- Samoans and Pacific people
were the worst people in the world.
I'd wished I wasn't Samoan.
I couldn't aspire to be Pacific and to be successful.
I'd think to be white was to be successful.
Talofa lava, Josiah's my name,
I live here in Ōtautahi in Christchurch.
I'm Afakasi Samoan.
My dad's from Apia in Samoa
and moved to New Zealand when he was 17.
And mum's a European Australian
and she moved to New Zealand just before she was five.
When I was a kid, very few Samoan people,
very few Pacific people that I could see around me.
I felt really embarrassed about being Samoan
because of the statistics that I saw on TV.
I remember one of the most influential shows on TV
at that time was Police Ten 7
and pretty much the description 22 brown Māori or Pacific
that's all I could see Samoan people, Pacific people were.
So yes this is Parklands, I can't remember when we moved here,
but it must have been like
when I was about six or seven, maybe.
We'd all sort of played together on the street's really
our playground.
Definitely as a kid, I participated in the racist
jokes that other people would say about other people.
They made my jokes about my own communities.
And I guess I looked at the stats and the
stories that people told about us
and couldn't see anything worth trying to cling to.
And so joined the majority.
I look at that now and think that was,
yeah, I wish I had the courage to not have done that.
When I was 14 there was a really big event
here in Christchurch called the Pacific Youth Parliament.
And me as someone who hadn't accepted that I was
Samoan at the time, it's kind of probably a bit strange that
I put my hand up, but it was my mum who encouraged me
to go for it.
That was amazing to suddenly feel completely embraced,
completely accepted, for who I was.
It didn't matter that I hadn't had the opportunities
to learn about my Samoan heritage
or our Pacific communities as a kid.
Now I had all these new friends, you know who a Fijian,
who Tongan who are Samoan, who are Niuean
and I guess beforehand, I couldn't even really say
I had one Pacific friend.
So that was huge, changed my life.
I made these new friends who were Pacific.
And we started this charity to increase Pacific youth voice,
in our city.
And then we started to hear from Pacific young people that
the biggest problem was belongingness.
Like 60% of us are born in New Zealand
and to be born in New Zealand means, you know,
become with not necessarily clarity
on how we're supposed to fit in here.
Suicide was a big challenge for Pacific young people.
More Pacific young men die
by suicide than by road accidents.
We started to host a couple of events
so that we could help teach Pacific young people
who might hear really horrific stories
from their friends know how to respond.
'Cause I mean, how do you respond
when someone comes to you and says,
"I'm thinking about taking my life."
How do you talk about those things
to young people?
As I finished school, I got this ¤20,000 law scholarship.
And so I decided I was gonna study law at university.
And my first year I did really well.
Second year midway through the year,
I had quite a significant breakdown.
I struggled to get up in the morning,
I struggled to leave the house.
And I ended up dropping out of uni.
So for six months,
I was re-nourishing myself with my family.
So trying to get back into routines,
trying to do what I love, you know,
by playing with Lego.
History has always been one of my passions.
One of the things I collect is military uniforms.
This is like a American Air Force jacket
former like 1950s New Zealand electrical engineer's uniform.
Yeah, I kind of just interested in these things
which speak of the past.
It not that something I saved,
it's like a copy of old newspapers from 1953.
And so in 1953,
a number of important things happened in the world.
Edmund Hillary climbed Everest and Tenzing Norgay.
But the one that really stands out is when
the Queen was crowned.
I'm not a royalist,
but I'm still interested in the key events
that shaped the world.
I collect the stuff 'cause I get nervous that
people forget about the past.
I got a call on February, 2018.
The New Zealand government had asked
if I would be interested
being on a panel during this big review
into mental health and addictions,
the biggest review in 22 years
and the biggest review in New Zealand's history.
So the government chose six of us,
one of them was Sir Mason Durie,
he created this model which a lot of
people use every day called, Whare Tapa Whā.
Also talks about the pillars of life.
And then other people like Professor Ron Patterson,
who was an ombudsman,
Dr Jemaima Tiatia-Seath who's a huge Pacific academics.
How do I share the voices of children,
youth and young people amongst the most amazing leaders?
They made it really easy.
They were so inclusive.
While I was 22, and while I was a student,
it wasn't just for me to ensure that children,
young people, students' voices were heard
that actually they had a responsibility to do that too.
All of us carried all of that.
I found that we're at our best
when we partnered with Kaumātua.
If we're not getting enough younger people,
alongside our current leaders,
learning about the way things are happening now
and then together shaping what could be,
it won't take long before we don't have the pipeline
of the next people.
Finding your identity is one of the most important things
I think we can do in our life.
If we don't love who we are,
or we don't love our heritage,
it can make our journey and the opportunities we have
much more reduced because we aren't willing to draw from
or to be part of a side of our life.
So for me, taking on the journey to
be comfortable in all of who I am,
is me feeling free I guess.