June 30, 2016
Kanaky activist influenced Maori nationalists
There's a final farewell at Tapu te Ranga Marae in Wellington today for Kanaky activist Susanna Ounei, who died sudden last week.
Ms Ounei first came to New Zealand in 1984 to study English after the murder of Kanaky New Caledonia independence leader Eloi Machoro by police.
She became a familiar figure within the Maori sovereignty movement, as well as introducing Maori to wider Pacific independence and anti-nuclear activities.
After working in Fiji and New Caledonia in the 1990s, she returned with her children to Wellington in 2000 in voluntary exile to what was happening in her homeland.
Dr Teresia Teaiwa, the director of Victoria University's Va'aomanu Pasifika research centre, first encountered her as a post-graduate student.
"I was interested studying militarism in the Pacific and she said to me 'If you have never looked down the barrel of a gun, you don't know the real impact of militarism.' That shocked me but it also gave me a really good sense of the impact of militarism in our region," she says.
Dr Teaiwa says Susanna Ounei will be taken back to her family in Noumea tomorrow, and it's expected there will be a huge celebration there of her life and contribution to Kanaky.
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