Bernie O’Donnell: Healing through taha Māori
“They treated us poorly. But that was the only life I knew, so I thought things were fine.” — Bernie O’Donnell.
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Author: Dale Husband
Tony Kemp: In search of te ao Māori
“I’ve fallen in love with what it means to be Māori.” — Tony Kemp.
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Sereana Naepi: Facing up to inequity in our universities
“We have to treat every Pacific student as being precious because they are precious. And we should remember that each student is a connection to an entire community.” — Dr Sereana Naepi.
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James Papali’i: The road to change
“What outsiders see as mobsters, I see as bros and the people I grew up with and could trust.” — James Papali’i.
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Lama Tone: Building to fit our Pacific ways
“Rather than looking towards North America or Europe for inspiration, I took inspiration from Māori and Pacific ideas because that’s what I could relate to.” — Lama Tone.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Deidre Brown: ‘Hey, Dad. What’s an architect?’
“You’ve got hundreds of years of research and development behind the wharenui that we see today. That doesn’t even take into account the building knowledge that our ancestors brought with them from Polynesia.” — Professor Deidre Brown.
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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.
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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.
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Traci Houpapa: What keeps me up at night
“Even though our Māori asset base is now worth $70 billion, that doesn’t mean anything if our families, who are still the working poor, can’t look after one another.” —Traci Houpapa.
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Briar Grace-Smith: True reflections of ourselves
“We weren’t seeing true reflections of ourselves on screen. The reflections we were seeing on screen were nearly always driven by Pākehā. Mostly Pākehā men.” — Briar Grace-Smith.
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Ella Henry: Creating a new Aotearoa
“When you’re around those whānau and individuals who’ve been broken, at the heart of that brokenness is a lack of belief in how extraordinary we are as a people.” — Dr Ella Henry.
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Ngarimu Blair: For Ngāti Whātua, a new fight
“No one was jealous when we had one-quarter of an acre. No one was jealous when we had the city sewer pipe spewing tiko and baby foetuses and amputated arms and legs right in front of our meeting house.” — Ngarimu Blair.
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Claudia Orange and the Treaty
“We need to acknowledge that this is a partnership that we can move further forward — and that there still needs to be an open-mindedness in government, and in the public at large.” — Claudia Orange.
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Tania Sharkey: The treasure in the struggle
“We were poor, man. Mum had multiple cleaning jobs, and she always told us kids to do the best jobs we could, no matter what it was. That message has stuck with me throughout my working career.” — Tania Sharkey.
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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.
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Claire Charters: Working towards a true partnership
“Law can be a tool for both justice and injustice.” — Dr Claire Charters.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Willie Jackson: Primed for politics
“One of the beauties of this Māori development portfolio is that it’ll give me an opportunity to help shape the future of Māori broadcasting.” — Willie Jackson, Minister of Māori Development.
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Glenis Philip-Barbara: Stepping up for Māori kids
“The fact of the matter is that tamariki Māori are far worse off than their non-Māori peers, and we know that racism plays a huge part in this.” — Glenis Philip-Barbara, Assistant Māori Commissioner for Children.
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Rhys Jones: Taking a sovereign stance
“Government agencies and various ministries seem to think that part of their role is to uphold their colonial power.” — Dr Rhys Jones.
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Ross Calman: The truths in our stories
“When you’re a descendant, you have to accept your ancestors. The good and the bad.” — Ross Calman.
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Piki Jakeman: Life on the river bank
“When we had king tides at night, we’d have to put our mattresses on Mum’s bed and wait until the tide went down. And Dad would put the babies, asleep, in the plastic baby bath, and they’d just be floating on the tide.”
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Melani Anae: Educate to Liberate
“It’s the Sāmoans living outside of Sāmoa who value and hang on to the vestiges of our Pacific culture and indigenous knowledge.” — Melani Anae.
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Tamatha Paul: Show up and be counted
“Overall, I think working at KFC has probably been the most formative experience of my whole life so far.” — Tamatha Paul, 23, Wellington City councillor.
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Fletcher Tabuteau: On ‘doing your part’
“When Pākehā talk about ‘long-term’, they rarely mean it the way Māori do. We are multi-generational.” — Fletcher Tabuteau, NZ First MP.
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