Ginah Vakaheketaha-Nelisi, 19, calls herself Niuean, even though she has never visited the island.
Niue is in the Pacific, about 2400 kilometres north of New Zealand. It has a population of just 1500 people. About 20,000 people of Nieuan heritage live here, mostly in Auckland.
Ginah Vakaheketaha-Nelisi, 19, is one of them. She was born in Auckland, and has called suburban Royal Oak home for all of her life.
But when asked her ethnicity, she replies “Niuean” without hesitation.
Growing up in New Zealand, Ginah was taught all the ‘rules’ of living in Niue – like how to behave in church, and to wear a skirt or lava-lava. She also learned about the traditional coming-of-age ceremonies – hair-cutting (for boys) and ear-piercing (for girls) – even though she didn’t take part in one.
“I plan to go there soon”, Ginah says. “When I’m rich.” Photo: Unknown
Ginah has also learned the language, Vagahau Niue, which is at risk of dying out. Though most speakers of the language live outside Niue, she says a lot of New Zealand-born Niuean people aren’t fluent in, or interested in learning, the language.
Though Ginah knows of some schools that teach the language, she learned it at home. “I’m just privileged, because even though I haven’t been to Niue, I speak the language, and understand it,” she says.
Though, she concedes, not as well as her three-year-old cousin. Ginah remembers sitting with family visiting from the island and feeling jealous of the toddler’s fluency. Her own Vagahau Nieu is often mixed with English. “I’m older than you, and I can’t speak how you speak,” she said at the time.
It’s one of the ways she feels detached from the place she considers home. She’s heard her parents’ and grandparents’ stories of the island, about villages’ show days with parades and celebrations, and she’s itching to visit. “My parents tell me what it’s like – but that’s when they were young, so I don’t know what it’s like now. I’ve seen pictures from hotels, and pictures on the internet.”
And those pictures sometimes make her feel homesick, for a place she’s never been. “I sometimes feel that I am ‘apart’. Because I’m already there when I look at them, but I am not actually there.
“I plan to go there soon. When I’m rich.”
Images like this, from Niue, make Ginah Vakaheketaha-Nelisi homesick for an island she's never visited. Photo: Beverly Tse
Ginah’s Niuean culture and heritage are very important to her now, but that hasn’t always been the case.
“I remember when we had a culture day at school, and everyone else had something to present, and they knew their background so well, and I was just blank. From then on I’ve always wanted to know what it was like.”
Ginah’s had some “bad experiences” that make New Zealand feel less like home.
She’s hesitant to say it out loud, but she thinks people can be “a tad racist”. She agrees that Pakeha culture is perceived as authentic New Zealand culture, and there’s a big – and growing – group for whom that isn’t true. People who don’t look Pakeha face small acts of racism all the time.
She noticed it more when she was still at school. “Every time I’d get in trouble, I’d say “miss, you always pick on me because I’m brown,” because I know that they do that,” she says.
Though she’s noticed it less since leaving school, that casual racism makes New Zealand feel much less like home.
“For instance, if you’re sitting with a bunch of people who are white, and they’re talking about some statistics, like “Oh, there’s been fights” or “these people that drink”, “there’s this, there’s that”, they’ll straight away look at the Pacific Island people, the Maori people.”
Until she’s saved up enough to get to Niue, Ginah contents herself looking at pictures from the island every single day, and indulging in her favourite dish from home – a paw paw and taro dish with coconut cream, called Takihi.
