Secondary students show Pasifika pride

Pasifika by Nature celebrates 20 years of showcasing Polynesian colour, culture and action!

Twelve Waikato and Bay of Plenty secondary schools with over 800 students took to the Hamilton Claudelands Arena stage on Saturday for one purpose, to affirm pasifika identities.

PBN Trust secretary, Mareta Matenga (Cook Islands), says that outside of hubs like South Auckland, Pacific Island communities need to “create a kind of village feel” for themselves. In 1998, she and two other secondary school students did just that when they put on a “cultural concert” with five participating schools and the event has flourished from there.

“PBN nurtures our pasifika culture. It also helps to evolve our culture because the young people are so talented. They come up with so many beautiful ideas,” Matenga said.

Some groups consisted of the maximum number of 100 students and each school had 20-minutes to perform. Schools incorporated this year’s theme, ‘Be who you want to be’ and were judged on nine Polynesian cultures ranging from Tongan to Tokelauan.

“We have schools that do six to eight different cultures. Everything is live, the band, singing, traditional drums with full-on costumes. It is mind-blowing and only lasts for twenty minutes,” Matenga said.

National MP David Bennett, Hamilton Deputy Mayor Martin Gallagher and city councillors Paula Southgate, James Casson, Siggi Henry and Ryan Hamilton attended the event.

PBN’s ‘Most Valuable Contribution’ trophy was renamed in honour of the city councillor Philip Yeung, who passed last year, for his dedication and service to the event for 14 years. His wife Alice and daughter Jeannie awarded the trophy to Tokoroa’s Forest View High School.

PBN judge Goldie Josephs presented Hamilton’s Fraser High School with the Hawaiian culture award. “All I can say is, Me ke aloha pumehana (with love and warm affection), they were brilliant. I loved it,” Josephs said.

The school also won the Tongan culture award and went on to claim the coveted top spot.

Fraser High School Year 13 student Junior Taumaoe was visibly overwhelmed. “I’m just speechless. We’ve been trying for ages and we thought Tokoroa was gonna take it out because they got heaps of trophies but then we managed to get the win,” he said.

Junior’s favourite part was winning the Hawaiian. “It was the first time we tried something like that.” He also liked winning the Tongan culture award and says, “PBN lets me express my culture. I’m Samoan.”

Clutching the trophy Tongan tutor, ‘T’ said, “I don’t know how to express it. I really thought Tokoroa won. I’ve been the tutor for Tongan for Fraser for so many years and we gave it to one of the students so she taught the stage and I just helped on the sides. I was kind of her sidekick. Honestly two weeks before the performance I didn’t think they would pull this out but it took a hard grinding through the holidays to actually pull it out.”

Luana Wickliffe, mum to Fraser High School Year 12 student Mihirangi Gregory, was whooping with her community from the stands. She was “elated!” and said, “the kids put in so much hard work for that and it’s so nice to see them pull it off in such a big year, 20 years. Wohoo Fraser won!”

It is Mihirangi’s first year participating in the event and her mum said, “It just opens up a whole new world for us in the form of performing arts and culture and the vibrancy of the people. Fraser, we’re definitely Māori hard so this is our [family’s] first year and just look at it!” She was pointing towards the Fraser High School stands where the students were performing a powerful haka towards their representatives on the stage.

Wickliffe’s favourite part was the finale and her message to her daughter was, “hurry up and come home so I can give you a big hug!”

The Fraser High School parent’s one word to describe Pasifika by Nature: beautiful.

The festival will become a bi-annual event and is scheduled for 2020.

1st place – Fraser High School

2nd place – Tokoroa High School

3rd place – Hamilton Girls High School