PASIFIKA THE BIG LIE?

It's that time again. Time for the all-singing, all-dancing, all-eating, all-happy festival that is Pasifika. But behind Auckland's biggest party, Andrea Jutson reports, life for Pacific Islanders is not all rosy
I am a Samoan - but not a Samoan To my aiga* in Samoa, I am a palagi** I am a New Zealander - but not a New Zealander To New Zealanders, I am a bloody coconut, at worst, A Pacific Islander, at best, To my Samoan parents, I am their child. For me, I am Giovanni Satupaitea Leota Moroga, a Samoan born in Aotearoa, the future of New Zealand.
As Auckland gears up for its 13th year of exotic dancing, drumming and even more exotic costume, let's go behind the scenes of Pasifika. Behind the Niuean mums cooking up takihi with taro, paw paw and coconut cream, the Samoan families selling mats woven with spirits ... beyond Auckland's biggest party and into everyday life. More than 225,000 people go along to the festival at Western Springs each year, but how much do they actually see? Thirty years on from the infamous dawn raids, some say things haven't changed much for Auckland's Pacific Islanders. Most are still in unskilled or semi-skilled jobs, live in poorer pockets of the South and West and suffer the country's worst rates of diet-related diabetes and heart disease. The education statistics speak for themselves ... 'We thought that going through the education system would open doors,' says Linita Manu'atu. 'But where are those doors?' She lectures in education at Auckland University of Technology. In her native Tonga, she says, people are taught to believe that knowledge and success can be achieved only if they leave their home country. Actively courted by immigration agents, they are confused when they arrive in a new land. 'They are shocked. They leave their homeland, only to find they're living between a Niuean and a Cook Islander, and they're still poor,' says Dr Manu'atu. The Pasifika Festival and all its relatives, including the ASB Polyfest, the schools' cultural gala, are not proof that all is well, she says, and certainly shouldn't be seen as a celebration. Dr Manu'atu goes to the festival each year, but deplores its commercial nature and its shiny, happy surface, which she believes covers a grimmer truth. She claims that last year, Government representatives ordered in their own food, rather than buying it at the festival. She remembers well educated colleagues cooing about Pasifika because it gave them a chance to 'see what you do'. 'We need to talk about realities that need changing, without making money off the backs of the poor,' Dr Manu'atu says, her voice and her passion rising. 'What's the good of the festival - except reinforcing to palagis that we are fat, black, dumb and dirty?' However, the academic herself is evidence that not all is doom and gloom. Far from living in a state-owned enclave in Otara, the senior lecturer has a home in Ponsonby, which is certainly no longer the low-rent island community it once was. Fellow lecturer Sailau Suaalii-Sauni, a Samoan raised in New Zealand, says Islanders are doing better than ever. The University of Auckland sociologist says times have changed a great deal since she was a child here in the 70s. 'We are no longer apologetic for being Pasifika in New Zealand, whereas before, I did feel like a migrant growing up,' she says. Rita, her 14-year-old daughter who feels nothing but pride in being an Islander, attends Avondale College, where, she says, about half the students are Pasifika. 'Us Pasifikas get treated just the same as the Pakehas,' says Rita. When she attended Bruce McLaren Intermediate, in Henderson, the students were mostly Pacific Islanders, a stark contrast to when her mother attended the same school in the 70s. When she grows up, Rita says she wants to be a high school teacher. Dr Suaalii-Sauni believes the Pasifika Festival should be a celebration, with Pasifika people enjoying rising income levels and improved education. More Islanders are applying for local government positions and are having their say. Manukau City deputy mayor, Sua William Sio, is one example; Pacific Islanders occupy seats in Parliament, are on TV, in films and are prominent in top sporting echelons. However, she agrees more could be done, especially in upskilling Pasifika people. Papatoetoe High School dean Pene Otto thinks schools have not changed much since those early days of Pacific migration to Auckland. Too few go to university, finish university or take up teaching. As a Niuean, she feels at home and accepted in Manukau where she grew up. But she's embarrassed by the number of Pasifika kids who are sent to her office in trouble. 'When people say, 'It's those Island kids again,' I just have to sit there and say, 'Yeah, it is those Island kids again, actually'. 'We need more brown people in professions where kids don't think they can achieve.' Mrs Otto is particularly keen to change the idea that because a youngster is good at sport, he or she needn't focus on their schoolwork. All three women agree that boosting Pacific Islanders' confidence in education will be critical to New Zealand's future. There will be 256,000 Pacific Islanders in Auckland within 10 years. There are 20,000 Niueans here now, compared with just 1600 in Niue. Signs suggest things are improving slowly. Mrs Otto says her own children, half-Niuean and half-Samoan, have been raised to look beyond colours, and see themselves as part of a wider world. 'I've raised my kids to see that Mummy's got different kinds of friends, and it's not a token friendship,' she says. 'My kids call my friends aunty and uncle.' In Otago, where Mrs Otto went to university and spent the early days of her marriage, she felt the odd one out. Back home, in Manukau, she is sometimes looked at oddly whenever she walks to the front of the classroom - a brown face teaching English - but people quickly shrug it off. 'People look at me, and I'm brown first, but that's okay,' she says. Auckland Samoa Football Association president says his club is teaching players more about their culture while giving them a way to unwind. The first Pasifika Soccer Cup will be played on March 15, the week after the Pasifika Festival, with 10 teams from across the Pacific plus a few top teams from elsewhere. 'Games and sports take away the stress. [Players] get to meet up with others who speak their own language and feel comfortable in each other's company,' says Mr Moroga. His 13-year-old son, Giovanni, is pleased to be able to tick the box 'New Zealander' now, instead of 'Samoan', which was all that was available before. Giovanni wrote the poem at the beginning of this story out of a deep wish for understanding. 'He wants to help people in Samoa, but he knows New Zealand has given him a lot of good things,' says Mr Moroga. That's reason enough to celebrate Pasifika, says Dr Suaalii-Sauni. 'It's easy to condemn,' she says. 'But all that we can expect of these festivals is that they continue to promote what's best about our culture.'