TUVALUAN MIGRATION STORY
Pasefika Proud is honoured to launch the last episode in the video series of Migration and Legacy stories featuring our Pacific mothers. This follows up to our series of stories from our Pacific fathers. Tangialiki Haulangi tells her migration story in the last of our legacy videos of her journey from Nauru to New Zealand on 20 December 1989.
The 2018 population census tells us that there are 4653 Tuvaluans living in New Zealand. 46% of Tuvaluans were born overseas. Nearly 80% of Tuvaluans live in Auckland. Unlike many other Pacific migrants in New Zealand, most Tuvaluans have arrived since the 1990s for health, education and financial reasons. They tended to live in West Auckland. Some Tuvaluans moved to Nauru for work and then migrated to New Zealand from there.
We are thankful to Tangialiki for sharing her story with Pasefika Proud and for providing further her words of wisdom below.
“I am very grateful to God for bringing us here to Aotearoa NZ and making it our new home now for more than 30 years. Blessing us with immediate and extended whanau and friends. I know we could have struggled to survive in Tuvalu as our family does not have enough land to share with all our children.
We encourage our children to study hard as education will be the key to success. We are very proud of them and what they have achieved in life, especially continuing to carry the values we have taught them… to always help other people in need but mainly our Pasefika people here in Aotearoa to have a voice to reduce inequality in our communities.
Also thankful to God that we are living here now with me having dialysis three days a week as it would have been a different story if we were living in Tuvalu. As we don’t have the health system and resources as we have here. In summary, I just want to praise God for blessing me with a loving kaiga, mokos, friends and Aotearoa NZ, a place we call home.”
OTHER VIDEOS IN THE MIGRATION & LEGACY SERIES