At the time of the dawn raids, Taupaū lived on the outskirts of central Auckland in Owairaka with her husband and four children.
She said she was rejected by her community for marrying a Māori Ngāpuhi man.
Taupaū explained how every Pacific Island family was living in fear. Her fear was layered with silence because she was already ostracised for her choice of husband.
Because of this, her children only found out this year about the trauma she was living with.
“I just broke down because I had no idea,” her daughter Fiū Mesepa Edwards said. “My siblings - none of us had any idea that my mum had experienced what she went through during the time of the dawn raids.”
She asked her mum if she would share her story and the pair embarked on a journey together to shine a light on the injustices Pasifika experienced.
Taupaū Makalita Edwards and her late husband. Photo / Fiū Mesepa Edwards
‘Absolute terror’
In the 1970s Edwards said she watched Robert Muldoon on the TV saying “all the Pacific Island people will return back to the Pacific and all Māori will return up north”.
She heard the same message on the radio and thought to herself, “I am one of them in that situation”.
With tears in her eyes she explained the feelings she kept to herself for all these years.
“Living in fear of, if they’ll send me back to Samoa and my husband up north, what happens to the four kids?” Edwards said.
“Can you imagine the fear you are living with at the time? It was so scary, so scary.”
She had all of her papers and managed to avoid deportation but she was still left with a scar from surviving through “absolute terror”.
“Sharing this story seems to be the medicine, for my soul, for my heart,” Edwards said.
One of Taupaū's daughters, Fiū Mesepa Edwards, who only recently found out her mother was living with this story, has been supporting her mother in sharing her story.
At a Teu Le Va event this year where her story was aired, Edwards told Fiū she wanted to organise a peace march to remember what happened.
On September 30, her vision of a peace march came to life.
In the pouring rain she was pushed in a wheelchair leading the silent march she dreamed up.
Edwards is calling on the government to implement pathways to residency for all migrants so no one needs to live in fear, like she did, in the present day.
“What about a pathway to residency?” Edwards requested of politicians.
“Do not support that at all,” National leader Christopher Luxon said. “The reason very simply is we support legal migration to this country.”
Meanwhile, to honour the historic Dawn Raids apology, the Labour Party has proposed a one-off regularisation programme for individuals who have overstayed their visas for at least 10 years.
Edwards’ daughter Fiū is “enraged” at the timing in which Labour has presented that offer.
“How are we going to even trust that you’re going to do it? And if you don’t win the election, we are totally stuffed.”
