“I wanted to show what colonisation is like today, because a lot of people seem to think of it as a one-time historical event. But it’s actually an ongoing process that has seeped into our everyday lives — and this applies whether you’re Māori or not.” — Shilo Kino on her new novel All That We Know.
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“Once you’ve seen the reality of considering ethnicity and the impact that can be made when we consider it, that’s not something easily unlearned. You can try to ignore the evidence, but you can’t deny its existence.” — Dr Anthony Jordan, former Pharmac director.
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“Ritual and celebration are absolutely a form of resistance. Matariki, for example, is a very loud statement that we don’t need to follow someone else’s idea of ceremony or celebration.” — Dr Rangi Mātāmua.
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“I could manufacture in China and mass produce and chase the money. But there are old kuia in those factories, and there’s nothing less Māori than having a kuia paid $4 a day to make your kākahu.” — Designer Kharl WiRepa.
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“What these types of comments do is hang an axe over the Waitangi Tribunal which threatens to drop if they behave and exercise their powers in a particular way. This has a potential chilling effect.” — Natalie Coates.
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“Waka, paddling, reading the water and the wind, navigating our own paths — all these things are in our whakapapa. In our blood. As wāhine Māori, there’ll probably always be barriers in front of us, but there will always be ways around them too.” — Tui McCaull.
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“My nan… had completely turned her back on being Māori. She was of the opinion that you just had to make it in the Pākehā world, and that speaking Māori and being Māori wasn’t going to get you anywhere in life.” — Stacy Gregg.
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“As life got harder and more things started cropping up, it was the reo that kept being put on the back burner — something I swore I wouldn’t do.” — Siena Yates on life after full-immersion reo learning.
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“If you look at Te Tiriti from a community perspective, it’s actually about balance and a promise between two peoples to take the best possible care of each other.” — Te Huia Bill Hamilton.
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“It’s a new form of civil wrong we’re proposing, which would recognise there is a legal duty to stop contributing to the climate crisis, and the Supreme Court has agreed that we have the right to argue for that.” — Michael Smith.
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“Part of showing aroha to yourself is accepting that you can only do what you can do. Some people can do more than others, and some people go about it differently, and all of that is okay as long as you’re doing something. The little things that we’re all doing come together to make a difference.” — Dr Waikaremoana Waitoki.
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“I look at all the examples around the country of the strides and changes we’ve made. And suddenly this government wants to take it all away? Nah. It's not going to happen. Because our people are already on the journey, and they’re not about to be stopped.” — Professor Margaret Mutu.
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“The dangers of digital colonisation may not be obvious yet because, on the surface, technology seems to be advancing our reo and our connections instead of suppressing them.” — Siena Yates.
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“I had a lot of ideas. But every time I tried to turn them into a sentence in te reo, it amounted to: ‘Māori good. Colonisation bad. Matua smart. Me dumb.’ And also: ‘Me tired. Want nap.’” — Siena Yates.
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“Yes, we want people with in-depth mātauranga Māori writing about that knowledge. But we also want people who are struggling with their identity as Māori, or who have just come to it, because those are valid experiences in Aotearoa today.” — Robyn Bargh.
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“Coming up in the world of fashion, Kiri Nathan ran into brick walls at every turn, was told she wasn’t good enough, or her work was ‘too Māori’ to sell.” — Siena Yates.
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“The colonisers tried to make us conform to a heteronormative way of living and being — and I reject this kaupapa.” — Allan Heta Cleaver.
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“She wrote that mamae and those fears into her song, so others who could relate might find some comfort in it.” — Siena Yates on Whirimako Black’s classic waiata ‘Kei hea taku reo?’
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“It would have cut out such a huge chunk of our grief and trauma if we’d done it the way that our people used to do it.” — Sharday Cable-Ranapia.
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“Their plan was simply to show up at the students’ common room and ask them to take off the grass skirts. But the meeting became a confrontation and quickly blew up.” — Katie Wolfe, on the haka party incident.
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“Something that we’ve found, which Māori should be so proud of, is that our culture provides proven protective factors against mate wareware (dementia).” — Dr Makarena Dudley.
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“The Māori karanga sound is designed to activate the sorrow that you hold inside yourself. That’s the function — that’s the purpose.” – Te Raina Ferris.
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“The moment you entered the festival, you became everyone’s ‘sis’ or ‘aunty’ or ‘kare’ — and they became yours.” — Siena Yates, on her first Matatini.
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