“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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“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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“There were laws here before the colonisers arrived . . . We had fully formed systems of law and social regulation.” — Khylee Quince.
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“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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“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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“In our darkest time, with so much going against us in Pātea, our whānau created Poi E.” — Debbie Ngarewa-Packer.
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“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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“Despite well-intentioned health practitioners, the health system provides lower quality care for Māori.” — Dr Papaarangi Reid.
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“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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“The health system has to stop being racist and become a pro-equity, pro-Treaty system.” — Dr Rawiri McKree Jansen.
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“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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“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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“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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“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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“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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“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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“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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“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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“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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“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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“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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“’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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“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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“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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“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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“It’s incredibly important, now more than ever, that we strive to become a more welcoming and compassionate nation.”
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“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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“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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“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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“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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E-Tangata is an online Sunday magazine specialising in stories that reflect the experiences of Māori and Pasifika in Aotearoa.
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