Troels Sommerville05:00, May 02 2021
Jason Payne/Supplied
Jason Payne is trying to get a memorial put up on Raoul Island for the slaves who died there in 1863.
More than 100 men, women and children died as slaves on one of New Zealand’s most distant islands, yet no trace of their existence remains. One man is trying to change that. Jason Payne had been digging into his family’s past and its ties to far-flung Raoul Island – located about 1100km north north-east of New Zealand – when he came across newspaper clippings that left him “absolutely shocked”. He found that in 1863 Peruvian slavers landed on the shores of the island and unloaded scores of men, women and children they had abducted from across islands in the Pacific; mainly Easter Island, but also Niue, Samoa and Tokelau.