Tapu Misa is a Samoan-born New Zealand journalist specialising in Pacific Islands affairs. [1] She is considered New Zealand's first Pasifika woman journalist. [2]
Misa was born in Samoa and raised in Wellington. [3] She studied journalism on a course taught by Gary Wilson at Waiariki Institute of Technology aimed specifically at encouraging Māori and Pacific people into journalism. [4] She and Wilson later worked together to establish the course in Manukau, Auckland. [3] She has written for The New Zealand Herald, magazines More (now Next), North & South and Mana. She has also worked in radio, for National Radio. She was a member of the New Zealand Broadcasting Standards Authority for eight years. [2]
In 2015 Misa and Wilson co-founded e-Tangata, a weekly online magazine which publishes writing by Māori and Pasifika writers. In 2017, Bridget Williams Books published a book of writing from the site. [3]
In 2019, Misa won the New Zealand Women of Influence Award for Diversity. [2]
Luamanuvao Dame Winifred Alexandra Laban is a former New Zealand politician. She served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for the Mana electorate, representing the Labour Party, and was the Labour Party's spokesperson for Pacific Island Affairs and for interfaith dialogue. Laban is the Assistant Vice-Chancellor (Pasifika) at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington and is a respected leader in the local Pasifika community.
Joseph Williams was a Cook Islands politician and physician who served as Prime Minister of the Cook Islands for four months in 1999. He is credited with having worked to prevent the spread of the tropical disease lymphatic filariasis (elephantiasis). He principally resided in Auckland, New Zealand, where he was medical director of the Mt Wellington Integrated Family Health Centre.
Etuate Ete is a New Zealand-based actor and comedian best known as one half of the Samoan duo Laughing Samoans.
Māori Americans are Americans of Māori descent, an ethnic group from New Zealand.
The Pacific Media Network is a New Zealand radio network and pan-Pasifika national broadcasting network, currently owned and operated by the National Pacific Radio Trust and partly funded by the Government. It includes the PMN 531 radio network, PMN News and Auckland-only broadcast station PMN NIU combined are accessible to an estimated 92 percent of the country's Pacific population. The network targets both first-generation Pacific migrants and New Zealand-born people with Pacific heritage. As of 2009, it was the only specifically pan-Pacific broadcaster in New Zealand.
Mīria George is a New Zealand writer, producer and director of Māori and Cook Island descent. Best known for being the author of award-winning stage plays, George has also written radio, television and poetry, and was one of the film directors of the portmanteau film Vai. In November 2005, she won the Emerging Pacific Artist's Award at the Arts Pasifika Awards. Mīria George was the first Cook Islands artist to receive the Fulbright-Creative New Zealand Pacific Writer's Residency at the University of Hawaii.
Bridget Rosamund Williams is a New Zealand publisher and founder of two independent publishing companies: Port Nicholson Press and Bridget Williams Books.
Bridget Williams Books is a New Zealand book publisher, established in 1990 by Bridget Williams.
Selina Tusitala Marsh is a New Zealand poet and academic, and was the New Zealand Poet Laureate for 2017–2019.
Courtney Sina Meredith is a poet, playwright, and short story author from New Zealand.
Rosanna Marie Raymond is a New Zealand artist, poet, and cultural commentator and Raymond was recognised for "Pasifika artists practicing contemporary and heritage art forms in Aotearoa," winning the Senior Pacific Artist Award Winner of 2018, at the Arts Pasifika Awards through Creative New Zealand.
Ida Malosi is a lawyer and judge from New Zealand. She is the country's first woman Pacific Island judge.
Barbara Rachael Fati Palepa Edmonds is a New Zealand politician and Member of Parliament in the House of Representatives for the Labour Party. She is Minister of Internal Affairs and Minister for Pacific Peoples in the Sixth Labour Government.
Moana Pasifika is a rugby union team made up of players from various Pacific island nations as well as New Zealand or Australian born players of Pasifika heritage, including Fiji, Samoa, Tonga and the Cook Islands.
Aroha G. Harris is a Māori academic. As of 2020, Harris is an associate professor at the University of Auckland, specialising in Māori histories of policy and community development. She is also a member of the Waitangi Tribunal.
Alice Te Punga Somerville is a poet, scholar and irredentist. Dr Te Punga Somerville is the author of Once were Pacific: Māori connections to Oceania which provides the first critical analysis of the disconnections and connections between 'Māori' and 'Pacific'. Her research work delves into texts by Māori, Pacific and Indigenous peoples that tell Indigenous stories in order to go beyond the constraints of the limited stories told about them.
The dawn raids were crackdowns in New Zealand from 1973 to 1979 and then sporadically afterward on alleged illegal overstayers from the Pacific Islands. The raids were first introduced in 1973 by Prime Minister Norman Kirk's Labour government, who discontinued them in April 1974. However, they were later reintroduced and intensified by Rob Muldoon's Third National government. These operations involved special police squads conducting often aggressive raids on the homes and workplaces of overstayers throughout New Zealand, usually at dawn and almost exclusively directed at Pasifika New Zealanders, regardless of their citizenship status. Overstayers and their families were often prosecuted and then deported back to their countries.
Maisey Rika is a New Zealand singer, songwriter and composer, performing in both English and Māori. Her five original albums have each reached the Top 40 in the Official New Zealand Music Chart. She was named an Arts Foundation Laureate in 2021, has received awards at the Waiata Māori Music Awards and APRA Awards, including APRA Best Māori Songwriter in 2010 and 2013, and has twice won Best Māori Language Album at the NZ Music Awards.
Alana Marissa Lopesi is a writer and critic based in Auckland, New Zealand. She has been published in multiple places in New Zealand and Australia, and has been an editor in chief at The Pantograph Punch. Her recent book Bloody Women is a series of essays which describes her experiences as a Samoan woman living in New Zealand.
Pasifika New Zealanders are a pan-ethnic group of New Zealanders associated with, and descended from, the Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Islands outside of New Zealand itself. They form the fourth-largest ethnic grouping in the country, after European-descended Pākehā, Indigenous Māori, and Asian New Zealanders. There are over 380,000 Pasifika people in New Zealand, with the majority living in Auckland. 8% of the population of New Zealand identifies as being of Pacific origin.