I acknowledge Minister Mark Burton, Judge Ida Malosi, Mr Leigh Auton, CEO of Manukau City Council, Reverend Ministers, government representatives, members of our community, friends & colleagues. Greetings to you all.

There is an old Samoan saying, “E le falala fua le lau o le niu, e ala ona falala ona ua agi le matagi.”

‘The leaves of the coconut tree do not move without reason, they move because the winds are blowing.’

The winds of change have been blowing upon Polynesian people ever since the first wave of people left the mythical Hawaiki in search of new lands, new horizons, and new settlements.

Hundreds of years before the birth of Christ, these pioneers settled the Pacific islands and established a thriving social, economic and religious order. There was a flourishing Polynesian community with trade taking place between Tonga, Fiji, Samoa and other islands (200 BC).

The French explorer, Louis-Antoine de Bougainville in 1768 marveled at seeing so many natives in small canoes moving about in the great ocean, at significant distances away from land, and he therefore called it the Navigator islands in recognition of their tremendous navigation skills and courage – an accolade reinforced by the vast distances traveled by Pacific people within the Polynesian Triangle.

Bougainville obviously did not know that the natives already had a name for their island home, they called it Samoa – the Sacred Centre of the Universe.…

THE JOURNEY TO NEW ZEALAND
Whichever island was the center of the universe, we have left it now, and between the 1950s – 1970s, we traveled from Samoa, Tonga, Rarotonga, Niue, Tokelau, Tuvalu, Kiribati, Fiji, and we’ve now settled in the land of the long white cloud, and have made it our home. Aotearoa is now the new Hawaiki.

We have come here for many different reasons, but moreso to seek better educational opportunities for our children and to give support to families back in the islands.

On arrival, we first settled in Grey Lynn, Newton and Ponsonby. Then we moved where the job opportunities were to Penrose, Mt Wellington, Otahuhu, Otara, and Mangere.

We have brought with us to New Zealand our religion, our cultures, our languages, our foods, and also our jandals and lavalava……just in case.

We have enhanced NZ arts, dance & music with our ability to create fusion of the old and new, from sasa & tamure - to hip hop & opera. We are fast becoming the creative masters of new sounds, new rhythm, new moves that the world has never seen before. The Pacific Music Awards held a few weeks ago at the Telstra Clear Events Centre is a testament of these talents.

We have injected New Zealand society with a massive dose of our infectious Pacific sense of humour & laughter…….The laughing Samoans, BroTown are a few examples.

We have infused new colours & designs to fashion, architecture, themes & events held throughout this country.

Whether it is on the football field, the boxing ring, the netball court, or throwing a discuss or shotput in the Commonwealth or in the World Games, both our sportsmen and women play with a warrior spirit and a belief in God Almighty, never before seen.

By speaking two or more languages & being confident in who we are, we shifted the NZ psyche towards embracing diversity and we inspired Maori to a renaissance of Te Reo Maori.

In short, Pacific people are making a significant contribution to the fabric of New Zealand society in so many different ways on so many different levels & fronts.

OUR CHALLENGES
However, not all our families are achieving the aspirations they set out to achieve by coming to this land.

I don’t need to give you statistics about the areas of challenge that our communities must improve on. We all belong to extended family groups where we each see first hand the kinds of struggles experienced by our various communities.

The tragic events surrounding the recent death of Folole Muliaga and the sad situation faced by that family highlighted for us all the reality of the real challenges that our communities must face and overcome.

How will we as a community face and overcome these challenges today and into the future?

Part of the answer lies in reflecting and pondering on how things worked in our village life in the islands. Not all of us will have this experience, but it is still an important reference point.

THE OLD WAYS
From my own experience, my family was part of the village’s traditional social structure which gave support, provided protection and gave us all a sense of belonging.

Irrespective of age group or gender, each individual belonged to a a sub-group of the village. The chiefs & orators (male and female) belonged to the Village Council. This council administered the day to day laws of the village and issued penalties to those who broke those laws. Decisions were made by your peers and were by consensus after robust debate.

The women belonged to Komiti o Tina, the young people belonged to the aumaga (for young men) or the aualuma (for young women).

Under the authority & direction of the Village Council the aumaga would serve & protect the entire village and would often enforce the village decisions.

The entire village had the duty of looking after every child, indeed looking out for everyone. Everyone had a role to play.

There were specialist roles, people who had special skills like navigating by the stars, fishing, planting, hunting, building meeting houses, building canoes, tattooist, healing the sick, even casting out evil spirits.

There were also specialists in weaving fine mats, making tapa, dance, song, and creating theatre.

We relied on these fraternities of specialists or tufuga for their advise & counsel to make our village life whole and safe.

Community Safety both inside the village, and for traveling parties visiting outside villages, was a collective responsibility by all the village members. If an individual was hurt or harmed, the whole village felt the pain.

SUPPORT AVAILABLE TO OUR COMMUNITIES
In modern NZ society, Pacific communities have established the Church as the substitute for the village back home. The sub-groups which make up the Village Council still exist. The fraternities of chiefs & orators, women and youth are an integral part of the Church social structure in New Zealand.

Those with specialist skills in the arts, culture & custom, language & music are still with us today.

But we now have additional groups and specialists within our community structures which can add more value in making our society whole and safe. Many of them are in this room today.

We have different providers of community services such as in the areas of health, education, counseling, budgeting, mentoring, like the Citizens Advice Bureau, Community Law Centres, Health Centres, Family Centres, Friendship House, Community Police, and many others.

Government departments provide welfare assistance, accommodation support, business opportunities for entrepreneurs, community safety & law enforcement, and many other ways of supporting our communities.

All of this resource & more is available to all our communities today. An example of a community using the resources & working collectively to provide a community response is found in my own community of Otara – the capital of Manukau City

COMMUNITY EXAMPLES - OTARA
In 2005, the Otara Community in responding to the issues of youth gangs & violence, called a serious of community meetings to get everyone’s input into developing a plan of action.

We were concerned for the youth because we want them to be able to reach their full potential and take up their rightful places as future leaders of our families and our communities.

To develop a plan of action, we involved all the government departments working in the area:- police, CYFS, MPIA, TPK, MSD, corrections, housing and many others. We involved Manukau City Council, the churches, the schools and interested parents.

After a serious of community meetings which was followed by engagement & negotiations with government departments, our plan for having youth workers working alongside these young people was accepted and we were significantly funded for the next 4 years. This is the 274 Youth project.

It should be noted that many of us involved at the beginning, did not necessarily have the experience & skill for this project. So we identified & brought in people with the skills to make this project work – youth workers, counselors, social workers, accountants, lawyers, etc.

Later, the community organized another community forum because we wanted to collectively do something about the drugs being sold in our local neighbourhoods.

(We feel strongly that the drug P has yet to fully release its destructive nature upon our young people and our communities.)

Again by collective action we got the Police to initiate a ‘Buyer Beware’ operation targeting those buying drugs as well as those selling drugs. We must do more on this front.

Pacific Communities can do more by taking the initiative and working collaboratively with others.

OUR FUTURE CHALLENGES?
By the year 2021, Pacific population is projected to reach 420,000 people, an increase of 59% over the 2001 figure of 260,000.

The Pacific ethnic group has the highest proportion of children aged up to 14 years of all major ethnic groups, at 38%.

It is this youth population that we will come to depend on to sustain the living standards for the older New Zealand generations in the years ahead.

If these young people are to take up their places as responsible, hard working, tax paying citizens, performing their civic responsibilities with care and commitment, we must do all that we can to ensure that our youth today are protected, nurtured and prepared to take up their rightful positions as future leaders.

Without quoting you the statistics, I will simply say this:
There are those who are leaving the education system early and are competing for the few remaining low skills, low paid jobs. We want them to strive for tertiary education, for degrees, for apprenticeships, or start their own businesses. We want them to succeed in this land, after all isn’t this the reason we left our island homes in the first place?

There are those who are involved in the gangs & the gang lifestyle of violence, booze & drugs which can only lead to death or jail. Is this not why we brought our religion & culture with us from the island to prevent this from happening? Is this not why our forefathers held regular family prayers or sauniga lotu faale-aiga?

There are those who are caught up in gambling, regular partying, and spending up large on trivial things, using loan shark debts on exorbitant interest rates, with no savings plan for the future. If they can’t help themselves, how then will they be able to help anyone else?

When the Cleaners who are members of the Service & Food Workers Union went on strike recently to secure better working conditions and better pay for themselves & their families, did we go to provide support? If the least of our communities are hurting, do we not feel their pain?

Community Safety in my view isn’t just a Police or the Court’s responsibility. It is a collective responsibility, just like it was back in our villages of old. It isn’t just about the enforcement of law & order through fines and penalties. It is also about teaching respect for authority & promoting individual responsibility within the collective.

Respect & Personal responsibility must begin from the inside out. It begins first from the home and then it should move outwards to our communities.

As this fono is about Navigating for Safer Pacific Communities, I can’t help but ponder on Bougaingville in 1768, when he first sighted our ancestors moving about in small canoes so far away from land. They had the courage and confidence to ride the great seas with such skill in navigation with no instruments but the eyes of a specialist who was ingrained with the knowledge of the stars and the skies. We too can ride the great seas & conquer the oceans ahead, with the wise counsel of groups of specialists available to us today.

All of us individually have a collective responsibility to one other. If we are to journey together, we must each do our part in building the canoe, in reading the stars, in paddling when there is no wind, and protecting those sacred things which we carry inside our hearts to be the basis of new beginnings for future generations.

(Tuiatua Tupua Tamasese Efi said,) Navigation epitomizes (Samoan) culture, our construction culture, our building culture, our spiritual culture, connecting us with the stars & the heavens, emphasizing that each of us is an important part of the cosmos.

Navigation requires skill and it requires leadership, strong leadership from our communities, now and into the future.

This is our collective challenge. Safe journey to everyone. Ia soifua

ENDS

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