- To me, it's about time they get to hearing about our life in Pukekohe. Here they thought that, 'Oh, you guys are living it up in Pukekohe in amongst all the vegetables.' But not so. What was really going on? We were treated like... dogs. 'No Maoris allowed.' That's all they said. 'No Maoris allowed.' - This is what they called 'the dark side'. And everybody called it 'the dark side'. It just had that name. You see some pretty rough-lookin' places around. Probably all Maoris live in this street. Probably on the dole or something like that. You know, they got plenty of time to work; they could do it. They didn't want all the Maoris living together, otherwise it'll turn into a ghetto. So they tried sticking one or two Europeans in amongst them, and that didn't go too well with people, cos they'd build a house and they said, 'Well, it's gonna be Maoris next door.' 'No, no, I don't want that place. I want to go somewhere else.' - It wasn't called racism; it was called Colour Bar. Pukekohe is the Colour Bar town. (SOMBRE MUSIC) www.able.co.nz Copyright Able 2022. - We moved out here to Pukekohe about five years ago. So, I grew up in Papatoetoe, where, racially, it's really, like, quite diverse. But out in Pukekohe, it's very Pakeha or very Maori, you know. - I was teaching history at Botany College in Auckland, and I saw in books little dribs and drabs about the segregation era, particularly in Pukekohe. And I thought to myself, 'Why aren't we teaching this history?' So I went to the National Archives, and I started to see more and more documents and more references to the segregation that took place. And I just couldn't believe that there was, like, a cover-up. (SOMBRE MUSIC) - When I read the book, I was just like, 'How does no one know about this? 'And what can we do to be able to tell everyone?' So I sent Robert Bartholomew an email, and I said, 'Would you be interested in holding a talk in Pukekohe?' So I booked the town hall, and I emailed primary schools and colleges around Franklin. I think this would be amazing for our students and teachers at our schools so they had a better understanding of what happened in Pukekohe. It's, like, a really ugly past. And I guess everyone's ashamed of what happened. Yeah, and I think that's why no one talks about it. - The frustrating thing for me is ` when people come up to me and they say, 'Oh, it didn't happen.' People are trying to deny this history, or to downplay it and say it wasn't that significant, and they were worried about the reaction. One of the labels for Pukekohe, like it or not, is that it's racist and was there long before my books ever came out. Some are trying to frame the debate over what happened in Pukekohe as some kind of contested history, that it's somehow open to debate. Let's examine the facts. Maori were barred from the upstairs of the cinema from at least 1933 to 1962... There were also barbers who refused to cut Maori hair... The Pukekohe native school was different than the many other public native schools across the country... It was to be racially segregated... In 1944, The New Zealand Herald described a two-room shack where 12 people were living... These overcrowded shacks with no toilets or running water were death traps. - I was angry, because some of his information as to why things were done this way... were wrong. You shouldn't write things without permission of the people who lived at that time. - Some of the younger Maori were saying to me, 'Have you gotten permission to do this story?' In my mind, no one owns history; history belongs to everyone. - It's our story. And it's our story that belongs to us. And there are many stories you don't know that took place here in Pukekohe. But I just finish saying it's about how we move forward now. Kia ora. (APPLAUSE) (SOMBRE MUSIC) - I thought the town hall was a massive success. You know, the sky didn't fall, like everyone, sort of, tried to predict. But I couldn't just leave everyone at the talk like that, cos there's a lot of us and them on both sides... all sides. And so the Hikoi For Harmony is designed to bring people together. This was one way to, sort of, feel positive about the future and think about the future and where we could go if we work together... - LOUDSPEAKER: Hikoi for harmony! - CROWD: Hikoi for harmony! - ...not a silver bullet for ending racism or, you know` or healing everyone. - Hikoi for harmony! I have never, ever organised anything like this before. - Hikoi for harmony! - Hikoi for harmony! - Catherine Tamahere means well, but she's not from this town. Some of the elders who lived through this history are very angered she and the American writer are forcing them to talk about the trauma without their blessing. So I've organised a hui in Pukekohe to create an interesting discussion around No Maoris Allowed. I rang the chairman of the council, Andrew Baker, so we can discuss the No Maori Allowed bullshit that went down in those days. - I'd been aware of some of the stories. But, you know, there was never anyone putting their hand up saying, 'Yeah, that was me.' And then I was invited along to meet some of the people who had some stories to tell. So, you know, it was a bit of a surprise to me. You're never gonna to hide from this; Pukekohe will never hide from its past. But how do we move on? - I think the best way to make changes in our community is if we educate our community, learn the history, and then for us to unite. Whilst I didn't grow up here, my children will. - It needs to be Pukekohe people. - Yeah, not outside. - You don't have that history. Let them be the people who are gonna influence change for Pukekohe, not you telling them how it should be done. And it needs the kaumatua first to heal, cos they're the ones that are walking around with all that pain. - You wanna hear the story? We've got a lot of stories. We got abused at school even! Chucked into the showers because we're brown. We had to rub the brown paru off our skin. I'm still mamae about that cemetery too. We weren't allowed to bury our people, our whanau, in the big cemetery. It had to be there unmarked. How many of us is left here? Who's honest enough and brave enough to tell the stories? - It was really confronting, and it was pretty tough to hear. I mean, how do we as a community respond to that so that, you know, Puke can continue to be such a good place? Do you find everyone that that's been affected and say I'm sorry? How do you apologise to every single person that's been affected by this? It's almost an impossible thing to do. - So, how'd it go? - It was heavy. - Heavy? - Yeah. Like, the room was split ` sort of half was like, 'Yeah, this is a good idea.' But then the other was like, 'Why would we have this hikoi for harmony 'when we haven't even healed ourselves?' - Yeah, I can respect where the kuia are coming from. And I imagine there's still a lot of hurt out there, because it's been bottled up for so long. - There was a kuia that wasn't really on board. And I get it. - With the hikoi? - Yeah, with the hikoi. - 'If I were to be honest with you? 'Well, understand where we're coming from in terms of Pukekohe.' And Catherine Tamihere ` he ahua pakeha tona whakaaro. And, so, kaore au i pirangi ki te korero ki a ia. Mm. - Well, they all come over to us, and they started telling me things that happened way back. - Have you read that book? - Maori Not Allowed? - Yeah. - Well, we` I disagree with a lot of it. But then again, it's a way that I grew up but not in those circumstances. - No. - But I was aware of it. - He just brought up things that... well, in my mind, a lot of them didn't happen. - The only one I noticed was 'No Maori Upstairs' in the theatre... - Theatre, that's all, yeah. - ...around here at that time. - I don't like it thrown in our face that 'they did this' and 'this happened' and 'that happened' and make a real drama queen. And I don't think your dad and mum, they didn't really worry about it too much, did they? They were quite happy to work on. No, we had a good life here in Pukekohe. I'm proud of the place, regardless of what others might say. 'Oh, that's a racial town.' We were still friends. Eh? (TENSE MUSIC) - If you're taking a story to another town that you've never been brought up in, the reaction from the locals is common ` 'Who are you to come and tell this story?' - Sometimes I hear through the grapevine, like, you know, others are not so happy. But at the same time, I want to try and do my part to improve things for our kids. I don't want them to experience racism in Pukekohe. - I'm gonna get the same reaction with this protest. Who am I to come here? - Oh, yeah. And how do you feel? - Oh, no, I feel good about it... - (LAUGHS) - ...cos I've been doing it all my life. If you're opposing racism, the disruption is gonna be always part of the... the comments being made by` by people. - Which is kind of crazy, right? You're trying to eradicate racism... - Yeah. Yeah, yeah. - ...and then you get called a disruptor. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - I feel like I represent a generation where we've been brought up to be Pakeha, but we're Maori. And we might not have the language or the connection to our marae or our whenua, but then we're not, you know, we're not white enough to be Pakeha, so we're kind of in the middle. And so it's very much a 'us and them', you know. So I really struggle with that. - You can understand why we have a clash between` often between rangatahi and our kaumatua, who have grown up in different worlds. You know, rangatahi should be celebrated for their idealism and energy and sometimes going ahead without a lot of thinking. - Yeah, I feel whakama about that. About not speaking to, you know, more... mana whenua, really. So how do I meet these kaumatua of Pukekohe? And so I guess that's just through talking to people and to connect and to listen and to share stories with the older generation. (KNOCKS ON DOOR) CALLS: Kia ora! - Haere mai. - Kia ora, whaea. - Kia tu ahau i ia. - Mwah. - Tena koe. Oh, are those for me? - Of course! - Aren't they peonies, bub? - Yes. - Lovely. Where are you from? - I'm Ngati Porou from Waipiro Bay. - Tena koe! I'm Ngati Porou. - Oh, you're Ngati Porou too? - Yes! - I heard you challenged the rules about the swimming pools... - Yeah. - ...cos Maori were only allowed to swim on Friday? - Yeah. So I was sent here to teach at the Maori School in 1953, '54. There was only one swimming pool in town. And of course, I didn't know that Maori children were only allowed to have a swim on Fridays. Not on any other day. Because all the other kids have had their swims in the clean water, so, by Friday, it's dirty. So the Maori kids get` I never heard of things like... - We used to go swimming in my class about twice a week. But the Maoris had to stay back ` if there was three Maoris in our room, well, they stayed back and the teacher would give him a bit of homework to do. But Friday afternoon ` at 1 o'clock, I think it was ` she was open slather for the Maoris, because on Saturday they'd changed the water; they put new water into the swimming pool. - The council didn't really want to talk about it. - Mm. - But I said, 'But I'd like to talk about it.' - I think it's important to share the load on something that happened to so many people. You know, it's not healthy for individuals to carry it on their own. - The movie house then ` when Maoris weren't allowed to go upstairs and all that ` well, that was there at the bottom of town. And we just accepted it. And we used to think, 'Oh, one day, it'll come right.' It did. It did. But, uh... by that time, well, a lot of damage had been done, you know. - Yeah, Pukekohe, I know it's had a bad name for racialism and things like that. Definitely was segregation, because you saw that at the picture theatre. The Maori boys, of course, they weren't allowed upstairs, but those were the rules. Well, I'd sit in the nine-penny seat; they'd sit up there in the six-penny seats. I mean, people have said, 'Well, why did they have to sit down there?' I said, 'Well, that was private property, and there was a dress code.' If they didn't comply with the dress code, that was it ` there was just a blanket 'no Maoris'. And he wasn't very well-liked for that. - Oh, he's a evil man. All I can remember is must have hated Maoris. I don't know why. And it was the only movie house in Puke at the time. - Did you go to the cinema outside of Pukekohe? - Papakura. Papakura, Manuwera, in Auckland. We spent a lot of time in Auckland. - Was it like that... - Different. Totally different. - ... there? - Nothing like that. (BIRDS CHIRP) - You know, I had no idea that that sort of thing was going on in Pukekohe. - And we talked about it. Of course, the guy himself wouldn't tell you. So you have to find out from others, from the older people, and they'd tell you just he didn't cut Maori hair. - Mack Short's and Bill Short's barbershop, they didn't like Maoris coming in there. They wouldn't cut their hair. And, again, because of hygiene, you see. If they looked along the road and said, 'Jeez, you're gonna cut his bloody hair? 'After mine, I hope,' you know. That go through their minds; they would think that. That's just the way it was, you know. - If you'd just walked in like normal to get a haircut, what do you think they would have said? - You just sat there. They just wouldn't cut your hair. So you just left. - So they just totally ignored you? - Ignored you. And that's the truth, you know. It did happen, sadly. - CHILDREN: Feed. - Grub. - Grub. - In 1952, as the New Zealand government was phasing out native schools, you see this Maori-only school opening in Pukekohe. And the parents in Pukekohe ` the Pakeha ` did not want their kids going to school, sitting next to an inferior race. - Pukekohe Maori school, everything was English; they didn't teach you te reo. Most of the teachers were English too. Every Wednesday was what they call a 'shower day'. But when you think about now, how humiliating that must have been, you know. But it was all part of that assumption that we don't shower; we're dirty people. - The report of the welfare officer in Pukekohe dated 31st May 1945, quote, 'The majority of the Maori children were seriously retarded.' That was the position of the Pakeha parents in Pukekohe. July 1943 ` (READS) 'the movement for the Maori-only school in Pukekohe has come from the Pakeha 'and not from the Maoris.' - No Pakeha children at that school. They had their own Pakeha school they could go to. (SINGING) - The first thing I said ` 'Ata marie. 'Kia ora.' Then I'd get a whack. 'You keep that language at home. 'Don't you bring it through those gates.' - Our schooling began, of course, where you weren't allowed to speak Maori. And for the native school system, teaching academic subjects was not allowed. So Maori were to be taught woodwork, metalwork, and the girls were to be taught cooking and cleaning. So, right from the beginning, you know, the curricula was shaped to ensure that Maori were to provide the labour force in this country. - Yeah, it's... it was terrible when you look back, but... Yeah. Hard to say. It's, um... You can look back and think, 'Well, what else could have been done?' (STEAM TRAIN WHISTLES, TRACKS CLATTER) - One of my brothers was born in the cabbage patch. My father was chopping cabbage; my mum was picking it up and putting it in the aisle. And then all of a sudden, she had that pushing pain, and out popped my brother in the cabbage patch. - One of the things that characterises Pukekohe is the large numbers of Chinese and Indian market gardeners alongside Maori. So that was one of the factors that intensified, I think, the racism. - This was a difficult book to write, because I wasn't initially getting cooperation from Maori or Pakeha. And Maori have said to me that 'you have no right to write this book', that 'it's our history'. And for the Pakeha in Pukekohe who are upset about this ` 'What were you upset about? What do you disagree with?' Yes, it's a messy history. It's not pleasant to recount, but the story needs to be told. - He's a joker with an American accent, born in New York, lived in New Zealand for a few years, and he's telling us about racism from the biggest racial country in the world, and he's telling us about what` about my forebears. My grandfather came to New Zealand on the ship Victory in 1865, and then in 1876, settled in Pukekohe, started that farm and broke it all in and farmed it, and there's still Goldings living on the property today. There's the Golding Road. It's 152 acres from that boundary into there. Now, my relations are all living in here. That's my cousin's boy there. And then there's another house up there. That's another cousin's boy. And this is where my uncle had this farm. He had his 48 acres in there. I've got another brother lives down that drive. My brother built that house, but he sold that when he took over Uncle Fred's farm. My brother's children own that now. And this house in here is where the house that I was born. - In 1863, Governor Grey declared by proclamation that Maori living in Pukekohe were to surrender to the Queen or retreat to Waikato. And so we retreated, and we left our homelands and became, effectively, refugees in our own country. And then our land was confiscated. You know, we used to live in kainga, not in a house, in a kainga in a village, where there were aunties and uncles and communities of people and food sources and awa and access to our spiritual places of wellbeing. The Tohunga Suppression Act made our experts in our housebuilding, in our rongoa ` our medicines ` it made that illegal. Why couldn't our people rise above that? Well, they were probably trying to survive at that time. You know, the '20s, '30s, you've got the Depression, of course. You've got really grave impoverishment. - Rundown huts, hovels, converted manure sheds, converted potatoes sheds, walls made of stacked up benzene cans and sutured together burlap bags. Just horrific conditions. - So, the house we used to live in was right here. We still had cooking outside, yeah. All in one room, we all slept together on the one kapock. Mm. - Cracks were in the walls, and the wind was coming in. - It may have had newspaper on the wall too. - Yeah, holes in the roof, rain coming through. - You get used to putting a bucket there or a tin there, and let the rain fall into it. - (CHUCKLES) It's so true. - He talked about those houses, but he doesn't know that many lives lived there, and they were the grandparents or parents of some of our people. And you would write things like that? You would call it 'the slums'? But to them, they were living the best way they could with what they would given. I don't know, Uncle, if you were aware of that. There was nowhere for Mum to go and have a baby, so they had to stay home and have their children. No Maori woman was allowed to go at that time and have their babies, cos there was only one, and the intake into that hospital was mainly for white people. Mm. So Dad would just tell me to go and then help Mum, and she would guide me in terms of what to do. One of the things Mum used to get me to do is actually, when she's pushing, is get, like, a cardigan, tie it around and tie it tight, as tight as I can. And that was to squeeze and help Mum for the baby to come out. Yeah. I'm doing as I'm told, and I'm shaking like a leaf doing these things... - Yeah. - ...in case I do it wrong. I cried all the way through it. Always cried. She was saying to me, 'Pull harder.' I'm thinking I'm hurting her. And when it was over, I used to just run outside and sit there and cry, because there'd been times when we lost the baby. And I even blame myself. I thought it was something that I did. I mean, look, this is a 10-year-old girl doing that. So, Dad, he'd come out and just sit beside me and be rubbing my head until I stopped crying. - You don't forget. You don't forget. - The Maori infants and children were dying from the atrocious housing conditions, but instead of trying to improve their housing, they were segregated, and that was the key. There was a health inspector that was talking about the deaths in relation to the housing in 1925, 1935, 1945, 1955, and into the early 1960s. The growers knew about it, but they didn't affect change. Why? Because they had a cheap population of workers to work on the market gardens. - I think it's really important that we tell those stories. And, like you say, some of them may not like it. Well... this wasn't their life; it was our life. - Exactly. - Segregation existed in a number of towns, but it existed with a special intensity in Pukekohe. - Maori had to walk on one side of the path and Pakeha on the other. It was just how it was. My dad always did that ` he would step on the side, and he would tilt his hat, you know, and not look at` eyeball them, yeah, cos they wouldn't` they wouldn't like that. - And we would practise that at school. We'd get told, 'Right, go down to the bottom of the field and get in line. 'OK, when a white woman walks towards you, what do you do?' Bow to them. That's what` That was our drill. It was our drill every day. - In the 1850s, Maori were running really thriving economies. We were supplying Pakeha towns with a lot of their food. The Waikato War was the attempt to stop this Maori success. In a context of colonialism, where you have suffered the terror of war and the power and the might of the government, just incredibly sad. Slowly, our people came back to our homelands, and as early as the 1920s, through to the '40s, '50s, increasing number of Maori settled in Pukekohe in the market gardens seeking economic opportunities. And their alliance with Chinese and Indian gardeners was seen as dangerous. - There was a social panic at the time that the Indian and Chinese growers are just going to take everything over, because Indian and Chinese market gardeners were out-working the local Pakeha farmers. George Parvin was the deputy mayor in Pukekohe from the mid-1920s, '30s and '40s, and he founded the White New Zealand League in 1926. He was against all Asians and all Asian migration to New Zealand, And the White New Zealand League was very influential ` they sent letters to something like 200 different councils and organisations and well over half of them gave them their support. - ARCHIVE: Remotely situated in the vast Pacific Ocean, lies the little dominion of New Zealand ` a white man's paradise. - Parvin and that? Yeah, White New Zealand, yeah. They didn't like the Indians coming into the area and buying land, and Chinese. Now, what's changed? What's changed? - Maori didn't have the land, so they didn't have the wealth, but the Indians and Chinese had more wealth, more land, more money, more influence. Maori in Pukekohe during the segregation era ` you know your place. - The trauma really lies in, for me, the older generations. It's passed down unconsciously through generations. Intergenerational trauma is often described as a 'soul wound', because it's something that you can't see but affects us so deeply. - I was 5 years old, and my mum said to me, 'I have to go downtown to do some shopping.' But we weren't allowed in the shops to do groceries. Miss Milner said, 'Would you like me to drop you off?' She dropped us off outside the Beehive, and then she took off. And my mum and I was just standing there, and I said to my mum, 'I thought Miss Milner was gonna come in and do our shopping for us.' And my mum said, 'Oh well, we'll just have to go in and get our own things.' We walked in. The shop owner was standing there looking at us. My mum got her bag out. And then, all of a sudden, we hear this roar from behind us. This guy saying to us... Do you want me to say the words? Yeah? 'What the fuck you think you're doing in here? 'Get your fuckin' black arse outta here.' EMOTIONALLY: My mum turned around and looked at him. Just as she turned, he punched her in the face. Nose bleed. She fell to the ground. Then he started kicking her. On the third time he lifted his foot, I jumped on my mum. SOBS: I jumped on her, and he kicked me in the head. (SOBS) I still got the scar. He kept on kicking us until the taxi driver came. He came and he saved me and my mum. (SNIFFLES) No doctors would come in to do my... my split head. Dr Beck came, looked at my mum and said, 'Oh, she's all right,' and left. (SOBS) My mum never recovered from that. She never went back into the gardens to work, cos she couldn't bend over. She couldn't stand up straight. Yeah. It was the... worst time of my life. This is one story. I didn't want people to hear it... because of the pain. This is my nephew, and he was 1 year old. (SNIFFLES) And that's his sister over there. (SNIFFLES) He died of the flu; they all did. I'll come and do you up. (SIGHS) I'll come up next weekend. These unmarked graves from here all the way up there. And to have just a little plot for Maori. Whether you're alive or whether you're dead, it doesn't make a difference to a Pakeha. They still don't want you beside them. - I had no idea that there were roughly 200 unmarked graves there. That goes over here. There are about 25 to 30 people that we just don't know where they're buried, because there's no markings, and the grass has grown over the area. How do you have a cemetery where you can't find where people are buried? And what does that say about the council? The only reason for not doing that and taking action now would be that a Maori is not worth as much as a Pakeha life. - I'm trying to find the ones that we know have been missing for a long time. Yeah, Mum had a lot of kids. - Yeah. - Look, see all the babies? Look, they're all stillborn. And it's all unmarked. - I'd like to see some sort of a marker. - I remember crosses. - Yeah, the babies had crosses. - You know, they'd make them themselves and just put it in to mark it. So they could have... fallen by the wayside and been picked up and dumped in the rubbish, yeah. And that's no fault of anybody, yeah. It'll be in this section here somewhere. - Over here. - Yeah. - Right. Gee, I should have worn my gumboots. - So between here... - Between there. - ...there's about four, five here in the middle. - One, two, three, four, five, six. From there to there. - And we walk on this, yeah. - There's six babies. - But I'd like to see names. (RINGING TONE) - VOICEMAIL: Yeah, hi, you've reached Andy Baker. Sorry I can't take your call. (MESSAGE TONE) - Yeah. Kia ora, Andy, this Taitimu Maipi. So, I wouldn't mind having a talk to you about some sort of an apology to the people of Pukekohe who suffered under the racist behaviour during those times. - There's no doubting that, you know, people are hurting, and they were, sort of, wanting an apology. And so basically what I did was I went away and I chatted` I had a meeting with the mayor, because there's only one person that can apologise on behalf of Auckland Council. And that's not me. - Matua Timi, he wanted to bring a few parties together, like the Council and kuia and kaumatua, and wanted to try and figure something out. I felt really honoured to be there, actually. - ALL: Kia ora. - Mr Bartolomew, I know that I didn't welcome your book so well on the day of the town hall, cos when I read it, you had a lot of gaps in there. You may have started the story, but you don't know the parts that went with it. But had you not written your book, this may not have commenced. - We wouldn't be here. - There are many stories to tell that happened in my time. This was the most racist place out, Pukekohe, in my time. And I don't care if I have to say it out loud... - ALL: Kia ora. -...cos I know it was. Colonisation at the hilt! - Kia ora. - Looking to the past isn't confronting if it's not painful. - If you feel this scar, you can still feel there... - 'While it's easy to say, "Let's move on," '...it's a complete lack of understanding of the impact of racism.' - What's the point of me coming there talking about... - What happened to our people here in Pukekohe sits in this room. Their shadows and their voices can be heard. When you look at the history that's been told here, the history is not in our favour. - I should acknowledge Ngati Tamaoho. I should acknowledge Te Akitai Waiohua who are who have both brought these issues, this take of racism. Although, I also acknowledge that Pukekohe had such a significant migrant Maori population here. And Richard and I will reflect on that. We will talk to our colleagues about it, and we'll also talk to our political leadership. Now, what the next step after then would be, I'm not too sure. - From this, I know what not to do now. Now I know how I'm supposed to approach certain things, you know, and it's just, yeah` it's all, kind of, learning. (INDISTINCT CHATTER) - And the settlers that came here were from Cornwall in England and from Scotland. Pukekohe the township, that was still in Maori hands. That never was sold. Governor Grey put out an edict that all Maori living in this district either had to swear allegiance to the Crown and hand in their arms, or get across the Waikato River to the south. So they formed the King movement to remonstrate with the government to get them to stop buying this land. - You know, the New Zealand histories curriculum is a timely reminder of not only that these stories need to be told, but who tells the story. The people telling the story for years and years haven't been us, and, therefore, the story has been different. - Morena, tamariki ma. - CHILDREN: Morena, Whaea Phyllis. - Come on, you can do better than that. - (CHILDREN GIGGLE) - Morena, tamariki ma. - LOUDER: Morena, Whaea Phyllis. - I used to live at the back of this kura up here. It used to be all gardens around here. Everywhere. We used to be gardens, no houses. - Your question. - Did you ever work at the market gardens? - I was born on the market garden. So I (CHUCKLES) lived on the market gardens. I had children on the market gardens. - How does it make you feel when you think about what happened in the past? - You see all those yellow things? Can you read that? - READS: 'Feelings and thoughts of my past.' - Feelings and thoughts of my past. I'll read you one. - READS: 'Deemed undesirable because of ethnic background.' Back then it wasn't called racism; it was called 'color bar'. - Students are hungry to learn... - Yeah, 1952 to '64. - ...so we have to have faith in our young people, faith that they want to do the right thing, and they want to understand how this has come to be so it is not repeated. - Like, the kids I teach, they've just come from intermediate. - Can you show us some party moves from back in the day, matua? - (CHUCKLES) - And I don't want my Pakeha kids to be whakama, ashamed, about their ancestors, because that's not what we're here to do. But we need to learn what not to do and how that's not OK. - You know, Maoris were at the bottom, and the Pakehas were on top. You guys are the ones who are gonna change it, because we can talk about it, and we can do something about it. That's the difference, you know. - I don't think we have to fear the teaching of histories that are painful. It is who we are, and it has to be taught in the context of our nation growing up. And if we're going to grow up as a nation, we need to understand who we are ` the good, bad and ugly... - And here we've got old favourites of Pukekohe. That's the hotel... - ...and the stories of our beautiful country, of our land. But also those things that have been hurtful and oppressive, and begin to explain why things are as they are today. - Homai e raru, terenga ka... Tu a tama wairua tapu ma te mangai i tautoko mai. My pathway is a lot clearer in terms of what I must do to help our whanau and mokopuna. Takoto mai e te mama, e te papa. Moe mai i raro te moengaroa. And that's why I'm doing the work I am doing now. - Pukekohe could be the first anti-racist town that is inclusive, diversity-rich, most aroha place to be an Aotearoa, (CHUCKLES) if it chose to do that. The potential is huge for any of our towns, not just Pukekohe, for all of Aotearoa. - ALL: # Kia tonu... # Ko te mangai # e tautoko mai. # Te arepa, # te omeka. # Tautokotia mai # te ropu nei. # Piriwiritua, # Hamuera. # Ka puta, # ka ora e. # Captions by Tom Clarke. Edited by Kristin Williams. Captions were made with the support of NZ On Air.