“It’s more helpful to look at the question of Māori science as a tangle of semantic, philosophical, and political arguments, rather than a simple yes-or-no question.” – Georgina Tuari Stewart.
Read More
“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.
Read More
“Once arrogantly dismissed as journeys of luck — the aimless drifting of incompetent mariners — these voyages are now rightly adulated as ‘among the greatest acts of voyage and discovery in world history.’” — Kennedy Warne on ‘Polynesia:900–1600’ by Madi Williams.
Read More
“It’s only recently that we started to talk about ‘the Māori calendar’ — which doesn’t actually make sense. Because there’s over 500 of these calendars.” — Rereata Makiha, an expert on maramataka and ancestral knowledge.
Read More
“Without the authority to practise kaitiakitanga, it’s all just talk. We need to have mana, but gaining mana isn’t what drives me. Restoring mauri is what drives me.” — Dan Hikuroa.
Read More
“I lose faith in my discipline quite often. English has broken my own heart several times, and it has been used for generations to make our community feel small.” — Dr Alice Te Punga Somerville.
Read More
“In these fields, the tūpuna lie where they fell in the swamps or in unmarked graves hastily dug by survivors, with the dead piled up around them. I swear I can sometimes hear their voices.” — Joanna Kidman.
Read More
“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.”
Read More
“Our Māori knowledge is thousands of years old. It ties in every element and aspect of the world — it can teach us a lot about the planet in this age of climate change and environmental sustainability.”
Read MoreE-Tangata is an online Sunday magazine specialising in stories that reflect the experiences of Māori and Pasifika in Aotearoa.
We welcome submissions or inquiries to:
editor@e-tangata.co.nz
Sign up for our email newsletter and get the latest E-Tangata stories sent straight to your inbox.
SubscribeYou can support E-Tangata’s kaupapa by contributing through PressPatron. With your help, we can tell more Māori and Pacific stories.
