Reciprocity and gifting

Emma explains the meaning of the gifts that the children receive.

Emma: You see how much your family appreciates you on days like that when they come with things because you just invite them. You don’t expect anything from your family, but when they turn up and they bring you all these gifts you just feel warm inside to know that, it shows how much your family appreciate—even your friends—appreciate you.

For those occasions, iepili | Niuean quilt is the main highlight of the day where there are so many different kinds of iepili being put up on display. When people come up to cut the piece of hair, they’ll ask the child to get up, and then they’ll start putting iepili on the chair. It starts piling up to that point where it looks like a throne and it’s quite high.

People come with money and you have a choice, you either put your money in the envelope where no one can see how much money you give or you can put it as a lei and put it on the children. All that money still counts. Back in Niue that money all counts. Even here we still count it as your gift. And I know when our kids had theirs, the aunties that came up and cut Malaki’s hair, even the aunties that pierced Ligipati’s ears, it’s just something for them to show the child that that’s their love for them. So they put the gift on the child and cut a piece of hair or pierce their ears. Some come with money, some bring iepili or a mat.

For our kids, we keep track of who gives them the kahoa | money necklace and which kahoa, so we note how much was on the lei. The ones in the envelopes is easy but it’s the lei that we have to a keep track of, who gives it to them, so we can count it later and make a note that this is how much money because over here not everyone does the hifiulu hukiteliga so we’re not going to give it back to that family through a hifiulu hukiteliga but we’ll probably give it back to them another way, probably a birthday down the road. How it works is what you get is what you have to give back some time in your life.