ABSTRACT
Auckland's annual Pasifika Festival is an exuberant fusion of 'traditional' and contemporary Pacific 'island' music and dance performance, food and crafts. This chapter considers the contradictions between Pasifika Festival representations. It discusses that what roles the Pasifika Festival performs in such a context and how it is put to work by different groups to build a Pasifika identity and generate positive images of Pacific peoples and their contribution to the city. The chapter describes Pacific peoples in Aotearoa/New Zealand and the socio-political contexts that characterize their lifeworlds. Since most Pacific migrants had relatively little formal education, Pacific peoples have typically employed in low wage sectors, thus are socio-economically disadvantaged and concentrated in suburbs of state rental housing. The roles that music, dance and other performance play in the representation of 'Pacificness' are complex and the boundaries between traditional and contemporary forms are not always clear.
