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Lou’ana (Photo: FIRST)
Lou’ana (Photo: FIRST)

Pop CultureAugust 31, 2022

Lou’ana’s love for Selena runs deep

Lou’ana (Photo: FIRST)
Lou’ana (Photo: FIRST)

The musician tells FIRST about her first musical idol, why she wasn’t cut out for netball and more.

First sport

Netball. I tried to be good at it, but I was always trying to make friends with my opponent and then be like, ‘Oh my god, I’m so sorry that I pushed you.’ So it just wasn’t the game for me.”

First collection

Stamps, which is weird. Like postage stamps. So strange. People would give them to me as well, because I was apparently collecting them. That’s what happens in our family. As soon as you’re into something, all of a sudden that’s all you get for years.”

First musical idol

“That would be Selena. The movie came out when I was little and my mum showed it to me and I was obsessed with it. And so I just watched it over and over and over again. I just wanted to be Selena and I learnt all her Spanish songs. I used to sit in my room and obsess and dance and make her outfits. I really wanted a fringe like Selena but for some reason they cut it [below my eyes]. I went to school like, ‘Yeah, I’ve cut my fringe.’ But it just looked gross and I couldn’t even see because it was in my eyes.”

First paranormal experience

“So Nana and I went to her sister’s funeral when I was three or four and then we came home and we were in the kitchen and the light was off. It was dark in the kitchen. And then my nana starts talking to this spirit and I remember them just talking to each other and then hugging. I always just knew that was my nana saying goodbye to her sister, because she never got to say a proper goodbye. I said to Nana a couple years ago, ‘Do you remember that happening?’ She was like, ‘Yeah.’ And I was like, ‘OK, cool.’”

This episode of FIRST was made with support from NZ On Air

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A collective of Pasifika cultural guardians reactivate ancient Tu’i Tonga kava ceremony for contemporary use in Aotearoa in a way that honours tangata whenua. (Image: Archi Banal, Photo: Jinki Cambronero)
A collective of Pasifika cultural guardians reactivate ancient Tu’i Tonga kava ceremony for contemporary use in Aotearoa in a way that honours tangata whenua. (Image: Archi Banal, Photo: Jinki Cambronero)

Pop CultureAugust 30, 2022

Kava ‘o Aotearoa acknowledges tangata whenua in Pacific traditions

A collective of Pasifika cultural guardians reactivate ancient Tu’i Tonga kava ceremony for contemporary use in Aotearoa in a way that honours tangata whenua. (Image: Archi Banal, Photo: Jinki Cambronero)
A collective of Pasifika cultural guardians reactivate ancient Tu’i Tonga kava ceremony for contemporary use in Aotearoa in a way that honours tangata whenua. (Image: Archi Banal, Photo: Jinki Cambronero)

A group of Pasifika community leaders invites us to think differently about practising cultural traditions in a country we’ve migrated to.

Kava ‘o Aotearoa only holds one kava ceremony a year. In 2019, their first ceremony was to stand in solidarity with the Muslim community after the terror attack in Christchurch. In 2020, the group held a kava ceremony at Auckland Museum for the launch of the new Te Ao Mārama space, which houses the largest kava bowl in the world. And in 2021, the ceremony took place in the sea, as a climate-awareness exercise after the America’s Cup. 

While kava is practised across many Pacific countries, this particular kava ceremony has been designed specifically to be performed in Aotearoa.

Who is Kava ‘o Aotearoa and what do they do? The group is made up of three prominent Pasifika leaders in the community – Pakilau Manase Lua, Christine Nurminen and Therese Mangos.

Lua is the Pacific advisory group chair at Auckland Museum as well as the chairman of the Pacific response coordination team of the Pacific leadership forum, a group that helped the community during the pandemic with social and financial support as well as more general things such as navigating the immigration process.

Nurminen spends most of her time as the international portfolio manager for the Pacific region at Oxfam New Zealand. Mangos is the director of Pacific Vision Aotearoa, a community whose work includes composting workshops and introducing gardens and how to care for them at churches and schools.

(L-R) Pakilau Manase Lua, Therese Mangos and Christine Nurminen. (Photo: Jinki Cambronero)

Together, the three pioneers co-designed Kava ‘o Aotearoa, a group that meets annually to practise a pan-Polynesian kava ceremony, and who are profiled in an upcoming documentary short of the same name. They’ve been practicing for three years – each time to mark a significant event in the country. 

Kava is a crop in the Pacific islands, where the roots are used to produce a bitter drink that’s traditionally consumed at ceremonial events. It’s one of the most important customs in the Pacific where attendees sit in a circle or semicircle and take turns drinking kava in a coconut shell cup. In Fiji, a yaqona (kava) ceremony would be seen at important social, political or religious functions and similar practices can be seen in Sāmoa and Tonga. For Sāmoans, the ceremony includes speeches and oratory from chiefs and distinguished guests.

Kava ‘o Aotearoa carefully selected components of how kava is performed in the Pacific, designing a unique ceremony for the Pasifika community in Aotearoa to follow. “The kava in Tonga, do that in Tonga and same for Sāmoa, but we’re in Aotearoa and we can’t come here, perform our kava and ignore the fact that we’re on Māori land.”

Last year, director Josh Teariki Baker was asked by Kava ‘o Aotearoa to film their dawn kava ceremony that they held on a waka in the sea near the Maritime Museum. The event was to raise awareness of the climate crisis in the Pacific region, following New Zealand’s America’s Cup victory. Baker says they also wanted to reflect on the fact that Pacific people revolutionised the way people travel on sea, yet it was colonised and taken over by the western world. “With no acknowledgement to Pacific people,” Baker says. “That kava ceremony was an acknowledgement to the Pacific and its history and that’s what sold me on wanting to do a doco on the group,” he says.

That same year, Kava ‘o Aotearoa wanted to praise the work that Pania Newton and her whānau did in terms of land rights and protecting Ihumātao by inviting them to a kava ceremony and placing mana whenua in a position of high regard. Baker approached the group to film the ceremony for Someday Stories and got their approval.

(L-R) Maria Tanner and Josh Teariki Baker. (Photo: Supplied)

Producer Maria Tanner says what she observed was Kava ‘o Aotearoa recognising that as Pacific people, they’re physically disconnected from their island homes yet still yearn to practise being Pacific through the kava ceremony. “The group is non-invasive because they realise that they’re not from Aotearoa, but they wish to be a Pacific Islander in this space. However, they don’t want to do an act of colonisation of tangata whenua here, so what they did is invite them and make them the most honoured guest in this space,” she adds.

How this kava ceremony differs from traditional kava ceremonies is it incorporates elements from Tonga, Fiji, Sāmoa and the Cook Islands. That includes the chief orators who stand with their staff or to’oto’o (talking sticks), a practice from Sāmoa as well as the turou, a welcoming gesture by the kava ceremony hosts to the guests, an element from the Cook Islands and Tahiti.

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For Baker and Tanner, if Kava ‘o Aotearoa were going to respectfully put tangata whenua at the forefront of their ceremony, they too were going to adapt a similar vision with the film. “It would be a missed opportunity if we didn’t include the voice of tangata whenua in this doco, even though it’s about the [kava] group,” Tanner says. The film documents the kava ceremony at Ihumātao and features Newton.

Tanner calls the group Pasifika cultural guardians because they activate change in a space, in a very gentle and Pacific way. “They’re cognisant because they look around Aotearoa, a place where they’ve laid their roots down and notice that the country is changing rapidly, more cultural groups are coming into the space and their response is ‘what do we bring to the conversation?’ rather than ‘how can I dictate this conversation?’” Tanner explains.

A kava ceremony is an important custom in Pacific cultures and has adapted over the years including having kava bars open. (Photo: Jinki Cambronero)

Baker says he had to earn the trust from Lua, Nurminen and Mangos. “It was a process where I had to explain the concept of filmmaking, story rights, the legal aspects to the project and throughout the many discussions I realised that their stories are precious and we need to approach it accordingly,” he says.

“The group were involved every step of the way, we wanted them to be,” Tanner says. “They’ve seen the rough cuts of the film and they’ve been great when it came to giving us feedback,” she says. 

Baker adds: “The massive smiles on their faces when they saw the final product was just amazing to see.”

Kava ‘o Aotearoa can be viewed online at Someday Stories on Wednesday August 31, 2022.

This is Public Interest Journalism funded through NZ On Air.

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