What lessons has your life journey taught you?

Mackenzie | Kirikiriroa

Mackenzie reflects on how learning about the struggles of her tūpuna and whānau inspired her to pursue history and advocate for her people, seeing her journey as a way to honour those who fought for her to be here.

“My dream since I was young is to always be an advocate for voices, for everyone around me, especially whānau. Growing up and seeing how iwi, my local community, Māori, tangata whenua, seeing all our struggles over the years. Especially learning history, really seeing the struggles that we’ve had to face and that they’re still happening today and that although there’s been evolution, there’s been change, things are actually very similar to the past still.

And that’s quite upsetting for someone who’s very passionate about change. Very passionate about growth. I want better for our people. For our Māori communities and our environment. So that’s always been my vision from a young age. And now that I’m here (Waikato University), I want to study history to understand the past, to make changes in the future.

I always saw things as cupcakes and rainbows. And of course, you’ve got that one Nan who has to sit you down and be like, ‘when I was young I used to get smacked for speaking te reo’ and tells you those things and says, ‘you have to keep going, you have to keep fighting.’ And for me, that’s when it started. She wanted me to understand why she was so strict on, ‘this is why I want you to speak our language.’

And that’s pretty much when I realised, as a kid, I thought ‘okay yeah so you had it hard, you want me to carry it on.’ But I really took in the bigger picture and I saw it as I was honouring my ancestors, and I was honouring my tūpuna. I’d be honouring my family who have brought me here to this day. So that’s how I view it. It was a big eye-opener for me to understand that the people who brought me into this world, my tūpuna, had to fight for me to be here.”