Leasu Fa’amasa
[This tattoo] represents my culture and it also has the first letter of my great grandfather. This new one represents the Minto boys, especially the one that passed away last year. It’s like a cultural pattern and it’s got the name of my country on it, Tonga, and it’s got an old English ‘S’ like a Celtic design. It’s not like any Celtic design, it’s one that was made for me. It represents my life.

I’ve been living in Minto since I was an infant, pretty much brought up by the street. My mum was a single parent, she raised me and my brother by herself. She decided to move out here because there’s a lot of family. She wanted to be close to grandma.

I am half Tongan, half Samoan, but mostly the Samoan blood is from my dad and the Tongan blood is from my mum, and a bit from my dad. The Pacific Islander community in Minto is strong.

I really respect Charlie and Malaemie*. To us Polynesian kids, they were the only ones who actually grabbed us out of captivity. The first time I got involved with music was in Year 10. Charlie and Mal had underground studios. We just wanted to come in and unleash all the negative stuff we had in us and had seen in our lives and express the positive stuff about Minto. I just wanted to speak up for the young Pacific Islanders that don’t have a voice. I started writing about Minto.

There was a time that I couldn’t get into school. I was dying to get in. The feedback I was getting was negative. Some of the teachers were saying, “You’re not going to graduate,” and I graduated last year so I showed them how it was done.

The feedback from the youth, they love my music. Every time we bring out a new Minto song, it boosts their confidence up. We like to say, “Don’t be shy, even though we live in Housing Commission, we shouldn’t be embarrassed about that”.

From my broken up childhood you see a lot of bad stuff. My mate was killed last year. It was hell for my mum raising me and my brother on her own. There was a time when we had to live in a garage, that was rough. Mum would cry because there was no food for me or my brother to eat and she’d blame herself. Life goes on, we eventually got back on track.