- I know who I am and where I’m from. That’s
how I identify myself as successful.
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- Success is defined by how the individual
feels. It’s an emotional thing. You have to get your mind in the right place, and that in itself is a
journey. But mistakes are a good thing as well. Make mistakes - it helps you learn.
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- It’s not just about achieving the goal.
It’s more about having a direction, something to strive for. You learn more valuable lessons from the
journey than actually getting the goal itself.
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- I think people can motivate you, but you
can only live off other people’s motivation for so long. If you really want
something you have to own it.
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- My family, my friends, my teachers –
they’ve been a key part of my life. With them you can strive harder in life,
and become the strong person you are.
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- If you find your true friends, you’ll find
who your family is, because you need that extra support at school. Just find your true friends, cause
they’ll be your backbone.
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- I think it means someone that is being
themselves, using their passion to get them where they want to be. Also using
the support of their family around them as motivation and to make them proud,
so then everyone’s proud.
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- Being a successful Māori means a real
strengthening of identity. The more we succeed, the more we identify with who we are, which
resonates with where we’re from, and obviously, we’re Māori. By succeeding we
give more power to our people, to our culture. It just means being able to
grow, become bigger and spread our wings to other people, other Māori. And it’s
just really, really cool.
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- Doors are opening, the doors to our dreams
are opening. We are journeying to the wider world, to our dreams. The big things on our journey
are te reo and our customs, and the support of our families.
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- It’s perseverance. Māori students don’t
show off in the school, like, “Oh, I’m the greatest person. I’m the man at
doing whatever I do.” They’re just real. They do a lot of background work.
Behind everything they’re doing a lot of hard work, but they never show that
when they get awarded for it. They never show off, or they never show that
they’re struggling. Quiet, working hard, doing all those little things so that
they can get something big out of it.
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- If you’re getting put down all the time,
you have to look on the bright side and know that you’re better than those
people. If you’re not happy with yourself, then how are you going to get
anywhere in life? There’s a lot of achievement coming from our school now.
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- I think it’s always good keeping your
cultural values with you - as in who you are - with everything that you do, so you can always go back to
them. If you’re going to succeed, you’re going to succeed as yourself, not as
someone else. As Māori people, you hold that mana. I’m proud to be a Māori
person.
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- Kapa haka is like a big family, a second
family. You can go there upset, confused, frustrated, and by the end of it,
you’re fine again. It’s that place that you can go and put all of those
emotions into something like a haka. It helps a lot, for sure.
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- It gives you that little mana boost. You
feel good after a period of kapa haka. It makes you more focused.
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- It’s about not comparing yourself with
others and doing the best that you can, and having fun doing it - just enjoying
learning.
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- Success isn’t about ethnicity or the
colour of your skin; it’s about having the motivation and determination to achieve what you want
to. So success as Māori for me is
knowing who you are and where you come from - and being proud
of who you are.
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- Having the confidence within yourself to
know that you can succeed and enjoy the journey our own Māori way as well. I really like that.
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- I didn’t carry kapa haka on because I
thought it was a bit too much. I wanted to focus on my schoolwork. But then I realised, sticking with kapa haka,
it’s what really pushed me to do everything really.
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- I didn’t have to give up anything to do
what I wanted. I just did everything.
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- Through kapa haka I learnt a lot of
discipline, and that’s paid off with my schoolwork, because you’ve got to be disciplined when it comes to your
studies.
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- My dad, he always expects us to do the
best that we can in everything we do: “Don’t do anything half-pai.” He always
talks to me and makes sure I do the best I can. So that’s why I was sort of
annoyed last year that I only got Merit endorsement and missed out by four
credits for Excellence. Being able to say that you’ve succeeded means that
you’ve tried doing everything, you haven’t given up, you’ve tried your hardest.
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- I used to come to school just to see my
friends. I was bored. Now, I’ve really changed my mind-set. I come to school
and I work hard so I can get somewhere in life.
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- Just reading The Word when you’re troubled
and just finding the meaning that you need. It’s really helpful.
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- Being
happy and making sure your wellbeing is okay - your physical, mental,
emotional, social and spiritual wellbeing. You can feel good inside and
outside.
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- Because of my whakapapa, my tīpuna, I can
believe in who I am.
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- It’s surrounding yourself in the
environment that you need to be surrounded in. You don’t want to be put, or you
don’t want to put yourself, in a negative area that’s not going to help you,
not going to support you, take you in the wrong direction and lead you the
wrong way, when you know where to go. So you need to put yourself in that
position, te haere tika (the right path).
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- Every time I feel down, I go and talk to
my Nan. She gives me some advice.
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- Make yourself able to grow. Don’t limit
your thinking. Allow it to expand, and allow people to speak into your life.
Listen to it and filter it, ‘cause what you listen to grows in you, and you
speak it. Just allow people to speak into your life so you can grow and create
new paths.
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- A lot of young Māori have this thing in
them, this whakamā. I’d like to break that shame.
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- We have a teacher from England who’s gone
over to the kura next door to learn te reo Māori. That shows me that he appreciates my whakapapa;
he appreciates where I come from; who I am as a person, and my culture. That helps me
understand where they’re coming from as a teacher, and what they’re trying to
teach me. I understand that they want to know who I am, so I want to know what
they have to teach me. It brings them to a level where you’re able to respect
them as a teacher and as a person as well. You understand that they value who
you are and what you do in your life, so you value them and you want to learn
from them.
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- I didn’t carry kapa haka on because I thought it was a bit too much. I wanted to focus on my schoolwork. But then I realised, sticking with kapa haka, it’s what really pushed me to do everything really.
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- I didn’t have to give up anything to do what I wanted. I just did everything.
|
- Through kapa haka I learnt a lot of discipline, and that’s paid off with my schoolwork, because you’ve got to be disciplined when it comes to your studies.
|
- My dad, he always expects us to do the best that we can in everything we do: “Don’t do anything half-pai.” He always talks to me and makes sure I do the best I can. So that’s why I was sort of annoyed last year that I only got Merit endorsement and missed out by four credits for Excellence. Being able to say that you’ve succeeded means that you’ve tried doing everything, you haven’t given up, you’ve tried your hardest.
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- I used to come to school just to see my friends. I was bored. Now, I’ve really changed my mind-set. I come to school and I work hard so I can get somewhere in life.
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- Just reading The Word when you’re troubled and just finding the meaning that you need. It’s really helpful.
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- Being happy and making sure your well-being is okay - your physical, mental, emotional, social and spiritual well-being. You can feel good inside and outside.
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