Pasifika marchers feel ignored

Sat, 16 Jun 2012 6:07p.m.

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Auckland's Pacific community marched through the central city today in an effort to raise the voice of Pasifika people in New Zealand.

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19/08/2012 6:51:43 a.m.

lucy wrote:

like it or not, our world is a blend of world citizens... if you separate yourself you don't make your life safer or better. Just more isolated, closed, ignorant. White NZ is an immigrant population in the majority. Pacific people have heart, soul and spirit. We all share the same mother earth wherever we were born. We are one tribe. Time to remember.

15/07/2012 11:16:53 a.m.

Anaru wrote:

He mihi tenei ki nga tangata pasifika, to tatou whanaunga o te moana nui a Kiwa, kia mau kia u ki o koutou rangatiratanga ahakoa no hea ahakoa ko wai. He Iwi ano koutou o Aotearoa nei. There's only one planet we have to share right now, and to force all people to conform to Pakeha culture is a result of Caucasian (as Phil puts it)affairs always taking center stage. I once asked a Pakeha chap (good man) what he thought Pakeha culture was, to which he had no answer. I told him to look around us, the steak house across the road, the hotel we were in. We were literally surrounded by Pakeha culture that could not be seen by this "Caucasian" gentlemen. Likewise a very real Caucasian affairs ministry exists (it used to be called government) if it did not we wouldn't need Te Puni Kokiri because Maori affairs would have already be part of NZ affairs. I dont believe in racial equality, simply because race is a social construct and not a biological reality, basing the way you treat people on a social construct particular to your own culture and society is not equal treatment, but based on the ill informed idea of the existence of race and its perceived differences. Migration is the movement of people from one area to another, so we r all migrants by the mere fact we all have legs, however using this as a lever against indigenous rights or cultural awareness is throwing the baby out with the bath water. We need to be supportive of Pacific representation in light of the ill effects that mono-cultural views have had on Maori in the past, what's good for Pasifka/Chinese/Pakeha/Maori people in NZ, is good for NZ. Can we say democracy?

15/07/2012 12:44:04 a.m.

Anonymous wrote:

As a New Zealand European, I think that Pacific Islanders should be happy be happy with what they have got here in New Zealand because this is New Zealand and not the Pacific Islands. Pacific Islanders are truly ungrateful for what they have got in New Zealand already, and should not be greedy and just keep wanting more.