Watch: Liana Leiataua reflects on the Dawn Raids

Transcript

So, my name is Liana Leiataua, I was born and bred in Porirua. My father is Mulufuiana Leiataua, or Leiataua Le Sa Mulufuiana, and my mother, who’s passed now, was Shirley Leiataua.

And we’re just recalling, at the moment, about the Dawn Raids, and what happened to our family. There’s a few moments that I can recall, I was four-and-a-half going on five when the Dawn Raids were taking place in Porirua.

I just recall one incident that involved my family – we were driving along Champion Street, and we passed a cop car that was – it was very very dark and he was parked on the side of the road, and as we passed the cop car and then just a little further up the road, we saw the– well basically, the cop car turned and followed us, and carried on following us up the road to Champion Street, and then basically stopped our car and asked my father for his papers.

So, my dad said he didn’t have his – well he had his driver's licence, but they actually wanted him, they wanted – really, they were stopping him to ask him for his passport. He said that it was at home, so we had to basically go – The cop cars followed us back to our house, and at that time, we were living in Birman Place, number 7 Birman Place, no, 6 Birman Place, number 7 Bowline Place was our last one that we shifted into in Whitby.

So they came into the house, and our mother ushered us into – we were actually quite young, my brother was still a baby at that stage – so she put us all in the room, and so the police were still wanting to see my father’s – It’s just a heavy thing to remember, because it’s like, that’s my childhood memory as a four-and-a-half, five-year-old, and to recall it, it’s actually really quite difficult to bring it back up, because it was a horrible experience of seeing my father, he pres– he was a New Zealand citizen at that time. He’d just become a New Zealand citizen.

I just remember getting really angry with the police, and then he just said, I remember him saying, “Apologise. Apologise to my children". So they were trying to calm him down, my mum was trying to calm him down, and I just remember the cop, the police coming – it’s a small, it was a small house, and the bedroom door was just a little ajar, so there was a little bit of light coming through from the hallway, and I just remember that light starting to get less as the door was opening and then there was the police with his helmet on, just saying, "Oh, everything’s alright, your father’s not in trouble,” and just hearing my father just really getting agitated, and then that door closing.

And I remember the police going and leaving and there was just this silence, but then I just heard – that was – that was the first time that I actually heard my father cry. And it’s not a cry that you– it’s a deep cry that – of somebody actually being broken, it’s like he was absolutely broken by this experience. And I just remember hearing my mother trying to comfort him and she’s just as distressed. That’s my memory of, or one of my memories of, the Dawn Raids.

Because Dad and Mum had a shop on Astrolabe Street, he was the first Polynesian to be a business owner in Porirua. So that was quite a hub for our community. I saw what the experiences were of people coming in and you just knew that something was not right, you knew that were – something that wasn’t right – children coming in with notes and then giving it to Dad, or giving it to Mum, and then Dad reading it, and then there’d be like a box of toilet paper and butter and eggs, and things like that, just supplies, that would be put into a box – there’s usually like two children that would come, and then those two children would just take it away, and there’d be nothing said.

And that was sort of like a constant thing that was happening at that time not realising what was actually going on in the families. And just remembering also at that time, my father’s business was targeted by the Health Inspectors, so he would – every week there’d be somebody coming in inspecting his business. That was also a really high-stressful sort of place, as well.

Yeah, those are my experiences of that.

This project that I have been asked to be a part of, asked to be the artist, the wall that has been chosen for this project is where they had the meetings, where Tala Cleverly held the meetings to educate our people about immigration and getting them, yeah, and just assisting. So, this project is like a – it's – I want it to be a wall, a healing wall where we can put all the mamae of that moment in our history, that we don’t forget it, but that we don’t carry it, and that it’s not carried to our children. Because as generational trauma is very prevalent, so part of this outcome of this project is that we’ll produce a piece of art that will honour the courage of our people at that time, and the resilience, and the mana and putting back the mana of our people too. Because that was taken from us at that time.

Fifty years is quite a long time, it’s quite a significant number. But it’s fifty years that it’s taken to respond to it as well, which is also a hard thing to actually take in because a lot of the people – my father is now 88 years old. A lot of the people that stood up to that time, the adults at that time, they’ve passed now.

There has been a ifoga ceremony by the New Zealand Government for acknowledgement of this mamae, of this wrong. Having something that’s more permanent and that we can actually go to, and there’s a point, and it’s on the church. Well, it’s not on the church, but it’s part of the church buildings. To be able to release that healing, but also, too, for the younger generations, that – like my children, who are just learning about it, and that we don’t forget those moments of our history and that it is part of our history.

At a very young age I was very aware of injustice. Like, also, like looking at other civil rights movements like Martin Luther King and Malcolm X and seeing what was happening to the black communities in America and then realising that that actually happened to us, and that my family was actually part of that resistance movement.

I wear the uniform of the Mau today, and I don’t put this on lightly, because it’s made me very aware of injustice, it’s made me very aware that we can’t be silent in it and that in my artwork, definitely, my themes are very much about that. Whether it’s women’s issues, or cultural issues, or children’s issues, I see that those themes resonate through my work and I also see that that’s part of what I do as well in terms of speaking up about things.

I think, you know it’s funny– it was interesting with the discussion that we– that not aware that actually that could have been the time that those thoughts or ideas were formed and that that’s actually taken, you know, gone through our lives as adults. And being a teacher, and being an artist as well, I think, has been formed by that, by those – indirectly – that’s where it’s come from, because it is the foundation of what I do, and it’s through the experiences, so, it’s definitely formed me in a way that I can see injustice and I’ll speak out for it.

Yeah, I think that’s what I think, and also, just realising that I don’t speak Sāmoan, and that was a choice of my father and just actually realising now, yes, he said to succeed in the Palangi way. But it was actually those decisions came from that mamae that they experienced by being Sāmoan, but they experienced it in their own country and saying that your culture is not as my culture, and that you have to learn this other way.

We talk about colonisation as a label, as a thing, and that’s basically, yeah, that’s basically what it is. It’s for me, and I think it’s also for my father, and I stand here being half Sāmoan, half Scottish, and I know that they loved each other but I think that’s quite intentional as well.

The darkness can never put out the light that the truth will always come through and that through love, through the love of ourselves, through the love of who we are as Polynesians, as Sāmoans, as human beings, that’s what’s going to– that’s what’s going to heal us, and if we can keep pushing into that, then these indifferences and prejudices will silence, will cease to be.

Yeah, thank you.

Oh, no, yeah, I just thank God, I thank God, I thank God that he’s brought us through this and that God works everything together for good.

Thank you.