Dawn Raids apology should bring change, Samoans say: 'Talk is cheap, we need action'

Thursday, 29 July 2021

Pacific Peoples Minister Aupito William Sio talks about his family's experience of the dawn raids.

Pasifika leaders say the Government’s official apology for the Dawn Raids should be backed up with change.

The apology, to be delivered by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern at the Auckland Town Hall on Sunday, is a move to acknowledge and make amends for the discriminatory and violent raids of the 1970s.

Pacific people were disproportionately affected by the raids, and thousands were rounded up and deported.

Samoan chief and orator Maulolo Tavita Amosa told Stuff he thinks the apology is a courageous move.

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Members of the Polynesian Panthers protest in the 1970s.

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“I don’t speak for other Samoans or other Pacific Islanders, but putting on my hat as a matai [Samoan chief] and orator living in Samoa, it’s good to hear [Ardern] will issue an apology, 46 years down the line,” he said.

“For the purpose of history in the making, although it was a long time ago, it’s good that a prime minister has the courage to officially document an official apology to the Pacific Islanders.”

Amosa was a young scholarship student in 1976. He remembers the fear he felt every time he had to travel between his room in International House on Symonds St, and science classes at Auckland University.

The scholarship management office back in Apia had advised students to stay home as much as possible.

“I was quite scared, actually … Even walking from campus to International House, I was scared I might be stopped by a cop,” he said.

“Being my first year up in Auckland, and being just 18 years of age, I was uncertain, I was confused.

“What the heck is happening? I am supposed to be studying on a scholarship scheme, fully funded by New Zealand, so what is happening here?”

“There needs to be an overhaul of the current systems that are designed to marginalise Māori and Pasifika people,” artist Yuki Kihara said.

Amosa said he and other Pacific students would gather around coffee tables to whisper about the situation, often with an early member of the Polynesian Panthers, Fuimaono Norman Tuiasau.

Fuimaono would go on to become a lawyer, and eventually work for the Ministry of Justice and the then-Ministry of Pacific Island Affairs.

But Amosa said he barely witnessed the raids themselves because he was tucked away in his room, avoiding the chaos.

“That alone was scary enough for me. I remember I finished my laboratory around 6pm. I had to make sure that once my lab was finished, I had to rush back to International House, I was so scared.

“I used to wear an old pair of jeans, but ever since then I had to make sure I dress up properly so that I look like an officer or a clerk.”

Samoan artist Yuki Kihara first went to New Zealand in the late 1980s, and said she quickly realised it wasn’t the famed “land of milk and honey” people in Samoa thought it was.

She said even today, mentioning the Dawn Raids among Samoans brings a certain shame to those who were deported or targeted at the time.

“I hope the generational trauma brought on by the Dawn Raids is taught in the curriculum in Samoa to learn about the trials and tribulations of the diasporic experience, given the upsurge in the residency applications to Aotearoa,” Kihara said in an email.

So far, the government has said it will not be changing its policies around overstaying as part of the apology.

Kihara, who is the first artist of Pacific descent to represent New Zealand at the Venice Biennale, says the country needs to work harder to end problems for Pasifika people.

“Lip service is not enough … There needs to be an overhaul of the current systems that are designed to marginalise Māori and Pasifika people.

“Talk is cheap, we need action.”

Amosa too wants more than words, especially because he considers New Zealand his second home.

He wants to know whether this apology will set the stage for a better relationship between Pacific New Zealanders and Pākehā.

“Is there real, impartial treatment of white New Zealanders and Pacific Island New Zealanders? There is still discrimination and racial issues … an apology without [addressing] that is an apology that people may ask, ‘well what does this mean?’

“It’s good to know your prime minister is humane and courageous enough to formally issue an apology.

“But even more good is if we can see that the treatment of the white New Zealanders is the same way the Pacific Islanders are treated in every way.”