Free seminar: Rethinking Pacific Auckland March 21


ak conver

Free seminar: Rethinking Pacific Auckland
Date:    Thursday 21st March
Time:    1.00pm – 2.30pm
Venue:  The Limelight Room, Upper NZI Level, Aotea Centre, Auckland CBD
Auckland Conversations, in association with the Research, Investigations and Monitoring Unit invites you to attend a presentation by:  Damon Salesa, Associate Professor, Centre for Pacific Studies, University of Auckland
Abstract:  Rethinking Pacific Auckland
Auckland has always been deeply engaged with the Pacific.  Though many of these engagements were critical and important, none were as transformative as the massive population movement which brought thousands of Pacific Island people to resettle in Auckland after World War Two.  But despite the established and crucial significance of Pacific people and engagements with Auckland, in many respects Auckland’s leadership has struggled to come to terms with its Pacific dimensions and location. Auckland has increasingly claimed an identity as a “Pacific City”, perhaps, but still uneasily and selectively.
It is impossible to understand Auckland’s past, present, and future without properly understanding its multiple Pacific dimensions.  But the ways in which this has largely been pursued has largely produced partial understandings.  The last decades have seen the production of Pacific Peoples as a “target population”, a population made legible in government and analytical categories and processes.  This process has provided access to resources, and shaped people’s and communities’ lives; and yet the same process has simplified or misapprehended key dimensions of these communities.  Confronted with the tremendously complicated vista of Pacific concerns, too often we move forward with blunt tools and dated understandings. How might these understandings be reconvened or redefined, particularly in the areas of great concern for Pacific Auckland: education, employment, property ownership and in new policy initiatives, particularly the Southern Initiative.
RSVP to Alyssa Stent:
Alyssa.stent@aucklandcouncil.govt.nz%3Cmailto:Alyssa.stent@aucklandcouncil.govt.nz

Community Research

E-News

Get the latest news updates sent directly to your email.

Sign Up
Back to top