This term, our class has been learning about a significant and challenging chapter in Aotearoa New Zealand’s history. This was a deeply stressful and frightening era for our Pasifika community when government rules changed, and Pacific people were unfairly targeted as scapegoats for the country’s economic struggles.In response to this social injustice, a group of young activists called the Polynesian Panthers —mostly teenagers and young adults—stepped up to defend and support the affected families. They worked tirelessly to move their community “into the light” by distributing informational flyers, organizing community survival programs, and creating a “Legal Aid Book” alongside lawyer David Lange to teach families their legal rights so they would never feel helpless.
Inspired by the Panthers’ courage and their powerful slogans like “Knowledge is Power” and “Educate to Liberate” our classroom’s challenge was to design our own historical posters. We started with a quick write session to brainstorm key themes of fairness, protection, and community identity. After drafting our ideas, we wrote descriptive prompts in Gemini to generate digital versions of our ideas written on a paper. We quickly learned that words have power; we had to constantly edit, adapt, and refine our prompts to get the exact imagery of what we had in vision. My poster features the Polyneisian Panther’s logo and a fist symbol which both represent equality and fairness, I also displayed a fake number to make it more realistic and information for where to meet up and what time, aswell as some tips that they may have needed during the Dawn Raids.
