Vitale Lafaele has lived a life of challenges, adversity, and bravery.  

Arriving in Auckland from Samoa during the 1970s Dawn Raids era, his childhood was characterised by poverty, discrimination, and bullying.  

Lafaele told Jack Tame that he would never take back the hard times, and that it taught him a lot about life. 

He served for seven years in the New Zealand army and the Police for 30. Lafaele was the first Samoan to gain the command of an area in New Zealand and the first Polynesian to reach the top level in any of Auckland's three metropolitan police districts.  

He’s told his extraordinary journey in his book ‘A Canoe Before the Wind’. 

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