In New Zealand, over time, government organisations and society have used different terms to refer to Pacific heritage peoples.
It was ‘Pacific Polynesians’ and ‘Pacific Islanders’ from the early 20th century through to the 1970s and the 1980s; ‘Pacific nations peoples’ towards the late 1990s, and ‘Pacific’ and ‘Pasifika’ (particularly with the Ministry of Education) from the late 1990s into the 21st century, until recent times (Samu, 2020).
Prior to the mid-1990s, the underlying assumption of such terms was that the group was homogenous, (Coxon, Mara, & Foliaki, 1994) and therefore could be responded to as one simplistic, unified block of sameness. Later in the 1990s, such umbrella terms acknowledged the diversity of languages, cultures, worldviews and histories within.
Recognition of more nuanced and contemporary expressions of being ‘Pacific’, related to being urban, and homegrown in Aotearoa New Zealand, also began to emerge ( Pasikale, 1999; Samu, 1998, 2015). The usage of such terms, at best, ‘encapsulates both unity and diversity’ (Airini et al., 2008, p. 47).
