Dave Mollard’s Change is Constant: We have much to learn from new New Zealanders

Aotearoa has an abundance of peace, plenty and Pineapple Lumps.

OPINION

Riverdale School held a cultural day this month to celebrate the diversity of its community.

There were kids who are culturally linked to every corner of the globe, from Bangladesh to Bishopdale, from Glasgow to Gisborne, and from Palestine to Palmy. It was a rich celebration of what the new New Zealand dances, eats, speaks and looks like.

Back in the 1980s I was a pupil of the same school, but apart from my classmate Stefan, whose parents were Greek, and Lilian, who whakapapas to China, almost everyone else was connected to this land through generations of whānau.

It was a time when a hot mince pie from Cobblestone Bakery was a once-a-term treat. A time when we all sat down on Wednesday night at 7.30 to watch The Dukes of Hazzard on one of the two TV channels available to us on our Phillips K9 19-inch television.

Like The Dukes Of Hazzard, the social norms of our day have dated poorly. We were blissfully unaware of the rest of the world, full of rich cultures that put our meat and three veg and church on Sundays lifestyle to shame. We were also ignorant of the wonderfully deep culture, right here in Aotearoa, of our first people.

One of my favourite days at Riverdale was “Indian” Day, not the Delhi and the Taj Mahal India, the “cowboys and Indians” Indians. We all got dressed up as braves and squaws and ran around pretending to scalp each with our papier-mâché tomahawks before eating fish and chips for lunch.

Nowadays we call that cultural appropriation and we realise how hurtful it was to the First Nation Americans and every other culture we did similar things to. In 2023 Indian Day would have got Riverdale School cancelled. To the many nations of indigenous Americans, I apologise for our ignorance.

The new New Zealanders, with their accents from Tehran, Tanzania, Tonga and almost every other country on earth, came to our country because of the abundance of peace, plenty and Pineapple Lumps. These are the go-getters from their worlds, who saw an opportunity to make a better life in this South Pacific paradise.

I recently spent some time in Auckland and I noted that almost everyone who served me in a shop, drove me in an Uber or cleared my dishes away in the cafe was a new New Zealander.

I spoke with many about their new lives, all had experienced overt racism, but all were still grateful for their new lives in our wonderful motu, free from the constraints and corruption of their ancestral homelands.

Not only is this cohort of new New Zealanders making themselves richer by their hard mahi, but they are also making our country richer through their international perspective and experiences.

Nau mai, haere mai.

Dave Mollard is a Palmerston North community worker and social commentator.