PASIFIKA FESTIVAL

Facing cancellation, the Auckland City Council voted in favour of funding the $355,000 shortfall that may have seen the back end of the Pasifika Festival had it been pulled from the cultural landscape if the rescue package did not survive voting ranks. Deputy Mayor David Hay is said to have strongly opposed rescuing the Pasifika Festival and there have been many stern comments from within the Pacific community against Auckland's Deputy Mayor. After all this is recession time and cutbacks are the norm when the national economic purse jangles only coppers, so why the backlash at this time. Our continual focus on public funding to prop up Pacific events that are significant to the Pacific community has got to stop. I'm sure that the Lantern Festival would survive the withdrawal of the public coffers and would be propped up immediately by the Asian business community.
The Pacific business community should be targeted to support the Pasifika Festival as should the Asian business community who have chosen to re-establish themselves in the Pacific Ocean alongside us. This is the time for PasifikAsia alliances to be drawn up and we cannot continue to rely on the government to draft the altering cultural landscape for us. We need only look at the census population figures to note that Pacific population figures are stabilising alongside a strong and growing Asian population. How long can a largely underfunded Ministry of Pacific Island Affairs survive before it becomes absorbed into the Ethnic Affairs portfolio. It's a numbers game. But the Pacific community must become smart, savvy and rethink it's future alliances. If the Pasifika Festival is to survive - stop focussing on the issues, rethink, alter, plan and modify how to recreate the future. The annual school cultural festival held in south Auckland every year has already moved in that direction. No longer the Polynesian Festival it now includes Asian and Middle Eastern dance groups. The Pasifika Festival must do the same. This is the age of PasifikAsia NOT Asia - Pacific and Pacific or Pasifika communities must forge that new identity now before we become subject to change.
Technorati Profile

PASIFIKA - WHAT DOES THAT MEAN TO PACIFIC PEOPLES?

by Vinepa Aiono

1923 -British Samoa (postcard)
Life in a 'fale' such as that pictured in this old postcard has changed for many Pacific people. For others who settled in Aotearoa New Zealand from the 1940s and who now are survived by their second, third and fourth generation descendants, such a home would be viewed as idyllic and sadly today a tourist experience that one pays for. In November 2003 my sister Pou, Karen Palupe and I developed 'Pacific Woman's Month' with the assistance of Manukau City Council and a citation was issued by Sir Barry Curtis in honour of our Pacific Woman of The Year. In 2004 we moved the Pacific celebration of women to March and renamed it PACIFIC PEOPLES MONTH to coincide with the Pasifika festival and the Polyfest that was held in the same month. Oddly enough the great powers of Auckland introduced Celebrate Pasifika in 2005 and while others might claim that it was their novel idea, we can sincerely claim that the month long celebration of things Pacific was first made public by 1st PACIFIC. Now don't think you've entered the complaints corner, let's just say revisionist history likes stating the truth. I like to entertain the notion that all good Pacific ideas come from south Auckland .., and ain't that the truth!!!

We can now safely claim that Tagata Pasifika (refer Wikipedia) is a reference to Pacific peoples and/or their descendants who have made Aotearoa New Zealand their home. Although genealogical connections may exist with one or many of the islands scattered through out the Pacific Ocean, Tagata Pasifika are unique in their claim of Aotearoa New Zealand as their homeland. Celebrating 'things Pacific' represents an acknowledgement of the special relationship that New Zealand has with the Pacific region and the necessity to continue working in partnership with Tagata Pasifika to improve the socio-economic, socio-cultural and socio-political statistics of the emerging Tagata Pasifika youth population.

Celebrating Pasifika is more than bright colours, frangipani prints or coconut splashed bodies performing on stage. It is also a month for Pacific people's to truly assess themselves against the rest of the nation and to strategise how to become leaders in all spheres of Aotearoa New Zealand. This is home.