“What they do today won’t destroy what we’ll be doing tomorrow. That’s why I keep doing this work. Because if we don’t exercise rangatiratanga over our health, we’re always going to be at the beck and call of successive governments.” — Lady Tureiti Moxon.
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“Not everyone has the chance to create mana motuhake and tino rangatiratanga in their lives. But we’re lucky enough to be able to do that by creating a dinner and sharing our kōrero in a space that is otherwise pretty white.” — Chef Kasey Bird.
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“If you get too caught up on mistakes all the time, you get into analysis paralysis, where you focus so much on not messing up that it stunts your ability to speak.” — Hona Black on correcting errors in te reo Māori.
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“Lately, it’s felt like every single day there’s a new struggle to add to the list, a new fight to be had. But the kotahitanga I witnessed and felt at Tūrangawaewae gave me hope again.” — Siena Yates on attending the tangihanga for Kiingi Tuheita.
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“When I started Anahera Press, there were a lot of Māori and Pasifika poets around, but they just weren’t being published. The reason certainly wasn’t anything to do with quality. It was because mainstream publishers didn’t want our kind of writing.” — Kiri Piahana-Wong, poet and publisher.
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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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“Tino rangatiratanga is the self-determination to do what we do as Māori every day, without needing permission or a policy, or even organised protest. We just need to embody our culture every day and live it.” — Kim Eriksen-Downs.
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“I’ve developed a new sense of knowing — which runs far deeper than a ‘belief’ — that my tūpuna are with me. A couple of years ago, this understanding would’ve been too airy-fairy for my liking.” — Siena Yates.
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“One of my goals is to get into a position where I can work for Ngāti Pikiao, as someone who helps our people to come home . . . to help them discover this whole other way of life.” — Te Atamairangi Emery-Hughes.
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“I think about how I grew up with my grandparents, and I’m hoping we can get back to that idea of “a village raises a family”, and not just for the kids but for our kaumātua and others who might be struggling with loneliness and anxiety.” — Miriana Stephens.
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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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“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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“All we’re asking for is a world in which Māori make our own decisions about our own lives, the government makes its own decisions about its people’s lives, and we sit together and make decisions on matters that relate to us both.” — Professor Margaret Mutu.
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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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“None of the people of our marae wait to find out if there’ll be money coming down the track. When you ask them why they do what they do, they say: ‘That’s what we do as Māori. That’s manaakitanga.’” — Siena Yates.
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“The reo journey is hard and confronting, and a lot of the time you just have to push through. There’s no skirting around it, especially if you’re Māori and carrying the language trauma that many of us do.” — Siena Yates.
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“For the first time in my life, I feel whole. I feel spiritually well. I feel Māori. And not because I can have a short conversation in the reo, but because I finally feel the connection.” — Siena Yates.
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“The kura reo is specifically designed to challenge you, to push your limits and demolish any concept of a comfort zone. But it’s done in a way that is manageable for you, and with aroha.” — Siena Yates.
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“Sometimes, it doesn’t seem to make sense. Sometimes, it’s unbearably hard and you want to quit.” — Siena Yates.
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“Once you’ve started to kōrero Māori with your kurī, there’s no going back.” — Siena Yates.
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“The full-time, full-immersion learning environment gives us a space where we don’t have to try so hard to be in te ao Māori.” — Siena Yates.
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“I’d finally joined an environment where I didn’t have to use my Pākehā voice for the first time in my life.” — Siena Yates.
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“It’s only in recent years that I’ve even plucked up the courage to claim my identity, to proudly say: Yes, I am Māori.” — Siena Yates.
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E kōrero atu nei ia ki a Kristin Ross o Punarau Media, e pā ana ki ngā mahi pakeke ki te whakatupu tamariki i roto i tētahi kāinga reo Māori, koia i whakaihu waka ai tōna pakihi.
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Anton Matthews e pā ana ki te mahi whakatupu tamariki kōrero Māori me te whakahaere pakihi reorua — me te wawata kotahi kei roto.
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“Ours is an oral tradition and that’s important because it’s not only how we share stories but how we transfer and transmit knowledge.” — Lee Timutimu.
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