50th Jubilee Dinner invite and commemorate glass

 It was such a privilege to attend my old primary (elementary) school's 50th Jubilee celebrations which started last week with a dinner which I attended and then ended in a Cultural gala day where I was able to launch our 10th book (play script) "Sacred steps of Tigilau".

In looking back in retrospect, I think the school got me ready for understanding a lot of the dynamics that I would face in my education journey. In starting in a school that was primarily European and I was often the only Samoan in the class throughout my primary school days.

The school composition has now changed and Samoans are the predominant population of the school with Tongans, Maori and Niueans also in numbers but few, if any Europeans now attend the school.

The school also now has a Samoan bilingual unit which recently celebrated it's 21st birthday with a curriculum that begins at Year 0 (new entrants) with 100% immersion in Samoan; Juniors: 20% English and 80% Samoan; Middle: 50% English/Samoan; Seniors (Middle/Intermediates): 80% English and 20% Samoan. I'm not sure how this works out but in watching the cultural dance performances on the day, it was neat to note how confident they were in their culture and something that I never experienced in school until I reached high school.

So there has been a major shift in the population of Mangere which was once predominantly Maori in the early 1800s and now in 2016 predominantly a Pasifika population with Maori and a growing Muslim Indian/Fijian Indian population with a Muslim school for locals.

What I did learn from being "different" from a young age was that I continued onto University in the early years, and it was a norm for me to be the only Pasifika/Samoan person in my classes especially in majoring in English and Geography, and as I negotiated my way through the maze of educational institutions and now into writing and publishing, I hope as I walk through that it opens the doors for many other Pasifika peoples to take up the opportunity to see that they too can try forging new pathways for careers and through taking calculated risks.

The picture below was one taken of a Cook Islands dance troupe who entertained through their "Around the world" drum dance. This is always a funny spectacle as the male dancers will pick unsuspecting women to dance (hula style) and the female dancers pick men from the audience to dance (male hula style) with in a knee knocking type dance. Being brought up in a Pacific Islands church environment, and in joining a dance group, I got to learn how to dance to the Cook Islands drum dance and when I watched the audience dancers up on the dance floor, I couldn't help chuckling and smiling to myself.

I think it's why I like the "Moana" movie so much in that as a primary school student, I missed out on learning my own culture through my formal education but at church I was fully immersed in culture and Christianity. Now when I see my former primary school celebrating culture, I am so thankful that education and movies have shifted to see the importance and relevance of children's home language and culture as relevant in the classroom to the world.

And now I also contribute to write books about important stories to pass onto our next generations...

Cook Islands group dance at the Robertson Road School 50th Jubilee celebrations