Author: Dale Husband

“I just loved the contact. I’ve always been quite physical. Like in netball I was fairly rough. I loved that game, but there was something special about rugby.”

“Look. There’s someone outside, just by the door. He’ll look after us. Let’s go out and pretend we’re with him.”

“I have come to realise that maths belongs in every culture. Yet, kids growing up in New Zealand get taught that there’s only one way of doing maths, and that’s a white way. As I see it, my Cook Islands family were the real mathematicians.”

“All of our stories hold wisdom and knowledge. They have determined our behaviours as Māori people. So there’s lots and lots of learning in those stories.”

“We ended up leading the world on this — and it’s all because whānau supported our research, and said: ‘Do this research for us.’”

“If I could do anything today, it would be to have the Waitara lands returned to the hapū. For me, it’s about self-determination, and seeing hapū rangatiratanga that was guaranteed in Te Tiriti o Waitangi becoming embedded in this country.”

“I like taking the kids back to Waitara and Urenui. Going back home and realising that wi-fi is not the norm … that Sky television is not normal either. Most of the whānau don’t have doors on their bedrooms, let alone wallpaper on the walls. There’s a stark contrast that they can see.”

“If you understand the technology and how to use it, then you can deliver important messages.” Gaming developer and winner of Māori Entrepreneurial Leader award, Maru Nihoniho.

“We grew up on our marae at Waipatu and we didn’t know there were Pākehā. We only saw and breathed Māori until Sunday school, or until we had to go to the dentist or the doctor. They were the only Pākehā we saw.”

“I’ve been through tough times … and it’s made me much better equipped to do the health work that I do now, because I understand, through my own experience, just how tough disabilities and mental health problems can be on families.” – Counties Manukau DHB chair Mark Gosche.

“All you can do is hold on, hold on, and then they break your hold, and they take you away, and you’re screaming.”

Kōrero with the former governor-general and chair of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Historical Abuse in State Care.

“If you’re an MP — and certainly if you’re a leader of a party — you should be thinking these things through, and upskilling yourself to make sure you have the maximum cultural competence and a sense of the full breadth of the issues we’re dealing with as a country.”

Like so many New Zealanders, Vivien has a Pākehā mum and a Māori dad. In the early 1990s, she hit...

The former probation officer has been battling to keep Māori inmates from heading back to prison.

“Prisons aren’t Māori. We can’t have kaupapa Māori prisons because we never had prisons in the first place.”

“I was surprised when I’d find people who couldn’t comprehend that you could be Māori and Christian.”

My uncle said: “I think you need to put a Pākehā name on your applications.” So Dad used the name McLeod . . . and he very quickly got a job under that name.

Many of our stories are not pretty, but they’re honest and they need to be told.