Poster girls share learning curve

By WARREN GAMBLE

A picture of innocence. Two girls - one Maori, one Pakeha. The sun shines on their long, dark and blond hair as they smile in the grass at Birkdale's Verran Rd Primary School, where they often played.

It is May 1980, and Bianca McGovern and Fiona Ross are the best of friends.

For seven weeks they are also mini-poster girls for a Herald education page series asking the question, "One People?"

It was a time when Maori issues were an emerging part of the landscape, and the Pacific Island influence in Auckland was growing.

The photograph caption, written by Fiona's father, John Ross, a former Herald journalist, says that to the girls the colour of their skins or cultural backgrounds do not matter.

"But will they feel the same way in 10 or 12 years? What happens to young people during their years at school to change their feelings and their views about those who have a different colour of skin and a different background to their own?"

Twenty years, on the childhood friends are living in different countries. They lost touch when Fiona moved to Rotorua at 8, but they share similar stories of racial awareness and acceptance.

Bianca McGovern is 25, married to Zach, a Pakeha, and has two children, Molly, aged 2, and Lennox, five months. She lives in Auckland.

Fiona Ross, now 27, is in suburban Sydney with her Australian partner, Clinton, and their 2-year-old son, Calhoun.

In the dining room of Bianca's Avondale home, the picture from that long-ago autumn is framed. "I really like it. Everyone who comes in comments on it - I don't know why, just childhood, I guess."

Adopted into a Pakeha family shortly after birth, she said her dark skin was not an issue for her or others until she walked home from her first day at Carmel College in Milford, aged 11.

That day and for the rest of her college years she was taunted by a group of "pimply little boys" from nearby Westlake Boys' High School.

"It was only until someone said you have got fat lips or you're a nigger that I thought, 'Am I different?'

"I will always remember it because I was embarrassed, ashamed and angry. Especially because I came from a white family and they didn't hassle me."

The experience triggered a need to trace her birth parents. Growing up, she had been mistaken as Polynesian, Hawaiian or African heritage "and I wanted to know what I was."

At 15, she found her Spanish birth mother and discovered that her natural father was Maori.

The end of college and the pimply boys also put a stop to the racial remarks, which she has never experienced again.

In her career as a teacher aid helping deaf students and those with learning needs, the workplace culture was supportive and meant seeing past differences.

Bianca is also optimistic that race relations in general are improving, although issues such as Maori land and fishing are still causing division.

Her own attitudes changed as she has learned more about her heritage. From being against Maori land claims, she is now more tolerant, having read "the other side of the story."

She has also welcomed Auckland's increasing cultural diversity. "I'm assuming that things will get better just because there are so many mixed cultures you can't avoid. You will have to leave and go to an island far away."

Fiona Ross left for another island four years ago, not to avoid race issues, but in a way to embrace the bigger, brighter, bolder mix that is Sydney.

Like Bianca, her first real experience of racial friction came at intermediate age in Rotorua.

The equal Maori-Pakeha split at primary school had been uneventful, but at Sunset Intermediate kids targeted the easiest and most visible difference.

"We got picked on by the Maori kids for being white. I suppose they were doing it back because other people picked on them."

As a waitress in the geyser town, she said, the only racial eruptions seemed to occur between gangs or at pubs which people simply avoided. "Some people were racist, but most were, like, if someone had a problem towards them they would have one back."

Boredom and the lack of opportunities put her and her friends on the well-travelled path across the Tasman, where she met Clinton, a truck driver.

"There are so many different cultures here, a lot I had not seen in New Zealand; incredible languages and different ways of doing things," she said. "From Rotorua to here, it was like going to a different world."

Fiona said that while people were not as friendly as in a small town, "they don't seem to hold opinions on people. They seem more accepting of people's cultures and different ways of living."

The exception, mainly in other parts of Australia, was the treatment of Aborigines. "We have a lot more respect for the Maori culture."

A visit home to Rotorua in 1998 gave her the impression the town had become more violent, with more robberies and home invasions, but she did not know whether racial tensions were the cause.

She did not plan to return in the meantime, particularly because of the schooling opportunities for Calhoun.

Looking ahead 20 years for her son, she hoped exposure to so many cultures at a young age would be a big boost. "It's what the world is about these days. I think he would grow up accepting people more."

Bianca had similar hopes for her children. "I hope they are exposed to heaps of cultures and as many different people as possible.

"I hope they will be totally non-biased, non-judgmental. If not I would be really disappointed."

Fiona and Bianca both said they would like to catch up one day. Bianca said she often wondered what happened to her childhood friend when she walked past the photograph. "It would be fun to look back together and have another picture taken."