This opinion is based on my own experiences because everyone is unique. as for sibling rivalry, that was the closest common association i could think of at the time which condensed the complex relationship between the vast diversity of children of the bountiful Pacific ocean. for example, we would have cultural sports games here in Otara which were electric, the Cook Islanders would smash everyone at touch, the Samoans were gods of volleyball, and the Tongans... man were they good at tennis. The sledging from each side was just as fierce as the sports they were playing, but where others would see that as segregation and racist remarks, they saw it just as banter and nothing malicious, violent or discriminatory in any way. that is the kind of attitude needed to end discrimination with integration, understanding and humor. we shouldn't be offended or get so defensive that we label others racist out of no where. sure there are those hateful, fascist and truly racist people but a majority of them are just misinformed troglodytes. also, i do find it hilarious that some so called cultural purists only take in the good things about their culture but ignore the horrid side of their history.

***** sure, its a global issue but its a localized debate. you could relate it to every other ethnicity but this isn't an NCEA assessment for excellence. cultures change all the time, for instances the Samoans use to do some really weird shit when they got married. some parts of our culture will stay with us and are acceptably in society but some traditions are meant to be forgotten for the good. i blame the missionaries who got rid of a whole chunk of their traditions, hell... they pretty much destroyed a majority of original Pacific traditions, like the old Tongan tatau that was purged from existence. like charles darwin said "Evolve or die".

***** click read more, for reasons... According to one of my lecturers who is a Samoan historian(i wont say who they are for privacy issues), they said back in the day, the village chief would over see the wedding and check the virginity of the wife by inserting his fingers in her ______ and breaking the hymen and everyone would rejoice at the sight of his bloody fingers. god that sounds dirty since one of my grand uncles is a village chief.

***** also that process of westernizing Samoan would have been a painfully longer process and they had no true choice in what traditions went out and what stayed. i mean, look at japan, they decided what traditions went out like Harakiri or Seppaku and kept alot of their Shinto traditions along side their new found western ways. also, which dictatorship are you referring to?

***** i hail from Fasi To'o Tai which is just east of the Western samoa airport

Eli David That doesn't make sense since many in NZ of European descent are poor, while many PI's are pretty well off. These programmes/scholarships you speak of should be targeting people of *all* cultures from poorer backgrounds. Also, Asian immigrants to this country were in the same position as PI immigrants - often poor, facing a language barrier, facing discrimination etc. I don't see any programmes for them.

iropa2k9 WTF? What's the difference between identifying as a Pacific Islander and a person from the Pacific Islands?