With the unexpected death of Efeso Collins on 21 Feb 2024, the New Zealand Parliament lost a Pasifika-affirming body, voice, and heart, from its membership. Collins was an academic and politician. He looked out for the interests of Pasifika and Māori communities and, when he joined the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand, for ecological wellbeing. A comment by the new co-leader of the Green Party, Chlöe Swarbrick, rings in my native ears: “We know as the late great Efeso Collins put it, that: ‘No one stands alone, no one succeeds alone, and no one suffers alone’.”

Polyculturality

I did not know Collins - and may he rest in peace - but I have learned that he was born and raised at Otara to humble blue-collar parents whose roots go back to Samoa and Tokelau.

Collins’ words reflect the relational cultures from and with which he came. I italicise cultures because each one of us, in my opinion, is poly-cultural: each one of us belongs to, and has been conditioned by, many cultures. And from time to time, we embody and reflect those cultures in the ways that we think and do things.

Sometimes, our cultures conflict (themselves) and confuse (us). This is one of the big challenges for migrants (like me) and for our overseas born children (like Collins). We need to negotiate the cultures of our parents at our old home with the cultures in our new home, alongside our cultured neighbors.

I humbly say that it is the same for tangata whenua: they cannot avoid being poly-cultural given the many cultures that have come ashore to Aotearoa New Zealand. Being poly-cultural is our reality, for both manuhiri and tangata whenua, and it is challenging.

A longer talanoa is needed on how each culture, on their own, is already many and multiple. But at this point, my agenda is to suggest that realising that we are poly-cultural peoples helps us affirm the need to accommodate, and negotiate, when cultural matters conflict and confuse.

Solidarity

Collins’ words affirm the drive of my article in last month’s issue of Touchstone: that collaboration (compared to the PM’s appeal to ‘unity’) is what we need. Collaboration is about acting and working together, with our differences and confusions, and this is important because, as Collins put it, “No one stands alone.”

The assertions that we do not stand alone and that we need to collaborate echo a keyword of liberation theology – solidarity. In many relational cultures, solidarity is why things happen the way they do; in relational cultures, solidarity is expected and even taken for granted.

Collins was a politician but he, like most Pasifika people, grew up in a church setting. And for all of us, church cultures make up a big part of our polyculturality. But we do not tend to see churches as cultural institutions, and many of us resist negotiating church traditions.

Hushed Saturday

In the Christian Calendar, Good Friday and Easter Sunday are highlighted as climaxes in the relation between God and humans. Jesus died for the sins of the world on Good Friday and rose from death on Easter Sunday to give humans hope – that death is not the end. These two days testify that in God’s eyes, “No one stands alone.”

The Saturday in-between, however, is not often acknowledged. In some Christian circles it is called “Black Saturday,” an unkind designation that reflects and feeds the racialised mindset of Christian people. But considering Collins’s words, I ask: Did anyone suffer alone on that Saturday?

This question shifts the attention to the people around Jesus. On his final day of suffering, his disciples had fled but his mother was there with two other women. The “three Mary’s” were not alone on the Good Friday, but their suffering would have been immense. And what happened to them on the Hushed Saturday, before they went to the tomb on the Easter Sunday morning?

Other people were also at the crucifixion – the two crucified criminals, the high priests, scribes, elders, centurion, soldiers, passers-by, bystanders, and a crowd. A few of them would not have witnessed a crucifixion before, and they would have been traumatized. What happened to those few on the Hushed Saturday?

My questions invite us to un-hush the realities of the Saturday, and to see that there is more suffering in the story than just the suffering of Jesus. Maybe Collins is correct, that no one suffers alone. But many people are traumatized when they are alone.

Other-kinds

Talks about collaboration and solidarity tend to be about, and in the interests of, humans. I imagine that the “one” in Collins’ “No one” is a human person as well.

So, this is an opportunity to check our solidarity radar: how do we get to the point where we also stand together with “other-kinds” and not just with the “humankind”?

By “other-kinds” I am referring to animals and plants, as well as to land, sea, sky, and underworld – the subjects that should be significant in the Green Party that Collins joined. Do they stand alone? Do they succeed alone? Do they suffer alone?

Put differently: Who stands with other-kinds? Who succeeds at the expense of other-kinds? And who suffers because of the hushing of other-kinds?