What it means to be Samoan on Auckland Council
Monday, 7 November 2016
Only days after being elected into his new role as an Auckland councillor Efeso Collins faced a racist insult from the council .
A council usher at his swearing in ceremony refused to believe that Collins' Samoan wife, daughter and elders were entitled to VIP seats.
'How did we get to this, it's 2016 and my family is being treated like this?' Collins said some days later being interviewed at Otara Shopping Centre on a Sunday afternoon.
The former local board chairman, university teacher, student politician, DJ, father of one and now Auckland councillor, has promised to keep reminding his fellow - and predominantly white, middle-class - councillors about the realities of south Auckland.
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Collins kept the pitch of his Governing Body maiden speech, delivered the morning after his family's shaming, squarely on 'thank you' to family and friends crediting them with helping the boy from Otara make good.
But listening to Collins' speech, this time with his family seated in their rightful place, there were painful hooks - and at times a palpable hurt and anger seemed to catch Collins.
'Today hundreds of children in my ward went to school hungry. . . hundreds of those families take the little they have, forced to decide between paying for food, the power or the rent from week to week.
'Those choices stark choices are disempowering and demeaning. I know this reality because it's the reality our family lived with, for years in Otara,' he told other councillors.
Collins, son of Samoan migrants and the youngest of six, has two sisters who suffer from asthma brought on by an upbringing in cold, damp state housing.
One of the sisters also suffers from rheumatic fever heart complications while his older brother Tom, died aged 38 from a heart condition.
Collins, 42, who's on his way to a PHD, talked about the time one of his teachers at decile one Tangaroa College told him he was 'too dumb' to go to university.
'There was a major part of my psyche that had believed [that teacher]'
What he didn't mention in his speech was jumping from Form Two (year eight in today's terms) straight to Form Three because that time teachers recognised his smarts.
Reaching the University of Auckland, Collins gained a bachelors, then a masters degree in education, he also served as Auckland University Student Association's first polynesian president.
Collins, the first of his family to reach university, 'loved' being there. Having been one of only 17 Tangaroa College seniors he was now surrounded by hundreds of pacific kids and other ethnicities.
However, he also encountered racism.
He was in a first year education tutorial when students where asked why there weren't many Maori or pacific people at university.
'A guy got up and said 'it's because they're dumb'', Collins said.
'For the first time in my life I felt really confronted by a comment I kind of felt throughout my life but it wasn't until he said it'.
University colleague Harry Toleafoa, said Collins is part of a 'new pacific generation coming through that is quite vocal and will no longer be passive'.
'[Collins] is not afraid to fight media, provide a [pacific people's] counter-narrative or deconstruct a narrative constructed by others,' Toleafoa said.
Toleafoa believes Collins will bear witness to South Auckland pacific people's experience through his seat on Auckland Council.
'He's the voice of equity and fairness.'
A member of the council's community development committee, freshman councillor Collins who promises to base himself in south Auckland at least one day per week, rattles off issues he'll be championing.
Rates, roads, public pools and housing.
'I've made it very clear to Phil [Goff] that I'm going to be very honest and won't back down telling him what my community feels'.
With Auckland's 194,000 polynesian population, statistically four of Auckland's 20 councillors should be polynesian. But there's just Collins and fellow Manukau councillor Alf Filipaina.
His PHD thesis is: 'How do people from indigenous backgrounds navigate western leadership spaces.'
'To a degree I'm doing my PHD on a reflection of my own experiences'.
Yet Collins is optimistic about the new council he's part of.
'I think it's going to be a great term, there's enough new people coming on to have quite an exciting discussion'.