Dahlia Malaeulu
“When I became a mother, I realised language was key to unlocking and developing my own cultural confidence, as well as to passing my Samoan culture on to my own tamaiti…
Seeing that my kids were learning more Spanish than Samoan, thanks to Dora the Explorer, I set out to engage my boys in the same way Dora did. I searched for Samoan children’s songs and online videos. And because my two young sons loved books, I visited our local library. In that library’s Pacific book collection there were twelve books – seven on Samoa – and among these there was nothing to reflect my children’s world as Samoan-New Zealanders. Yet, Pasifika people are the third largest group in New Zealand. I thought, if we can’t find ourselves in books what message does this send our tamaiti; and how can other people learn about us?
I decided to create my own books. I’ve taught writing for over a decade as a classroom teacher and so the writing felt quite natural. Though I created the first versions of the Mila’s My Gagana stories for my own tamaiti to introduce and strengthen their connection to our Samoan culture through basic gagana Sāmoa, around the same time, the Ministry of Education announced the need to support Pasifika students to achieve as Pasifika.
Language and culture help shape us and to tell us and others who we are. In educational settings, real learning happens when we are able to understand and connect as our true selves, to form strong relationships that enable the sharing of new information and knowledge. Life-long learning cannot happen without culture. But to support Pasifika students to achieve as Pasifika, teachers need to be able to understand what it means for tamaiti to be Pasifika and they need resources that help them in this. So, I shared the stories I had written with fellow educators who were well aware of the need for safe language resources and stories for both their own learning and for their Pasifika students – and they loved them.
I began working with illustrator, visual arts teacher, friend and cousin Darcy Solia and with a publisher. Once the books were released, we started to receive incredible feedback. Every week there are new messages and pictures of parents and children reading the books. Most of these express gratitude for creating safe spaces to develop both the child and the parent’s gagana and cultural confidence. Parents have also told us how our stories have encouraged their children to read at home and to talk more about their culture and identity. At live readings we get to witness this first-hand, and I know we’re on the right track when I meet people like the Samoan student who came up to me after a reading saying, ‘I didn’t know we could write books,’ and telling me excitedly that she wanted to write one too!
For so long we have not had many books that show the world as we see it, and in some spaces there have been none. In order to continue to keep producing quality Pasifika books we need to acknowledge and protect the time, experience and energy of creators, through mechanisms like copyright. At the same time, it is also important to understand that for Pasifika cultures our work and achievements are never simply our own. I stand on the shoulders of a village which extends past those who were physically part of creating my books, to the people who helped to raise and inspire me, and to the people who prayed over me, even before I set foot on this earth. That is how deep and far back the connection goes for us as Pasifika when it comes to anything we create and share with the world. And although in my Samoan culture we do so many things out of alofa (love) and tautua (service), what is also paramount is faʻaaloalo (respect) for the alofa and tautua given. This is how I view creative rights and the importance of keeping the vā, the sacred space and connection, intact to ensure a mutual faʻaaloalo and a reciprocity of alofa is maintained between us and for our stories.”
Dahlia Malaeulu is an author, educator and creator of Mila’s My Gagana Series, Mila’s My Aganu’u Series, Teine Sāmoa and soon to be released Tama Sāmoa.