Debbie Ngarewa-Packer: Taking on the world from Pātea
“In our darkest time, with so much going against us in Pātea, our whānau created Poi E.” — Debbie Ngarewa-Packer.
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Author: Dale Husband
Reflecting who our courts serve
“I didn’t come from a legal family. And I didn’t know any lawyers, so it wasn’t as if, by osmosis, I’d taken a bit of that legal stuff on board. I was a blank page.” — New Family Court judge Robyn von Keisenberg.
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Papaarangi Reid: Pushing for real change
“Despite well-intentioned health practitioners, the health system provides lower quality care for Māori.” — Dr Papaarangi Reid.
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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.
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Rawiri McKree Jansen: Speaking out on Māori health
“The health system has to stop being racist and become a pro-equity, pro-Treaty system.” — Dr Rawiri McKree Jansen.
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Pero Cameron: Big man, big impact
“We had a very practical Māori upbringing but not much in the way of Niuean or Scottish.” — Pero Cameron, head coach of the Tall Blacks.
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Alan Wendt: The Interpreter
“My journey into the Deaf world has been a true gift.” — Alan Wendt, New Zealand Sign Language interpreter and language geek.
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Shayne Walker: Social work as an act of love
“As a foster parent, when you’re sharing kai, sharing breath and sharing space, these are deep acts of love.” — Shayne Walker.
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Lupe Taumoepeau and her life-changing surgeries
“When I take the clamps off the vessels and see the shrivelled-up grey kidney become purple and then pink and then pulsate with blood, nothing else I do beats that.” — Dr Lupe Taumoepeau.
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Denise Wallwork: Keeping people out of prison
“As a defence lawyer for 32 years and trying all that time to keep people out of prison, it’s going to be tough, eventually, having to send someone to prison.” — New district court judge Denise Wallwork.
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Anjum Rahman: We can do better
“When March 15 happened, one of our reactions was anger because we’d raised the alarm much earlier — and pushed and pushed. And nobody took us seriously.”
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Sandra Alofivae: Hearing the call
“Things need to change for our babies, children, and young people who are still in the system today.” — Ali’imuamua Sandra Alofivae
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Inia Tomas: ‘Get your arse back into the fight’
“It was just me and my mother. She was a single mum during this time, on the benefit. And she essentially educated me in Māoritanga, and herself at the same time.” — Dr Inia Tomas
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Peter-Lucas Jones: Storing our reo treasures
“In spite of all the opportunities in the mainstream Pākehā education system, having access to native speakers of te reo Māori is much more beneficial.” — Peter Lucas Jones.
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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.”
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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.”
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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.”
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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.
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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.”
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Karamia Müller: Building futures that resist inequality
“I saw parallels with an earlier process of gentrification which displaced communities — largely Pasifika — from Ponsonby, St Mary’s Bay and Freemans Bay in the late 1970s to 1980s. That displacement has had ongoing ramifications for Pasifika people.”
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Guled Mire: Working for a more welcoming Aotearoa
“It’s incredibly important, now more than ever, that we strive to become a more welcoming and compassionate nation.”
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Waitohiariki Quayle: ‘Yep, I can do this’
“I thought: ‘There’s nothing stopping me from doing this, is there? If I’ve got a Bible and a prayer book to help me, then, yep, I can do this.’”
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Jade Kake: Māori by design
“There’s a lot of ways that Māori design can be woven into a building. But I think the essential thing is that whoever holds mana whenua in that area is engaged in the process.”
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Tim Tipene: My teacher changed my life forever
“Their idea was to send me to school to beat other kids up — and that didn’t go down too well with the teachers.”
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Hiria Te Rangi: Stubborn has to be the best trait ever
“Only Māori have Māori insights. There’s still the routine where other cultures think they can build things for us. But that’s a no. Kāhore.” — Hiria Te Rangi, CEO of Whare Hauora.
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Tuari Potiki: Fighting the darkness with the light
“This year, there’ll be another 4,000 convictions just for cannabis offences. Forty percent of those will be Māori. So I see decriminalisation and regulation as a way of reducing harm, particularly to Māori.”
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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.”
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Meng Foon: A journey in te ao Māori
“When I told Mum I was going to take Māori, she said: ‘Waste of breath.’”
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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.”
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Dilworth Karaka: Singing songs of freedom
“You do miss the brothers who’ve passed on. And you miss the vibe that they all brought to the gigs. You miss their mannerisms. You miss what made them individuals.”
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