Tapu Misa: Maori-Islander relations need understanding, respect

I sometimes masquerade as a Maori. I don't mean in the way that National MP John Carter did a few years back when he tried to pass himself off on talkback radio as a character called Hori (or was it Hone?)

In my case it's unintentional. It's just that being brown and working for a Maori news outfit as I sometimes do, once I get that first "kia ora" out it's difficult to avoid being mistaken for tangata whenua. Sometimes even by Maori. Not that I mind; sometimes it helps to be a cultural chameleon.

It does draw out the odd unexpected revelation, however.

Like the time, reminiscing with a nice old kuia about her life - all 80-plus years of it - we got on to the subject of one of her pet hates: those bloody Islanders and their disgraceful pillaging of the seafood supplies, how unlike Maori they were, and the awful way they had toilets right on their beaches.

I didn't have the heart to tell her that I was one of them, and that the little houses in the water were a colonial innovation.

So I know what Sir Howard Morrison is on about when he says that, despite being cousins and virtually indistinguishable to almost everyone else, Maori and Pacific Islanders are miles apart. Our relationship has been a chequered one, to say the least.

When the largest wave of PIs first came here in the 1960s and 70s, Maori were not exactly laying out the welcome mat. They had more pressing matters on their mind - like survival. They had lost much of their land and were in danger of losing their language and culture. You would have thought that we would have been sympathetic, being cousins and all, but most of us were not.

We had arrived here armed with our prejudices and attitudes and without any understanding of the country's history. Many of us felt, really, that we could have done better, put up more of a fight. We blamed Maori for their plight.

Besides, we had come here for what Pakeha culture could give us - education, jobs, the material comforts that our islands couldn't offer. There wasn't a lot of interest in seeking out meaningful cultural exchanges on the marae.

Not that we were being invited. Maori were not all that impressed with PIs, either, seeing the fresh-off-the-boat interlopers as unsophisticated, backward and taking up resources that were needed by Maori.

It didn't help that, for the sake of convenience mainly, we were often lumped together by Government and Pakeha. That was the case with the old Department of Maori and Pacific Island Affairs, which was supposed to cater for the needs of both communities in the 1970s and 80s. It didn't work, as I saw when I worked for its head office in Wellington at the time.

Howard Morrison and others might believe that we had common goals, but we were marching to different drums.

In the push to get taha Maori, land and Treaty of Waitangi issues on the national agenda, there wasn't a lot of room for concerns about the Pacific Island rellies. Pacific issues tended to take a back seat.

It is only since the old department was reconstituted and separated into Te Puni Kokiri for Maori and the Ministry of Pacific Island Affairs that there has been progress.

No matter how many dire social statistics we share, PIs are tauiwi like everyone else, not tangata whenua. And when Winston Peters tells Maori that immigrants have helped to push them to the bottom of the heap, he's making no distinction for Pacific Islanders.

Still, there's been some progress over the years as we have adjusted and as some of us have improved our lot. We have moved on from the pub brawls and gang clashes that were the inevitable consequence of our disparate - and desperate - communities being haphazardly thrown together.

Back in those bad old days of the 60s and 70s, Maori tussled with Samoans and Samoans with Tongans in a tense struggle for survival and respect - a combination of cultural muscle-flexing and boys behaving badly. Thankfully, the boys and our communities have grown up since then.

There is much greater understanding these days between Pacific Island groups, as distinct and diverse as they are. And some PIs - Cook Islanders and Tahitians, for example - are by language, culture and, consequently, inclination much closer to Maori than to, say, Samoans and Tongans.

These days, the relationship is more reflective of sibling rivalry than racism - intense and passionate but not destructive.

And there is another significant development that Sir Howard might not have noticed, the growing "Hulahaka" generation - the offspring of those Maori and Pacific Islanders who have been engaging in intimate cultural interaction.

I'm all for greater co-operation, but it has to be accompanied by real understanding and respect. And that means not falling for the same old assumptions about each other - such as Sir Howard pointing the finger at Pacific Islanders for physically abusing their children. Yeah, some do, but it's a bit like saying all Catholic priests are sexual predators.

Good relationships don't happen overnight. But they will come about the same time we stop looking down our noses at one another.