TE WĀHI • PLACE
THE central STORY WORDS: CAITLIN SYKES • IMAGERY: AMANDA TRAYES
A tour of Auckland’s K’ Road with the Pua brothers weaves together tales of family and faith, tragedy and triumph, activism and social justice – all the while connecting the city’s Pacific urban history to the story of Aotearoa “Growing up, I would hear everybody else’s stories, except ours,” says Sofi Ulugia-Pua. “I thought, ‘When am I going to hear my story?’” It’s a painful reflection, but one that also served as a powerful motivator for the creator and founder of the Pasifika Urban Street History (PUSH) project. For almost 20 years, as part of the project, the urban historian, storyteller and poet has been running tours with his older brother, the Revd Mua Strickson-Pua, around central Auckland that give voice to the area’s Pacific urban history. The Pua brothers grew up in Grey Lynn, two of the six children of Vaitulu and Sofi Pua, who came to New Zealand from Samoa and met in Auckland in the 1950s. The tours weave their personal stories associated with central city locations seamlessly into a wider Pacific urban history and that of Aotearoa: the post-World War II urban migration waves, the establishment of Pasifika churches, the rise of the
16 Hōtoke • Winter 2022
Polynesian Panthers, and the Dawn Raids and the formal apology for them decades later. Called ‘Savali Le Talanoa’, or ‘Walk The Talk’, the tours initially began with Sofi and Mua talking with tour participants as they took in sites of significance around Karangahape Road (known as K’ Road), Ponsonby and Grey Lynn. In more recent years, their sister Vaitulu Pua has joined occasionally, as she does on the day Heritage New Zealand magazine takes the tour. The tours have expanded over time to incorporate music, poetry and dance, sometimes performed live by family members and other artists (Sofi’s daughter is a Siva dancer, for example, and Mua’s son Feleti was a member of hip-hop/R&B group Nesian Mystik). “Traditionally our stories are told through music,” explains Sofi, “and we also wanted to celebrate artists and how they tell our stories.” It’s a bright, warm morning when we meet Sofi and Mua at Pigeon Park, at the corner of K’ Road and
Heritage New Zealand
