Jemaima Tiatia-Seath
Taga, Salelologa, Vaimoso
Jemaima Tiatia-Seath is the Co-Head of School, Te Wānanga o Waipapa, School of Māori Studies and Pacific Studies, Waipapa Taumata Rau, University of Auckland. She is of Sāmoan heritage and has a public/population health background. She was one of six panelists on the New Zealand Government’s 2018 Mental Health and Addiction Inquiry and is currently a Board Member of the inaugural Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission. Her expertise lies in Pacific Studies, Pacific health, mental health and wellbeing, suicide prevention and postvention, inequities, climate change, and youth development. She has held various governance positions, including as a current member of the Health Research Council of New Zealand’s Public Health Committee, and as a previous member of the Mental Health Foundation’s Suicide Bereavement Service Advisory Group, the Health Promotions Agency’s National Depression Initiative Advisory Group, and the Health Quality & Safety Commission’s Suicide Mortality Review Committee.
Government sanctioned racism: The impact and legacy of the dawn raids
"Pacific people were welcomed to Aotearoa in the 1950s and 1960s to relieve a huge labour shortage. With rising unemployment in the 1970s and 1980s in a government turnaround they were targeted by a crackdown on Pacific overstayers called the dawn raids.
These operations involved police squads conducting raids on the homes and workplaces throughout Aotearoa usually at dawn. Overstayers and their families were often prosecuted and then deported. Although Pacific Islanders only made up one-third of all overstayers, they accounted for 86% of those arrested and prosecuted. The majority of overstayers were from Great Britain, South Africa and the United States. "
