Ross Calman: The truths in our stories
“When you’re a descendant, you have to accept your ancestors. The good and the bad.” — Ross Calman.
‘Pick your own damn fruit’
“New Zealand’s colonial legacy in the Pacific is one that was inherently exploitative. We took — not just land and resources but brown bodies, too.”
A dereliction of duty?
“It’s not too late for the government to decriminalise cannabis. What’s the point of a once-in-a-lifetime majority if you’re not going to use it?” — Leah Damm.
To be Māori requires action
“For parents on our own language journeys, we need to bring our children along for the ride.” — Tainui Stephens.
Piki Jakeman: Life on the river bank
"When we had king tides at night, we’d have to put our mattresses on Mum’s bed and wait until the tide went down. And Dad would put the babies, asleep, in the plastic baby bath, and they’d just be floating on the tide."
A man of contradictions
“When you ask me whether I’m in parliament as a Māori? No, I'm a New Zealander lucky enough to have Māori in my background.” — Winston Peters.
Melani Anae: Educate to Liberate
“It's the Sāmoans living outside of Sāmoa who value and hang on to the vestiges of our Pacific culture and indigenous knowledge.” — Melani Anae.
Tamatha Paul: Show up and be counted
“Overall, I think working at KFC has probably been the most formative experience of my whole life so far.” — Tamatha Paul, 23, Wellington City councillor.
No time to be humble
"There really isn't time for the old 'be humble' buzz." — Emmaline Pickering-Martin on Pacific MPs.
Don’t take the Māori vote for granted
“The next election has already started. The Māori Party has over 1,000 days to pick away at Labour whenever it makes a mistake or fails to deliver for Māori.” — Matt McCarten.
The Māori Electorates
The Greens and the Māori Party both have candidates who are threatening to prevent a repeat of Labour’s 2017 clean sweep.
No law is racism-proof
“The idea of choice is a fallacy. It’s based on people having access to adequate resources to enable their choices. And this is the ultimate choice." — Hirini Kaa on voting "no" in the End of Life Choice referendum.
Will it end with us?
“In her mind, the real tragedy of her story wasn’t what happened to her. The tragedy was that her story wasn’t unique. The tragedy was that stories like hers invariably involved Māori children as the protagationists.”
The beauty and the violence
“This is the way it was for us. The two sides of our lives. The beauty and the violence; the richness and the poverty; the love and the hate. Everything, but nothing.” — Stan Walker, in his new book 'Impossible — My Story'.
The grind of racism
“Racism is wearisome. Literally tiring. It does not create a pearl after years of grinding. It creates sickness, fear, anxiety, sadness, resentment, and worry.” — Shelley Burne-Field.
‘At uni, we’re expected to be good, quiet Māori’
“We’ve struggled to find a space where we can be Māori and feel safe within these institutions.” — Māori doctoral students.
Cole Meyers: Bringing truth to trans stories
"We don’t just want to see our life experiences. We want change so we can fully experience our lives." — Cole Meyers, writer and producer of 'Rūrangi'.
The struggle to embrace my identity
“It’s funny to think that it took moving across the moana and immersing myself in another Pacific culture to gain an appreciation of my own.” — Terina Kaire.
Language, identity — and ‘real’ Sāmoans
“Some of the things you may have learned from those anthropology textbooks shouldn’t be seen as a bible for what a ‘real’ Sāmoan is.” — Patrick Thomsen.
‘Don’t you want to be Sāmoan?’
“Except for church, our Sāmoan-ness never made it out the front door of our house.”
Pay attention to those who go before
“I would seek out kaumātua who were knowledgeable about the Māori world. I’d sit and listen to their words, try and remember them, and write them down afterwards.” — Tainui Stephens.
A yearning for the reo
“I think had I stayed in Australia, I wouldn't have been happy and my heart would've yearned to be here." — Jeremy MacLeod.
Hinewehi Mohi: Beyond Twickenham
“I was often defined by that moment which was probably, what, a minute? I get it. I understand the importance of it, but it's nice to be able to focus on new and important developments.” — Hinewehi Mohi.
This Pākehā life
“I decided to enrol in an immersion course at Te Wānanga o Aotearoa, in South Auckland. My friends were impressed, commending me for my ‘bravery’.” — Alison Jones in her new book 'This Pākehā Life: An Unsettled Memoir'.
Balancing tikanga and journalism
“Māori journalists see themselves as Māori first and journalists second.” — Atakohu Middleton on her PhD research into the influence of tikanga on reo-Māori journalism.
Indira Stewart: When one of us wins, all of us win
“When I think about the shortage of Pasifika journalists, I'm a bit surprised there aren't more of us, because we're powerful storytellers and we always have been.”—Indira Stewart, host of RNZ's new morning news show First Up.
This is not the time for white voices
“Everyone has their say in a democracy. But mostly the people who have their say in public life in New Zealand are white.”—Steve Braunias
Conversations: Lifting our voices
Our stories create the lens through which we see ourselves and our neighbours and the world around us.
Tim Worrall: Tūhoe storyteller
“We grew up proud of being Māori, proud of Ngāi Tuhoe and of our tīpuna.” — Tim Worrall.
James Eruera and his waka kaupapa
"There are very few who’ll understand how it feels to know that you’ve built this vessel that’s gone across the ocean and that’s delivered your people safely to their destination." — James Eruera, master waka carver.
Kerry Warkia: A chorus of Pacific voices
“In filmmaking, the essence is collaboration. For something to be really good, there needs to be different perspectives, techniques and skills from lots of different people.”
Lani Wendt Young: A hunger worldwide for our stories told by us
“There are lots of silly excuses that people offer for why there aren’t more of us published. They say, for instance, that we don’t like to write. We aren’t storytellers. We’re not readers. But that’s ridiculous.”
Who should tell our history?
"We are still here, the descendants and beneficiaries, the marginalised and reviled — so how are we going to face the truth, and how can it be taught?" — Catherine Delahunty on the teaching of New Zealand history.
The Terror of the Dawn Raids
“The majority of overstayers were British or American. But, in 1974, under the Labour Government, 107 Tongans, 24 Sāmoans and 2 Americans were deported. Meanwhile, arrests of Pacific overstayers continued.” — Dr Melani Anae.
A whakapapa approach to history
“Time is more like a spiral than an arrow. You dive back into the ancestral past and, next minute, you’re spinning out into the future.” — Anne Salmond.
History demands a personal reckoning
“You can’t be Pākehā and believe that you’re not personally responsible for the colonial oppression of Indigenous peoples. No matter who your ancestors are.” — Leah Bell.
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E-Tangata and Radio Waatea are longtime friends, and support each other's kaupapa.
