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Island Time
The task of living in modern New Zealand – and especially in modern Auckland – is not just to understand how to live with different peoples, but how to adapt to the future that has already happened.
New Zealand is a nation that exists on Pacific Islands, but does not, will not, perhaps cannot, see itself as a Pacific Island nation. Yet turning to the Pacific, argues Damon Salesa, enables us to grasp a fuller understanding of what life is really like on these shores.
After all, Salesa argues, in many ways New Zealand’s Pacific future has already happened. Setting a course through the ‘islands’ of Pacific life in New Zealand – Ōtara, Tokoroa, Porirua, Ōamaru and beyond – he charts a country becoming ‘even more Pacific by the hour’. What would it mean, this far-sighted book asks, for New Zealand to recognise its Pacific talent and finally act like a Pacific nation?
New Zealand is a nation that exists on Pacific Islands, but does not, will not, perhaps cannot, see itself as a Pacific Island nation. Yet turning to the Pacific, argues Damon Salesa, enables us to grasp a fuller understanding of what life is really like on these shores.
After all, Salesa argues, in many ways New Zealand’s Pacific future has already happened. Setting a course through the ‘islands’ of Pacific life in New Zealand – Ōtara, Tokoroa, Porirua, Ōamaru and beyond – he charts a country becoming ‘even more Pacific by the hour’. What would it mean, this far-sighted book asks, for New Zealand to recognise its Pacific talent and finally act like a Pacific nation?
- GenresNonfiction
256 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2018
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
December 23, 2021
The powerful stories settlement colonies tell about themselves, many of which are dominated by the utopian tales of the heroic settlers taming a savage and untamed land (and its existing peoples) to build a new society, or less often the tales of genocidal occupation (not that they’d use those words) as building a new society of native and newcomer, almost invariably omit the imperial acts of those societies. Sometimes that omission is a powerful aspect of the national myth making (we almost all know of the 7 December 1941 attack on the US colony in Hawai’i – it was not yet a state – but seldom mentioned is the concurrent attack on a US colony in the Philippines with similar devastating military costs), just as we seldom see New Zealand’s Pacific territories considered as part of an imperial outreach.
A consequence of this New Zealand blind spot is a poor understanding or recognition of the basis of the presence in New Zealand of a large population of Pacific Islands descent. This is not simply a question of propinquity, but that many of those peoples are from territories New Zealand controlled or claims as its own – from Nuie, Tokelau, Cook Islands as New Zealand territories, from Sāmoa as a former colony. It is those peoples, the ones increasingly considered tangata Pasifika, who are at the centre of this exploration of contemporary New Zealand.
Salesa opens by unpacking that often heard claim that Auckland is the world’s biggest Polynesian city, exploring spatial segregation to highlight the ways Pasifika peoples are excluded from many parts of the city with the result that there is a “Pacific city inside Auckland” and as a consequence of other national distributions “an archipelago of Pacific islands spread within New Zealand” (p55). Although much of the case draws on Auckland, he draws attention to that archipelago in Tokoroa, Porirua, Invercargill, Ōamaru and elsewhere, in unravelling what that Pasifika world looks like. He also reminds us that this world is likely to have an increasingly powerful impact, noting that it often takes quite some time for the effects of social change that has already begun to become obvious – that is to say, the future is already here.
What follows is a careful unpacking of Pacific economies and politics as public spaces, not much as ethnographic insight to the Pasifika world, but as a call to recognise the significance of those networks and their wider implications for contemporary New Zealand. There’s a powerful reminder that while the focus has been settler colonial relations, as the settler state has sought atonement though the Treaty settlements process, that the off-spring of New Zealand’s Pacific empire have different stories to tell and different significance for New Zealand’s future that is already here.
Yet, as richly informative as it is, I think I would have liked a slightly more sceptical tones about New Zealand’s ability to recognise that future as it is arriving, if for no other reason than the intense spatial segregation makes Pasifika into marginal peoples, and the basis for their presence (continuing colonial relations) remains poorly understood.
A consequence of this New Zealand blind spot is a poor understanding or recognition of the basis of the presence in New Zealand of a large population of Pacific Islands descent. This is not simply a question of propinquity, but that many of those peoples are from territories New Zealand controlled or claims as its own – from Nuie, Tokelau, Cook Islands as New Zealand territories, from Sāmoa as a former colony. It is those peoples, the ones increasingly considered tangata Pasifika, who are at the centre of this exploration of contemporary New Zealand.
Salesa opens by unpacking that often heard claim that Auckland is the world’s biggest Polynesian city, exploring spatial segregation to highlight the ways Pasifika peoples are excluded from many parts of the city with the result that there is a “Pacific city inside Auckland” and as a consequence of other national distributions “an archipelago of Pacific islands spread within New Zealand” (p55). Although much of the case draws on Auckland, he draws attention to that archipelago in Tokoroa, Porirua, Invercargill, Ōamaru and elsewhere, in unravelling what that Pasifika world looks like. He also reminds us that this world is likely to have an increasingly powerful impact, noting that it often takes quite some time for the effects of social change that has already begun to become obvious – that is to say, the future is already here.
What follows is a careful unpacking of Pacific economies and politics as public spaces, not much as ethnographic insight to the Pasifika world, but as a call to recognise the significance of those networks and their wider implications for contemporary New Zealand. There’s a powerful reminder that while the focus has been settler colonial relations, as the settler state has sought atonement though the Treaty settlements process, that the off-spring of New Zealand’s Pacific empire have different stories to tell and different significance for New Zealand’s future that is already here.
Yet, as richly informative as it is, I think I would have liked a slightly more sceptical tones about New Zealand’s ability to recognise that future as it is arriving, if for no other reason than the intense spatial segregation makes Pasifika into marginal peoples, and the basis for their presence (continuing colonial relations) remains poorly understood.
March 16, 2020
This book was a broad survey of Pacific culture in New Zealand. It discussed the economic, social, cultural and political position of Pasifika people.
I was frustrated that it didn't ask more radical questions, instead framing Pacific futures on colonial terms - e.g. how Pacific people can improve their 'economic position' in capitalism by 'innovating' and unlocking their natural 'entrepreneurship'. I'm interested to learn how Pacific culture exists separate from colonial, capitalist structures.
Some interesting ideas
- One of the main themes of the books was that the future has already happened - it has been locked in by processes and events occurring now and in the recent past. There is a gap between when a change occurs and when it is felt
- Pākehā New Zealanders distance themselves from the Pacific by differentiating between themselves and 'Pacific Islanders', even though New Zealand is a Pacific Island. "In these kinds of understandings and claims there can be no acknowledgement of Pacific place and Pacific histories, no claiming of a Pacific connection, let alone a Pacific-based identity."
- There is also a dominant New Zealand narrative about what the 'Pacific' is - usually it refers to a small collection of islands (e.g. Tonga, Samoa, Fiji, Niue, Tokelau, Cook Islands) out of tens of thousands. This language defines what is authentically 'Pacific'
- "Our futures will not simply fall upon us like a hammer. We will shape them by what we do (or do not do) in the present and the choices we make for the future; these will collectively be expressions of our priorities, our ambitions, and who we are and what we value. Most of the radical changes we face, and have faced, emerge not from some particular 'new' thing or way, but from the choices and changes we make as people, families, cultures and communities... The future comes as transformation as we take up new things and practices through established and familiar ways, and in doing so incorporate the new and alter the old."
- "One study found that 80 per cent of house sales in Ōtara went to investors."
- "[The accommodation supplement] policy acts as a transfer of public money to private landlords - to the tune of at least $2.3 billion per year, subsidising 60 per cent of private rentals nationwide."
- Pacific people were "raised" by New Zealand to remain in manufacturing and process labour - in the parts of the Pacific that New Zealand ruled there was a deliberate policy not to educate Pacific people. This was only reversed when there was significant international pressure for development and decolonisation.
- I liked the brief discussion about digitality and the acknowledgement of the need for consumers to become producers in order not to be 'confined to the role of passengers'
- A group or individuals political position is the result of an aggregation of public and private choices. The position can be negotiated or transited by an individual, but not changed by an individual
- Pay attention to where your strengths are, be observant, and build and extend that (rather than importing an easy 'fix')
- "If an overwhelming commitment to family and children is not a successful strategy for life, as it is in the homelands of the Pacific, then we all have larger moral, ethical, political, economic and social questions to answer."
I was frustrated that it didn't ask more radical questions, instead framing Pacific futures on colonial terms - e.g. how Pacific people can improve their 'economic position' in capitalism by 'innovating' and unlocking their natural 'entrepreneurship'. I'm interested to learn how Pacific culture exists separate from colonial, capitalist structures.
Some interesting ideas
- One of the main themes of the books was that the future has already happened - it has been locked in by processes and events occurring now and in the recent past. There is a gap between when a change occurs and when it is felt
- Pākehā New Zealanders distance themselves from the Pacific by differentiating between themselves and 'Pacific Islanders', even though New Zealand is a Pacific Island. "In these kinds of understandings and claims there can be no acknowledgement of Pacific place and Pacific histories, no claiming of a Pacific connection, let alone a Pacific-based identity."
- There is also a dominant New Zealand narrative about what the 'Pacific' is - usually it refers to a small collection of islands (e.g. Tonga, Samoa, Fiji, Niue, Tokelau, Cook Islands) out of tens of thousands. This language defines what is authentically 'Pacific'
- "Our futures will not simply fall upon us like a hammer. We will shape them by what we do (or do not do) in the present and the choices we make for the future; these will collectively be expressions of our priorities, our ambitions, and who we are and what we value. Most of the radical changes we face, and have faced, emerge not from some particular 'new' thing or way, but from the choices and changes we make as people, families, cultures and communities... The future comes as transformation as we take up new things and practices through established and familiar ways, and in doing so incorporate the new and alter the old."
- "One study found that 80 per cent of house sales in Ōtara went to investors."
- "[The accommodation supplement] policy acts as a transfer of public money to private landlords - to the tune of at least $2.3 billion per year, subsidising 60 per cent of private rentals nationwide."
- Pacific people were "raised" by New Zealand to remain in manufacturing and process labour - in the parts of the Pacific that New Zealand ruled there was a deliberate policy not to educate Pacific people. This was only reversed when there was significant international pressure for development and decolonisation.
- I liked the brief discussion about digitality and the acknowledgement of the need for consumers to become producers in order not to be 'confined to the role of passengers'
- A group or individuals political position is the result of an aggregation of public and private choices. The position can be negotiated or transited by an individual, but not changed by an individual
- Pay attention to where your strengths are, be observant, and build and extend that (rather than importing an easy 'fix')
- "If an overwhelming commitment to family and children is not a successful strategy for life, as it is in the homelands of the Pacific, then we all have larger moral, ethical, political, economic and social questions to answer."
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews