Summer 2009 TOKTOK

Pacific Media Centre-Creative Industries Research Institute, AUT University, Private Bag 92006, Auckland 1142, New Zealand www.pmc.aut.ac.nz

PACIFIC MEDIA CENTRE No. 15 SUMMER 2009 ISSN 1175-0472

Budding new Māori, Pasifika filmmakers eye the industryWINNERS at AUT University’s inaugural Flavorz09 film festival for student video makers this month say they are now inspired to break into the industry.

Sophie Johnson, who won the year three prize of $350 for her 12 minute documentary, The Makings of a Kaitiaki, was delighted with her success.

“I worked quite closely with a group of eight people and I know how hard each of them worked. I feel really honoured to receive this tonight,” she said.

“It was so amazingly rewarding. Then to be able to see your images up on the big screen like this, and see people’s reactions, it is so rewarding.”

The film was a short biopic about kuia Nganeko Minhinnick, a kaitiaki of the Manukau.

Hosting the public showing of 11 Māori, Pasifika and diversity short films for AUT’s Pacific Media Centre, presenter John Utanga, a producer of TVNZ’s Tagata Pasifika programme, was impressed with the quality.

Utanga, who is also chair of the PMC, pledged to consider some of the programmes for possible broadcast.

His message to communication studies students was to strive for quality work and to have a good attitude.

‘Affectionate look’The second-year prize of $150 went to Karleen Bidois, Ashleigh McEnaney and Natasha Munton for their four minute documen-

tary Ka Tuituia, described as an “affectionate look at Isa-bella Sharrock, her whanau and her Karakeke taonga”.

Bidois said she hoped to work with Māori Television when she graduated.

“I feel emotional, excited and very surprised by the outcome. But I also know that I worked really hard to produce such a film from the bottom of my heart.”

She had not realised her passion for media before coming to AUT.

“Now I am hungry for it and I want to do it for the rest of my life.”

Organiser Dr David Robie, director of the Pacific Media Centre, said the festival was an “inspirational showcase” for quality programmes being made by students on Māori and Pasifika themes.

One film, Beyond the Ropes, also featured women’s wrestler Sangita Patel, a New Zealand-born Indian known in the business as “Alita Capri”.

Tongan musicStrong applause also greeted the documentary The Modern Afo of Tonga, directed by John Pulu, which features Tonga Kru and Three Houses Down and examines temporary Tongan music styles.

Pulu’s programme was broadcast on the Pacific Viewpointtelevision show on Triangle Television.

The festival was supported by television staff, including acting curriculum leader James Nicholson and Jim Marbrook, and Tui O’Sullivan, equity coordinator in AUT’s Faculty of Design and Creative Technologies, who also gave a mihi.

O’Sullivan said she was delighted with the festival.“It would be great if it could be an annual event because the

calibre of the work is really impressive.” – Violet Cho

Dr ‘Okusitino Mahina and the tra-ditional nose flute in John Pulu's The Modern Afo of Tonga.

Kuia Nganeko Minhinnick reflects on her life in Sophie Johnson's TheMakings of a Kaitiaki. Sophie's documentary won the third year prize.

Flavorz09 featured on Triangle TV's Pacific Viewpoint www.tnews.co.nz/TNEWS/PVPEP3-2009.html

TOKTOK Summer 2009

New AUT professor targets Pasifika strategic postgraduate policy development

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NEW ZEALAND’S first professor of Pacific studies, Tagaloat-ele Peggy Fairbairn-Dunlop, wants to see more Pacific Islanders at decision-making levels and she believes postgraduate educa-tion is the key to achieving this goal.

Dr Fairbairn-Dunlop has begun her new position at AUT University’s Institute of Public Policy with a clear drive to increase the number of Pacific Island students at postgraduate level and to cultivate “robust” Pasifika research and methodologies.

“For too long in the Pacific, and for Pacific Islanders in New Zealand as well, we have been the subjects of other people’s policies,” she told Pacific Scoop before last month's formal powhiri and Pasifika welcome.

“We have to educate our Pacific Island students to take part in and be able to sit confidently at national and decision-making tables, as well as sitting at the village fono.”

Professor Fairbairn-Dunlop describes her own approach to research as “hands-on and more practical”.

She spent 25 years of her life working in Pacific nations, including 15 years at the University of the South Pacific’s School of Agriculture at Alafua campus in Samoa, researching areas such as semi-subsistence economies and agricultural development, rural development and women in households.

Her current research focus is centred around Pacific family

systems and how to maintain the security of these cultural networks in the face of social change.

Professor Fairbairn-Dunlop’s appointment marks a significant step in Pacific research development at AUT University, whose new campus in Manukau is set to open next year, catering to the large number of Māori and Pasifika students in the area.

“There is little doubt that Professor Fairbairn-Dunlop is one of the Pacific’s leading researchers,” said AUT’s Pro Vice-Chancellor Research Professor Ian Shirley.

“Not only does Professor Fairbairn-Dunlop hold the chiefly title of Tagaloatele but she has also built an outstanding reputation as a researcher and a scholar.”

As the 2006-2009 inaugural director of Victoria University’s Pacific research unit, Va’aomanū Pasifika, Professor Fairbairn-Dunlop initiated the ongoing Pacific postgraduate Talanoa Network, which allows Pasifika students from different New Zealand universities to meet for biweekly interactive videoconferencing seminars.

The primary goal is to increase Pasifika numbers at the postgraduate level. Source: Govt Education Count

Her primary goal as AUT’s professor of Pacific studies is to increase Pasifika numbers at the postgraduate level, and to develop students who “value and understand Pacific Island knowledge”.

Critical mass“It doesn’t matter what area they go into. We need a critical

mass of skilled and confident student. We have to secure ourselves, economically socially, and in social participation,” she said.

“As Pacific researchers we need to review and document our own Pacific knowledge systems and research methodologies and the ways these may have changed over time, and how we are visioning our present and our futures by exploring past beliefs.

“It’s part of who we are.”She said that since a lot of Pacific Island knowledge is

transmitted through oral culture, there was a need to document as well as critique it.

According to the AUT annual report, 10 percent of the 23,715 students at AUT University were Pasifika and 10 percent Māori.From 2007, government education counts showed a total of 30,852 Pasifika students were enrolled at NZ universities, 29,297 of this number being domestic. The report also showed that 3.6 percent of Pasifika students were postgraduate, less than half the national average.–Josephine Latu

AUT graduates publish in FijiTHREE Graduate Diploma in Journalism students from AUT have had a peer-reviewed Pacific studies journal article accepted and published in an interna-tional journal based in Fiji.

It is believed this is the first time that GDJ students have had an article accepted in an academic journal.

The article, “Freedom of Information and Media Accountability in the Pacific: Case Studies of Fiji, Cook Islands and Papua New Guinea”, by Carolyn Thomas, Carly Tawhiao and Natasha Burling, was published in the latest edition of Fijian Studies: A Journal of Contemporary Fiji.

Editors of the edition were Professor Biman Prasad and head

of journalism Shailendra Singh at the University of the South Pacific.

PMC director Dr David Robie, who supervised them in the postgraduate Asia-Pacific Journalism paper, said: “It is a credit to both their perserverence and quality of their work.

They submitted this originally as an exegesis for the APJ paper and then revised their article and went through the blind review process.”

Meanwhile, the PMC is publishing a new book on the achievements of leading women in the Solomon

Islands on behalf of AusAID and RAMSI. Being the First: Storis Blong Oloketa Mere Lo Solomon Aelan is edited by Alice Aruheeta Pollard and Professor Marilyn J. Waring.

Summer 2009 TOKTOK

Flavorz09 Māori, Pasifika and Diversity filmfestEleven short films made by second and final year AUT television students, including from Te Ara Poutama, were shown on 6 November 2009. The evening was sponsored by the Pacific Media Centre.Images by Del Abcede.

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TOKTOK Summer 2009NEWSLETTER EDITOR: DEL ABCEDE

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Jillian Green 1963-2009Jillian was a strong supporter of the Pacific Media Centre from its launch and she often contributed to research projects and the proof reading of Pacific Journalism Review. About six months before she passed away, she donated a Fijian tapa cloth – given to her by her mother, Joan, from a Fijian minister – and books to the centre. She will be sadly missed.

ABOUT SIX months before she died, Jillian gave me a special task. I was to give the eulogy at her funeral. From her closest

friends, I constructed a biographic profile which I will outline here. We all came to know Jillian in different ways over the last 20 years or so. Yet our memories and understandings of her were remarkably similar.

Around 1983, early 1984, Jillian travelled extensively to Australia, Britain, France, Greece, Turkey, China and the Philippines. Upon her return, she translated her experiences and insights into a university education. She obtained a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology and Education followed by a Masters with Honours in Sociology. Jillian wrote her dissertation on the impact of Tony Blair`s economic policies on the British health system. Near the end of her MA, Jillian was a researcher on a major collaborative project concerning New Zealand trade policy with Fred Dayo and Nigel Haworth. These endeavours illustrate two of Jillian’s abiding qualities—intellectual curiosity and a passion for social justice. During the 1990s, she worked as an administrator for the Access Literacy Trust.

During her time as a research administrator at AUT, Jillian helped with Pacific Journalism Review and took a strong interest in Pacific development issues.

Privately, Jillian enjoyed black jokes and macabre topics of conversation; she encouraged others to laugh outside of their comfort zone.

For those who knew her, Jillian possessed a remarkable generosity of spirit. She was kind, a good listener and entirely at ease with those outside of the social mainstream for reasons of race, sexual orientation and/or political belief. Jillian also behaved generously toward others—she was a lifeline for people at times when their lives were at a low ebb.

Jillian was also a woman of enormous courage. About 18 months ago she was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Everyone I spoke to about this commented on Jillian’s fortitude, fearlessness and upbeat manner. She was at work two months before her death and dictated a resignation letter from her hospital bed—a final testament to the dedication, dignity and dark humour of this remarkable woman – RIP – Dr Wayne Hope

Remarkable generosity of spirit

TRAUMA and exiled writers, the challenge of en-vironmental journalism in Delta land, issues of ed-itorial “slant” in health reporting and use of te reo Māori in newspapers are some of the topics featured in the latest edition of Pacific Journalism Review. The October edition is a special “Public right to know” joint issue published by the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism and the Pa-cific Media Centre

A selection of eight peer-refereed papers, mostly drawn from the PR2K7 conference with the theme “Giving them what they want” (PR2K), has been published in this edition co-edited by professor Wendy Bacon, director of the ACIJ.

The PR2K conferences, which have been held regularly since 2000, have mostly focused on how the right of people to know what is happening has been frustrated by legal, political and social constraints on the media in the Asia-Pacific region.

Bacon herself contributed a major role in one of the key research articles, along with two Bangladeshi colleagues, about the urgency of environmental coverage of Delta land, showing up the “neglect” of reporting ecologcal devastation by Australia

Public right to know – new PJR editionand New Zealand media in some parts of the region and why change is needed.

This year is the Year of Climate Change in the South Pacific and several small island nations have stretched their resources to provide better environmental reporting.

PMC director associate professor David Robie provides a comparative case study on the controversial Fiji news media “review” in the lead up to the regime imposing martial law and censorship at Easter.

Other articles outside the main PR2K theme include a study of the “intentional use” of te reo Māori in New Zealand newspapers in 2007 by the

Kupu Taea project at Massey University.This edition has been dedicated to AUT research administrator Jillian Green, who had been a strong colleague, friend and supporter of PJR. The next edition of PJR has the theme “reporting conflict” in association with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and will be published in May 2010.• Pacific Journalism Review can be ordered on the PJR website www.pjreview.info or through the ACIJ www.acij.uts.edu.au