避風港 | Tangata Tiriti, Tangata o te Kaipuke | People of the Treaty, People of the Ventnor

Be(com)ing Chinese Tangata Tiriti, converging narratives, and the on-going SS Ventnor story

Livestream: 3:00 to 5:00 pm Saturday, 22 March 2025

Presenters include: JieYing Cai, Etienne Wain, Lincoln Dam, Eda Tang, Nathan Joe

Community Research is pleased to support the livestream of 避風港 | Tangata Tiriti, Tangata o te Kaipuke | People of the Treaty, People of the Ventnor, Freeman’s Bay Community Hall, Tāmaki Makarau on Saturday 22 March. The event starts at 2pm with Powhiri and introductory talks, followed by the Artists Talk (3pm) and the Reflections panel (3.30pm). Our livestream starts at 3pm.

The Artists Talk by JieYing Cai who has recently curated the exhibition 雙土海葬 DOUBLE BURIAL, explores the unique relationship between Māori and Chinese through shared rituals around death, burial and afterlife. This exhibition ran from 2-28 February at the Shutter Room Gallery in Whangārei. JieYing will be telling us more about this exhibition and the artworks presented.

The Panel kōrero presents reflections about the exhibition, be(com)ing Chinese Tangata Tiriti, whanaungatanga, shared history, and the poignant intergenerational legacy of the SS Ventnor. This session will be moderated by award-winning playwright and performance poet, Nathan Joe, and features young Chinese New Zealander academics and creatives: Etienne Wain, Dr Lincoln Dam, Eda Tang.

For those of you who can, we encourage you to attend in person. Tickets to attend are available here. However, if you are unable to physically attend, you can connect via our livestream link. We will also record this event to share afterwards.

Please register to receive a reminder with the Livestream link and to receive notice when the post-event recording is available.

Context

The SS Ventnor was chartered by the Chinese New Zealand community in 1902 to return those who had died in New Zealand to their families in China. The ship had only just left Wellington when it struck a reef off the Taranaki. On 26 October 1902 it sank off the coast of the Hokianga. Thirteen crew and passengers died and the remains of 499 men were lost.

Over the following months, some of these remains (kōiwi) floated to shore where they were cared for by the different iwi who lived along the coast. It was not until 2007 that Chinese descendants became aware that their ancestral bones had been cared for. Since then, Chinese and Māori descendants have built strong relationships at a people-to-people level and between the New Zealand Chinese Association, Te Roroa Whatu Ora and Manawhenua Trust Board, Mātihetihe Marae Committee (Te Rarawa) and Te Hua o te Kawariki Trust.

In 2024 the New Zealand Chinese Association led a group of young Chinese New Zealanders to the Hokianga and to Waitangi celebrations to pay respects, learn, strengthen identity and build relationships. The haerenga (journey) was called Pāruru or place of shelter, in recognition of what was gifted to the Ventnor ancestors. This panel discussion and the preceding exhibition is a result of that haerenga and the discussions and connections made during that journey.

Presenters

蔡杰盈 JieYing Cai  is a Chinese-born artist with ancestors from Jiangxi, Ganzhou. They are a multimedia artist who works with photography and textiles. Their practice explores identity, custom and tradition. A recent artist residency in Hokianga guided them to their most recent work, 雙土海葬 DOUBLE BURIAL. JieYing was an attendee of Pāruru 2024 and is currently studying Pūtaketanga o te reo at Te Wānanga o Aotearoa.

周润豪 Nathan Joe  is an award-winning playwright and performance poet based in Tāmaki Makaurau. He was the recipient of the 2021 Bruce Mason Playwriting Award and the 2020 National Poetry Slam Champion. His best known work, Scenes from a Yellow Peril, premiered at the ASB Waterfront Theatre in 2022. Most recently, he presented A Short History of Asian New Zealand Theatre, which blended theatre history with performance essay.

黃義天 Etienne Wain  is Peranakan Malaysian-Chinese (Hakka, Hokkien, Hainanese) and Pākehā. Etienne is a final-year Law PhD candidate at Te Herenga Waka - Victoria University of Wellington, writing about what it means to be Tangata Tiriti. Their research includes a case study on Chinese Tangata Tiriti, focused around the story of the SS Ventnor. They also express themselves through poetry, music and embroidery, including work featured in 雙土海葬 DOUBLE BURIAL.

Dr Lincoln Dam is a lecturer in Te Kura Mātauranga, the School of Education, at Auckland University of Technology (AUT). His work explores Asian-Māori and Asian-Te Tiriti relations, biculturalism and multiculturalism in Aotearoa-New Zealand, and multicultural education. Lincoln was born in Aotearoa-New Zealand to a Thai-Chinese mother and a Chinese-Cambodian-refugee father.

唐子遥 Eda Tang is a second-generation Chinese New Zealander descending from Guangzhou, China. She is a writer and journalist whose work has featured in Stuff, Ensemble, The Spinoff and The D*List. Passionate about language revitalisation, she is a student and teacher of te reo Māori and is recording bilingual oral histories from Cantonese elders across Aotearoa.