He ran all the way to Ellerslie then on to Panmure where he was staying at the time,” she said.
Susana said her father still remembers this experience — it’s imprinted on his memory.
Susana and her older brother were children through the dawn raid years. “It was just a horrible feeling, you know like fear and just trying to support each other, not knowing what was going on.”
She remembers a lot of toll calls with Samoa and other Pacific islands as uncertainty grew in the community.
“The calls were asking ‘what’s happening?’, ‘what’s going on?’, and as a young child there was a lot of fear and hiding.”
Susana said the atmosphere in the community and her house became extra cautious and silent.
“We weren’t allowed to talk. People were saying ‘Don’t talk to this person’ and ‘where are you going’. We had to be mindful of where we were going. People would say ‘we could pick you up’ or sometimes four of us would walk to get our friends.”
Susana went to Yendarra Primary School in Otara and Ferguson Intermediate School before going on to Otahuhu College.
There were two groups of teachers, she said — one supportive and other not.
“When we were at school, some teachers were supportive and some would ask us questions like, ‘who stays at your house?’, ‘How many people stay there?’ ‘Are they your aunties and uncles?’
“Why would they ask questions? What were they wanting to do with that information — that was the part we were worried about.
“The good thing about tagata pasifika (people from Pacific Islands) is that we can speak our language and we would talk in Samoan. We’d say ‘don’t tell them anything, if they ask us who’s at home, uncles and aunties, don’t tell them’ ‘just say it’s Mum and Dad’ or ‘just don’t say anything at all’.”
Susana’s uncles were deported back to Samoa during the raids.
“It impacted hugely on our family, because they had all these plans to work and send money back home but they got deported, so it was really difficult,
“All the time we asked, ‘where did uncle go?’ ‘what happened?’ and the elders would tell us, ‘oh it’s none of your business really, you don’t need to know.’
“They were trying to protect us because they didn’t want us to feel we would be singled out as different.”
Susana said the effects of always staying on the alert carried on in her life.
“Because you still believe it’s a racist place. There’s racism even today, it will always be there. People will experience triggers. I think the pain is less. The memory is there but the pain is slowly going away.”
Susana said it took her family some years to heal and humour kept them strong.
“We have a big sense of humour — our culture is to laugh about things even in the worst times. My dad jokes about his experience now, he says ‘Oh my gosh, lucky I was fit and I was sober, that I was able to get away from the police, and jump high fences. If I was overweight and drunk I would definitely be caught’. We laugh about it now but at the time, it wasn’t funny.”
Susana said she was proud of Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern going through the ceremony of ‘ifoga’( a public act of self-humiliation — accompanied by the gift of fine mats) and when she made an official apology to tagata pasifika for the Dawn Raids.
The ceremony took place in Auckland on August 1.
“The formal process is really significant in our Samoan culture.”
Susana said for her the apology did not need to have any element of compensation.
“The whole acknowledgment and apology is not about ‘OK, you’ve done this so you have to give us this’. Don’t pay us back. It’s a nice gesture that scholarships are being offered but for me, it’s about putting something to rest. It’s acknowledging people were treated like dogs and our people were running for their lives, they were fearing for their lives.”
Susana said she believed even today, there is a sense of hate towards immigrants and people of colour — the only difference is that now it’s behind closed doors.
“I think it’s up to people like me not to educate them but to role model for them. If you want something, you get out there and work hard, don’t just sit back and complain.
“That’s what I think our Pacific people have done. We were given an opportunity and invitation to come here and work, we worked hard and then we were told to get back, to go away.”
Susana said coming to Tairawhiti from South Auckland was especially hard on her children.
“From South Auckland, (a predominantly multicultural/multiethnic area) to Gisborne was different for them in terms of the community. They felt like they don’t fit because they are a mix of Samoan-German/Irish.”
Susana said her children did not really connect with their culture and she felt responsible to educate them about it.
“It comes back on me to teach my children their heritage and they learn it at home, not in school. It’s more authentic when it’s at home because I model that to them.
“In terms of identity, they know who they are. I have told them, ‘No matter where you go in the world be proud of your heritage’ and that’s the value they have.
“Most of all, they will have that strength from me, because as a Pacific Islander woman, I am proud of what I have achieved and what I am continuing to do in the community, and how I serve the people.
“Even after all the obstacles which my parents faced, I am one of the first generation of Pacific Islanders born in New Zealand to attend university (University of Auckland and Manukau Institute of Technology). This is what most migrant parents want for their children.”
Susana says the community in Gisborne is really good but some people are unaware of other cultures in New Zealand.
“There are people in Tairawhiti who have never been out of this region. They don’t know there is a world beyond the Waioeka Gorge and so they are scared of other ethnicities.
It’s just ignorance, the fear of not knowing — people fear what they don’t know so they make judgements.”
Susana said she had first-hand experience of ignorance when people couldn’t say her daughter’s name correctly.
“My daughter Suatino is a bull rider and competes as a show jumper and the rodeo and equestrian announcers couldn’t pronounce her name properly.
“People in the Tairawhiti community should take the time to ask ‘how do you pronounce your name’. I guess its unconscious bias.”
Susana said her daughters were mocked by the word ‘coconut’ (‘coconut’ is a derogatory term used to describe Pacific Islanders) in Tairawhiti.
“I say to my kids, ‘that’s right you are a coconut, hard on the outside soft on the inside’, I try to turn the negative around and make it positive for them.”
Susana said she believed the change is coming sooner than later.
“There’s a browning happening,a brown wave which has always been here but now it’s starting to surge
“We are here, we contribute to society, we pay our taxes and now we are saying, ‘you can’t want us just for rugby, we have other talents and gifts to offer’.”
