Moriori: Still setting the record straight
“What happened to our people has been, and to a large extent remains, an inconvenient truth and stain on the history and conscience of our nation.” — Moriori leader Maui Solomon.
Rahera Shortland: To know your reo is to know your culture
“Sometimes we don’t appreciate what’s right under our noses until we go away from home. Then we tangi weto for our reo. And that’s the situation for some of our Aussie whānau.”
You shouldn’t forget where you come from
“My sister always said I was a natural nosey parker as a kid. She reckons I’m really in the best position to do the work that I do — and that’s asking questions.”
Haare Williams: A child of the community
“'Whatever you do, remember, you’ll never be a Pākehā.' Everyone then wanted their children to grow up in a Pākehā way. Speaking English was the norm, the wanted thing."
Eteuati Ete: The things we don’t laugh about
“She'd say: ‘Ete, you're a Laughing Sāmoan, and if you start telling your story of how you were violent and what you did to overcome that violence, that would be really awesome.’” — Eteuati Ete.
Rawinia Higgins: Regenerating the reo
“My greatest aspiration for the future of te reo is to have a mokopuna, so I can speak Māori to that mokopuna every day.”
Getting past white defensiveness
"How do we begin to have conversations about critical issues when we’re so far apart?"
A call to war?
"There’s a litany of examples, including admissions by the police themselves, of unconscious bias. Or racism, as we called it in the good old days." — Moana Maniapoto.
‘They travel with shadows’
“Their tūpuna inhabit every room they enter, they embody every act, and they help guide every word.”
Why we should care about retirement policy
“The simplicity and universality of the NZ Superannuation model is the envy of many across the world, but it doesn’t address the needs of all — nor is it guaranteed to be sustainable without refinement.” — Peter Cordtz, interim Retirement Commissioner.
Becoming ‘really Pākehā’
“Regardless of personal politics or wealth, as Pākehā we all benefit from the dispossession of Māori. There are no exemptions from Pākehā privilege.”
Crafting Aotearoa: What Planet Do You Come From?
“The ’nesian body was not welcome, nor was anything that adorned it — unless it was ‘in fashion’, doomed to disappear when the next trend arrived. The New Zealand mainstream media did not reflect the world I inhabited.”
Crafting Aotearoa: The Ancestry of Te Aute
"Most people have forgotten that the paper mulberry plant made it all the way to Aotearoa. Like their Pacific cousins, Māori made barkcloth for kites, clothing, adornment and ceremony."
The day the world changed
"Don’t let schooling get in the way of your education, moko.” — Haare Williams' grandmother, after his first day of school in 1943.
‘Don’t you want to be Sāmoan?’
“Except for church, our Sāmoan-ness never made it out the front door of our house.”
Ihumātao feels like how I wish Auckland felt
“I can’t think of a time I’ve been in such a mixed group. There is a vibe of considerateness, gentleness. People are careful with the kids, and with each other. If you make eye contact, people say 'Kia ora', even if you don’t say it first.”
I’ve tried to learn Tongan, and I’ve tried to be Tongan
"Being an outsider because of my personality quirks was an identity I could embrace. Better than being defined purely by my lack of culture and language. Give me Crazy Pālangi over plain Pālangi any day."
My mother is Pākehā — and I love her
When I hear a child saying she hates Pākehā, it doesn’t sit right with me. It’s the same when I hear people referring to the “bloody Pākehās”.
Celebrating our reo warriors
“When the Māori Language Commission first opened its doors in 1987, te reo was viewed by many New Zealanders as something that would divide us. Māori language proponents were often seen as the enemy.”
Timoti Karetu: A stickler for standards
“All the Māori students at Victoria wanted to be lawyers and accountants, but I only ever wanted to be a teacher.” — Sir Timoti Karetu.
One reo to rule them all?
“If the best resources on offer for our children aren’t in our dialect, then how the heck does dialect survive?” — Quinton Hita on the unintended consequences of the project to translate titles like 'Harry Potter' into Māori.
A Tongan without the tongue — a cautionary tale
"Rightly or wrongly, my father was trying to protect us from a world that treasured English above all else, that used English as a marker for intelligence."
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.
Conversations: It’s about serving our communities
“Our women look at people as if everyone is important and everyone belongs to one of the communities they serve.”
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.”
Kura Forrester: Rudely funny
“Everybody knows what it's like to be on a first date. Or have rude thoughts. And, as long as you're being honest, it can be funny.” — Kura Forrester, Billy T award winner.
Whiti Hereaka: My advice? Let yourself write terribly
“It's okay to be a bad writer in your first draft because a lot of the craft of writing is in the rewriting.”
Not one iota of evidence
“There is no credible evidence that any non-Māori — other than Tasman and his crew — visited New Zealand before Cook’s first arrival in 1769.”
Marching into history
“We didn’t know what we were getting into and how we would be received. We only knew that we had left, we were going to march, and nothing was going to put us off that.” — Tama Te Kapua Poata on the 1975 Māori Land March.
The iceberg below the surface
“The people who have marched before me, who have occupied spaces before me: their feet taking steps for change, their bodies on the line, their voices hoarse with conviction . . . they are the iceberg below the surface.”
‘Neither forgotten nor forgiven’
“In New Zealand, unlike anywhere else, South Africa’s racist sports practices have been the subject of Māori protest since the end of World War I.”
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