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The first significant wave of migrants from the Pacific Islands began in the late 1950s. As the New Zealand manufacturing sector expanded, employers turned to the Pacific for unskilled and semi-skilled workers. Migrants from Cook Islands, Niue and Tokelau arrived as New Zealand citizens. Technically, Samoans and Tongans needed approval to live and work in New Zealand. However, the government overlooked this requirement during the 1960s.
Children of the Migration tells the stories of the Pacific Island immigrants who came to New Zealand from the 1950s to 1980s, and changed the cultural landscape of Aotearoa.
Brian Edwards speaks to immigrants from Pacific Island nations who relocated in pursuit of better job opportunities and education for their children. However, it's not always the dream they were hoping for with the challenges of language barriers, housing inequality and discrimination
Watch to get a glimpse of what it's like to experience the journey made by our parents and grandparents who left their beloved homelands in the Pacific and moved to New Zealand for a better way of life. This is the Pacific peoples migration story to Aotearoa, New Zealand, our story!
We visited the small town of Porangahau recently, to meet with the descendants of the first Cook Islands families who moved there in the 1940s.
Our first story in this series features Akeletama Etuata who migrated with her husband to New Zealand from Niue in 1967. She recalls thinking that New Zealand homes seemed to have everything you’d ever need or want. “But the thing is you have to have money to get that life here.”
Vocabulary to unpack: “equality”, “humiliating”, “terrifying”, “encounters”, “dawn raids”, “paperwork”, “scapegoats”, “escorted”, “distraught”, “endured”, “address”, “blitzes”, “prosecuted”, “expose”, “Chief Superintendent”, “residence”, “revolution”, “positive recognition”