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Journal of Undergraduate Research

Keywords

faith-based communities, Auckland, preserve language, cultural heritage, Pasifika immigrants

College

Fine Arts and Communications

Department

Communications

Abstract

Originally I had requested an ORCA Grant to aid in the creation of an ethnography documentary video on a qualitative research study of community-­level efforts to preserve languages and cultural heritage among Pasifika immigrants living in the Auckland, New Zealand Metro area. The younger generations of these communities do not speak their native languages with a high level of proficiency and many scholars have expressed concerns that these languages, and their accompanying cultures, are at a risk of eventually being lost. The Pasifika Education Center is an organization that has provided tertiary educational programs, helped sponsor language weeks, and offered community outreach services. With a group of twenty-­one students from Brigham Young University, I lived in Auckland for a month and a half. I conducted interviews with local families from the Samoan and Maori culture. Unfortunately, despite the interviews and filming that I had done on my own, I was unable to meet with any representative from Pasifika until my last week of the New Zealand Study Abroad. The President of Pasifika’s father passed away the first week of our journey. In accordance with Samoan customs, she left work for an entire month to mourn with her family in Samoa. Thus, I was unable to work with the Pasifika Education Center to create an ethnography documentary that they could use to help in their campaign against the government, who is trying to cut their funding.

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