Saving Samoa House on Karangahape Rd | STILL HERE S2 | Episode 2

By Four and Five Films

Samoa House hides in plain sight on Auckland’s Karangahape Road. It was built with funds raised by the Samoa House Appeal Fund and opened in 1979 as a response to the Dawn Raids. 

The site includes the first fale built outside of Samoa and previously housed the Samoan consulate. The future of Samoa House - in particular, the Fale - is uncertain as Pacific communities groups no longer have direct or priority access to the space. 

This episode of STILL HERE explores the future of Samoa amid a rapidly gentrifying Karangahape road.

“It’s important that we move quickly to restore the mana of this fale,” Bonni Tamati, operations manager of Samoa House Library, says.

STILL HERE is a love letter to our inner-city Auckland Pasifika community. Since the 1950s, the Pasifika community has cultivated a unique Central Auckland identity that many of the community’s youth proudly embrace; both as an act of resistance from ongoing gentrification and as an unapologetic reminder that they and their families are Still Here.

Made with the support of NZ On Air.

Watch more episodes below:

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The Grey Lynn home where Niuean culture thrives | STILL HERE S2 | Episode 1

Watch the first episode from the new season of STILL HERE now.

Saving Samoa House on Karangahape Rd | STILL HERE S2 | Episode 2

“It’s important that we move quickly to restore the mana of this fale.”

The league club continuing the Pasifika legacy in Grey Lynn | STILL HERE S2 | Episode 3

“The Richmond Rovers and Grey Lynn park go hand in hand. It wouldn’t feel the same anywhere else.”

Grey Lynn’s last kava club | STILL HERE S2 | Episode 4

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Still Here Season 2

STILL HERE Season 2 season follows Aotearoa’s first multi-generational kava club, a predominantly Polynesian rugby league club that's been around for more than 100 years, a small community fighting to keep the Niuean language alive, and the challenge to keep the first Samoan fale built for Samoan people in the hands of Samoans. This series exists as a cultural taonga for generations that have been before us and those that are yet to come.

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