A new Pacific book to celebrate AUPISA

A new Pacific book to celebrate AUPISA

‘ĀTEA, MOANA AND VANUA: Voices from the Brown Edge was co-edited by Dr ‘Okusitino Māhina (Anthropology), with three postgraduate students Nuhisifa Seve-Williams (PhD, Education), Alovale Faaiuaso (MA, Pacific Studies) and Davina Hosking (MA, Geography) and foreword by Rangi Moeka’a, formerly an arts students in the 1960s and later a lecturer in Cook Islands Maori in the Centre for Pacific Studies since early 1990s, both at the University of Auckland.

This new book, co-authored by the co-editors and others, was specifically written for the celebrations of the 10^th anniversary of the Auckland University Pacific Islands Students Association (AUPISA) Inc., beginning on Thursday 18 and ending Sunday 21 October, 2007. It kicked off with the launch of the book, followed by a one-day conference and an evening of community seminar and other activities of both educational and social significance. The Vice Chancellor, Professor Stuart N. McCutcheon, and some senior members, of the University of Auckland, were in attendance and support of some of the events.

The book records an important epoch in the history of academic struggle of the peoples of the Pacific at the University of Auckland. The book’s main title, ‘Ātea, Moana and Vanua, points symbolically to the voyages of their ancestors in the past, of theirs in the present and of the generations yet to come in the future, where pathways in education are actually traversed across the depth of the sea and breadth of the land, aiming as high as the height of the heavens.

There are six chapters in the book, each for convenient reasons representing some of the main Pacific ethnic groups at the University, viz., Cook Islands, Fiji, Niue, Samoa and Tonga, dating back to early 1950s when students from a number of Pacific countries began to take up tertiary studies at the University. Each of the six chapters, functioning as critical remarks on Pacific education collectively, is followed by a list of graduates of up to, and including, 2007.

Specifically, this book is about that growing Pacific academic connection with the University of Auckland, situated in the so-called largest Pacific city in the world.