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NZ: Tangata whenua village challenges Pasifika protocols, 1 April 2008

The original Maori village at the Pasifika festival was “sneaked in” during 1999. Carly Tawhiao checks out the whakapapa and sharing of common roots with this year’s tangata whenua village.

Auckland’s Pasifika Festival turned sweet 16 this year. But despite the event’s ripe age and outstanding reputation, it has taken this long to recognise that Māori, by virtue of location and kinship, are Pacific Islanders too.

For the first time, Māori had a tangata whenua village in the world’s largest celebration of Pacific culture thanks to new festival director Ole Maiava.

“For me it should’ve been done a long time ago.  Having to come in and make that happen is annoying,” he says. “We could be doing other things now, be at year three rather than year one.”

The tangata whenua village, which represented ‘”the people of the land”, was previously known as the “Niu Sila” village.  Before that it was called the “Aotearoa” village and has suspicious beginnings, apparently appearing from nowhere in 1999.

Renata Blair, village coordinator for the newly formed tangata whenua village, believes this set up marks a new  beginning for the hapu (sub tribes) that constitute Ngāti Whatua Orakei, the local iwi of Auckland.

“It’s been great to re-establish our links,” says Blair. “Ngāti Whatua has very strong whakapapa (geneology) with Cook Island, Samoan and also Tahitian families.”

Maiava was able to bring tangata whenua back into the celebrations by giving the festival a theme.

“Having a theme meant that we could then explore what connected us as Pacific people. We wanted to go with something local, and thought it would be best to connect it to the venue, which was through the eel.”

Western Springs – the venue for Pasifika, was one of Auckland city’s earliest sources of water supply and is also home to the native orea (eel), which is why the lake was originally called ‘Te Wai Orea’, meaning ‘the water of the orea’.

Stories of the eel

The night before the festival, a free concert at Western Springs Park centred on this theme and explored the different ways Pacific people are linked through their stories of the eel.  In years to follow, themes will include the frigate bird, the centipede and the octopus.

Although Maiava is uncertain how there came to be no tangata whenua representation, at the actual festival, his predecessor, Mere Lomaloma-Elliot, does offer an explanation.  She worked at Pasifika from 2000 to 2006. 

“We had a committee serving as an advisory board which sought the advice of Auckland City Council’s kaumatua (respected local Māori elder), the late Sir Hugh Kawharu.  His advice to us was Pasifika was for the Pacific people who came from the islands and as such did not include Māori who were tangata whenua.”

Both Maiava and Blair are sceptical of this rationale, and are convinced Sir Hugh’s advice was taken out of context.

 “There’s a lot of misconception around that statement,” says Blair. 

“I don’t think it justifies anything,” says Maiava. “There were tangata whenua there because it was just a matter of who was out there doing stuff at that point in time, no one looked at who was who, they just looked at who was actually able to help.”

Pati Umaga agrees.  He got involved in 1997 as entertainment coordinator for the festival when the celebrations began to expand.  He recalls Māori being imperative players in the early years, not only in officially opening the event, but also by being the entertainment and producing props for the stages and villages. 

“We followed Ngāti Whatua protocol with a powhiri the night before the festival,” says Umaga. “Sir Hugh [Kawharu] gave a whaikorero (speech) for the opening ceremony and then we had kai after that.”

Murky area

Yet Umaga recalls the area between Māori and Pacific Islanders was always quite murky with no one wanting to take responsibility for opening up the discussion of including a village for tangata whenua.

Lomaloma-Elliot remembers in 1999, before she got involved, there was a lot of confusion and some resentment when a team member defied directions and went ahead and made an Aotearoa village.

“I sneaked it in,” admits Umaga.  “When I say I sneaked it in, I think I went ahead and got some people who could come and do it.  Then the board were asking ‘How did the Aotearoa village get in there?’ and I just went a bit ignorant about it.”

Umaga was unsure how to bring it up within the committee because although linked as individuals, they weren’t linked on any political level, and it was the potential for Māori to move a political agenda at Pasifika that worried organisers the most.

“There was concern that it would be overrun by protesters,” says Umaga. “They didn’t want the festival to be for any political gain. It was a bit of a hot potato.  And we had a hangi! So there was fear of a fire hazard too.”

Michelle Khan, event manager for Auckland City Council says the worry was warranted.  “Well that’s why it ended up being changed to Niu Sila because it did. It happened in ‘99 and again in 2000,” she says.

“Pasifika was started originally to celebrate Pacific people, it was their celebration,” says Khan.  “There was the Aotearoa village, and at that time there was no Matariki (Maori new year) festival, and Maori had no representation of an event of their own.”

Khan was part of the team who rebranded Pasifika festival in 2001 as its popularity grew.  She held several meetings with Ngāti Whatua where it was felt that the powhiri ceremony was unnecessary as well, and under the directive of the committee, a Niu Sila village was set up to deter any radical activists.

“It became a sort of ‘government village’ where you would find DOL, Elections Office, Fisheries Department, and these organisations were paying $900 for their site,” says Ms Lomaloma-Elliot.

Penny dropped

Many wondered where this island was in the South Pacific.  It was only when Niu Sila was pronounced aloud that the penny dropped – sort of.

“There was a feeling that the Maori were being excluded, so we had to call this meeting and the kaumatua explained why there was no tangata whenua village,” explains Ms Lomaloma Elliot. 

“Not that we did not want them in, but we had a clear channel of communication and anything to do with tangata whenua we had specific channels to go through.  I remember the kaumatua saying that the Māori already had their festival and it was the kapahaka and he asked the question to those present at the meeting, would you open up the kapahaka to include Pacific Islanders? Of course, the answer was ‘No’.” 

Blair refutes this. “Kapahaka festivals do include Pacific performances.  They don’t compete for trophies but they are represented.  There was a call made to include rather than exclude, which I believe is a colonial construct anyway.

“Ngāti Whatua has always played the role of tangata whenua in Tamaki Makaurau (Auckland) regardless of which culture is hosting a festival,” he says.

Maiava is now focused on the future of the festival and is looking forward to the next one, where tangata whenua are appropriately involved as custodians of the land.

“I’m a 43rd generation Samoan and in my whakapapa (genealogy) I have people that left my island to come to New Zealand, to the land of the light, to Aotearoa,” he says.

“We share common roots and I think that’s the most important thing.  We need to start looking at our whakapapa and reuniting bloodlines again throughout the Pacific, for which Aotearoa is a major part.”

Carly Tawhiao is a Graduate Diploma in Journalism student at AUT University studying on the Asia-Pacific Journalism paper.

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