EDITORIAL Samoa bill highlights untold history

• Published date: 16 April 2024
• Publication title: Northland Age, The

When Green Party MP Teanau Tuiono started promoting a member’s bill that could lead to the reversal of a decades-old law many regard as a historic wrong against Samoans, people expected it to fall at the first hurdle — the first reading in Parliament

Instead, in the two years that Tuiono has been busy promoting his bill — Restoring Citizenship Removed by Citizenship (Western Samoa) Act 1982 — many within the Samoan and Pacific communities have been inspired to learn about the past.

It has also prompted many non-Samoan Kiwis to look up this history — centred around a young Samoan woman’s determination to fight for her right to stay in New Zealand.

In the 1970s, Falema’i Lesā was among the scores of Pacific Islanders who moved to Aotearoa — considered the land of milk and honey — for better opportunities.

It was also the period of the infamous Dawn Raids: police officers raiding homes in the early hours of the morning to find and deport people who had overstayed their temporary visas.

Lesā was taken by police and ordered to be deported back to Samoa. But what authorities did not expect was her bid to stay — finding a lawyer and taking her case to court. She argued that she was, in fact, a New Zealand citizen by birth.

Lesā was born during a time when Samoa was under New Zealand administration. Before NZ citizenship was established on January 1, 1949, people living in New Zealand were not considered New Zealanders, but British subjects.

The young woman’s case made it to the Privy Council, who agreed with Lesā and in July 1982 ruled that she and all then...