Synthesis of ligands

‗Families not governments hold the Pacific together‘

(Gibson & Nero, 2007)

Pacific peoples do not think of each island as isolated from each other but rather as fluid spheres of influence linked by patterns of economic flow (goods, services and money), movements of people for long periods and short stays (education or work) and exchanges of knowledge and culture. Or, as put by Hau‘ofa (1993) Westerners conceive of the Pacific as islands in a vast sea, but Pacific Islanders conceive of the same world as ‗a sea of islands‘. Diaz and Kauanui (2001) suggest that Pacific peoples are continually and unconsciously employing a schema of triangulation, oriented to homeland islands, in order to have a clear sense of one‘s place at all times while they move fluidly around the globe.

Oceanic peoples have always been on the move, embodying a dialectical tension between movement and settlement (Jolly, 2007). They have traced complex routes of migration and circulation between island homelands and metropolitan centres of the Pacific Rim, North America and Europe producing marked social, cultural, and economic differences in the region. For instance, Melanesia, (southwest Pacific Ocean), home to three quarters of the Oceanic population, has political structures that are independent indigenous states made up of mostly rural communities living on ancestral lands (White & Tengan, 2001).

The popular tourism image of the region is of ‗Polynesian atolls, beaches and coconut trees‘, a description that is accurate for only 4% of the populated area.

Papua and New Guinea hosts the largest population base who cultivates mainly temperate crops, far from any beach (Gibson & Nero, 2007). Micronesia and Polynesia (north and east Pacific Ocean) are colonial and quasi-autonomous states.

Their indigenous peoples are now minorities in their own lands and experience high rates of emigration to emergent urban communities in cities along the Pacific Rim, such as Auckland, Honolulu, Los Angeles, and Sydney (White & Tengan, 2001).

Diasporan mobility is engendered or discouraged by barriers for out-migration as well as inward. Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands and Papua and New Guinea are very restricted by border controls. They experience minimal emigration and low education levels since 35% of the adult population has never been to school (Gibson

& Nero, 2007). However, in these islands, rapid population growth and inter-communal tension, compounded by lack of employment for youth has resulted in several coups and state failures (Ware, 2005). It is noteworthy that current New Zealand immigration policy looks to these islands as a future labour pool.

Micronesians, except for Kiribati and Nauru, have assured migrant access to the United States so that population pressures and communal tensions are relieved by continuous emigration as well as inflows of remittances (Ware, 2005).

There differences too between the Polynesian island nations. As New Zealand citizens, Cook Islanders and Tokelauans are globally mobile, whereas Tongans, Tuvaluans, Samoans and Fijians have some limits placed on their external movements. There are also differences in their educational base. Most Tongan adult migrants come to New Zealand after up to 10 years of schooling, but Tuvaluan and Samoan adults often arrive as unskilled and labourers (Gibson & Nero, 2007). This has particular importance for this thesis in terms of calls from the communities for future capacity building and potential to undertake enterprises in a mainstream context where English literacy and numeric skills are essential.

Several geo-political, social and geographic features of Oceania interact in complex ways to create spheres of influence in this ‗Sea of Islands‘. These are manifested in ongoing links to colonizing powers and wealth potentials related to the size and type of island. For instance, the rich soils of so called ‗high islands‘ are suited to agriculture, are well vegetated and have high levels of bird life as well as concentrations of volcanic minerals, high rainfall areas and pelagic resources. Atolls however have minimal vegetation and fauna but poor soils, are rich in pelagic resources and are very susceptible to rising sea levels and climate change. Other issues are remoteness from or proximity to the larger high islands and the land and sea resources of stronger economies.

The concept of ‗remoteness‘ as applied to either type of island is actually more a factor of economic growth than size or actual distance. Remoteness is influenced by transport links, potential market access, proximity (or distance) from rich countries and the cost of airfares (regardless of tourist hubs, producing a substantial cost disadvantage to movement of labour, and export of services and product). It is very expensive to move around the Pacific because of high costs, strong competition for tourism and trade dollars and heavy government tariffs. The Cook Islands are actually the most physically remote of all the Oceanic Islands, but benefit from trade relationships with New Zealand and close familial networks and movements between the two countries.

Pacific Island countries also have small land mass, limited domestic markets, high language diversity, are not very open to international trade (due to protectionism) and many maintain links with the past colonial powers. Yet, migration patterns do not follow the former colonizer. The majority of Kiribati emigrate to America, whereas Samoans, Tongans, Fijians move to Asia, New Zealand and Australia (Gibson &

Nero, 2007). All of these factors impact on their capacity for actual economic growth and wealth accumulation.

Wealth in the Pacific signifies power and strength and testifies to the achievement of individuals. It is also attributed to the clan and tribe through the individual as part of collective effort, and is generated for the common not individual good (Saffu, 2003).

Pacific peoples generate wealth in ancestral interchanges between food production, labour, and soft (textile) and hard (stone and bead) currencies, but are linked today to introduced monetary systems. Remittances are one of the most important ways in which Pacific peoples transfer wealth. These serve as short-term ‗insurance or safety nets‘ within and across nation-states, and long-term investments in social and financial capital (Gibson & Nero, 2007). A large part of the population still lives in a non-monetised subsistence economy (Fisk, 1995), highly dependent upon monies remitted home from emigrant communities such as those in Auckland. For example Tonga obtains $120 million in remittances per annum (Gregory, 2004) which represents a potential loss of capital for business and enterprise in New Zealand.

Remittances in Tonga from outside the Islands are almost 40% of GDP, in Kiribati they are 12%, the Cook islands less than 4%, in Samoa 15%, and in Tuvalu over 35%

(Gibson & Nero, 2007).

But there is also a significant impact received from the highly productive Household Sector of the global economy, now recognised by the OECD, which include the subsistence and remittances of the informal economy, embedded in diasporas across the region. While there are of course culture-specific differences, in general terms, food production is the foundation of Pacific wealth. This contrasts with European standards where wealth, as money (gold or cash) is separated from the commodities that generate it. Family food production (taro, breadfruit, fish) is still the primary source of support and wealth for many Pacific peoples. Excess production can be transformed into ‗Pacific wealth items‘ and cash through market sales. Pacific wealth items are soft textiles such as fine mats, tapa, fine banana fibre weavings and bundles, and fibre clothing, associated with and made by women (Horan, 2002) and hard wealth - adze blades, bead money, associated with men. Generally women grow root crops and men tree crops.

Past practices have been modified to fit current needs. Production is still organised by brother-sister cross-sibling relationships which transfer through their spouses and family members, today including class- and work-mates in the transactions. For example, in a market economy, in a family supported by tourism and wood carving, the sister‘s husband expends cash to support his wife‘s collection of banana fibre bundles (relative to the number of yams his brother-in-law provided). Pacific Islanders use shellfish for subsistence (‗daily costs‘), lagoon fish are sold to meet routine requirements (‗current account funds‘) but copra and pelagic fish are sold for

seasonal or major costs such as school fees, medical costs, house, boat or vehicles (‗capital accounts‘). These informal transfers are important because they level inequalities in living standards, act as a safety net in times of duress but also have a negative side in that self-sustaining agriculture fishing may be reduced in proportion to the amount of remittances, therefore increasing reliance on a potentially unsustainable source, and increase the trend to urbanisation (Gibson & Nero, 2007).

Pacific families use regional waged seasonal labour opportunities and market sales to transfer indigenous valuables, money and foods among islands ands overseas, replicating longstanding local and regional commodity and wealth exchange systems.

Today, those patterns remain. Pacific Islanders draw upon and adapt their food production and existing wealth systems to provide support for the education of their children, access medical services at home and overseas, provide large amounts of capital to fund housing, clinics and transportation as well as to fund local development projects and to make contributions to the churches and church leaders (Gibson and Nero, 2007).

However a diaspora is not a group of self-interested individuals who happen to originate from one place. A diaspora is a network in which knowledge and resources circulate through people, at nodes such as people, houses, community centres, and churches. This happens in multiple directions, trans-locally and trans-nationally, associated with families in the homeland. Integration into a new set of cultural patterns in the new home becomes a choice into which one can potentially enter, but which can (but not always) carry with it the consequence of being ‗cut‘ out of the old networks (Gershon, 2007). However with migration, new social worlds are formed, influenced by the colonisation and post-colonial processes. Domestically, intermarriage between ethnic groups and between ethnic and non-ethnic people increases over time. Increasingly, numbers of children are born and raised away from their traditional homelands. Further, in the new lands, both children and adults have access to different educational and employment opportunities than they would at home and thus are exposed to different value systems (Gray, 2001). The flow of ideas accompanies the movement of people and capital (Spoonley et al., 2003). Thus new technology and virtual forms of community appear in the Islands and the idea of cultural tourism transfers to New Zealand because it is successful as an enterprise strategy in homeland nations where tourism is central to GDP.

When we consider the position of Pacific peoples in Waitakere vis-à-vis their interest in and capacity to develop cultural enterprise and tourism, we must also think of them as communities connected locally with other family and cultural community members across Auckland and New Zealand. They are connected trans-nationally to the island homelands and to family elsewhere around the globe, such as in the United States, Australia, Europe, Asia, etc. Gershon (2007) suggests that other questions

then arise. Do the exchange systems alter with distance and what are the layers of commitment that people have, and others perceive them to have, in these networks?

This wider context is important to this research because the island nation economies, subsistence and informal economies, ‗Pacific wealth‘ and family structures as vehicles for wealth redistribution are fundamental to understanding the dynamics of enterprise capacity and aspirations for community-initiated tourism by Pacific peoples now resident in New Zealand. Awareness of the diasporan mobility and connective structures also have relevance to understanding some of the values, dilemmas and tensions, social networks, enablers and hindrances revealed by both the marketplace and community. As well, the importance ascribed to ‗treasures‘ (Pacific wealth), the nature of ‗enterprise‘, identity, connectedness and obligation that are seen later in Chapter 5 (community studies) are noted, and in Chapter 6 (marketplace studies) where ethnic values-sets and connected communities.

The history of migration and development of the Pacific diaspora in New Zealand is also relevant. In fact, research in 2003 identified a distinctive Pacific peoples‘

economy and society nested within the broader New Zealand and global economies, based upon cultural as well as economic and social interactions (New Zealand Institute of Economic Research, 2003). The concept identified generic organising principles such as agents (individuals, households and firms), resources (labour, capital and raw materials), goods and services (produced and distributed) and institutions (legal and regulatory).