Ko te Whenua te Kaiako
When I grew up in Māngere we weren’t taught the stories of the people who lived here before anyone else – the Waiohua iwi. We thought Māngere just meant “lazy” and it had a negative association. It wasn’t until recently that I learned the full name of the whenua we lived on is Ngā Hau Māngere, “the lazy winds.” It’s a place of beauty. People from here are not lazy but hardworking, enterprising and prosperous! Today at Mountain View School we launched a book written and illustrated by children of Māngere sharing that story and more, returning the language and stories of Waiohua to the whenua. A young author said to me she wants to keep writing and I asked why. “Because I want to write stories that make children happy.” Isn’t that the essence of what children’s books do, said so insightfully by a young writer from Māngere 275.
