“I told them right from the start that I'm serving my ancestors, so anything that I feel offends the ancestors, I'm not going to do it.” — Opetaia Foa‘i, on working with Disney to make 'Moana'.
“If you only see one thing about our people, I want to leave you with an impression that we are people of goodness. We look after our partners. We look after our kids. We look after the moana and the taiao that sustain us.” — TikTok star Louis Davis.
“Even in my academic work, I try as much as possible to write in an accessible way, especially when you're dealing with iwi whānau histories, because even if it's for a PhD, it's really for whānau as well.” — Ngāti Kuia historian Dr Madi Williams.
“We have a right to the best healthcare and the best health outcomes that are available. And we have a right to be part of creating the solutions when those rights aren’t being met. So advocacy needs to be part of an excellent health system.” — Professor Matire Harwood.
“People like David Seymour like to frame what we’re doing as selecting medical students based on race. No, that’s actually the issue we’re trying to correct — historically our admissions processes have selected an overwhelmingly Pākehā student cohort.” — Professor Papaarangi Reid.
“For Te Awa Tupua to be more than a bicultural compromise, it must become a platform for the genuine exercise of Māori authority over ancestral lands and waters.” — Hemopereki Hoani Simon.
“If those poisoned men can keep standing up for their people and lands while sick and tired, the rest of us can stand with them.” — Catherine Delahunty on the continuing fight for redress by sawmill workers exposed to PCP.
“We all want children to be safe online. But when policy responses focus primarily on prohibition, we need to ask whether we’re addressing the causes of harm, or simply treating the symptoms.” — Dr Jean M Uasike Allen.
“Releasing a kiwi is a privilege. There is a sense of homecoming. As Matua Tom Roa says, kiwi are the ‘manu whenua’. The originals.” — Paul Ward, founder of the Capital Kiwi Project, on returning kiwi back to the wild in Wellington.
“As I leaned into the dissonance of the past, I realised that learning te reo had become a salve that smoothed away the spiky edges of my defensiveness.” — Marcel Currin on how learning te reo changed his perspective as a Pākehā.
“What I remember from those first reo classes was realising that my monolingual, monocultural upbringing was not the only way of seeing the world, and that learning a language as an adult is hard.” — Atakohu Middleton, author of 'Waka Aroha', a new collection of Māori-language short stories.
“Living rurally, I knew an ambulance would take 45 minutes. It wouldn’t get here in time.” — Shelley Burne-Field on trying to save her husband after his heart stopped.
“Tākuta Ferris was off course in so many ways. ‘Asians’ have their own history of subjugation to white supremacy and British colonial rule.’ — Kim Webby.
“You can still deliver a pepeha — even if, like me, you’re Māori and don’t know your whakapapa.” — Emma West.
“Our collective future in this country depends on our willingness to show up — not as obedient subjects of the Crown, but as those who refuse to participate in the settler colonial project of disenfranchising Māori on their own whenua.” — Ara Alam-Simmons.
“In London, I’m constantly searching for signs of Aotearoa and Te Tiriti in museums, public squares, and wall texts. But in the museums I’ve visited so far, there are no references to Te Tiriti or Aotearoa at all.” — Charlotte Doyle.
“In South Africa, I had learned Afrikaans, Latin and Zulu at school, so it was just a natural thought that as a new Kiwi, I needed to learn te reo Māori out of respect for Indigenous people.” — Barb Costelloe.
“As a learner, it’s easy to become overly cautious about the language. We can get bogged down in the seriousness of te reo Māori, in the formality and solemnity of it, the oratory, karanga, and karakia.” — Eugene Bingham.
An extract from Atakohu Middleton’s newly published collection ‘Waka Aroha: He kohinga pakipoto’ — the first sole-authored book of short stories in te reo Māori, written for adults.
"Whenever Cook Islands Māori languages week rolls around, I get a sense of dread. I know that’s probably not what some of you want or expect to hear. But it is my reality." — Tepaeru Minster.
“If the BSA disappeared tomorrow, Aotearoa would lose more than a complaints office. We’d lose one of the few free and accessible ways for ordinary people to challenge harmful or unfair media content.” — Pulotu Tupe Solomon-Tanoa‘i, a former BSA member.
“One ongoing challenge Whakaata Māori faces is securing equitable funding and resources. Today’s financial pressures highlight the fragility of our position.” — Shane Taurima.
“Māori rights, like all Indigenous rights, have always been the strongest roadblock to corporate mineral and freshwater extraction, and that is why we are consistently attacked in the media.” — Tina Ngata.
“In wanting to play with the big boys, the state bureaucracy, coupled with a grasping political class, appears likely to drag New Zealand into a US-led Asia-Pacific conflict that serves none of our interests.” — Glen Johnson.
Māori communities must be "central to the kōrero around whether or when we could or should pursue a project like huia de-extinction.” — Terri Te Tau, author of ‘The Valley of Unlikely Acquaintances’.
In this extract from Terri Te Tau’s debut novel, 'The Valley of Unlikely Acquaintances', a community hui has been called to discuss a tūpāpaku found in a cave in the forest, and scientist Lydia is reluctantly in the spotlight.
“I always approach the storytelling like I'm cooking a meal for everybody. I want there to be some sense of satisfaction and some sense of warmth.” — Actor and comedian Bailey Poching on his solo stage show 'Doing Great'.
“That kind of blew my mind, because it was so gross. Just the thought of somebody taking you from your land, your environment and your family, and placing you in this foreign environment where you’re now on display.” — Lindah Lepou, artist.
“The way Cook overlaid English names on Te Waipounamu, Te Ika-a-Māui and the other islands that make up ‘New Zealand’ was (and continues to be) a powerful means of claiming intellectual and political sovereignty.” — Tony Ballantyne, in ‘Captain Cook and the Unsettled Afterlives of Empire’.
“Within Māori framings of the past, Cook has become one of the most potent symbols of empire and its bitter and enduring legacies.” — Historian Tony Ballantyne, author of ‘Captain Cook and the Unsettled Afterlives of Empire’.
“China’s missile test came just days after the 80th anniversary of the first nuclear test in the Marshall Islands, when the US dropped a warhead into the lagoon of Bikini Atoll on July 1, 1946 — an event locals describe as ‘the day the sun exploded.’” — Jamie Tahana.
“Te Pahi’s name had been defamed and tarnished by Pākehā histories for more than a century, the falsehoods and lies carried by newspapers and books for generations.” — Eugene Bingham, author of ‘The Chief and the Empire’.
E-Tangata and Radio Waatea are longtime friends, and support each other's kaupapa.
“I got to do what I wanted to do right from the very beginning — to contribute to a kaupapa of our storytelling that I knew was growing. And to be able to investigate the Māori world, and at the same time consolidate my place in it.” — Tainui Stephens, filmmaker, storyteller, and E-Tangata columnist.
“People like David Seymour like to frame what we’re doing as selecting medical students based on race. No, that’s actually the issue we’re trying to correct — historically our admissions processes have selected an overwhelmingly Pākehā student cohort.” — Professor Papaarangi Reid.
“Without elders they can see and a history they can access, each generation of Pacific Rainbow people can feel as though they’re the first to navigate sexuality, culture, family and faith.” — Andre Afamasaga on wishing he’d found his elders sooner.
Māori communities must be "central to the kōrero around whether or when we could or should pursue a project like huia de-extinction.” — Terri Te Tau, author of ‘The Valley of Unlikely Acquaintances’.
“Without elders they can see and a history they can access, each generation of Pacific Rainbow people can feel as though they’re the first to navigate sexuality, culture, family and faith.” — Andre Afamasaga on wishing he’d found his elders sooner.
“I like to keep a low profile. I wouldn't go so far as saying I'm an introvert, but I prefer being in the shadows to being in the light.” — Leon Heketū Blake, a leading reo teacher, translator, and composer.
E-Tangata is an online Sunday magazine specialising in stories that reflect the experiences of Māori and Pasifika in Aotearoa.
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