‘This is for you’: 24 Pasifika New Year’s honours recipients
Twenty-four Pacific peoples have been recognised in the 2023 New Year’s honours. A former Premier of Niue, Young Vivian, leads the list of distinguished Pacific peoples in the list.
Vivian has been made Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for his services to Niue.
Fiji-born Dr Api Talemaitoga, a familiar face to Pacific communities during the height of Covid-19 in Aotearoa, has been acknowledged for his decades of service in the medical sector.
The first Pacific Priest ordained in Rome in 1990, Father Paulo Filoialii of Samoa, has been recognised for services to the Pacific community.
Also on the honours list is Lisa Taouma, the producer and director of Coconet TV, the largest pool of Pacific content on screen in New Zealand. And the lead singer of the popular band Ardijah, BettyAnne Monga, has been recognised for services to music.
‘Better things will come’: Niue’s Young Vivian
Young Vivian started his career as a teacher in New Zealand. He went to a British school based on an English system. He failed English and was told to leave because enrolments were backed up.
He said he “begged the education officer” to stay so he was sent to Northland College and was “very happy” there.
Community members say he has been instrumental in fostering a love for Vagahau Niue, or Niue language, as a respected elder. Speaking to reporter Lydia Lewis in 2022, at the launch of the Niue language app in Auckland, Vivian said:
“A language is a key to your culture and your tradition. It gives you that spiritual strength of who you are and you are able to face the world,” he said.
“That’s very, very important to a small nation like Niue who has a population of only 2500 people, but here in Australia and New Zealand it’s 80,000.”
When he went home to Niue, he was “dissatisfied”.
“I want to be fully independent, but I could see signs that people were not acceptable to that so I gave up, only then we can be real Niueans,” Vivian said.
His message to Pacific leaders is to believe in themselves.
“They must depend on themselves and God, they have everything in their homes, they need guts, stickability and determination, small as they are, they can stand up to it.”