Moa | Te Atatū Peninsula
“What I liked about the way I was raised was that actually I was raised in the country. I remember climbing trees, black and white TVs, no power and a lot of forest, and I loved that about my childhood.
So, I was born in Auckland, but I was brought up in Colville Coromandel for the first five years of my life. My mother is Swedish, so she came over with the circus, and was a bit of a hippy, and so I was brought up around a lot of natural forest and we lived in a, well a house truck. We lived in a house truck for a little while, and then she built a house in the middle of the forest, which took about half an hour to walk to, and in the night-time it was beautiful because we would look at the stars, and we’d look at the glow worms, and we’d just be around the forest and listen to the moreporks.
The values that I grew up with were very environmental. So, I’m still very into helping the earth, and hopefully ridding the world of plastic and things like that, but very, very natural. A lot of natural products, organic programs, and things like that. There’s definitely a difference with the urban and rural lifestyle where it’s much easier to get out into the forest and climb trees, and do these sorts of things when you’re rural, whereas when you’re a bit urban in a big city, it’s quite difficult to find places to take the children out.
We manage to get out and go to the Ranges, or go bush-walking every now and again, but it’s certainly not as much as what I wish I would be able to do. In terms of the types of food and things, it’s becoming more and more common that we can buy foods like organic food and things like that, but it’s still very expensive, whereas growing up in rural New Zealand, you could grow your own vegetables. You could swim in plastic-free oceans to an extent. Lately, you find more and more organic produce and more and more healthier food in the supermarkets and things.
Being part Māori, my Māori heritage has been extremely important to me, in being able to have that instilled in my children has been extremely important. One of the greatest things that I see nowadays is that you see more and more parents teaching their children te reo Māori. You see more and more conversations happening at the supermarket, or at the library, or around town, and it’s really amazing to see. It’s also great to have more options to put my children through Māori schooling and teach them the language. So, that’s been one of the things that I’ve been quite proud to be able to give to my children.
In terms of raising children, it’s very different to having a village raise children these days. It’s a much more isolated practice, where I think that parenthood is more so, a bit lonely these days. Whereas, when we were younger, you had aunties and uncles and everything around, and people raising each other’s children. You don’t have that so much, that tribal way of life. So, that can be a bit difficult in the big city for example. Otherwise, I think our children, that generation is really important. For our Māori people that generation is important because they’re going to carry the language on. They also seem to be a little bit more onto it with food and things like that, whereas when I was younger, I wasn’t so happy to eat good food. My children seem to have caught onto that, and are quite happy to eat really good food. So, that’s one of the positive things.”
