Jacinda’s choice: Transformative or timid?
“The problem with social democratic parties around the world is that they’re timid. They focus on feel-good social justice issues and not nearly enough on economic justice.” — Matt McCarten.
Tyla Vaeau: Walking with your ancestors
“Tatau is having this visual reminder on your body to the long line of your ancestors, who you walk with every day.” — Tyla Vaeau.
Claire Charters: Working towards a true partnership
“Law can be a tool for both justice and injustice.” — Dr Claire Charters.
The big beats of history
“The thing about the big beats of history is that they’re often signs or reminders that we must now reimagine the society we live in. Momentous history requires momentous change.” — Tainui Stephens.
Neru Leavasa: A history of service
"Before I got cancer, I wanted to be an All Black or a professional athlete." — Dr Neru Leavasa, GP and MP for Takanini in Auckland.
Hirini Kaa: Māori and the church
“Part of the challenge for non-Māori, particularly for Pākehā, is to understand that we are not a secular culture.” — Dr Hirini Kaa.
Tiana Epati — raising the bar for future generations
“It won’t mean anything if all it was is that one time we had that brown girl as president. There has to be more.” — Tiana Epati, president of the New Zealand Law Society.
Barbara Edmonds: Sacrifice and success
“Dad knew that a better education could mean a better life. So he sent us to Carmel, and he was still paying off our school fees for decades after we'd left school.” — Barbara Edmonds, MP for Mana.
‘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.
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.
New Zealand universities are lucky to have us
“Even though I studied at tertiary level for 10 years, I've never had a Pacific lecturer, and there were no Pacific academics who could supervise my PhD in my school.” — Jess Pasisi.
Lost in translation
“There’s often been a gulf between our multilingual Pasifika and Māori students and their teachers, who are mostly middle-class English-speaking Pākehā.” — Kim Meredith.
Suicide prevention — we have a long way to go
"My whānau’s experience tells me that we have a long way to go in this country to prevent the mamae of suicide in our communities." — Emmaline Pickering-Martin.
Hey, that’s our mana you’re messing with
“It was straight-up rude to be honest. That mishandling, misunderstanding, minimising of mana.” — Becky Manawatu, award-winning novelist, on being labelled “average” after one school test.
No longer scared to speak my language
“It’s only in recent years that I’ve even plucked up the courage to claim my identity, to proudly say: Yes, I am Māori.” — Siena Yates.
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.
Keeping Māori storytelling alive
“Ours is an oral tradition and that's important because it's not only how we share stories but how we transfer and transmit knowledge.” — Lee Timutimu.
A whānau affair
“We have almost four generations of te reo Māori speakers in our family. My goal in life before I leave this earth is that those teachings will funnel down to the next three generations after my children.” — Eli Smith.
Reflecting the reo world
“Their decision to be a reo Māori-speaking household instantly cut off friends and whānau who either didn't agree with their decision or found it too challenging to communicate solely in te reo.”
Fish and chips and a serving of te reo
“It really didn't sit well with me that, outside our home, my kids would feel like they’d have to leave that part of themselves at the door and be somebody else. To put on a mask.” — Anton Matthews.
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.”
(Not quite) 250 ways to start an essay about Captain Cook
“We have been hoarding stories about Cook for 250 years now. Some of those stories are valuable, important, useful. Most of them are junk.” — Alice Te Punga Somerville.
Te Rauparaha’s migration
“In the morning when the sun was high, near midday, they migrated, they left their pā. They did not allow themselves to weep, they left Kāwhia behind, following the paths along the coast."
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.
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