The Grey Lynn home where Niuean culture thrives | STILL HERE S2 | Episode 1
“When you think about the fact that less than 11 percent of us can actually speak (Vagahau Niue), it’s terrifying, it really is.”
The Fineone Hakupu community house has proudly sat at the top of Ariki St, Grey Lynn, for over 50 years, a pillar of the Central Auckland Niuean population. The house serves as space for generations of Hakupu members to meet, sing, celebrate and practise their culture.
In this episode of STILL HERE we met Leki Jackson-Bourke (28, Niuean, Samoan, Tongan), a multidisciplinary creative and teacher at Marcellin College fighting alongside his family and community to revitalise the endangered Niuean language and culture.
“When we come to this house [Ariki Street], it’s like the whispers of our ancestors are in the walls,” says Leki.
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.
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