Family unity drives festival

Helen Hagai (front row, far left) and her mother, Vaevae Ngere (front row, third from left), are heavily involved in Pasifika. Tyla Hagai, 1, stands at the front of her extended family. Picture / Dean Purcell

Making 40 fresh chrysanthemum lei for guests attending Pasifika's opening event is a family affair for New Zealand-born Cook Islander Helen Hagai and her family.

More than 16 of her immediate family and more than 20 other friends and relatives are involved in this year's Pasifika Festival, which is expected to draw up to 200,000 people to Auckland's Western Springs.

But for Ms Hagai, 29, and her Rarotonga-born mother, Vaevae Ngere, 50, the Pasifika Festival isn't just a great day's entertainment.

It's about preservation and rejuvenation of skills and traditions that can be lost to families when Pacific Islanders relocate.

Ms Ngere spent her first 20 years immersed in the Cooks way of life, with many of the skills she learned, like weaving and gardening, essential to daily life.

As an 11-year-old she learned to make lei - garlands of flowers secured by cabbage tree fibre "thread" - from her mother.

She migrated to New Zealand at 20. These days, some of her income is derived from making lei to order in an application of traditional skills.

But it has sometimes been hard to convince her six New Zealand-born children, aged 11 to 29, to value Cooks culture, she says - it has been drowned by the choices and values of a very different environment.

"It's hard to get the second generation involved - they have their own opinions," she says.

"For them it is a choice [to learn]. I had no choice."

But she does have some leverage. In late 2004, when Ms Hagai asked her mum to make lei for a friends' wedding, an overworked Ms Ngere suggested it might be a good time to learn.

Ms Hagai wishes she had acted earlier: "It's been a great learning experience."

The Pasifika festival's breadth, says Ms Hagai, often shows New Zealand-born Islanders that traditional practices are still important to many: "A lot of New Zealand-born Islanders don't see that in their own homes."

Pasifika, she says, also allows cross-pollination as Pacific peoples note cultural similarities: "You feel like you belong somewhere as a brown face. It's important, if your parents are Islanders and you're Kiwi-born, to have the background.

"It's about who you are as an individual and keeping your culture with you, ... "

Although she judges her Cook Island Maori as "average", Ms Hagai, an Auckland City finance staffer, is determined her son Denzel, 6, will become bilingual and conversant with Cooks culture.

He attends a Maori-speaking school and his dad, Joe Pareanga, 27, is fluent.

Pasifika is an "awesome platform for preserving culture", says Auckland City project manager Mere Lomaloma Elliot, 45, who moved to New Zealand from her native Fiji five years ago. But its expression evolves with time and new influences.

"I always say, the western culture is here - let's embrace its positives but preserve what we feel is unique to ours," she says.

"It's not a matter of closing the door on one."

Where & when

* The annual Pasifika Festival opens tonight at Western Springs Stadium with a 7.30-9pm concert featuring top Pacific performers ranging from NZ Idol finalist Sela Mahe to opera singer Ben Makisi.
* The winners of the inaugural Pacific Music Awards will be named.
* Tomorrow from 9am-6pm, the Great North Road stadium and park come alive with the sights, sounds, smells and pastimes of the Pacific Islands, entertainment from five stages, and more than 300 stalls.