Transcript
JAMES NOKISE: I guess the trick of the show is that, on face value, it looks like a response to the Pacific artists who I've been seeing and their openings, but it's actually a response to the conversations with non-Pacific Islanders who've been at those openings.
DOMINIC GODFREY: And how they misinterpret things?
JN: And how they don't engage. So misinterpret implies that they have.
DG: Some interpretation?
JN: Yes! So it's more about 'I am at the Pacific events so therefore I am supporting Pasifika' and I felt like in the second decade of the 21st century New Zealand needs to move beyond those conversations.
DG: So moving beyond tokenism and on to true engagement?
JN: Yeah, we're sort of talking about New Zealand as a society paying lip service to the Pacific and doing that by presenting, for the first half of the show, sort of your very 'happy go lucky' almost minstrel...
DG: Your traditional islander, the perception of the traditional islander?
JN: Yes. You know how with the West Indians, they have Calypso? For ages everyone was like 'Oh that Calypso spirit!' and then West Indians were like 'Yeah actually, we're a bit more than that'. I think it's the same kind of conversation we're having with the Pacific and Pacific artists.
DG: And it's not just in the arts though is it? It's a perception across many areas of this modern age where people do pay lip service. They feel like they're engaging with something by 'liking' it on Facebook or by re-Tweeting something, but that's not really connection is it?
JN: No, I know. I mean it's support and support is always good but it's very, like I say, 'lip service'. It's very like I've done as little as possible. We are sort of at a state, the Pacific nations, and I say this as a mixed race Samoan who's born in New Zealand but who travels the world to a lot of these industrial countries to perform, we are at a point where with things like global warming, with things like the world economy we need these countries who talk about loving the Pacific - if America is going to have one of its big companies produce a movie like Moana where they're like 'Look at how amazing the Pacific is!' We're like yes and it's not going to be there in a hundred years if you guys don't get your act together. Moana might be the only record of Pasifika to Americans.
DG: And the impending administration in the US is another threat is another threat to that very existence?
JN: Yeah and it's been a very interesting week because on one hand a lot of my contemporaries, a lot of conversations we've been having, which is very bleak. Okay Trump's in, he doesn't believe in the Paris agreement. He's stated he doesn't believe in Climate Change. So, what islands are we now going to lose in our lifetimes? And that's a reality conversation. We've had to try and help each other to come and understand that that is a reality, that in our lifetime now, because of the clock on global warming, because of the way that the United States is a leader in cultural perceptions, that we are going to lose these islands in our lifetimes and our children will not know them. It's been a very hard conversation but we've had to keep having it so that it cements itself so that when we talk about it with other people we have that weight of reality and not letting them off the hook.
DG: So you as Pacific artists are going out as ambassadors for these potentially cataclysmic events that could befall the Pacific?
JN: Yes and I don't know too many people who got into the arts to do that. I didn't.
