Breaking news


News Home

Sorry, this video has expired

Video Celebrating Pacific Islander culture

Melanie Arnost

An insight into the community behind the Nesian Pride festival.


ALYSSA BETTS, PRESENTER: Pacific Islanders are renowned for their rich culture, singing and sport. And tonight, Islanders living in Darwin are sharing their talents with the wider community at an annual festival called "Nesian Pride". Melanie Arnost takes a look at the community behind the event.

MELANIE ARNOST, REPORTER: In Darwin's northern suburbs, a new generation of Islanders are learning about their heritage. Each week, they come together to practice dance moves inspired by a Pacific beat.

JULIA GRAY, SUNAMEKE PRODUCTIONS: Basically our motto is from old to new old and that's our culture knowledge through dance, through the visuals, through our stories.

MELANIE ARNOST: For instructor Julia Mageau Gray, dance is key to teaching the wider community about the Pacific.

JULIA GRAY, SUNAMEKE PRODUCTIONS: We're not all from one particular culture, we're from very different Pacific backgrounds, well world backgrounds really and what it is is we're taking our traditional stories and we make them relevant to us today in Australia, Darwin.

MELANIE ARNOST: For more than a decade, this performer has helped bring Pacific culture to Darwin audiences. She was a member of the popular music troupe 'Drum Drum'.

JULIA GRAY, SUNAMEKE PRODUCTIONS: There is more to the flower in the hair and the hip shaking, there's much more to that so that's a stereotype. The, you know the velvet paintings of the beautiful island girls, well once the beautiful island girls get talking you have to question the beautiful because I tell you what they can be quite scary. No, they're just very strong women.

MELANIE ARNOST: Julia Mageau Gray first came to the Top End from Papua New Guinea as a child almost 30 years ago. She says Pacific Islanders have long been a part of Darwin.

JULIA GRAY, SUNAMEKE PRODUCTIONS: There's new families every day. I go to the shops, I live in Palmerston so yep, it's like "wow, I've never seen you before" but yeah I assume they are here for, yeah the work, the mining and what not and of course once one family member moves somewhere then the rest come as well - that's just how it works, yeah, Pacific style.

MELANIE ARNOST: The latest numbers show Darwin's Pacific Islander community is growing.

GLENN CAPUANO, DEMOGRAPHER: It's a fairly small community overall, but it has grown, so it has grown around about 200 people in the last 10 years - people from Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia. It's not a huge community - in the 2011 census there were 774 people recorded with a birthplace in one of those places and around about 900 people who had some sort of ancestry with the Pacific Islands.

AISEA MOALA, PASTOR: I didn't really expect it - so many Pacific islanders here in Darwin and even find out some of them have been here for more than 40 years and I'm so surprised.

MELANIE ARNOST: Tongan-born Aisea Moala moved to Darwin with his family three years ago. When he heard there was no Tongan church here, he decided to open his own.

AISEA MOALA, PASTOR: Church is very important first of all to keep the family together, unite the family, keep them happy and make them be healthy at home and also because once that happens then the children will go to school happy and hopefully have a better education.

MELANIE ARNOST: And while the Church provides support for many, challenges for recent migrants remain. Aisea Moala says many islanders move here for employment, but don't have the skills needed to tap into Darwin's job market.

AISEA MOALA, PASTOR: People that come to Darwin, either you have well-educated, have some qualifications or have skills with a plumber or builder or a mechanic or anything like that, but if you're coming here as a hard labourer it's going to be a little bit hard to find a job.

MATTHEW TAMAOTAI, LANDSCAPER: It's their wish to have a job but we don't have any qualification, like unless someone been to USP or UPNG or any other university in the Pacific and then even though they have the qualification but when they come here it's still, the grade of their education, of their study is not much to the Australian education systems.

MELANIE ARNOST: He's glad to be employed as a landscaper at Darwin's Crocodylus Park where he uses his gardening knowledge from back home.

MATTHEW TAMAOTAI, LANDSCAPER: It's just a hobby to me because I'm brought up in the islands so I normally do gardening and other stuff but not any paperwork.

MELANIE ARNOST: Having found his feet, Matthew Tamaotai is now giving back to the community. Every Friday evening, he and his friends pick up leftovers from a Nightcliff Bakery and deliver it to backpackers, longrassers and Indigenous communities. His generosity is welcomed but it wasn't always that way.

MATTHEW TAMAOTAI, LANDSCAPER: The first time I remember I'd drive around and then ask "anyone like bread?" and they say "oh no, no" - they look at me with a strange look and it really makes, embarrassed me because when I talked to people they thought I'm crazy and when my wife say you know go there, open it and tell people it's free and then I did next Friday night and it work and people just, every time I go there they call me Father Christmas. I do it just to help other people and talking to other people and have fun together and they enjoy they bread.

AISEA MOALA, PASTOR: Our people are very happy and friendly people. They always love to be involved in anything they can be.

MELANIE ARNOST: Leaders of the Pacific island community say generosity is its biggest strength.

AISEA MOALA, PASTOR: No matter how hard there will be struggle, but we will survive because of that. Once anybody knows the other person, my brothers is in a bit of struggle, even though I only have 2 bread, maybe just enough, I'd rather share one bread with their family and one for mine but that's how our Pacific islanders live.

MELANIE ARNOST: The Nesian Pride festival will celebrate Darwin's Pacific Islander community. And help to unite the many nationalities from the region that now call Darwin home.

JULIA GRAY, SUNAMEKE PRODUCTIONS: That's where our different cultural groups can stand up and say this is how we are in our islands, in our different communities and we're here. So yes, unity, that's what I hope for.

ALYSSA BETTS: Melanie Arnost with that report.

7.30 NT