On The Cusp Of Change

"In Samoan tradition, the older you get, the more freedom you have to say what you feel," he says, adding that as a 64-year-old cynic, turning white and arthritic, all he wants these days is to be loved by his grandchildren.

He was speaking to a friendly audience helping celebrate a key moment in Pacific life in New Zealand: the opening of a US$4 million Pacific Studies Centre at the University of Auckland on Oct. 2. Its centrepiece, a modern Fale Pasifika, is a working tribute to achievements behind half a century of migration from the South Pacific to New Zealand.

A Professor of English, Wendt had a pivotal role in getting New Zealand's premier university to recognize its Pacific roots. As a schoolboy he first arrived in New Zealand in 1953 and in the 51 years since he has seen the globalisation of his own increasingly vast extended family. "My family now includes a mixture of German/ Pakeha; there are Chinese members of my family, there are Maori members of my family, Fijians, Cook Islands, Niueans, Jewish members and African American members."

"And yet when our people first came to New Zealand we were accused of being unwilling to integrate. Never mind. Samoan families are now international families."

Pacific Centre director Dr. Melani Anae. Photo: Michael Field

It is not the only irony offered by Fale Pasifika. The centre director Dr. Melani Anae back in the early 1970s was a member of a group called the Polynesian Panthers, which caused heart flutters and security scares among the old conservatives of then white-dominated New Zealand.

Many of the people in the Polynesian Panthers, she laughs, are now like her in professional, high-level, society-defining positions. "We are still panthers, it is never-ended, it is to be continued."

Changes though are obvious, even from Anae's own work, such as a recent essay entitled: "Kava to Coffee: the browning of Auckland."

Born in New Zealand of Samoan parents who had lived in Fiji, she has no doubt where New Zealand is now going.

"The first non-palagi (white) prime minister of New Zealand will be a Samoan."

It's hard to argue with that; everywhere the migrant culture has commandeered the word 'Pasifika' as symbolic of the changes occurring. "We are at the cusp of change in terms of Pacific development," Anae says.

"While we have got the bottom of the heap demographic in terms of all the social indices, there is something happening at the other end, the successful stories are there which have not been documented or bothered about before, and they are coming out."

It is happening in many ways.

One of New Zealand's major commercial television channels, the CanWest-owned TV3, in September launched its first ever prime time adult animated series - bro'Town. And it is unashamedly New Zealand urban Polynesian in flavor, written by the multi-talented Naked Samoans made up of Samoans and Niueans Oscar Kightley, Dave Fane, Shimpal Lelisi and Mario Gaoa.

Like The Naked Samoans sell-out theatre shows, bro'Town satirises the boys' Pacific Island heritage and describes what it is like to grow up as a minority culture in Auckland-the self-proclaimed largest Polynesian city in the world.

What is striking is not that bro'Town exists, but that it has been mainstreamed and is expected by a hard-core commercial operator to be a rating's success. Perhaps its no surprise: Auckland is heading towards 25 percent of it's population being Polynesian and with over half those Polynesians aged under 20.

Tongan publisher Kalafi Moala declares 2004 as "the year of Pasifika in Aotearoa," citing a long list of Pacific islanders dominating New Zealand's popular and classical music scenes.

Inevitably Polynesians dominate in New Zealand sport but less noticed is their growing presence in the academic and business field.

Writing in the liberal Listener magazine, economist Brian Easton writes that the Samoan diaspora was not unique, but it does present a challenge and raised the question of how Samoan New Zealanders were treated.

"Is it to celebrate the diversity they bring to New Zealand life? Do we respect that they are both New Zealanders and Samoans? Given their younger population, their economic contribution will include providing the nurses for our aging population. Our aid funding the education and health of Samoans is partly an investment in our future."

Dr. Anae is delighted that with places like the Fale Pasifika, the New Zealand establishment was sending a message out to the Pacific population that it was "creating space and a comfortable environment to get on with the business, which is to get top quality degrees."

"(Pasifika people) want to study in a place where they feel comfortable, where they feel recognised and part of. Prior to this, they didn't, and they were shunted all over the campus."

Professor Wendt talked about the Fale as a space ship: "I kept comparing it to Close Encounters of the Third Kind; the space ship has landed."

Except it was not entirely out of this world. "Pacific people have been coming to Aotearoa for at least a thousand years. The tangata Maori are the youngest branch of our Polynesian family," Wendt says.