Intro to the 267

Words by Luisa-Tafu Leiataua Tuiloma Tauri-Tei | She/Her

Here, they don’t call you by your name. Here, we have titles. Sole, uce, doxx (specifically with two x’s), usi (for that one friend) and uso. Here, we see faces in FA$IN8 tagged on the back of 1B5 history notebooks. Handprints in dried concrete. Picked picket fences show the aftermath of milk and honey pipedreams.

Here in South Auckland, we hold shared-lunches everyday and remember the times we used to make a playground out of big green electricity boxes. We break bread ten times over in hopes to feed thousands. Sometimes though, our hopes aren’t enough—not all of us get to eat.

Clutching for our seatbelts that are already there every time we pass a police car. “My uso got arrested” for the same thing our white counterparts in the North Shore get let off on. Headlines don’t give our people any room for mistakes. They paint us as aggressive thugs and criminals, fill our streets with cop cars, and raid through the rights we don’t even know we have. Police Ten 7 never looked so much like my brothers as I watched from our state-owned living room. Yet, we go back to the dinner table, and say “fa’afetai Iesu”. Like I said, not all of us get to eat, so when we do we are grateful.

Clendon library had this couch, it was shaped like a flower with a hole in the middle. Most days after school, I would sit inside the hole and read Chicken Soup for the Soul. There was a day when I stopped reading at the library and started ashing cigarettes by the skate park instead. I was 12. A day came when I couldn’t break my hopes and dreams into pieces to share anymore because I barely had enough for myself. A day where I stopped saying “fa’afetai Iesu” and started asking “why us?”. A day where I got sick of holding onto memories of being blissfully ignorant about my sister coming home from being rushed. CYFS knocking on our front and back door. Friends who never even got to 18. A nana picking and packing fruit for less than minimum wage at age 75.

“You’re so strong.”

Is what the government tells us when we plead for reparations, like a shitty high school counsellor. We shouldn’t have to be so strong. There comes a time when our people falter under the pressure of living in a white system. Our brown boys desperately seek some sort of community. So they rep their colours, live by their area codes, and die by the hands of boys who look like them. Teachers used to— and still do—tell us that we will never be worth something, that we will never get anywhere. I’ve come to realise that if kids don’t feel seen at home, don’t feel understood in school, they try to find solace in the streets. The same streets that track a liquor store on every major street corner. The same streets that cops roam at night looking for suspicious brown kids who fit the description of their assigned criminal, only to pull out their guns on innocent boys buying a drink at the dairy. How many of us have to be crushed by the weight of systemic injustice before everyone sees us as children again?

When I was a kid, my brother sketched out the Mona Lisa freehand and I was so (silently) proud of how talented he was. I would brag to other kids that “my brothers are way better than your brothers” and then we would all proceed to lie about our brothers until someone lied too much. “Yeah well my brother’s The Rock”. Like, ok Fred stop lying, we all know your brother’s name is Tevita.

My uso, their usos...it didn’t really matter who was better. We were just trying to get everyone to see what we saw. Sarah’s brother who goes to St Kents gets weekly art lessons, his mum pays for his art supplies and supports his endeavours to pursue something he was only slightly interested in. Mine hid the fact that he could draw because he thought drawing was never something that could’ve put food on the table. His teachers said all he does is doodle in class when he should be focusing on academics… and we could never really afford an art set or supplies anyways. We too, have hopes and dreams like everyone else, and yet, we have to fight harder for ours or face an unfair reality. A reality where, because not all of us eat… we don’t get to play with our food.

I am the first child in my family to study at university. I have eight siblings. I can’t afford to fail a class or have long periods of being depressed after a tragic bender at Boston. I have the opportunity to challenge systems and be anti/pro/activist/changemaker/politicallyaware/whatever the hell I want to be. Something not all of us are privileged with. I have the opportunity to make sure my family is fed for generations to come, that their hopes aren’t snuffed out by a messy reality, and that their innocence isn’t killed by the need to survive.

For my uso’s; Manu, Leilani, Junior. Rangi, Vain, Kimmy, Tiana, Awanui. For my uso’s on the Southside of my heart. For Nan. A day will come when we break bread enough to go around, the big green boxes will hold weekly talent shows, our hand prints will still be there in concrete to high five us on our walks home, liquor stores will be cancelled and replaced with keke pua’a shops, I will finally finish all of Chicken Soup for the Soul and we will eventually be able to find peace at the dinner table and say—

Amene.