Justice Joe Williams: Let’s try and get it right
“Both sides are saying: ‘We want to do it a different way.’ It’s just no longer right to say evil nasty Crown, good angel iwi. It’s not like that at all.” — Supreme Court judge Sir Joe Williams.
The hope for change: imagining decolonisation here and now
“Just as colonisation began in the mind — as a set of ideas based on racial and cultural superiority — so must decolonisation begin with a mental deconstruction of those ideas.” — Kennedy Warne.
Things have to change
“For two weeks, my co-parenting partner and my daughter and I lived out of a car. It was just the worst feeling you could imagine.” — Apanui Koopu, on how MSD decisions made things worse for him and his whānau.
WAKA Episode 1: The revival
"The knowledge of wayfinding and waka building was almost lost as a living practice, destined to survive only in historical journals and museums. Luckily for us, a small group took up the battle to keep them alive." — Simone Kaho.
WAKA Episode 2: The future
"Billy Harrison isn’t just carrying the mana of the Aotearoa team in this symposium. He’s the future of waka building in Aotearoa. If tārai waka is to survive here, it will need more like Billy and his teammates." — Simone Kaho.
WAKA Episode 3: Creatures of perfection
The Hawaiians are considered the best technical experts in canoe building: “They make creatures of perfection," says James Eruera.
WAKA Episode 4: The edge of old times
“I can look at the wood and see parts of the canoe. The shape. Like a vision in my head.” — Freddie Tauotaha, Tahitian master waka builder, who came to Aotearoa to finish the va'a his father started 27 years before.
Che Wilson: Not your conventional party president
“As we embrace te reo Māori, as we embrace kaupapa like Matariki . . . we’re starting to indigenise Aotearoa.” — Che Wilson, Te Pāti Māori president.
Bailey Mackey: A passion for rugby and Ngāti Porou
“Moving back to the Coast, I found two things that would become the love of my life outside my family. One was East Coast rugby and the other was Radio Ngāti Porou.” — Bailey Mackey.
Restoring mauri is what drives me
"Without the authority to practise kaitiakitanga, it’s all just talk. We need to have mana, but gaining mana isn’t what drives me. Restoring mauri is what drives me.” — Dan Hikuroa.
Reikura Kahi: Fuelling a love for te reo
“It's up to us to keep fighting for our language and ensure its survival. Our language is essential to our identity as Māori.” — Reikura Kahi.
Ōrewa’s ugly echoes
“For me, there hasn’t been an uglier year before or since.” — Winston McCarthy recalls the impact of Don Brash's 2004 Ōrewa speech.
Fair pay agreements — a victory for all workers
The Fair Pay Agreements "will transform the lives of hundreds of thousands of workers now and in the future. It will change the entire power relationship between capital and labour.” — Matt McCarten.
Moana Jackson: Decolonisation and the stories in the land
“In this country, the potential exists to develop a different and unique decolonisation discourse because there are already stories which express the power of a different truth.” — Moana Jackson, from 'Imagining Decolonisation'.
Story sovereignty belongs with the people
“It is the people who offer us the material and inspiration for our stories . . . The people are the ultimate sovereign power. Story sovereignty belongs with the people we serve.” — Tainui Stephens.
Flies in milk
“The reason this female ancestor of mine is a mystery is simple. She was either Indian or what was then called Eurasian.” — Catherine Delahunty.
The Māori mascot
“The rangatahi Māori interns were like mascots. We were there to entice funding bodies into handing over more money.”
This doesn’t make us less
“We can be Māori and reo-less at the same time. It’s not ideal — especially in the hidden places we never talk about — but we can keep our heads held high. This doesn’t make us less.” — Shelley Burne-Field.
Everything ancient was once new
“Words like ‘traditional’ are used to inflict violence against us.” — Dr Emalani Case.
Reclaiming what was lost
“That bridge tragedy in 1947 severed my links to my taha Māori. And only now, in my early 40s, am I reclaiming what was lost.” — Cornell Tukiri.
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.
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.
Reforming Māori media
"Sometimes I think we have too big an expectation of the reo Māori sector. Yes, broadcasting is part of the reo revitalisation plan. But it’s not the only mechanism." — Bailey Mackey.
Breaking the circuit
“There are unhealthy consequences for our society if the mainstream media doesn’t become much more accomplished at looking beyond Pākehā interests.” — Gary Wilson.
The Māori voice comes in English as well as te reo
“English is the language that reaches all the politicians and the voters, including the journalists and teachers and lawyers and doctors and nurses and academics and business leaders and all the others who play a part in shaping our society.”
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Toi Tū Toi Ora: a mind-opening experience
Visiting Toi Tū Toi Ora, Auckland Art Gallery’s exhibition of contemporary Māori art, is like being invited to a wānanga in cosmology and culture, writes Kennedy Warne.
Veranoa Hetet: For me, weaving is home
“Weaving is my way of connecting my past and present with my future — that is, with my children and my mokopuna.” — Veranoa Hetet.
Ema Tavola: What our artists are telling us
“I think what contemporary Pacific art tells us is what the truth of our reality is.” —artist-curator Ema Tavola.
The Māoriland story
“We define ourselves by the stories we choose to tell about ourselves. When we make films for our own people, it’s not just about the art of it, nor the business of it. We are testing the empowering potential of film.” — Tainui Stephens.
The Dawn Raids of 1974
“No one was safe. The police just went to addresses where they knew Tongans lived, maybe tipped off by a disgruntled neighbour. And the checks were indiscriminate.” — Joris de Bres.
‘I follow the trail of blood’
“In these fields, the tūpuna lie where they fell in the swamps or in unmarked graves hastily dug by survivors, with the dead piled up around them. I swear I can sometimes hear their voices.” — Joanna Kidman.
Claudia Orange: Questions of sovereignty
"The early plans for a British colony envisaged a Māori New Zealand in which settlers would somehow be accommodated," writes Claudia Orange. But, by 1840, there'd been a shift in thinking, reflecting "reluctant official acknowledgement that the tide of British colonisation could not be held back forever".
(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.
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