"This is a conference of the Pacific communities in New Zealand, yet the Pacific Vision literature I have read appears to have an omission. There is no reference that I could see to the Indians (Indo-Fijians) from Fiji. Fiji Indians are full citizens. They are officially designated as Fiji Islanders and one, the Honorable Mahendra Chaudhry, is now Prime Minister. They may have a distinct and different appearance and characteristics and been late arrivals, but ISLANDERS they are - fully fledged Pacific Islanders." The then President Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, July 1999
A New Zealand youth MP Shaneel Lal is speaking out against education policies that exclude some Pacific Island people from Pasifika programmes and scholarships as unfair.
Lal, who is eighth generation Indo-Fijian, applied for a Pasifika scholarship at the University of Otago only to be told he had to prove he had “indigenous” Pacific Island ancestry because Indo-Fijians did not qualify.
He is not the only one to be rejected on the basis of race – even though he was born in Fiji – but he aims to take the matter up with the Education Minister Chris Hipkins.
Lal told Stuff: “I know I’m Fijian. I’m eighth generation Fijian. I have indigenous [ancestry] along the lines I just cannot draw a family tree and say, ‘this person is an indigenous person’.”
Lal said the policies were unfair as Indo-Fijian people experienced many of the same challenges as other Pacific Island groups.
He said that some universities that did not recognise Indo-Fijians as Pacific people “kind of highlights the subtle racism that’s going on in our Pacific community”.
The Auckland-based student said he struck the same problem when applying for Pasifika leadership opportunities while at secondary school and his cousin had a similar experience when she tried to apply for a place in the Māori and Pacific Admission Scheme (MAPAS) at the University of Auckland.
‘Not enough evidence’
He was told his passport and birth certificate were not enough evidence of him being of Pacific descent and he would need to get a Pacific community leader to vouch for him.
He said that would be difficult having come from Fiji to New Zealand in 2014.
The irony in his circumstance was that he was chosen as youth MP for Minister for Building and Construction, Minister for Customs and Minister for Ethnic Communities Jenny Salesa, who was not responding on the issue.
When asked for a response, a spokesperson from her office said: “Yes, but probably not from the minister. It will be around definitions and criteria.”
Meanwhile, Professor Vijay Naidu from the University of the South Pacific based in Suva – where all Fiji citizens are recognised as Fijian and the indigenous people are recognised as I-Taukei – had a historical perspective on the issue.
“Some years ago, Loraine Pillai who migrated to New Zealand many years ago and retired as a senior high school teacher over there wrote to then Prime Minister Helen Clark about Pasifika identity and Indo-Fijians,” he said.
“Her response was that Indo-Fijians were Pasifika. Apparently, Aotearoa had arrived at this decision when [founding Fiji prime minister] Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara had expressed his disaffection with the absence of Fijians of Indian descent at an official reception hosted for him.
“Back to Loraine’s letter. She wrote her letter because, at a workshop for school administrators in Wellington, she had been told by a woman by the surname of Wendt that Indo-Fijians were not regarded as Pasifika people.”
Education Minister Chris Hipkins has said universities set the criteria for Pasifika scholarships, not the government.
Lal, who is eighth generation Indo-Fijian, applied for a Pasifika scholarship at the University of Otago only to be told he had to prove he had “indigenous” Pacific Island ancestry because Indo-Fijians did not qualify.
He is not the only one to be rejected on the basis of race – even though he was born in Fiji – but he aims to take the matter up with the Education Minister Chris Hipkins.
Lal told Stuff: “I know I’m Fijian. I’m eighth generation Fijian. I have indigenous [ancestry] along the lines I just cannot draw a family tree and say, ‘this person is an indigenous person’.”
Lal said the policies were unfair as Indo-Fijian people experienced many of the same challenges as other Pacific Island groups.
He said that some universities that did not recognise Indo-Fijians as Pacific people “kind of highlights the subtle racism that’s going on in our Pacific community”.
The Auckland-based student said he struck the same problem when applying for Pasifika leadership opportunities while at secondary school and his cousin had a similar experience when she tried to apply for a place in the Māori and Pacific Admission Scheme (MAPAS) at the University of Auckland.
‘Not enough evidence’
He was told his passport and birth certificate were not enough evidence of him being of Pacific descent and he would need to get a Pacific community leader to vouch for him.
He said that would be difficult having come from Fiji to New Zealand in 2014.
The irony in his circumstance was that he was chosen as youth MP for Minister for Building and Construction, Minister for Customs and Minister for Ethnic Communities Jenny Salesa, who was not responding on the issue.
When asked for a response, a spokesperson from her office said: “Yes, but probably not from the minister. It will be around definitions and criteria.”
Meanwhile, Professor Vijay Naidu from the University of the South Pacific based in Suva – where all Fiji citizens are recognised as Fijian and the indigenous people are recognised as I-Taukei – had a historical perspective on the issue.
“Some years ago, Loraine Pillai who migrated to New Zealand many years ago and retired as a senior high school teacher over there wrote to then Prime Minister Helen Clark about Pasifika identity and Indo-Fijians,” he said.
“Her response was that Indo-Fijians were Pasifika. Apparently, Aotearoa had arrived at this decision when [founding Fiji prime minister] Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara had expressed his disaffection with the absence of Fijians of Indian descent at an official reception hosted for him.
“Back to Loraine’s letter. She wrote her letter because, at a workshop for school administrators in Wellington, she had been told by a woman by the surname of Wendt that Indo-Fijians were not regarded as Pasifika people.”
Education Minister Chris Hipkins has said universities set the criteria for Pasifika scholarships, not the government.
Fijileaks: Long before Ratuva was appointed Director of the Macmillan Brown Studies Centre for Pacific Studies at the University of Canterbury, our Founding Editor-in-Chief had received a very similar reply in the 1990s when he enquired if he could spend part of his sabbatical at the Centre to complete a collaborative research he was engaged in with his Oxford academic colleagues on Indigenous-Immigrant Contestation of Land Ownership in New Zealand, Fiji, Canada and South Africa
and International Land Rights Laws.'
"Oh, sorry, you are not Pacific Islander, ENOUGH, for our Pacific Studies Centre to host you'. And here are the same people always begging for our support to champion their indigenous causes. Bloody hypocrites. We hope that after two decades and a Fijian as its Director, such perverse test of who is a genuine Pacific Islander has been ditched by the Centre
No wonder Indo-Fijians had voted with their feet for FijiFIRST PARTY
"The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it." - The Oxford-educated Indo-Trinidanian novelist and Nobel lietrature laureate, the late
Sir V. S. Naipaul in his novel A Bend In The River.
In the eyes of the Macmillan Brown Studies Centre for Pacific Studies our Founding Editor-in-Chief was nothing but RABUKA'S COOLIE and
'Kai Raiwaqa and RKS Boy' from Fiji. How Fijian can one get in Fiji?
Test: Lynda Tabuya's Siga Tabu 'Diwali Firecracker' Observance Decree
HONOURED AND NEXT - HOUNDED - OUT OF FIJI. Our Founding Editor-in-Chief's family were not only the political backbone of Ratu Mara's Alliance Party but also in the development of the capital city Suva
The Raj Moti Lal Street in Raiwaqa, Suva
