‘It’s not too bad here in Tokelau after all’

Swimming with Sharks Chapter 12.1

Colonialism had done its dash by the time I started reporting in the Pacific. 

The French territories remain determinedly French but the British had mostly gone, stuck with the sexually perverse Pitcairn Islands. American Sāmoans were not interested in independence, or worse, joining their neighbour. 

In UN headquarters in New York the only Pacific blemish was Tokelau, occupied by around 1400 people under imperial New Zealand rule. 

Ambassadors of freedom loving nations Syria and Cuba demanded they be liberated and the desk-wallahs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Wellington blushed. 

It was deemed that at great cost the people of Tokelau would ‘make an act of self-determination’. The question put to them was somewhat vague but the sub-text was clear enough: the ministry was cleansing itself of the colonial stain that embarrassed it in New York. 

Landing at Atafu. Photo Michael Field

Tokelau’s Council of Elders, ‘the Grey-hairs’, decided that any referendum would need two thirds approval, and the 8000 Tokelauans living in New Zealand would have no say.