- I’m just breaking that cycle of people in
my family not passing, not wanting to go to school. Breaking that cycle of being a Māori on the dole.
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- With our NCEA achievement rate being
higher last year, in all three levels than they were in previous years, it’s given Māori students the
confidence to do better this year, and meet that expectation of doing as well if not better than non-Māori
students.
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- It’s a bit of a challenge with
stereotypes, but our mind-set now is thinking that our being Māori is not a disadvantage; we use it as an
advantage within our school.
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- I’m Māori but I’m not that stereotypical
Māori. I’m going to enjoy my education and find something that I’m passionate about.
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- Success for me was just making it to Year
13. I’m the first out of all my Mum’s sisters, brothers - and all my first cousins - to make it this
far. And just passing has been like a real big thing for me and my family. I almost got an Excellence
endorsement in English.
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- Māori work really hard - they are really
good at working at something and just keeping on and carrying on.
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- We can embrace our Māori culture,
especially with our successes. If we do well, we know that we have some
influence. We can gain Excellence in any subjects we want. Being Māori doesn’t
stop us at anything. It isn’t a boundary, and we can steer past those
stereotypes - especially with our school. It
allows us to grasp hold of our excellences and success and just fly.
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- Our success shows, and it leads down to
future generations. When we achieve, it proves that more and more of us can achieve to get out
of the thing of being, oh, being
troublemakers, because our success will go down the line to our
next generations.
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- Every year, apart from Year 7, I’ve had an
academic prize, so I’ve excelled in some of my subjects. I’m pretty good at
Science. It’s one of my favourite subjects. And one day I hope to be a
scientist. Which would be pretty cool, because do you
know a Māori scientist? I have done well in competitions like Te Manu Kōrero,
and I also do speeches in Japanese as well.
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- It felt so good passing, because every
time you walk
past a teacher that
taught you, they’d always be like:
“So
good to see that you guys passed and that you
decided to come back to school.” It just feels great hearing them say that.
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- I feel proud as a Māori when success comes
through
and you hear: “Oh, it’s the
Māori students. They’re
the ones
passing.” Māori students are excelling at
our school.
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- It means there’s hope for Māori to become something more than everyone’s
stereotypes. It brings hope just to see that we can
actually make a
difference.
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- Not a lot of Māori kids have actually made
it to the
senior levels in our
school. I think people are scared
of
failure, because they’d feel ashamed. But failure,
you can learn from it. It’s nothing bad. Just push yourself. Who cares if you only get
Achieved? At
least it’s something.
So be proud of yourself, and
have
the mana. Actually, be the Māori kid that gets
to the senior level and passes. It makes you feel really good about yourself.
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- When
you’re a Māori and you achieve, it’s amazing
because quite a lot of Māori get underestimated. For Māori to show people our capabilities,
what we can
do, it’s quite an
amazing feeling. When other Māori
see
our achievements, they want to be just like us,
so they push for it as well
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- If you’re a Māori, you’re probably already
put in those classes where they’re not pushing you to succeed as much, so automatically you do
not achieve well. That’s the overall stereotype of Māori achievement. People aren’t expecting as
much of you.
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- Back in the day, you never used to find
very many successful Māori people out there doing things - and these days you do. We’re kind of
changing that. I want to do managing and marketing and go into Māori business,
and get more of that kind of thing rolling.
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- Success as a Māori student, for me, is
breaking the stereotypes of not succeeding and not doing as well in school. For
me, Māori is my strongest subject. But it doesn’t get acknowledged as much as
if you got endorsed with Excellence in
English. So to break the stereotypes for a Māori student, is to succeed well and be acknowledged, just as
much as succeeding in a non-Māori based subject.
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- This year, being Head Girl has been pretty
cool. That breaks the stereotype. Māori can be leaders and they don’t just sit around and do
nothing. We’re passing NCEA Level 1, 2 and 3, and now getting UE and going off
to University.
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- I’ve noticed that when people are asked if
they’re Māori or not, not many people admit it. But for me, I’m actually proud
to be Māori, and I think everyone should be.
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- People saying stuff like: “Māori can’t do
this, can’t do that” - it’s just heart-breaking, because we do have a lot of
Māori achievers within New Zealand. It’s really good knowing when you have done
something and you’ve done your culture proud.
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- People in our community say, “Oh, that
person’s dumb because they’re Māori”. Being a school leader next year, I will
work against this stereotype that Māori are underachievers. It’s a privilege,
and I hope that other Māori students and our community can realise that. Just
because you’re Māori, it doesn’t mean that you’re dumb. And it doesn’t mean
that you can’t achieve.
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- When I was receiving my awards at the
assembly, there was a Māori boy who said to me: “How did you get those awards?
You’re a Māori boy. I don’t know how you got them and why you got them. You
must be paying them”.
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- Some people see Māori as a barrier. I do
believe that our people need to look straight past that, because it’s not true.
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- Learning
is fun. If I could do it for a living... well, that’s me.
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- You’re not going to look at a Pākehā
person and be like: “Oh, he can do this. I bet a Māori can’t.”
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- You really want to make something of
yourself and make your family and iwi proud - and you want to beat the stats.
You want to just be you and succeed.
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- It’s about trying to change the stereotype
that they’ve put on all of us as Māori. We can all actually achieve - sometimes
even better than others.
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- Everyone knows we have this stereotype -
that we’re not as high achievers as anyone else in our world today. Yesterday,
this actually happened to me. Someone came into work and when I was serving
them they pretty much told me that Māori can’t achieve, that they’re not
successful people. And it really hurt me. I want to prove that stereotype
wrong.
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- I just want to show the world that we as
Māori can achieve, and we can achieve anything we want to if we put our mind to
it.
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- Regardless of your culture, your
ethnicity, anyone can achieve anything. I mean, look at our Governor-General.
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- A lot of people think being Māori is
trying to work against something. But if you’re Māori, you’re working with your whole culture. You have
your ancestors, your family, they’re all behind you. Being Māori is something that will support
you, not something that you have to fight against.
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- To be successful is not to conform to the
negative stereotype that we all know is there with being a Māori student. Being successful, it’s
not just academically or physically but it’s also the respect you get from the
teachers and friends.
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- My older brother he sort of slacked off
with school, and he knows it. He talks to me and he always says, “Don’t be like
me”. He always pushes me to make sure I know where I am going. And like, I’m
not trying to sound sad, but I don’t want to do what he did.
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- A lot of Māori do have talent, I can see
it in my cousins and all my family, but they just don’t bring it out to the table. You need to put your
results on the table. Don’t be shy. You need to be proud of who you are as a
Māori - show your talents to the people.
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- I think it’s more about pride - showing
the way for the rest of the family and for the rest of us as Māori. We just
make the path bigger, not longer. And I reckon, being the oldest, I have to show
my brothers and my cousins and my extended family that they can be more than
what they are.
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- The Māori pass rate for NCEA has lifted in
our school. It is lifting every year and I think the word that’s been thrown
around is pride, and I do carry a lot of pride in seeing that I was part of
that stat.
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- Breaking that stereotype and those
assumptions that are put on us as Māori. I don’t think success for us is just academic. It’s finding who
we are and being happy with our well-being, and being able to confidently walk with te ao Māori and te
ao Pākehā. (
the Māori and Pākehā worlds). And showing them that we can do just as good as
they can, and better.
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- When all of us Māori kids can walk into
our school and be proud to wear our uniform, I think that’s a good success. Not just walking in, but
when you walk out of our school and we’re not rushed to take our uniform off
because we’re proud to wear it. I reckon that’s a pretty big thing.
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- I saw this Māori fella on the fifty-dollar
note, and I asked my dad: “Who’s this fella, Dad?” And he said: “Oh, that’s Api
(Apirana Ngata). He was the first Māori to graduate from a university.” I know
Api is a big inspiration for Māori, and I respect that. I want to be like that
fella.
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- We have to push past the expectations that
the world has on Māori. We have so much talent and intelligence,
but it’s these statistics and the kind of image that everybody else has placed
on us that hold us back. There is resilience amongst us, and it’s slowly coming
through. And that’s what success means to me as a Māori,
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- I was first in my family to pass Level 1
in school, and so for me I was happy as. I don’t want to tell my mum yet. I
want her to find out next year so she can be happy too.
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- The lies that we get told - that we can’t do
it. But we are strong people. When you go back to the wars that were fought,
the battles that were fought, that doesn’t just stay in the past. Those battles
were fought for us to be here, to move forward.
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- My biggest success would be overcoming the
barriers, the doubts, the stereotypes about me being Māori - and also the limitations of my
school.
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- It feels good to prove other people wrong
when they’re stuck thinking that because we’re Māori we can’t achieve in an academic world, and we
can only achieve in Visual Arts and nothing related to English and careers and
Science and Technology. Everyone is capable of anything we set our mind to.
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- I’m the first. I’m the first one to make
it to this point. To make it to Level 1
in my family is like: “Wow!”
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- Times have changed. In our school we now
see our Māori students succeeding at the same level as the Pākehā students.
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- Just because I’m ‘smart’ doesn’t mean that
I’m not Māori. Success is being able to hold on to who we really are as Māori.
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- It’s not so much where you come from. For
me it’s who you make yourself to be.
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- I’m one of a few Māori students in a
prefect leadership role at our school. I think my success as a Māori student is I don’t have to put
away any part of my Māori identity. I’m allowed to walk in that identity and speak te reo Māori.
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