Arena Williams: Making changes from the inside
“I think it’s right for us not to forget the times in Labour’s history when they went with what was popular and lost sight of Labour’s values.” — Arena Williams, Labour candidate for Manurewa.
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Author: Dale Husband
Shane Reti: National’s rising star
“I arrived in Boston about three months before my family, and I thought: ‘Okay. The best way for me to meet people is to take my guitar and my squash racket.’” — Dr Shane Reti, MP for Whangārei and National’s health spokesperson.
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Steven Ratuva: Decolonising our ‘differences’
It’s important for us to look beyond the “artificial and nonsensical” demarcations imposed by early Europeans and see ourselves “as just one people connected at different levels through the ocean”, says Professor Steven Ratuva.
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Joe Daymond: Unfiltered
“Probably 99 percent of what I talk about are things that my nan would hate.” — Joe Daymond.
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Rangi Matamua: Matariki and Māori astronomy
“I hope that Matariki can become a beacon for us . . . Why should we follow the northern hemisphere and the rest of the western world and celebrate the new year because that’s when they’re celebrating it?” — Professor Rangi Matamua.
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Collin Tukuitonga: Looking after our people
“There are Pasifika families who want their daughter to succeed in medicine but she still has to teach Sunday school, cook food for their family, and look after the young ones — and those expectations aren’t realistic.” — Dr Collin Tukuitonga.
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Khylee Quince: Seeing beyond Pākehā law
“There were laws here before the colonisers arrived . . . We had fully formed systems of law and social regulation.” — Khylee Quince.
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Dr Canaan Aumua: Beyond textbook medicine
“As a GP in Māngere, I soon realised that medicine wasn’t the solution I was looking for. These people were coming in with problems that medicine, and my textbooks, couldn’t solve.” — Dr Canaan Aumua.
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Pou Temara: A modern tohunga
“In my generation, many of us were brought up by our grandparents, especially if you were a mātāmua, or first born, as I was.” — Pou Temara.
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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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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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