Some life lessons and my why…
I spent a portion of my early life being raised by my grandparents in our family home that was then on the outskirts of the city in Glen Eden, Waitakere City. During this time, I learned:
People with different skin colour were treated differently depending on how they looked and how they presented themselves.
My grandmother was pākehā with blue eyes and my grandfather was dark skinned with dark brown eyes. My brother and sister were also a different skin colour to me. My brother darker and my sister lighter.
When I was in Primary School my parents separated, during that time I lived with my mother, and we moved…a lot. During that time, I changed Primary Schools six times. This time in my life taught me:
Schools in different areas have different things depending on where they are and who attended them.
Moving into my teenage years, I spent a year in a small town called Marton in the mighty Manawatu and then moved to Cairns in North Queensland to finish my High Schooling. As you can imagine, there were some very big lessons learnt during this time of my life.
Living in a small town that had a high percentage of Māori, I was able to step into my Māoritanga without fear of being picked on for being lighter skinned. I was proud to be Māori and could learn about te ao Māori from my school, whānau and friends.
When I moved to Cairns, I went to my new High School to pick my subjects. Being Indigenous to Aotearoa, I wanted to learn about the Indigenous people of Australia. I quickly learned there were no such subjects at the school and the closest I could find was an art class.
Living in Australia, I learned about and experienced racism on a very different level. I saw and heard terrible things about the Aboriginal and Torres Strait people that should never be repeated.
Moving home, I ended up at university studying Sport and Recreation. During one of my classes, the lecturer started rattling off a heap of negative stats about Māori.
“…Māori have the highest rates of obesity, Māori have the highest rates of smoking, Māori die earlier than their European counterparts…”
I remember looking around the room thinking to myself, is this guy for real? How can he just casually talk about me and my whānau like that? I also remember thinking; I need to do something about these stats!
So that brings me to where I am today. Having a series of experiences that have influenced my thinking from a very early age. I’ve come to realise the world isn’t fair, its not made for people who look and sound like me and something needs to be done about it. I once heard the saying “be the change you want to see in the world”.
And that is what I aspire to do every day. With every action, conversation and movement. I want to ensure that whānau Māori live prosperous lives today and in the future.