I've tinkered a bit more and the following works for me, and the PaginationHelper works:
In the element:
// requestAction returns an array('data'=>... , 'paging'=>...)
$data = $this->requestAction(array('controller'=>'events','action'=>'archive'));
// if the 'paging' variable is populated, merge it with the already present paging variable in $this->params. This will make sure the PaginatorHelper works
if(!isset($this->params['paging'])) $this->params['paging'] = array();
$this->params['paging'] = array_merge( $this->params['paging'] , $data['paging'] );
foreach($data['events'] as $event) {
// loop through data...
}
In the Controller:
public function archive() {
$this->paginate = array(
'limit' => 10
);
if ($this->params['requested'])
return array('events'=>$this->paginate('Event'), 'paging' => $this->params['paging']);
$this->set('events', $this->paginate('Event') );
}