When the police started cracking down on Pasifika overstayers, a group of young people called the Polynesian Panthers started pushing back. Produced by Jamie Tahana.

"We brought racism to everyone's attention."

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."

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."

Those times were 1970s Auckland where the Panthers were formed in response to the marginalisation and discrimination experienced by the Pacific community.

From the 1940s to the 1960s, Pacific migrants had been encouraged to come to New Zealand to fill gaps in the labour market, often in poorly paid and back-breaking manual work.

They flocked mostly to Auckland, where they filled the inner-city suburbs of Ponsonby and Grey Lynn, an area that became known as 'Little Polynesia.' Entire families filled houses; the first Pacific church opened in Newton and crowds were drawn to Karangahape Road to shop and mingle.

But the area was also run down and impoverished, with families living in houses that 'Ilolahia said should have been condemned, and where violence and gangs flourished.

As the economy plunged in the early 1970s, the spotlight - and the blame - was turned to immigrants and overstayers which eventually led to the dawn raids that began in 1974.

Started by the third Labour government of Norman Kirk and Bill Rowling, the raids accelerated under the National government of Robert Muldoon. …

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