Matavera is on the eastern side of Rarotonga, where the reef comes in close to a stony shore. It's the village where my grandparents spent most of their lives and where my mothers stories of growing up take place. When I think about who I am and where I come from, it always seems to start here.

My grandmother (Ani) was a taunga, well known for her herb medicines and massage. She didn't speak English so I never got to know her in the way I'd like to. She was married three times and had eleven children, six of them to her second husband (my grandfather). Grandad was part of the pa (chiefly) family, so he had and worked a huge plantation. Mum said he spoilt them but he died of TB when she was a young girl.

Mum came to New Zealand when she was twelve. She later worked in the Wairarapa as a Nanny for a well-respected farming family the Mc Leods. Unlike other families who employed young Polynesian nannies and house help, they regarded mum as another daughter so we inherited another set of grandparents (Ruth and Gordon). When she was older, mum moved to Wellington, working at the George Hotel (a first class hotel then), where she met Dad. He was considered a bit of a "ladies man" but mum was quite gorgeous (and equally charming). Apparently, they'd go on romantic picnics around the Wellington waterfront, dining on crayfish and mangoes.

After they married, they moved to Christchurch. I was born a couple of years later and then my sisters Frances and Michelle. By this time, we'd moved next door to Dad's parents. Nana's (Ethel) family had emigrated from Denmark and had settled in Le Bons Bay on Banks Peninsula. Shed tell us stories about growing up and riding to dances in Akaora on horseback. Grandad had his own stories (most of them invented) and every now and then, hed sing to us in Norwegian.

As a kid growing up brown, in Anglo-Saxon Christchurch, I remember being told I wasn't a real Cook Islander. Even though I was probably the only Cook Islander this person knew, I found myself asking "What makes a real Cook Islander, how are Cook islanders different and how do I know if I'm different?" To express and explain his own sense of difference Dad always identified with his Norwegian heritage more than with being a Kiwi. Mum never seemed to have any problems concerning identity. She'd say, "What are you worried about? Just be proud, you know who you are, where you come from."

If there was a problem with being half-caste, part of it came from some less enlightened members of Dad's family. He put it down to jealousy (as in; some people know how to be happy and others don't like it). He welcomed their prejudice as reason to have little to do with them. Otherwise, I don't remember that much of my childhood. I was quite shy and often sick with pneumonia.
This meant that at church the other kids would go into Sunday school while I sat next to mum, listening to the imene tuki (traditional chant) and the services delivered in Cook Islands Maori, never understanding a word.

Mum never taught us maori, she thought we'd get confused. People only seemed to use it when they were gossiping and didn't want kids with big ears listening in, so rather then fight the flow I learnt to tune out.

What did help validate my sense of Cook Islandness however was the experience of extended family, family in general and dancing. We always had people arriving out of nowhere and staying, sometimes for months on end. Three of mum's brothers and a sister had moved here so we'd go in convoy on big family picnics, sometimes getting pulled up for overloading (too many kids in the car).

My Auntie taught us to dance when we were young and for a long time, we (my sisters and cousins) were the only Cook Island dance troupe in Christchurch. We didn't have live drumming and singing though, we had a tape player and records. Sometimes the record would stick, or it would start half way through the wrong track. The mood really dies and time slows right down when your standing half dressed in a cold hall, waiting for someone to fix the music or for uncle Tua to finish his introduction. Uncle's English wasn't the best and his love of public speaking only made it worse. "These ah my gewls. All Nusealun born." The New Zealand born thing always grated but mostly on my cousin who was born in Raro.

Other than relatives and church, brown faces in Christchurch were few and far between. It was only at intermediate that I realized there were actually lots of other brown kids out there, many of them angry, hurt, confused at not fitting in and becoming more sensitive to being confronted by obvious racism.
In the second form I was moved from my quiet predominantly white nurdy class into the worst behaved class in the school, (predominantly Polynesian). Chronic shyness soon vanished. Each day our teacher would stand at the front of the class and say, "anyone who wants to learn something come to the front." A handful of kids would walk forward and the rest of us would bounce out the door and wander the school, smoking and joking around. After the first term, he had a nervous breakdown and left. Our next teacher was much more on to it.

Becoming more socially confident, I learnt very quickly that there was a certain freedom and pleasure to be had in playing with peoples prejudice and expectations. At high school, I experimented with this idea by being cool and yet always doing well with my work. However, in trying to define who I was at that time, I was looking more towards boys and psychedelic experiences than my sense of cultural heritage and identity. Still, this gave me some valuable time out and a different perspective on life.

The first time I stepped out of the plane in Rarotonga, I was seventeen. It was 3am in the morning and as soon as the doors opened a rush of air, heavy with perfume and moisture clung to my skin. I felt everything fall into place.

There was a time when I thought 'home' might be in the islands but we are a home unto ourselves and as New Zealand born, we've been and still are, creating our own home here in Aotearoa.

My friend Ani says "when youre in Rarotonga the environment speaks to you." It's true, it speaks of your history and of yourself. Since that first trip, lifes been full of both wonderful and sad things: I've been married, had two children (Holly and Nina). I've traveled, studied at University, mourned the loss of my father, grandparents, friends, some of my uncles and cousins and now my marriage but I still find myself on this journey, getting more and more excited about my heritage: our arts and culture.

I love the way as a people we are so diverse, so different and yet so close. Bell Hooks states, "Without love, our effort to liberate ourselves and our world community from oppression and exploitation, are doomed." I believe it's this energy, the different ways we work together and the different ways we express our love and respect for each other that empowers us as Pacific people.

Part of this is about sharing our experience, our pleasures, pain, the things that challenge and nurture us, understanding that as we do, we journey, learn and grow as one.