantastically strong and powerful community with so much future,” he said.

“I think what you see on social media is always a small minority of people. What you see everyday in school and in our community is a fantastic community doing the very best to support and help each other.”

Bill Peace, operations manager for social service Strive Community Trust, said people now know what to expect from level 3.

There was a rush to grocery stores when the latest lockdown was first announced.

But now, he said, people are feeling much calmer compared to the last lockdown.

“If there’s any long line its actually [for] the covid testing, that’s gone crazy.”

Peace called the online hate disappointing, but said he isn’t letting it get to him.

“We just think positive in that space. It’s our hood we’re talking about. We’re here from day one and we’ll continue to support our communities, regardless of what people are saying about them,” he said.

Testing centres in Ōtara and Mangere have been seeing a steady stream of visitors, with each centre handling around 500 to 600 tests a day each.

This article is republished by the Pacific Media Centre under a partnership agreement with RNZ.

• All RNZ coverage of covid-19
• If you have symptoms of the coronavirus, call the NZ Covid-19 Healthline on 0800 358 5453 (+64 9 358 5453 for international SIMs) or call your GP – don’t show up at a medical centre.

Pasifika family or just an Auckland family?

There has been much debate over whether it was wrong to identify the family at the centre of New Zealand’s covid-cluster as a “Pasifika family”.

As Pacific correspondent let me make this clear – it would have been the absolute peak of irresponsibility not to.

READ MORE: Covid spread could ‘decimate’ Pasifika, Māori communities, warns Tukuitonga

And here’s why.

Pasifika live and breathe community – we interact widely with each other, we share, we are big churchgoers, we live in intergenerational homes – and 40 percent in overcrowded conditions.

Unlike most other communities, Pacific families do not live in isolation.

To not share the information that the affected family was one of our own and interacting in our community circles for days before being tested was unfathomable.

My business is not to keep information hidden or censored because people might be upset or feel targeted. People’s lives are at risk, there is too much on the line for tippy toeing around people’s sensitivities.

Barbara Dreaver reports. Video TVNZ

Keeping Pasifika families safe
The information was given not to victimise Pasifika – but to give our vulnerable community crucial information they were entitled to to keep them safe. It is about helping people living near a new covid-cluster to make life-saving decisions.

And it was important that information be given as quickly as possible so Pasifika could be extra vigilant and be aware that unlike the first wave, covid-19 is being transmitted within our circles.

In the first wave, Pasifika had low infection rates – only 85 cases, five percent of the total number. They were easily traceable.

This situation is not. It is different and unless immediate action is taken we are looking at an unfolding tragedy in our community.

We hear about how covid-19 does not discriminate. Well it doesn’t in terms that anyone can be infected.

But it is the Pacific community who are most at risk because of the way we live, interact, work on the frontline and have high rates of underlying health issues contributing to covid-19 deaths.

In the US, Pasifika are infected at ten times the rate of white Americans in many states and we are not pretending otherwise. The people there are facing an unravelling situation for many reasons – we do not want to be in that place.

The family of six have connections all around the locked-down city – and outside of it. Video: TVNZ

It was not their fault
It was important to me not to reveal the ethnicity of the affected family despite knowing it from the get go as it would have likely identified them. It was not their fault, they didn’t magically contract covid-19 from Tinkerbell. It came from somewhere and any of us could have been in that same position.

Their ethnicity is not relevant as they had no overseas travel, but the fact they interacted in the Pasifika community, in ways which are just now becoming clear is.

It is unfortunate that the government of the island country the family originated from put out a media release confirming their ethnicity and that information was put to air in that country, is all over social media and other media outlets.

That island government got its information from the New Zealand Ministry of Health.

Despite this 1 NEWS chose not to reveal the family’s ethnicity and will continue not to despite it being public information.

South Auckland community ‘hugely disappointed’ after local family contracts Covid-19

The very thing – community interaction – which makes Pasifika vulnerable to covid is also a huge strength. Pasifika know how to look after each other and work together.

Leaders inspiring hope
Add to that a team of leaders who have been working on the frontline such as Dr Collin Tukuitonga, Pakilau Manase Lua from the Pacific Response Coordination Team, Taleiai Edwin Puni from the Pacific Leadership Forum, Auckland counsellor Efeso Collins and the many outstanding health professionals, church, community and political leaders who inspire hope.

But make no mistake… there are grim times ahead. If you feel upset over “Pasifika” being used as being the centre of this covid cluster, it’s time to have a long think and work out what’s more important.

Pacific lives matter.

Barbara Dreaver is of Kiribati and Cook Islands descent. This TVNZ News column has been republished with permission.

After Australia’s misguided attempts at handing over $17.1 of Australian-made television content to the Pacific region last month with programmes such as Neighbours and Border Control, questions have been asked about a $10 million New Zealand grant made in 2018.

At the 2018 Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) meeting in Nauru, New Zealand’s Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Winston Peters announced that New Zealand would spend $10 million on a Pasifika channel for the region over the next three years.

He said at the time that the plan would improve both the production of more Pacific content, including news and current affairs.

However, little was known of what became of Pasifika TV and today a MFAT spokesperson cleared the air.

“Pasifika TV was established to make New Zealand television content available to Pacific broadcasters,” she told Pacific Media Watch.

“In 2018, Pasifika TV moved from providing eight hours of content a day to become a standalone 24 hr TV channel, as announced by Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Winston Peters.

“This provided Pacific broadcasters the choice to recast it in its entirety alongside their own channels or select content to rebroadcast, reducing the operational demands on small broadcasters,” she explained.

As well as that developmental and skills training for staff in the Pacific was progressing at a steady pace.

“In addition, Pacific Cooperation Broadcasting Limited (PCBL) is providing training and development programmes for Pacific broadcasting staff and content creators to increase operational resilience and skills, including journalism, editing and broadcasting,” the spokesperson said.

“PCBL holds an annual regional conference for chief executives of associated broadcasters and has upgraded broadcasters’ decoders to enable high definition quality broadcasts and future online streaming.”

She also made clear what happened to the NZ Institute of Pacific Research (NZIPR) which was disestablished after an independent review in 2018 found it was not achieving its objectives.

“It has been replaced by ministry-commissioned policy-relevant research, focused on enduring or emerging issues facing the Pacific which align with the Ministry’s priorities.

“The research is published on the Pacific Data Hub, a digital repository of Pacific research knowledge hosted by the South Pacific Community (SPC).

• NZ Pacific research institute to be overhauled

When Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced extending the New Zealand lockdown to past ANZAC weekend, she mentioned “co-morbidities” among parts of the population – particularly Māori and Pasifika.

She was not wrong, concern has come from the Fijian, Samoan, Tongan, and Niuean communities over the health of the elderly and the immuno-comprised to Covid-19 as a representation of Pasifika from a group of community leaders and doctors said so.

While they have all said their communities have been coping well, there are concerns for the elderly and infirmed.

READ MORE: PM says ‘devastating’ Māori, Pasifika inequalities factor in lockdown move

“Very concerned with winter approaching. In a way the lockdown may have been good for them allowing their families who would normally be at work or away to be present,” said Dr Siro Fuatai of the Samoan community.

“They are getting good social care but are missing out on some of their medical care due to the absence of face-to-face consultations with doctors.

“However, we are trying to get families to utilise our video consulting which may be good for these folk.

“Also, families are hesitant to bring them in when needed but we have informed people that as long as they let us know there are steps in place to review their elderly folk it is going to be okay,” Dr Fuatai added.

Staying in their bubble
Tongan community leader Melino Maka said people understood the meaning of staying in their bubble.

“Some of them tell me they have found a cure from social media. I tell them, please don’t tell me anything about what you have picked up from social media – go to the official sources,” he said

He has a radio show on Tongan Dateline every day through the week and he warned not to follow inaccurate “fake news” on social media that speaks of “cures”.

His advice was for the Tongan community to go to official sources like covid19.govt.nz

He said education was equally important for the people because they were so prone to social media.

As Auckland councillor for Manukau Efeso Collins said: “What we’ll probably face soon is those people who have been made redundant.

“There has been a number of community groups where people can get food parcels.

Real impact to show soon
“That has been really helpful, but the real impact will start to show over the next few weeks,” he predicted.

“When you don’t have enough income coming in you aren’t able to store and for many of our communities, they couldn’t panic buy.

“People have become a lot more trusting since there is a lot more testing stations in South Auckland.

“We are very aware of our older communities because they are the ones with pre-existing conditions, and we want to make sure they are safe,” he said.

“We’re trying to encourage them to stay in their bubble, and that is still difficult because we still have a number of grandparents who think it is okay to go out and visit the kids.”

“Unfortunately, my mother was standing outside our door the other day wanting to visit her granddaughter because we’ve just had a baby about six weeks ago.

“So we had to say, ‘oh, sorry mum just for everyone’s safety let’s just follow the rules’,” he said.

Danger of moving levels
He said part of the danger of moving out of level 4 was that “our parents were now starting to get the message home – everyone has to stay in their bubble”.

As Dr Fuatai said: “Most of the Samoan community have been very respectful of the regulations and adhering to the rules, maybe too much as some didn’t realise it was okay to do stuff for the elderly.”

A similar sentiment was echoed by Dr Apisalome Talemaitoga of the Fijian community.

“Everyone understands you need to stay in your bubble,” he said.

“Although, a very foreign concept to Fijians – to not be able congregate, visit each other for a cuppa, go to church, attend funerals and share a bowl of kava, people have found ways to interact online, by phone and social media.

“Like everyone else, the Fijian community is looking forward to the reduction of levels and restrictions when it happens.”

He was worried about old people and people with co-morbidities being at high risk.

Change to media messaging
“This is something we had to change with our media messaging,” said Dr Talemaitoga.

“We have heard of Pacific people arriving at Middlemore Emergency Department in an extreme state or children being quite unwell because parents thought that taking them ‘outside their bubble’ may cause them to be infected with coronavirus.

“We needed to say repeatedly with our messages to call doctor or Healthline for advice.”

And Dr Colin Tukuitonga of the Niuean community has been providing information to the Niuean community since Day One.

“Think they have a good understanding of it all. Many are following the lockdown rules,” he said.

“They are mostly worried about the old people being at high risk.”

However, the bigger problem was domestic violence due to loss of a jobs.

Some groups stressed
“Certain groups get stressed for financial reasons, they have been out of employment for a long time and they’ve suddenly got a job and all of a sudden they can suddenly pay their bills…they then just as suddenly find themselves out of a job and they need financial support,” Melino Maka said of the Tongan community.

And as Efeso Collins said of the Samoan community: “We definitely know from a lot of our families who are communicating with us there has been a lot of pressure in the house.

“And so we seeing an increase in reporting both in families and people connecting with others in Church and referrals of people to social agencies,” he said.

“Its really okay for mostly the men in our families to say it’s okay we are going to get through this.

“Once people have been made redundant or on 80 percent of income that is going to put real stress on families. Many of the arguments that are happening are finance related,” he said.

“We need people to see if our brothers are doing okay and friends to check if they are okay,” Collins added.

Melino Maka was waiting for some data as anecdotally he had been told there had been an increase.

No hard data
“There has been no hard data to support this and we won’t know until the lockdowns are lifted,” he said.

And Dr Talemaitoga said the Counties Manukau police have reported an increase in violence.

“Yes, Counties Manukau Police have seen a slight increase in domestic violence. Women’s Refuge has noticed an increase in demand for housing,” he said.

“Paediatricians at the hospitals explain they are concerned as they have lost the ‘safety net’ of structures/workers that often refer in children suspected of exposure to violence.

“Although, no current increase in violence seen, no doctors, plunket nurses, school health nurses, child welfare nurses and so on who normally can see this with their interactions and refer people in,” he said.

Like so many communities in New Zealand, the Pasifika community is doing it tough.

The cancellation of this year’s New Zealand Pasifika Festival in Auckland because of coronavirus fears is expected to be a huge financial blow for some stallholders.

Dutchie Low, from Hawaiian Pineapple Hut, said he found out about the cancellation on Facebook, which was then followed by a few of his friends who were also stallholders texting him about the new plan.

“I was shocked. After 12pm, the Auckland Council decided to send an email to everyone that the festival is cancelled, but by then it was old news,” he said.

READ MORE: Coronavirus developments – livestream latest
READ MORE: Last-minute cancellation a disgrace – Barbara Dreaver

“I totally understand why it needed to be cancelled, but I just wish they did not do it with less than 24 hours until the festival kicks off.

“I have got around $8000 of stock such as pineapples, watermelons and ice-cream just sitting here now, and I am unsure of what to do with it all because I can’t return it back to the store.

“I did keep in touch with the council through email asking them if the festival will be cancelled because of the coronavirus and if so please give us enough notice so that we don’t lose out financially, but they kept reassuring us that it will still go on.”

Low said he did not buy his stock the week before the festival because he had a feeling there was going to be a cancellation.

‘Trust council’s word’
“I had pressure from my supplier saying if I don’t confirm my order, they will sell it, so I had to try keep my supplier happy, but at the same time trust the council’s word that they won’t cancel, even though I had my suspicions.,” he said.

“I have a friend who was going to have a stall at the Māori village and she has $7000 worth of meat in her van. She was in tears when she heard the news.”

Company director of a Cook Islands’ clothing brand Mareko Island Creations, Mark Sherwin, said he had a feeling the event was going to be cancelled due to the Covid-19 coronavirus.

“We figured that there was a chance it was going to be dropped, but we still decided we’ll come over to New Zealand. I mean it’s a shame that it’s cancelled, but we totally understand.

“Before the festival, we were pushing our products online to sell and now that is the plan – to do more of that – seeing we can’t sell our clothing range at Pasifika.

‘Asked Cook Island help’
“We have asked the help of the Cook Island community in Auckland to find alternative locations for us to sell at as another option to help clear our stock. We have around $1000 worth of clothing in New Zealand and ideally we don’t want to bring it all back to Rarotonga.

“We have been a part of Pasifika Festival for over 10 years and so it is sad to see it not happening, but I am happy to see New Zealand take a stand because of the Covid-19.”

Meanwhile, the Pacific Business Hub based in Manukau City is opening its doors on Saturday to provide support to Pacific vendors left stranded by the cancellation.

“With continued vigilance, the chance of widespread community outbreak is expected to remain low. With that in mind, the Pacific Business Hub will open up its premises to hold a Pasifika pop-up market to allow our communities the opportunity to have stalls.

“We open our doors on the understanding that we are all responsible for our own health and safety at all times. If you have developed symptoms of fever, cough, or shortness of breath seek medical advice and stay home.”

‘Safety of our Pacific neighbours’
The cancellation of this year’s festival was a decision made by advice that highlighted the safety of the Pacific countries that take part in the event.

Overnight, the Covid-19 Cabinet Committee met and considered the issue, and its advice was to cancel, based on concerns from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment.

Associate Minister of Pacific Peoples Carmel Sepuloni said the primary consideration was New Zealand’s Pacific neighbours.

“MBIE indicated that the large amount of people that were likely to be in attendance from the Pacific and then therefore traveling back to the Pacific and the large nature of the event, keeping in mind that Pasifika Festival would have been the biggest event in New Zealand this weekend with around 60,000 people attending, would have meant contact tracing would have been incredibly difficult.

“If someone who has coronavirus was to attend and it was caught and taken back to the Pacific, it would be potentially detrimental.”

“We know the challenges in the Pacific in terms of the resourcing and the health infrastructure in general and we also know the challenges of the health conditions that our Pacific people in our Pacific nations have higher proportions of like diabetes, so it makes those populations much more vulnerable.”

“We don’t want to be in a position where we are hosting an event here that could lead to the spread of coronavirus to the Pacific region.”

Auckland mayor Phil Goff said the council was making decisions on an event by event basis.

“While the latest Ministry of Health advice is that New Zealand does not have a community outbreak of Covid-19 and the risk of a community outbreak remains low, Auckland Council, and the Cabinet Committee’s specific concerns are about the risk of the virus being transmitted to the Pacific Islands by attendees of the festival.”

This article is republished under the Pacific Media Centre’s content partnership with Radio New Zealand.

• If you have symptoms of the coronavirus, call the NZ Covid-19 Healthline on 0800 358 5453 (+64 9 358 5453 for international SIMs)

Pasifika people in New Zealand need to take charge against climate change which is already threatening their home islands, an Auckland hui has heard.

Political leaders have been too slow, warned climate experts, community, youth and Pasifika leaders who were joined at the Roskill Climate Restart hui by Minister for Climate Change James Shaw and Mt Roskill Labour MP Michael Wood.

“We have no choice. It’s about my people surviving in this world. My people [in Tuvalu] are already suffering. In terms of food they can’t plant crops now because of the salinity of the soil,” said E Tū union Komiti Pasifika representative Fala Haulangi.

READ MORE: USP journo students return from Solomons climate storytelling project

“Every day our people live in fear and that’s the reality people have to face. So, when we talk about what we will do in the next 10 years, no, let’s talk about today.”

Haulangi said there is a lack of trust in politicians among Pasifika communities but believes in the power of community to tackle climate change.

Pacific climate warrior Brianna Fruean said more attention needs to be placed on the resilience and adaptability of Pasifika people.

“Young people in Tokelau are building keyhole gardens for their villages so their gardening is raised off the ground as a way of adapting to climate change and soil salinisation. I’ve seen so many examples of the resilience humans can bring forward.

“We need more attention on the solutions and how we can look at people who really shouldn’t be as resilient as they are, considering all the obstacles that are given to them, and how they’ve overcome them. If someone in the Pacific can put up a fight against climate change, then anyone in the world can.”

James Shaw agreed, saying it was critical government works with communities when it comes to assessing real life effects of climate change.

“Wellington can’t work that out all by itself. [Risk assessment] is an area where we need to work closely with other communities because they have on the ground knowledge. Communities often have knowledge that has been passed down from generations.

“It’s going to take everything that we’ve got at every single level. It is one of those things that has to involve political change.”

The hui began with a community cycle ride around the newly-opened Te Auaunga (Oakley Creek) walkway led by “local biking heroes” Roskill Bike Kitchen and Global Hope Mission, followed by a free lunch provided by Wise Collective.

• Ayla Miller is studying Journalism through AUTs postgraduate diploma of communications and has an interest in arts, culture, entertainment and environmental news
• This story was first published on Te Waha Nui

An exhibition about the infamous Dawn Raids in the 1970s has opened in South Auckland, providing a window into a painful chapter of New Zealand’s history.

Called Educate to Liberate, the exhibition showcases art projects, memorabilia and photographs of a time when the police were racial profiling and harassing Pacific Islanders in a government-approved campaign.

Curator Pauline Smith told Pacific Media Watch the exhibition raises awareness and invites people to come forward to share their stories.

WATCH TAGATA PASIFIKA: Polynesian Panthers on the Dawn Raids

Polynesian Panthers Will ‘Ilolahia and Tigilau Ness speak to John Pulu and Marama T-Pole about the new exhibition. Video: Tagata Pasifika

“It gives people permission to talk about it. It’s still very painful and shameful for a lot of people,” she said.

The Dawn Raids were part of a police and immigration crackdown on illegal “overstayers” in the 1970s. Pacific Islanders were specifically targeted while overstayers of European origin were overlooked.

Police entered homes in the early hours, demanding to see passports and proof of residency. They often physically removed residents for deportation.

Smith said the raids created a lot of shame among Pacific people, many of whom are reluctant to talk about it due to social stigma.

However, some have opened up about their experiences.

South Island raids
“We had this girl in Invercargill who had a story about how they were dawn raided and the uncle was escorted on to the plane by police, so they looked like criminals.”

Social services then came and put her brother and sister in state care.

“She said her brother never recovered properly.”

Educate to Liberate was exhibited in the Southland Museum and Art Gallery, Niho o te Taniwha in Invercargill last year after the release of Smith’s award-winning children’s book, Dawn Raids.

Co-curator Ari Edgecombe of the Southland Museum said there were many sad stories of the Invercargill Dawn Raids, despite a common misconception they were not carried out in the South Island.

“That’s one of the reasons why we’re asking people to share their voice if they want to,” he said.

“We just figured that this might be the time for healing.”

Polynesian Panthers
The exhibition’s Auckland opening in Fresh Gallery Ōtara last weekend featured talks from Tigilau Ness, Will ‘Ilolahia and Reverend Alec Toleafoa of the Polynesian Panthers, an activist group formed in the 1970s in response to the raids and police discrimination.

Pacific people were being “systematically targeted” for random street checks in a police initiative called Operation Pot Black.

The Panthers distributed a legal pamphlet to Pacific communities allowing people to know their rights when being harassed by police. A copy of the pamphlet is on display at the exhibition.

They also carried out their own dawn raids on the houses of North Shore MP George Gair and the Minister of Immigration, Bill Birch, turning up at 3am with loudspeakers and spotlights and demanding to see their passports.

The police raids stopped shortly after.

Former chair of the Panthers Will ‘Ilolahia said he and other members of the group served prison sentences for their struggles with the police.

“Some of us were feeling so strong about it that we were prepared to go and do time.”

Institutional racism
A “change consultant” now, ‘Ilolahia and other Panther members visit schools and talk to students about the need to stand up for what is right.

While he said that there have been improvements in the treatment of Pacific people, institutional racism still exists in New Zealand.

“Racism is still here, basically because the system is monocultural in it’s outlook.”

He said there was a need for all New Zealanders to start recognising themselves as migrants.

“Aotearoa is a country of migrants. We’re all migrants.”

“But we’ve got a pretty good place here. That’s why we fought for it.”

The Educate to Liberate exhibition opened at the Fresh Gallery Ōtara on April 6 and runs until May 25.

Michael Andrew is the Pacific Media Centre’s Pacific Media Watch freedom project contributing editor.

• Forgotten Dawn Children – Pasifika student film success
• An insight into a dark time in history

Newstalk ZB broadcaster Heather du Plessis-Allan has been censured for Pacific Island slurs in a ruling that contains uncharacteristically strong language from the official broadcasting watchdog.

It may end up costing NZME more than the $3000 the company must cough up in costs.

On her Newstalk ZB show Wellington Mornings this week, Heather du Plessis-Allan praised Jacinda Ardern for paying the grocery bill of someone without a wallet.

READ AND LISTEN MORE ON RNZ MEDIAWATCH

But about an hour earlier, the Broadcasting Standards Authority upheld complaints about Heather du Plessis-Allan telling listeners the government shouldn’t pay the bills of other Pacific Island nations.

“The Pacific Islands don’t matter. They are nothing but leeches on us,” she said.

Unsurprisingly that upset a lot of people who heard it at the time – or later on RNZ’s Mediawatch.

Some people who called Newstalk ZB to complain were initially told they should complain to RNZ instead because that’s where they heard it.

Proper context
ZB’s owner NZME argued some complaints should not be considered from people who “saw other media reporting” of the comments without the proper context.

The context – by the way – was Heather du Plessis-Allan telling listeners the Pacific Islands did not deserve financial aid from New Zealand and Jacinda Ardern shouldn’t go to the Pacific Islands Forum in Nauru – which Heather du Plessis-Allan called “a hellhole”.

The BSA ruling said her comments breached the good taste and decency standards – and those for discrimination and denigration. ZB’s owner NZME has been ordered to pay $3000 in costs.

The comments were “inflammatory”, said the BSA, and “devalued the reputation of Pasifika people within New Zealand – including New Zealanders of Pacific origin”.

NZME had argued the host’s comments were not about specific individuals or organisations and the audience expect “a forthright manner” from a former political journalist.

“Her opinion is in line with the robust opinions offered in talkback … which has been recognised as a special category of radio by the Authority,” said NZME.

Indeed it is.

‘Went too far’
But the BSA decided that “even in the talkback context, these statements went too far”.

Things are said in the heat of the moment in talk radio to spark discussion – things callers and hosts alike may not say given more time for reflection.

But in this case, du Plessis-Allan re-affirmed them two days later.

“I will double down on this. I do not regret what I said because I was not talking about people living in this country or the people themselves. I was talking about the Pacific Islands and the people who run it [sic],” she told her listeners.

She also took a big swing at critics of her comments – including Privacy Commissioner John Edwards.

“Go back to university and do some more training. You are not good enough,” she said.

The Authority considered du Plessis-Allan was disingenuous in subsequently arguing that she had been referring to the Pacific Islands as leeches, not the people themselves.

“Countries are not just plots of land. They are the land and their people,” the Authority stated.

Deliberate choice
The BSA said she was deliberate in her choice of words and coupled with her “dismissive tone” it “reflected a high level of condemnation towards the Pacific Islands … with an element of malice and nastiness and went beyond responsible broadcasting.”

The authority is not usually so strong in its condemnation of a broadcaster.

Underlying all this was Heather du Plessis-Allan’s view that New Zealand aid to the Pacific Islands has not been well spent – something worth discussing in light of the Pacific Reset policy.

But du Plessis-Allan misled her listeners when she seized on Niue as an example.

She told her listeners pension portability for Niueans amounted to “welfare sponging”.

But she didn’t say Niue is a self-governing territory affiliated to New Zealand and Niueans are also New Zealand citizens.

Niueans – or other Pacific people for that matter – wouldn’t get a pension if they were not entitled to one by living here in New Zealand in the first place – and incentivising pensioners to relocate could help reduce economic dependence on New Zealand that she seemed so worried about.

Employers using temporary migration work visas and the New Zealand companies exporting roughly 13 times as much as New Zealand imports from Pacific Island countries would also disagree with her claim “we get nothing from them”.

What’s the punishment?
The award of $3000 in costs doesn’t sound a significant – but it is.

The BSA only awards costs up to a maximum of $5000 to signal serious breaches of standards.

“NZME is a large and experienced broadcaster, with staff who ought to be familiar with their obligations under broadcasting standards,” it said.

The BSA can order a broadcaster off the air for up to 24 hours, but only in exceptional circumstances. The last time it did that was 12 years ago.

NZME has instead been ordered to broadcast a statement summarising the decision on the Wellington Mornings programme – and an apology from its host.

The BSA and du Plessis-Allan’s employers at NZME agreed on one thing: she has already been subjected to heavy public criticism for what she said in September last year.

Recently she tweeted from a vigil in Wellington that she was “standing with our Muslim community” after the Christchurch attacks. Some followers replied to remind her she hurt Pacific Islands communities with her comments.

After the attacks, NZME head of talk radio Jason Winstanley told Stuff several previously-published items had been pulled from ZB’s websites because they were “upsetting people.”

“Our priority is to do the best we can for all New Zealanders, and honour those who have lost their lives,” he said.

It remains to be seen what that means on air at Newstalk ZB and the other ZB hosts who have a habit of provoking people to engage – and enrage – the audience because it’s good for business.

It’s also an issue for NZME stablemate The New Zealand Herald which is preparing to ask readers to pay for “premium content” online.

The Herald publishes the opinions of du Plessis-Allan and other ZB hosts each week and the cost of embarrassments like this BSA ruling may be greater than $3000 in costs to the Crown.

This article is republished under the Pacific Media Centre’s content partnership with Radio New Zealand.

• More ‘Pacific leeches’ slur reports
• RNZ Mediawatch

By Leilani Sitagata

Two final-year communication studies students at Auckland University of Technology decided for their end-of-year project to film a mini documentary about what it means to be a “plastic” islander.

The television majors Elijah Fa’afiu and Jamey Bailey brought it all to life to create Plastic Polynesia.

The nickname “plastic” refers to a person who is out of touch with their culture and perhaps cannot understand or speak their language.

READ MORE Dear Heather, we’re really talented, empowered – and we’re not leeches!

The film looks at the lives of Pacific Islanders who choose to ignore or struggle to embrace their heritage and follows a student learning Samoan for the first time.

Fa’afiu says he was passionate to pursue this concept because he can relate to being “plastic”.

Plastic identity
“I identify with the term ‘plastic’ and it turns out that I’m not the only one who does,” he says.

“I wanted to explain this word and how it differentiates Pacific Islanders from each other.”

He says that over the years he has not been in touch with his Samoan and Māori heritage, and this is the case for a lot of Kiwis.

‘Disconnected from roots’
“I feel I’ve been disconnected from my roots, that wasn’t intentional – it was just how things ended up.”

Alongside Fa’afiu was producer Bailey, who was in a similar boat to him when it comes to being connected to his culture.

“I label myself as ‘plastic’ because it’s an easy scapegoat.

“I don’t speak the language, I don’t do church, I don’t do all the things I’m supposed to do.”

He says that this film was an opportunity to challenge and explore what exactly “we are meant to do”.

Part of the documentary follows university student Rashad Stanley as he undertakes the journey to learning the Samoan language.

Not knowing
This was important to Fa’afiu as he says he can relate to the experience of not knowing such a big part of his culture.

“Being born in New Zealand, my parents did take me to church and speak Samoan to me, but I never really absorbed the language.”

Plastic Polynesia also touches on the idea of how Pacific Islanders are stereotyped.

Bailey says he strongly believes this generation is the one that’s working hard to break the misconceptions surrounding all types of people.

“Growing up, the common stereotypes are that we’re only at school for the sports and music, and mainstream media has been a big part of the way Pacific Islanders are perceived.

“With Plastic Polynesia, we’re trying to break those stereotypes and show that there are Polynesians out there who are different.”

The film also includes an interview with Hibiscus and Ruthless’ Nafanuatele Lafitaga Mafaufau Peter as well as many students.

Bailey says the message is key and he hopes the audience will catch on to the importance behind the story they share.

“In terms of face value, a lot of people just see brown skin and we want to tell that stories don’t get heard.

“Our goal by the end of this is to bring awareness that we can’t keep grouping people, we’re all individual.”

Leilani Sitagata is a reporter on the Pacific Media Centre’s Pacific Media Watch freedom project.

• Plastic Polynesia will be screened during the AUT Shorts film festival being held at The Vic in Devonport on November 22

By Leilani Sitagata

Since media personality Heather Du Plessis-Allan’s “leech” comments late last month, some of New Zealand’s Pasifika community have responded with messages of empowerment.

Online platform Plantation Conversations has created a video compiled of people who were affected by what the broadcaster said.

PC co-founders Tara Leota and Torisse Laulu told Asia Pacific Report that after seeing a story about the “leech” comments they knew they had to do something.

READ MORE: Broadcaster Heather du Plessis-Alan under fire for Paciofic island ‘leeches’ claim

Leota says it was hard to swallow and she was “appalled” that Du Plessis-Allan would say that.

“We wanted to make a video that would empower our people who may have been hurt or disappointed by the words used by a woman in her position.”

The video includes short testimonials of Pasifika people celebrating their success. However, Leota says it wasn’t an easy task gathering people.

“We worked with those who were confident enough to be on camera, and coincidentally they were students.”

100,000 views plus
The video currently has more than 100,000 views on Facebook and numbers are still growing.

However, people have “misinterpreted our intentions” since only students were used.

“Degrees and academic achievement aren’t the only form of success.

“But they are symbolic to our parents and grandparents’ hard work, sacrifice and endurance.

“Without them we wouldn’t have achieved these degrees and attained good careers – so in a way we’re also celebrating our aiga.”

AUT’s Foundation Professor of Pacific Studies Tagaloatele Dr Peggy Fairbairn-Dunlop, who recently retired and took up a role with the National Commission of UNESCO, says Du Plessis-Allan’s remarks were “extremely naïve, ill-informed and actually quite inflammatory”.

Tagaloatele emphasises that New Zealand is a country closely related with the Pacific Islands.

“New Zealand considers itself a region of the Pacific. She has totally underestimated and can’t understand the trust, respect, and historic ties.”

New Zealand Pacific pride
Despite Du Plessis-Allan saying Pacific Islands are “leeching” off of New Zealand, Tagaloatele still believes the country is proud of being linked to the islands.

“I think New Zealand actually takes great pride in saying that it is a Pacific nation.”

Although it has been a few weeks since the comments were made, the Pasifika community is still supporting the idea of empowerment.

Laulu says they have had an overwhelming amount of love and support both here and overseas for their video.

“Some misinformed opinions are disappointing especially when they come from your own people, but we are happy that we are seeing a healthy discussion between those who are for and against our video.”

PC have not heard about whether Du Plessis-Allan has seen their video or not, but either way they say they are not concerned.

“We aren’t bothered if she does or doesn’t watch our video, we don’t want any more attention focused on her.

“We are just happy to see our people remain resilient and uplifted. If that’s the case, then we’ve done our job.”

Leilani Sitagata is a reporter on the Pacific Media Centre’s Pacific Media Watch freedom project.

#IAmNotALeech
#WeAreNotLeeches

New Zealand will spend $NZ10 million in the next three years on a Pasifika television channel for the region.

The Pacific Cooperation Broadcasting service would be expanded to include a dedicated channel with New Zealand content.

New Zealand’s Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Winston Peters announced this at the Pacific Islands Forum in Nauru today, saying the plan would improve both the production of more Pacific content, including news and current affairs.

It would also improve access for free-to-air broadcasters in the Pacific.

Peters said the expansion would include a training programme to support broadcasting and journalism across the region.

Internships, training
It would include equipment, internships and cross-regional training.

“The expansion of the Pasifika TV service will dramatically improve the way in which New Zealand content is delivered across the Pacific,” Peters said.

“While the existing service has demonstrated its ability to lift broadcasting and journalism in the region, it is the natural next step to promote the production of more Pacific content, including news and current affairs.

“Informed open conversation, facilitated by the media, is the backbone of transparent governance.

“This initiative provides an opportunity to support broadcasters throughout the region to contribute to that debate.”

This article is republished under the Pacific Media Centre’s content partnership with Radio New Zealand.

By Kendall Hutt in Auckland

The Pacific Media Centre kicked off its 10th anniversary celebrations last night with the launch of an investigative photojournalism book.

The book, Conflict, Custom & Conscience: Photojournalism and the Pacific Media Centre 2007-2017, was launched by Professor Berrin Yanıkkaya, head of AUT’s School of Communication Studies.

“We celebrate the launch of Conflict, Custom & Conscience. The book is an honest and moving account of some of the biggest issues in the Pacific region. It’s a fitting milestone to mark this important day,” Dr Yanıkkaya said.

READ MORE: The new photojournalism book

The book, co-edited by Jim Marbrook, Del Abcede, Natalie Robertson and David Robie, features the work of 15 photographers throughout the Asia-Pacific region, from Gil Hanly to Russian photographer Vlad Sokhin, who have been involved with the PMC since its founding in 2007.

Marbrook, an award-winning documentary maker, told Asia Pacific Report the title speaks to three major themes in the book.

“It speaks to custom – the customary and indigenous world, while conflict defines a lot of news coverage in the area,” he said.

Marbrook explained the idea of “conscience”, however, came through clearly on the part of the photographer.

‘Telling stories that weren’t being told’
“It’s the commitment to telling stories that weren’t being told before and in a respectful, ethical way.”

Conflict, Custom & Conscience is also divided into four themes – culture, environment, women, and politics, protest and conflict – through which Marbrook hoped the richness of the region would come through.

“Hopefully it gives a window into women’s rights issues, climate change, and the intersection between traditional culture and modernity, which is really interesting in the Pacific,” he said.

Marbrook also hoped people would gain an insight into the region and be “charmed” by the photographs.

“Some of the photographs are quite horrific, but I’m hoping they can tell stories that don’t often come through in a couple of column inches in a daily paper. I’m hoping it will pique their curiosity and they’ll go and look for more images from these photographers,” he said.

Professor Yanıkkaya also launched the latest edition of Pacific Journalism Review.

Those gathered also honoured the work of PMC founding director Professor David Robie and the photography of Pacific Journalism Review designer and TOKTOK newsletter editor, Del Abcede, which was on display.

‘Forefront of journalism’
“Professor David Robie has been the face of the centre since it opened. We applaud his energy, his dedication and commitment to the ideals of the centre and to keeping it running at a high level of professionalism,” said Dr Yanıkkaya.

“Since the centre was opened by Luamanuvao Winnie Laban in 2007, it has been at the forefront of journalism and human rights activism, reporting human rights violations in our region,” Dr Yanıkkaya added.

Luamanuvao Winnie Laban, who opened the PMC 10 years ago as Minister for Pacific Island Affairs, reflected:

“The spirit of the PMC is our ability to keep together and hang together. The reality is no canoe is on its own.

“The word Pasifika, the word Oceania, will tell you it is very important we honour that sacredness and connection that we have with each other, whether we are from Melanesia, Polynesia – which is Aotearoa New Zealand – and Micronesia.

“I particularly wanted to acknowledge Professor David Robie. For his vision and the team on the 10th anniversary of the launch of the Pacific Media Centre.

“Congratulations to your team and all of the beautiful frangipanis that you have developed that are now on our screens and on our radio,” Luamanuvao said.

“It’s indeed an honour to attend this celebration. To see the Pacific Media Centre in good heart 10 years on, still working hard to ensure that we have a quality, free, free media in the Pacific that continues the tradition you have established for critical thinking and shining a light into the dark spaces, telling the stories that need to be told.

‘Voice of humanity’
“I remember people saying, and as you know, there’s sometimes numerous shutdowns of the media and universities in the Pacific. People said when they heard the voice from here and Radio New Zealand, ‘it’s like the voice of humanity and hope when everything else has been closed down’.

“But today, the title of today’s programme and celebration is ‘Journalism under duress in Asia-Pacific’. This is evidence the Pacific Media Centre is still doing the important work that started a decade ago.

“You’ve continued to contribute to the economic, political, cultural and social development of our region by providing informed journalism and media research, raising awareness, showing respect for the cultures and environment of our region that we love so very much and in empowering our peoples of the Pacific.

“Thank you so much for your service, for your vision and leadership to our region and good luck for the next 10 years.”

• Livestream link 
• Media freedom under the spotlight in PMC anniversary event