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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Author: Dale Husband
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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Rawiri Waititi: Unapologetically Māori
“There’s a kōhanga reo, kura kaupapa generation of us coming through who want something different for Māori. And many Pākehā have no issue with that.” — Rawiri Waititi, Māori Party candidate for Waiariki.
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Kiri Allan: Always raising eyebrows
“The values we were raised with were to work hard and serve others. So you had to have a job. (Dad made sure I had an IRD number when I was six.)” — Kiri Allan.
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Harete Hipango: Not a textbook politician
“There’s been a tendency to judge me by how I sound, how I speak, how I look. I look too Pākehā. I sound too Pākehā.” — Harete Hipango, National MP for Whanganui.
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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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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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