August 02, 2021
Pasifika touch adds power to apology
Crown Māori Relations Minister says handing over the organisation of yesterday’s Dawn Raids apology to Pacific people was the right thing to do.
The ceremony at Auckland Town Hall started with recordings of the dogs and police knocks that many Pacific Islanders would have heard in the 1970s before being hauled out of their beds to be deported.
It included the laying of mats over Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern as an act of humility, testimonies from many Pasifika people caught up in the discriminatory immigration policies of that era, and a special contribution from the current Minister of Pacific Peoples, Aupito William Sio, who dressed himself in traditional Samoan clothing.
"It had to be left over to Pacific people to determine how the whole occasion was to run, and it did. We wouldn't have had that audio recording, we wouldn't have had the mats, we wouldn't have had Aupito standing their in his traditional Pacific attire if it had been left to Palagi to organise. So I think it was done in a very Pacific way," Mr Davis says.
The apology is not just words so it was backed it up with pūtea to support Pasifika initiatives.
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