Polynesian Panthers

"Polynesian Panthers records the Pacific rights and social activist movement in New Zealand, told by those who were there. Forming in 1971, the Polynesian Panthers sought to raise consciousness and took action in response to the racism and discrimination Pacific peoples faced in New Zealand in the 1970s and 1980s. The Panthers organised prison visit programmes and sporting and debating teams for inmates; provided a halfway-house service for young men released from prison; ran homework centres; and offered 'people's loans', legal aid and food banks that catered for 600 families at their height. Drawing on interviews, memoirs, poetry, newspaper articles and critical analysis, Polynesian Panthers is a thought-provoking account of this period in New Zealand"--Publisher information.

Imagine this: You're having an amazing family holiday, one where everyone is there and all 18 of you are squeezed into one house. All of sudden it's 4 o'clock in the morning and there's banging and yelling and screaming. The police are in the house pulling people out of bed ... Sofia is like most 12-year-old girls in New Zealand. How is she going to earn enough money for those boots? WHY does she have to give that speech at school? Who is she going to be friends with this year? It comes as a surprise to Sofia and her family when her big brother, Lenny, starts talking about protests, "overstayers", and injustices against Pacific Islanders by the government. Inspired by the Black Panthers in America, a group has formed called the Polynesian Panthers, who encourage immigrant and Indigenous families across New Zealand to stand up for their rights. Soon the whole family becomes involved in the movement. Told through Sofia's diary entries, with illustrations throughout, Dawn Raid is the story of one ordinary girl living in extraordinary times, learning how to stand up and fight.

In a book that is both deeply personal and highly political, Melani Anae recalls the radical activism of Auckland’s Polynesian Panthers. In solidarity with the US Black Panther Party, the Polynesian Panthers was founded in response to the racist treatment of Pacific Islanders in the era of the Dawn Raids. Central to the group’s philosophy was a three-point ‘platform’ of peaceful resistance, Pacific empowerment and educating New Zealand about persistent and systemic racism.

This groundbreaking volume examines the transnational dimensions of Black Power - how Black Power thinkers and activists drew on foreign movements and vice versa how individuals and groups in other parts of the world interpreted 'Black Power,' from African liberation movements to anti-caste agitation in India to indigenous protests in New Zealand.

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Why have the struggles of the African Diaspora so resonated with South Pacific people? How have Maori, Pasifika and Pakeha activists incorporated the ideologies of the African diaspora into their struggle against colonial rule and racism, and their pursuit of social justice? This book challenges predominant understandings of the historical linkages that make up the (post-)colonial world. The author goes beyond both the domination of the Atlantic viewpoint, and the correctives now being offered by South Pacific and Indian Ocean studies, to look at how the Atlantic ecumene is refracted in and has influenced the Pacific ecumene. The book is empirically rich, using extensive interviews, participation and archival work and focusing on the politics of Black Power and the Rastafari faith. It is also theoretically sophisticated, offering an innovative hermeneutical critique of post-colonial and subaltern studies. The Black Pacific is essential reading for students and scholars of Politics, International Relations, History and Anthropology interested in anti-colonial struggles, anti-racism and the quests for equality, justice, freedom and self-determination.

"Brilliant, painful, enlightening, tearful, tragic, sad, and funny, this photo-essay book is at its core about healing, and about the social justice work that still needs to be done in the era of hip-hop, Black Lives Matter, and the historic presidency of Barack Obama." -- Kevin Powell, author of The Education of Kevin Powell: A Boy's Journey into Manhood "A brilliantly conceived volume. Bryan Shih and Yohuru Williams demonstrate why the Panthers' story-its lessons and failures-even fifty years after its founding remains key to understanding national and international struggles for freedom and justice today." -- Cheryl Finley, professor and director of visual studies, Cornell University Even fifty years after it was founded, the Black Panther Party remains one of the most misunderstood political organizations of the twentieth century. But beyond the labels of "extremist" and "violent" that have marked the party, and beyond charismatic leaders like Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, and Eldridge Cleaver, were the ordinary men and women who made up the Panther rank and file. In The Black Panthers, photojournalist Bryan Shih and historian Yohuru Williams offer a reappraisal of the party's history and legacy. Through stunning portraits and interviews with surviving Panthers, as well as illuminating essays by leading scholars, The Black Panthers reveals party members' grit and battle scars-and the undying love for the people that kept them going.

From the &“golden weather&” of postwar economic growth, through the globalization, economic challenges, and protest of the 1960s and 1970s, to the free market revolution and new immigrants of the 1980s and 1990s and beyond, this account, the most complete and comprehensive history of New Zealand since 1945, illustrates the chronological and social history of the country with the engaging stories of real individuals and their experiences. Leading historians Jennifer Carlyon and Diana Morrow discuss in great depth New Zealand's move toward nuclear-free status, its embrace of a small-state, free-market ideology, and the seeming rejection of its citizens of a society known for the &“worship of averages.&” Stories of pirate radio in Auckland's Hauraki Gulf, the first DC8 jets landing at Mangere airport, feminists liberating pubs, public protests over the closing of post offices, and indigenous language nests vividly demonstrate how a postwar society famous around the world for its dull conformity became one of the most ethnically, economically, and socially diverse countries on earth.

This book charts the previously untold story of the mobility of Indigenous peoples across vast distances, vividly reshaping what is known about decolonisation.