What gives you hope?

Norman | Te Tai Poutini

Norman emphasises the importance of understanding your family’s history, your town’s history and your country’s history.

“Everybody needs to know their own history, their own personal history. They need to know their family’s history. And they need to know their town and even their country’s history. Because if you don’t know your history, you don’t know yourself. And really that’s the thing that I hope that people in Westport appreciate – some of the history that I’ve been able to find out.

Sometimes it’s not been easy. And sometimes it’s been, well, what shall I say? Unfortunate, in that some people have discovered things that perhaps they didn’t want to know. But I think really that to know yourself, you need to be able to do that, to know the future.

And I think that’s one of the things that gives me a bit of hope, at least about Westport, is that it’s the people here who are the main drivers of the future. And I don’t mean the council, I don’t mean the officials in this government department or that, I mean what you might call the ordinary people.

The people who do things not because they have to, but because they want to. Not because they’re paid a fortune to, but because they do it thankfully without necessarily looking for any pay whatsoever.

And that’s basically what I think is so good about living in Westport – in that the people are resilient, they help each other, and it’s one of those things that in the future I hope will carry on.”