KEY POINTS:
Something you may not know about pint-sized and pretty Madeleine Sami. She is - when it boils down to it - "a curry potato". That's a self-description. Sami is an Irish-Catholic, Fijian-Indian, Kiwi "mongrel self", in a cultural nutshell, laughs the actress, who grew up with her sisters and mother in Auckland's ethnically diverse Onehunga.
"There was no room for anything but tolerance," the 28-year-old says, "even back then. If you weren't something different, then you were different, you know?"
Viewers can delve into Sami's "curry" side tonight on TV One. Following last week's examination of Kiwi-Italian culture by "part wog" Paolo Rotondo, the homegrown doco series Here To Stay continues to sample the many ingredients of Aotearoa's ever-thickening, cultural melting pot. What brought the globe-trotting Indian race to the (apparent) land of milk and honey? Why is it there's an Indian face behind the counter at almost every corner dairy? Who exactly can call themselves Maori-Indian or "Mindian?" And how many Kiwi-Indian farmers contribute to the country's agricultural sector?
Sami, as a part-Indian presenter, explores all this and more, donning a sari for the first time since her character's arranged wedding on Shortland Street nigh on a decade ago - and tracing her father's heritage back to India, via Fiji, of course.
With help from other well-known Kiwi-Indians - Target's Brooke Howard Smith, former and current Black Caps Dipak and Jeetan Patel, beauty queen Jessie Gurunathan and comedians Rajeev Varma and Tarun Mohanbhai - Sami is pulled from Pukekohe, where the scandalous White New Zealand League meant Indians couldn't own land or even bathe with Pakeha in the mid-1920s, to the Waikato farmland where horse-backed Indian farmers defy the white stereotype. There's also Rotorua, where a whanau of "Mindians" put on a feast that well demonstrates the cultural fusion.
Comic Tarun's traditional Indian wedding reception, with more than 1000 guests, features in one chaotic scene, while the action is interspersed with older Indians recounting the sometimes frightening and lonely road to becoming "Kiwi".
For Sami, though she's been mistaken for Iranian, Mexican and Spanish, there's never been any doubt about it - she's always felt Kiwi. "Being Indian is never something I gave much thought."
She's not yet travelled to India and admits she thought twice about taking on the presenting job. Publicly exploring this part of her identity was "a bit scary" for the girl who grew up Irish dancing, and has only ever spoken English, aside from Te Reo classes at school.
Immersed in Maori and Pacific culture her whole life, Sami says "it's never really felt like India was the place to go. I've never really felt Indian, because I'm not Indian. I never felt like I didn't know who I was."
Sami's late father hailed from Suva, and the actress has been there more than once, enjoying meeting scores of relatives and soaking up the cultures. "It's quite strange and bizarre that these two very different cultures have met on an island in the middle of the Pacific."
Now in its second season, Here to Stay has already explored the Scottish, English, Chinese, Croatian, German and Irish-Kiwi communities in 2007. The Dutch, French, Pacific Islanders and Scandinavians get their turn under the microscope in coming weeks, as the producers attempt to explain the part each plays in the make-up of the Kiwi social fabric, and our national psyche.
The show is a sign of more accepting times, reckons Sami, "though there is always going to be racism".
"There are so many cultures here, in Auckland especially. I think it's something that gets better slowly, as people are forced to become more tolerant."
For her part, racism extended only to being called "Punjabi teeth" once at primary school.
"Maybe that song, What We Need is A Great Big Melting Pot, is the right way to go."
* Here to Stay screens tonight on TV One at 7.30pm.
