Jared Mackley-Crump - The Pacific Festivals of Aotearoa New Zealand: Negotiating Place and Identity in a New Homeland

How New Zealand Became a Center of the Pacific Diaspora

T he beginning point of understanding Pacific festivals in New Zealand is migration and the creation of diaspora; the story cannot be told without first discussing how communities of people from other Pacific nations came to call New Zealand home. The creation of diaspora is crucial: the act of migrating to New Zealand, where the generic term Pacific Islander did not differentiate among nations or islands, and certainly not among villages, created a commonality based on historical connections and cultural similarities. In addition, a new commonality was created, the result of migrants being located in similar sociocultural circumstances once in New Zealand, within the same geographical and social communities, workplaces, churches. These factors created a mind-set of being of the Pacific, a part of the broader Pacific diaspora in New Zealand. An important part of these constructed communities has been the changing place of indigenous Mori within them, a factor reflected in festival spaces. The evolution of Pacific communities from groups made up primarily of migrants into communities where the majority are New Zealandborn contributed greatly to the development of festivals. Coming of age in a Westernized country, and receiving Western-style educations while living in Pacific homes, provided new urban Pasifikans with different worldviews, opportunities, and ambitions from those of their migrant elders. Products of the diasporic mind-set, they were more easily able to come together, as Pacific peoples, and work together to achieve and effect change. The development of Pacific festivals is a product of these factors.

Migration

The Pacific has long been characterized by successive waves of exploration and migration. New Zealands original settlement by those who became Mori and who developed a specific but Polynesian-related culture was, of course, the result of such explorations. These waves of migration include not only journeys of discovery but also continuous migration and exchange, back and forth between islands, across centuries and generations. The Pacific has been, and continues to be, a place where migration is experienced widely and represents a significant lifestyle pattern. The migration story of Pacific peoples to New Zealand has been recorded in detail elsewhere, in scholarly texts, personal accounts, arts, and visual media. There is therefore no need to attempt a retelling here; instead, this chapter presents the story in overview.

It is important to note that the main period of migration, from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s, was preceded by small amounts of earlier migration and New Zealands long interest in establishing an empire in the Pacific, an ambition that dates to the 1840s (Fairbairn-Dunlop 2003, 21). At the turn of the twentieth century, the New Zealand prime minister took a party to Tonga, Niue, Fiji, and the Cook Islands with the purpose of soliciting an agreement to annexation, successfully in the case of Niue and the Cook Islands. In addition, the three-atoll nation of Tokelau became part of New Zealand in 1949, after a period as a British protectorate. These three nations are those with the closest constitutional ties to New Zealand, and to this day the residents of these states are also citizens of New Zealand, with full and free citizenship rights.

As fellow colonies of the British Empire, Fiji and New Zealand, which helped to uphold colonial rule in Fiji, were also closely linked (Leckie 2009). More formally, New Zealand also had a constitutional relationship with (Western) Smoa, after taking responsibility for its government from Germany at the outbreak of World War I. This situation remained until Smoa gained independence in 1962. The relationship between the New Zealand administration and Smoans was not, however, always harmonious. The introduction of the influenza epidemic to Western Smoa in 1918 via an Auckland-originated vessel, the galvanization of dissent into the Mau independence movement in 1926, and the subsequent and fatal firing upon a peaceful independence march in 1929 by New Zealand officers are pertinent examples (see, e.g., Meleisea 1987; Field 1991).

New Zealand had also looked to the wider Pacific for its war efforts during World War I. The armed forces enlisted six hundred men from Rarotonga, Niue, and the Gilbert Islands (now Kiribati), and two soldiers from the Cook Islands joined members of the first contingent of the 1915 Mori Battalion (Fairbairn-Dunlop 2003, 26). During this time, young Cook Island women were also recruited as home help and domestic workers on farms in the South Island, and Smoan girls were trained for domestic duties in New Zealands Catholic missions. By 1916, 18 Melanesians, 49 Fijians, and 151 other and undefined Polynesians had settled in New Zealand (Walrond 2009). This number grew with the early-1940s arrival of scholarship students from Smoa, as part of New Zealands mission to prepare the country for self-government (Fairbairn-Dunlop 2003, 26). After the end of World War II, students from Tuvalu, Papua New Guinea, and the Solomon Islands also began arriving (Walrond 2009). These groups represent some of the very first Pacific migrants to New Zealand, numbering 988 in 1935, but more than doubling to more than 2,000 by census night ten years later (Macpherson 2006, 99). With 1.7 million people living in New Zealand at the time, these migrants represented only 0.1 percent of the population, however (Cook, Didham, and Khawaja 2001, 45). It was not until after World War II that this figure would change dramatically, rising to 50,000 by 1971 and, as a percentage of the population, to 2 percent.

The PostWorld War II Great Pacific Migrations

From the New Zealand perspective, the migration of Pacific peoples was a consequence of historically specific moments: the substantial reduction of the male population as a consequence of war and the governments postwar decision to diversify the national economy (Macpherson 2006, 99100). As a result, citizens of former and current New Zealand territories (as well as from farther afield) were encouraged to migrate to meet postwar labor shortages. Rapid development in New Zealand resulted in new settlements being built to house the growing workforce. This occurred especially in the South Auckland area, where Otara was established in 1966 and was populated largely by formerly rural Mori and Pacific migrants (Stevenson and Stevenson 2006, 53). Significant numbers, especially from Tokelau, which was suffering the effects of overpopulation, were also strategically settled in the Wellington region cities of Porirua and Lower Hutt and throughout the central North Islands volcanic plateau and forestry belt. During the period of migration, the New Zealand economy underwent two periods of significant growth, from 1964 to 1967 and from 1970 to 1974. A recession between 1967 and 1970 slowed both official and unofficial migration (de Bres and Campbell 1975, 446447).

Migration occurred primarily from Smoa, the Cook Islands, Niue, and Tokelau, with large numbers of migrants also coming from Tonga and Fiji. Smaller numbers arrived more latterly from Kiribati, Tuvalu, and French Polynesia, island nations geographically close but with no historic or formal constitutional linkages with New Zealand. While the migration patterns and specific circumstances of the various feeder nations varied, the method by which migration most commonly occurred was chain migration (Macpherson 2006). Initial migrants secured housing and employment and became socially and economically settled. Establishing reputations as conscientious workers and gainfully employed tenants, migrants were then able to secure the required work and accommodation guarantees for other family members. Later arrivals, in turn, established themselves and their reputations and, following the same pattern, then secured work and accommodation for other kin. This process was replicated over and over, with the chains of migration extending farther and into more and more families and villages throughout the Pacific. In the New Zealand context, this type of migratory pattern worked effectively, as it matched labor supply to demand. A consequence, though, was the concentration of Pacific migrants in particular industrial sectors and residential areas, which would later have significant and long-lasting negative effects. In most cases, migrants undertook employment in industries where other New Zealanders were not working in large numbers: shift work, factory work, assembly-line production, and cleaning, work that involved long hours and often unpleasant conditions. Women worked, too, and some employers, like hospital laundries, became dependent on Pacific labor. Initially, though, this enclave served migrants well, creating insulated communities where early settlers replicated central features of their island social structures and organizations (Macpherson 2006). Within these largely transplanted societies, the role of the churches took on an added importance as they replaced the Pacific Island village as both the locus and focus for social events (Leota-Ete 2007, 68).