The Whakaako Kia Whakaora / Educate to Liberate mural project honours the historical presence of the Polynesian Panthers in Tāmaki Makaurau, the connection to the Black Panther Party and a visual representation of some of the social justice issues both organisations fought for at that time, and still fight for today.

The Panther Mural Project includes artists Huriana Kopeke-Te Aho, Numa McKenzie, Toa Sieke Taihia in collaboration with Emory Douglas, Tigilau Ness and Chris McBride.

The Mural Project was inspired by Ness and McBride’s travel to the Black Panther Party 50th Anniversary celebrations in Oakland Ca. in 2016. The politically charged cultural and artistic landscape across Oakland and San Francisco created the seed to bring our stories alive with inspirational messaging, recognising past and future hopes and well-being in Auckland. The Mural will generate positive inspiration and hope for future generations to realise better outcomes for all.

The production of the mural design and the liberationlibrary.nz website has been supported by an arts grant from Creative New Zealand.

Fakaalofa lahi atu to Extended Whānau, Tyrone Ohia and Dexter Edwards.

Black Panther Party members rally in 1968

I have no doubt that the revolution will triumph. The people of the world will prevail, seize power, seize the means of production, wipe out racism, capitalism.

Huey P. Newton (1973)

Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale founded the Black Panther Party for Self Defense in Oakland, California. Newton and Seale met at Merritt College and founded their group in October 1966.

1966

Watch Black Panthers (1968), a short film by Agnes Varda Source

Protest for Civil Rights, photograph by Flip Schulke Source

The group set its political goals in a document entitled the Ten-Point Program, calling for better housing, jobs and education for African Americans alongside a call for an end to economic exploitation, an improvement of life in Black communities and an end to police brutality.

The fifth point of the draft of the Black Panther Party’s original 10 Point Program, written in 1966 by Bobby Seale and Huey Newton (and handwritten by Seale), titled “What We Believe.” Source

Ericka Huggins in California in 1971. Source

Love is an expression of power. We can use it to transform our world.

Ericka Huggins

In the 1970s, Newton aimed to take the Panthers in a new direction emphasising democratic socialism, community interconnectedness and services for the poor including free lunch programs and health care.

  • Panther Profiles
  • Huey P. Newton

    Co-founder of The Black Panther Party

    “The revolution has always been in the hands of the young. The young always inherit the revolution.”

    Huey P.Newton was a revolutionary activist best known for founding the militant Black Panther Party with Bobby Seale in 1966. He was died on August 22, 1989, in Oakland, California, after being shot on the street.

    Huey Percy Newton was born on February 17, 1942, in Monroe, Louisiana. Newton helped establish the African American political organization the Black Panther Party, and became a leading figure in the Black Power movement of the 1960s.

    An Interview with Huey P. Newton (1968)

  • Bobby Seale

    Co-founder of The Black Panther Party

    “You don’t fight racism with racism, the best way to fight racism is with solidarity.” Bobby Seale is a political activist and was co-founder and national chairman of the Black Panther Party.

    As cofounder and Chairman of the Black Panther Party, Bobby Seale was an important leader of the Black Power movement. Born in Texas, Seale joined thousands of African Americans when his family migrated to Oakland, California during World War II.

    Inspired by Malcolm X, independence movements in Africa, and anti-colonialist intellectuals such as Frantz Fanon, he founded with [Huey P.] Newton in 1966 the Black Panther Party for Self Defense.

    While working at a War on Poverty program, he and Newton wrote a ten-point program that outlined the outlook and goals of the BPP.

    Source

    Black History Speaks: Black Panther Veterans: Bobby Seale

  • Emory Douglas

    Revolutionary Artist & Minister of Culture, Black Panther Party

    Emory Douglas was a member of the Oakland and San Francisco chapters of the Black Panther Party. He was the revolutionary Artist and Minister of Culture for the Party and oversaw art direction and production of The Black Panther, the official newspaper from 1967 to 1980.

    Emory Douglas was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan in 1943. His family moved to Oakland when he was eight due for health reasons and a better climate. After some trouble with the law Emory spent 15 months at the Youth Training School in Ontario, California working in the print shop. This provided the basic training in typography, illustration and logo design. Later he enrolled at City College of San Francisco and it was there he began to explore the combination of art and message.

    In March 1967, when Douglas met Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale, founders of the newly formed Black Panther Party. “After that meeting, I told them I was interested in joining the party. I began catching the bus to Oakland, hanging out with Huey and Bobby and going on patrols with them,” says Douglas.

    At civil rights activist Eldridge Cleaver's apartment, where Seale was working on the inaugural issue of The Black Panther, Douglas offered his design skills. He realized The Black Panther needed potent images to cut through the high illiteracy rates in poor communities.

    Source

    Emory Douglas: The Art of The Black Panthers

  • Ericka Huggins

    Human rights activist, poet, educator, Black Panther Party leader and former political prisoner

    "On developing a description for the Black Panther Party, Ericka Huggins says. “We know the party we were in and not the entire thing. We were making history, and it wasn’t nice and clean. It wasn’t easy. It was complex.

    As an activist, former political prisoner & leader in the Black Panther Party, educator & student I’ve devoted my life to the equitable treatment of all human beings—beyond the boundaries of race, age, culture, class, gender, sexual orientation, ability and status associated with citizenship.

    I spent 14 years in the Black Panther Party—the highlight being my eight years as Director of the renowned Oakland Community School from 1973-1981. During that time I became both the first Black person & the first woman appointed to the Alameda Co. Board of Education."

    – Extract from Ericka Huggins' Bio

    Ericka Huggins oral history interview, 2016

  • Elaine Brown

    Minister of Information & Chair (1974–77), Black Panther Party

    In 1974, Elaine Brown became chair of the Black Panther Party. She was also Minister of information. Elaine grew up in the ghettos of North Philadelphia and now lives in Oakland. Elaine is also a musician and recorded two albums. She is CEO of a non-profit Oakland & the World enterprises dedicated to not-for-profit cooperative businesses set up by formerly incarcerated people and others facing barriers to economic survival.
    – Sourced from Elaine Brown's website

    While leading the Party she contributed to the campaign of Lionel Wilson, who became Oakland’s first black mayor. She also worked to establish the Black Panther Party’s Liberation School. However after the return of Huey P. Newton, Elaine Brown stepped down from leadership and the Black Panther Party due to concerns regarding sexism and ensuing violence.

    Presently, Brown lectures at colleges and universities, as well as at numerous conferences, while still maintaining her efforts as an activist.
    – Sourced from archives.gov

  • M Gayle Dickson

    Graphic Artist, Black Panther Party

    M. Gayle Dickson, also known as Asali, was the only woman graphic artist for the Black Panther Party Newspaper between 1972 and 1974. Dickson was born in Berkeley, California on June 27, 1948.

    In 1966, she graduated from Fremont High School and attended Laney Community College where she studied painting. A year later, she transferred to Merritt College, a hub for black student political protest, and learned about African cultural heritage through African masks. While there, she also joined the Black Student Union and engaged in a protest against police brutality at the Housewives Market in downtown Oakland after police assassinated Bobby Hutton.

    Her images [for the Black Panther newspaper] often focused on women and children to critique capitalism and urban poverty.

    – Sourced from blackpast.org

    M Gayle Asali Dickson, Black Panther Party Graphic Artist

  • Mama Charlotte Hill O'Neal & Pete O'Neal

    Black Panther Party, Kansas City Chapter

    Charlotte Hill O’Neal, aka Mama C, was a member of the Kansas City chapter of the Black Panther Party before she went into exile with her husband Pete O’Neal in Tanzania. Together, the two have worked in community development and founded the United African Alliance Community Center. She is a visual and spoken word artist, musician, longtime community activist and performs her music and poetry at events in Arusha and tours the globe.
    – Source

    “On January 30, 1969, O’Neal, then 29, announced the formation of a Black Panther chapter for Kansas City right in the hallway on the fifth floor of Kansas City police headquarters. With over 30 supporters looking on, and some police officers, he read a list of demands, which included an immediate end to police brutality and the murder of black people. Several confrontations with the police and arrests of Panther members ensued in the following year.”
    Source

    The Story of a Black Panther – an interview with Mama C.

    A Panther in Africa

  • Billy X

    Veteran member and archivist, Black Panther Party

    Black Panther Party (BPP) veteran member, activist, educator and archivist Billy X Jennings acted as the personal aid to BPP leaders Huey Newton and David Hilliard. In this interview, Jennings discusses the legacy of the Party within the US and outside it, the role of education in revolutionary practice, his experiences alongside Newton and other Panthers, and lessons for the current uprisings in the United States and the world.

    Archivist Billy X speaks about the BPP archive

  • Angola 3

    Members, Black Panther Party

    Albert Woodfox, Robert King and Herman Wallace were known as the Angola 3. They spent a combined total of 114 years in solitary confinement for crimes they did not commit. Their real “crime” was being black in the U.S. and organizing the only prison chapter of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. Most of their time was spent in the Louisiana State Penitentiary, which is located on a former slave plantation known as Angola.

    Robert King was released in 2001 after 29 years in solitary, Herman Wallace was released after 42 years on October 1, 2013 and he died of cancer three days later, and Albert Woodfox saw freedom in February 2016 after almost 44 years in a six-by-nine cell for 23 hours a day.

    Since their release, both Albert Woodfox and Robert King have authored critically acclaimed autobiographies and they continue to fight for reforms in the criminal justice system.”
    Source

    Heroes: A conversation with Albert Woodfox and Robert King
    After 40 years in solitary, activist Albert Woodfox tells his story of survival, 2019
    Emory Douglas - The Angola 3, the Prison-Industrial Complex, and Abolishing Solitary Confinement

  • Bobby Hutton

    First Recruit & Treasurer, Black Panther Party

    Robert James Hutton, also known as Bobby or Lil’ Bobby, was the first recruit to join the Black Panther Party (BPP) at just 16 years old. He became the first treasurer. In 1967 Bobby Hutton led 26 Black panthers on a march on the State Capitol in Sacromento to protest new gun laws – all were arrested. Bobby Hutton was killed by police during a shootout in Oakland on April 6, 1968. Police ambushed a car occupied by BPP members. The shootout lasted for an hour and a half. Bobby Hutton was shot more than 12 times after he had already surrendered and stripped down to his underwear to prove he was not armed.

    Bobby Hutton (1950-1968)

We worked hard to put an end to police brutality leading up to and including the Dawn Raids — and to overcome the racist policies which we saw as hindering fair access to quality education, health, and housing.

Dr Melani Anae

The Polynesian Panthers were formed in Auckland in June 1971, molded in the shape of the Black Panthers. They formed in response to the marginalisation and discrimination experienced by the Pacific community. They began by organising homework centres, tenancy support groups and community shows, to build a reputation of respectability.

The Polynesian Panthers adapted the Ten-Point Program of the Black Panthers. The PPP also created a Legal Aid handbook for young polynesian poeple.

"The ensuing seven-point platform was finalised in 1972. It demanded basic human rights such as self-determination, decent housing, full employment, education that included Pacific history in New Zealand, and an end to police brutality."
– The Platform: The Radical Legacy of the Polynesian Panthers by Melani Anae (view book)

Ngā Tamatoa and Polynesian Panthers march against the Vietnam war (1972) Source

[The Polynesian Panther Movement] enthusiastically adopted the Black Panthers’ Ten-Point Programme of freedom, equality and social justice so as to teach Pasifika families how ‘to survive in the system'. The Panthers were especially concerned with both dividing lines among Pasifika peoples of various islands as well as between Māori and Pasifika. Blackness as a Polynesian identity was the solution to colonial divide and rule.

The Black Pacific

The Panther legacy continues in the Panthers Rap in schools programme which began in the early 2000s. In recent years this has led to a new three-point platform:

• To annihilate all forms of racism (peaceful resistance against racism)
• Celebrate mana Pasifika (Pacific empowerment)
• Educate to liberate (A liberating education)

Poor housing conditions in Ponsonby (1980’s)

The Dawn Raids targeted the Polynesian community, footage from Dawn Raids (2005)

The Dawn Raids of 1976 targeted Tangata Pasifika families. Immigration from the Islands had initially been welcomed in the past as an answer to the need for cheap labour. However, a worsening economic climate compelled the government to massage racist rhetoric in order to provide an easy scapegoat: the Islander overstayer.
Surviving Racism and Colonialism

  • Panther Profiles
  • Tigilau Ness

    Minister of Culture and Minister of Fine Arts, Polynesian Panthers

    Tigilau Ness, is a first generation New Zealand born Niue activist and reggae artist. At 17, Tigilau joined the Polynesian Panthers and was the Minister of Culture and Minister of Fine Arts. He was active in the protest movement taking part in the land protest at Takaparawhau/Bastion point and the Anti-tour protests in 1981 against the South African Springbok Rugby tour. He was arrested as a protest leader and incarcerated at Mt Eden Prison for 12 months. He was released on good behaviour after nine months.

    Tigi embraced the Rastafarian faith after the 1979 tour of Bob Marley and the Wailers and in the same year, the tour of Keskidee Aroha which included a Rasta band – Ras Messengers.

    Tigilau helped to set up the 12 Tribes of Israel and was a member of the 12 Tribes band. Previously, he was a member of a band called Unity. In 2002, he created Unity Pacific and recorded their debut album, From Street to Sky in 2003. Into the Dread followed in 2007 and Blackbirder Dread was released in 2016.

    In May 2009, Ness was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the fifth Pacific Music Awards in Auckland, New Zealand in recognition of more than 30 years in the music industry
    Tigilau Ness continues to deliver his message of unity among Pacific peoples, but he does so peacefully through song. From Street to Sky delivers a fascinating history lesson as well as an inspiring story of one man‘s difficult journey towards a state of grace.

    From Street To Sky – a biography of Tigilau Ness

  • Dr. Melani Anae

    Member, Polynesian Panthers & Writer

    Misatauveve Dr Melani Anae joined the Polynesian Panthers in 1971. It was a cold winter’s night when Melani Anae snuck out of home and headed for Keppell Street, Grey Lynn, where a group of teenagers were gathering to, in their words, start a revolution. “We couldn’t tell our parents, ‘oh we’re just going down the road for a Panther meeting’ with these ex-gang guys,” recalled Anae. “Especially for us girls who were just starting university and were good church girls.” But they were all at the house with a purpose: to push back against racism and to form the group that would become known as the Polynesian Panthers. “We knew this was different,” Anae said.
    “We heard the leaders speak, we heard the platform and we were inspired to be part of that.”’ – from RNZ eyewitness interview, 2019

    Huia Books interview

  • Rev. Alec Toleafoa

    Member, Polynesian Panthers & Writer

    Nearly 50 years since the Polynesian Panthers formed in Auckland, their legacy lives on through young activists and students today. United against racist policies and mistreatment of Pasifika, original Panthers members like Dr Melani Anae and Alec Toleafoa speak at schools and universities as part of an ongoing education programme called Panthers Rap.

    Polynesian Panthers make history relevant

  • Will Ilolahia

    Co-founder, Polynesian Panthers

    Molded in the shape of the Black Panthers, the Polynesian Panthers was formed in Auckland in June 1971. One of its co-founders was Will ilolahia, who had been inspired by the works of Bobby Seale, Malcolm X and other US civil rights leaders. “When we looked at their ten-point platform, it was relevant to us,” he said. “Barring the (carrying of) arms, everything else that we saw and experienced actually was to the point,” said ‘Ilolahia. “Legal rights, education … housing. We just translated it to be relevant to our times here, and that’s how we started up."
    – extract from RNZ Eyewitness

    Pacific Media Watch Polynesian Panther co-founder Will 'Ilolahia discusses the similarities between the 1970s struggle against racism in New Zealand and the #BlackLivesMatter movement in the United States. July 2020

  • Lautofa Ta Iuli

    Minister of Information, Polynesian Panthers

    "We had nothing but ourselves, our camaraderie and our solidarity, when we founded the Polynesian Panthers," wrote Iuli to 'Ilolahia last week. "For us the most important mission was to galvanise and unite all the Polynesian youth; Maori, Tongan, Samoan, Rarotongan, Niuean, Tokelauan, Fijian and our sympathisers under one voice. We desperately needed to speak out, to challenge where our elders and leaders had tried to remain silent.

    New Zealand was still in the colonial dark ages as far as social conscience was concerned and most New Zealanders were in self-denial when racial discrimination against 'boongas' and the natives was ever mentioned.

    Source

  • Miriama Rauhihi

    Social Worker, Polynesian Panthers

    Miriama Rauhihi (Ngāti Raukawa) moved to Auckland from Palmerston North in the late 60s. She joined the Polynesian Panthers in the early 1970s and as the Minister of Culture. Miriama was the first paid community social worker for the Polynesian Panthers. She was approached by Ngā Tamatoa an activist organization promoting land rights, social justice and racial discrimination, but joined the Panthers instead. She travelled to China with a Māori delegation including Hone Tuwhare and Tame Iti in 1973. Miriama was actively involved in the 1975 Māori Land March, the land rights occupation at Takaparawhau/Bastion Point and the 1981 Springbok Tour protests. She has continued to advocate for justice, land rights and has been involved with the PPP Panther Raps providing education in schools.

    – Source

  • Tu’ulenana Iuli

    Member, Polynesian Panthers

    Tu’ulenana Iuli is a New Zealand-born Samoan. His parents emigrated from Samoa to New Zealand and he was born and raised in Auckland. Tu’ulenana joined the Panthers in 1975 when he was living at the headquarters in Redmond St Ponsonby. He attended PIG patrol and set about educating other Polynesians about their rights, attended Indigenous land rights campaigns, creating employment opportunities through the Ponsonby Labour Co-operative.
    Tu’ulenana became involved in the anti-apartheid movement in 1981. Four months of protest led to two years of court proceedings, 12 months periodic detention and eventually four months jail for breaches. He was also involved in anti-nuclear campaigns.
    Tu’ulenana Iuli has worked in Maori Mental Health Services at whare paia and after moving to Australia, he worked in Indigenous mental health at the Koori Unit in Melbourne. He continues to support land rights, cultural, language and sovereignty issues for Indigenous nations in Australia. After attending the Black Panther Party 50th Anniversary in Oakland Ca, in 2016, he arranged with members of the American Indian Movement to travel to Standing Rock Reservation, Oceti Sakowin Camp in North Dakota and worked there to protect Native lands and Waters from DAPL Oil pipe line for two weeks. Tu’ulenana Iuli says this “was the making of me and I felt a reciprocal response to Native American people who have supported Aotearoa in their Indigenous resistance to colonialism."

    https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/world/2016/11/new-zealander-honoured-to-perform-haka-at-standing-rock.html
    https://www.bellingencourier.com.au/story/4329772/tus-north-dakota-journey-what-it-means-for-the-bellingen-shire/

  • Fa’afete Taito

    Member, Polynesian Panthers

    In the 1950s Fa’afete Taito’s parents moved from Samoa to New Zealand in the hope they could provide a good life and education for their children, enough to be able to send money to family back in Samoa.

    Along with three older sisters and one younger, they were raised by their parents, who were very involved with the Church, attending every Sunday and helping out afterwards. He had a loving Mum and was always close with her.

    But his father, like many Samoan men of his generation, struggled with the broader cultural forces at play and the challenges of trying to raise his family in New Zealand society while maintaining Samoan values. He experienced strict discipline at home when he was younger.
    “I look back and see the state gifted me the gang lifestyle. In between custody, I was spending a lot of time on the streets with other kids who were in similar situations to me,” he says. “We would find abandoned houses to stay in until the Police J-team came after us. For a while we crashed at a house in Ponsonby which was next door to the Polynesian Panthers. So I got involved with them, delivering pamphlets.”

    Fa’afete met many good leaders at the Panthers. But life was still a struggle. In 1978, Fa’afete joined the King Cobras eventually leaving in 1991 but the struggle with crime and drugs continued until 2010. He then applied for a bridging course at the University of Auckland. It was the beginning of a new academic career. He has now completed a Bachelor of Arts at the University of Auckland with a double major in Sociology and Māori.

    He has remained a close friend of former Polynesian panthers and a strong advocate for those in struggle.

    Source, Source 2

  • Mere Meanata-Montgomery

    Member, Polynesian Panthers

    In the 1970s Mrs Montgomery became involved with the New Zealand Polynesian Panthers, a group which sought to emulate the work done in the social justice area by its American counterpart.

    When the group started in Auckland, Mrs Montgomery, who now works for a Government social work agency, was still in high school, but was acutely aware of the social injustice which faced many Pacific Island immigrants to New Zealand.

    The group set up homework centres to help disadvantaged youth from, what were at the time, the poor suburbs of Grey Lynn and Ponsonby. It accessed legal aid, before legal aid was officially set up, took elderly women to visit family and visited prisoners at Mt Eden and Paremoremo.

    In 1973 Mrs Montgomery moved to Dunedin to study law and started the Dunedin Polynesian Panthers, becoming distracted from her degree with the pull towards social justice.

    – Source

  • Albert Wendt

    Writer & Supporter

    “Our art is our attempt to understand who and what we are, and the marvellous cultures, histories and situations we have come out of.”
    For many of us, our rejection of colonialism, racism and sexism, and our refusal to be colonised, Pākehā-fied and reject our ways of being, believing and dreaming is at the heart of the art that we do. Our art is our attempt to understand who and what we are, and the marvellous cultures, histories and situations we have come out of. Our art is the search for that and to map and shape the present. All artists everywhere are influenced throughout their lives by everything around them. And our artists, because they have grown up in a society and national culture and tertiary educational institutions that are largely Pākehā are conversant with Western art and practices and have indigenised those in their work and, over the last 50 or so years, have produced art that we can call Pasefika, a fusion that is unique to Aotearoa.
    Arriving at this fusion has not been an easy or deliberate process. I want to illustrate that by talking about writing and literature because it is the form I know a little about. For me the Tāngata Māori Renaissance, which began to gain momentum after World War 2 and is now the most successful anti-colonial Indigenous arts movement in the world, was and still is the movement we have learned much from in our political and artistic struggle as a minority group in Aotearoa.

    – Source

  • David Lange

    Legal Adviser, Polynesian Panthers (1971–1976) & Prime Minister of New Zealand (1984–1989)

    Former Prime Minister of New Zealand, David Lange, was the PPP legal adviser from 1971 to 1976
    “The panthers provided some substance to the possibility that there was an alternative to endless court appearances."

    In co-operation with the Panthers we produced a set of notes (Legal Aid Book) to provide some guide to young people about dealing with the police and what their rights were … it was a statement of the law and it was very useful to some.

    – Extract from Polynesian Panthers, edited by Melani Anae with Lautofa (Ta) Iuli and Leilani Burgoyne. Reed Publishing 2006

    The formal politicisation of the Polynesian Panthers would concentrate direct action, which, again, had already begun with their involvement in the Tenants Aid Brigade, a group that had on occasion physically confronted exploitative landlords and their political supporters. Two direct action campaigns stand out, the “PIG Patrol” – familiar to scholars of the Black Panthers in San Francisco - and the “Dawn Raids”. With regards to the PIG Patrol, police would regularly descend upon bars that had a significantly Māori and Pasifika clientele and act extremely provocatively in order to engender a reaction that, no matter how small (for example, swearing), could facilitate an arrest. Many of the clientele did not know their legal rights, hence, the Panthers’ lawyer, David Lange (a future prime-minister), helped to produce a legal-rights document. In partnership with other activists as the Police Investigations Group (PIG) the Panthers would listen into Police frequencies, pre-emptively follow the police vans, and run into the targeted bars to warn the clientele of an impending official visit and to distribute the legal aid leaflets.

    Source

Black Panther Liberation School in Oakland, California 1968

It’s important to remember there was a time when we really fought as a people to make our communities as strong as possible, We assumed that we would have to do that ourselves. We weren’t going to wait for someone to come in and do it for us.

Ericka Huggins

Polynesian Panthers homework centres

The Polynesian Panthers focused their practical efforts on grassroots activities including: organizing prison visit programmes and sporting and debating teams for inmates, providing a halfway-house service for young men released from prison, running homework centres, offering interest-free ‘people’s loans’, legal aid, and organizing food banks that at one point catered for 600 families.

If we want to change things the best way to begin is to educate our children.

Ericka Huggins

Painted plywood sign advertising a free breakfast program organized by the Black Panther Party’s Illinois Chapter. Source

A variety of community social programs became a core activity of the Black Panther Party. In 1969, the party instituted the Free Breakfast for Children Programs to address food injustice, and community health clinics for education and treatment of diseases including sickle cell anemia, tuberculosis, and later HIV/AIDS

The Black Panther Newspaper 1971 Source

Two women with bags of food at the People’s Free Food Program, one of the Panther’s survival initiatives, Palo Alto, California, 1972.
Photograph by Stephen Shames Source

Homework centre set up in Ponsonby (1970’s) Source

Our art is our attempt to understand who and what we are, and the marvellous cultures, histories and situations we have come out of.

Albert Wendt

The Lumpen, the Black Panthers pioneering funk band

The Panthers understood pop culture's tremendous potential as a means to spread their revolutionary message and when Emory Douglas, the Panthers’ minister of culture, heard some of the members singing as they worked on the weekly distribution of the newspaper The Black Panther (which at its peak had a circulation of 400,000), he supported the creation of the vocal group known as The Lumpen.

The Black Panther was the official newspaper of the Black Panther Party. It began as a four-page newsletter in Oakland, California, in 1967, and was founded by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale. It was the main publication of the party and was soon sold in several large cities across the United States, as well as having an international readership.

The Black Panther Newspaper September 20 1969, cover by Emory Douglas Source

Art by Emory Douglas

Art by Emory Douglas

Art by Emory Douglas

Art by Emory Douglas

Art by Emory Douglas

Art by Emory Douglas

Art by Emory Douglas

Artists have a way of instantly communicating essence. Things are made clear, almost like a language, and so art is a powerful tool to communicate with the community.

Emory Douglas

It was done for a reason.. social justice brought by ignorance of man, of those who do not believe in human rights

Tommie Smith

On the victory stand
Tommie Smith (center) and John Carlos (right) raise a black-gloved fist during the playing of the US national anthem during the medal ceremony at the 1968 Mexico Olympics. In addition, Smith, Carlos, and Australian silver medalist Peter Norman (left) all wore human-rights badges on their jackets. Both Smith and Carlos were banned from the olympic village after 
this incident.

Source

200m final and medal ceremony
1968 Mexico Olympics Source

Harry Edwards with Lee Evans (left) and John Carlos (right) at San Jose State University Source

I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses Black people and people of color

Colin Kaepernick

Colin Kaepernick takes a knee during the American national anthem

The Patu Squad led by Miriama Rauhihi-Ness

The last official activity of the Polynesian Panthers was to participate in the Springbok protests in 1981. The Springbok Tour of 1981 inspired many New Zealanders to go to the streets in a series of protests aimed at stopping the rugby tour with an apartheid South Africa.

We do not fear you. We might shed blood on the road, we might show some bruises tonight, but at least we can sleep with a clear conscience [...] Many of you won’t.

Tama Poata, in a speech to police, featured in Patu!

The Patu Squad, from Patu! (1983)

Nelson Mandela visits New Zealand (1995) Source

You stood in the trenches with us and ensured that a crime against humanity was buried forever never to return

Nelson Mandela

 

Sinking of the Rainbow Warrior, 10 July 1985

The Pacific Islands are facing devastating impacts of climate change including increasing droughts and water scarcity, coastal flooding and erosion, changes in rainfall that affect ecosystems and food production, and adverse impacts to human health.

Anti Nuclear Protests 1977