traditional knowledge conference 2008 te tatau pounamu

Brief Background on Australia’s Pacific MigrantsMigration from the Pacific Islands to Australia began as early as 1863 when indigenous Melanesianswere recruited by the then-colonial government to work on sugar cane and cotton plantations inQueensland. Such labour recruitment was often conducted under extremely questionable circumstancesthat many scholars have likened to the trans-Atlantic slave trade because of the gross exploitation andracism on which it depended for its existence. The migration, whether forced or voluntary, ofMelanesians to Queensland was tellingly termed, “blackbirding”, a racist term that combined negativecolonial perceptions of Melanesian skin tones with a horrific reference to the early Australian settlerpractice of recreationally hunting Aborigines.Voluntary migration to Australia from the Pacific Islands increased during the labour shortages ofthe 1970s and today there are an estimated 150,000 individuals in Australia who self-identify with theterms Pacific Island and Māori. Out of a total Australian population of 20 million, Pacific Islanders andMāori definitely constitute a minority group with a history of injustice and exploitation. The largestPacific communities in Australia originate from New Zealand, Samoa, Tonga and Fiji and, despite theircultural and ethnic diversity, all face significant challenges in contending with European institutionsthat do not share their cultural values. This paper will first explore how the Tongan community fromSydney’s inner western suburb of Auburn has been impacted by and responded to these issues.The Tongan Community in AustraliaTongan migrants to Australia bring with them a cultural mindset that emphasizes hierarchy as central tothe maintenance of social harmony. Their cultural background provides a rationale for particularinteractions between gender, families, lineages and even individuals, so that “even the simplest ofapparently routine behaviour takes place within a complex social matrix guided by specific tenets andtraditional values that provide the basis for social exchange and bonding” (Nabalarua, 2000). FirstgenerationTongan migrants leave their homeland accustomed to a monocultural environment in whichland ownership and decision-making processes are dominated by a hereditary noble elite. Elders occupya position of great respect and even in non-noble family lineages are responsible for the culturaltransmission of language, history and values to the younger generation.Many first-generation Tongan migrants to Australia quickly find themselves confronted with acultural framework that completely contradicts these notions of hierarchy, order and, above all, culturalhomogeneity. As these migrants and their families struggle to financially support their families, they areforced to contend with an institutional system that does not respect and all too often does not make aneffort to understand the cultural and individual priorities of a relatively small migrant community. TheAustralian Government, faced with high competition for limited financial and temporal resources, oftenprioritizes universal services designed to cater to an ethnically and culturally diverse society. The resultof this unfortunately, along with the small size of the community, is that Pacific Islanders do not benefitfrom settlement or other services designed specifically for them, foremost of all being settlementinformation in their respective languages. It is perhaps not surprising, then, that the Tongan communityin Sydney, which forms the basis of this case study, found itself fragmented, disunited and unable tointegrate with local services.Such disunity manifested itself in a number of interpersonal and intra-group forms that combinedfurther to marginalize the community. Many second-generation Tongan migrants who were born inAustralia found themselves at a critical juncture in which they were marked as a minority group bywhite Australians and yet, simultaneously, had not maintained their Tongan language skills or culturalknowledge. An increase in intercultural marriages has doubtlessly contributed to this lack of cultural“maintenance” although this, of course, is a complex issue outside the scope of this paper. One of themost significant ruptures that took place in the Tongan community was the lack of church attendance,an almost completely unthinkable concept in religious Tonga. It is estimated that 40% of Tongans donot attend church, which leaves them outside the networks of support that they would otherwise receivefrom the community.This lack of communication in the Tongan community unfortunately extended to the relationshipbetween Tongan migrant families and the Australian Government. The Tongan community is179