Hifiulu and hukiteliga in Niue and Melbourne

Emma compares the ceremonies in Niue and Melbourne.

Emma: In Niue, it’s a little bit different because the family has to prepare two years in advance before the actual function because they have to decide where they gonna plant the taro for the function and then 10 months before the date, that’s when they clear their maala which is the plantation, they clear it and get the whole village or family to plant the taros.

The week before the ceremony, that’s when it’s like a whole village kind of thing and it’s a whole week of preparation just before the function on a Saturday. On a Monday the family will probably... or the village women will come together to start weaving baskets and the baskets are used to harvest the taros two days before the function. And then on the day, people will come early and start prepping all the required for the galue | gifted food.

But now, things have changed, because there’s freezers and things they can use, they start preparing about a month earlier, so it doesn’t take up so much time on the actual day before the occasion. They have really incorporated the white man’s magic into it to now. Because back in the day they build a shelf. So what they do is they hang all the pigs and the fish from there and that shows how big your occasion is. How many pigs you have, how many fish, how many boxes of corned beef, how many buckets of that salt meat, the povi masima.

But here in Melbourne it's different. You invite your guests—it's just like a normal birthday party over here. The only difference is, how the food is distributed… we still pretty much run the function how we do it back home, it’s just that when it comes down to the food, we don’t distribute food so everyone doesn’t have their own little parcel to take home. We just put out the one big table and everyone can share. But back home the amount of food you take back home with you depends on the amount of money you give.

Some families prepare early so they make all their iepili | Niuean quilt early. But for people like me, I always wait last minute and then try squeeze everything in last minute and so it all depends on the family here.

So there wasn’t much preparations for us, because everything, we bought it all. We paid some to cater it on the day. So it was quite an easy process in terms ... but we still have an umu | earth oven though, we still have our Niue traditional umu and we tried to make the actual ceremony more like how we have it at home. We had all the iepili up, and tie-dyes and we have our hiapo | tapa cloth on the floor. Our occasion is not as stressful as the one back at home.