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There is nothing in this world I have achieved
that I don't attribute to the place where I grew up.
My story began here
on June 3, 1952
at Kawakawa hospital.
This is the story I heard when I was growing up.
Not long before I was born,
my mother had a foster child in her care,
and back then nurses from the hospital
would visit rural communities like Matawaia
to check on the health of those babies.
When the nurse arrived, she found my mother alone crying
and asked her what was the matter.
She replied,
"The birth mother has taken her baby back".
The nurse felt sorry for my mother and said,
"Well, this might be your lucky day".
"A baby has just been born at Kawakawa hospital
"and as far as I know, the baby is going up for adoption.
"How do you feel about that?"
So my mother and father
thought they should go to the hospital.
When they got there,
Wasy had been born,
and his mother had put him up for adoption.
My mother was so happy,
they brought our baby home,
and that's how Wasy became a part of our family.
I could see how happy our new baby made my mother and father.
We became one big happy family with our new baby.
And so I was adopted.
My birth mother was from Te Aupouri
and what I know of my father
is that he passed away not long before I was born.
For whatever reason my birth mother saw fit
to put me up for adoption, that was her decision.
We then returned to Opahi
to where my adoptive grandmother, Te Hikumutu lived.
When we arrived there,
she looked at me and said here is the name for this child.
So my name Te Waihoroi was given to me.
Her youngest child
had joined the army
just before I was born,
and he had gone to fight in Korea.
My grandmother was so afraid he would not return,
she named me after him.
When you were over there,
I was born and named after you.
Did you know about this?
Mange wrote me and said that you have a new namesake
who was Moriki and Erina's new baby.
What was his name?
- Waihoroi.
I grew up, some say, with all the traits of my namesake.
The uncle that I'm named after,
many would say,
is one of those mischief characters that you would just look at
and you'll get in trouble.
Some say that I'm like him in that respect -
who am I to deny that?
So I grew up with the name given to me by my grandmother
with all its implications.
I grew up with a lot of taunting
that seemed to follow me because of my name.
Waihoroi this and that...
You know how cruel kids can be,
so I was taunted by other kids
and you know what comes next - I'd beat them up.
Sometimes I would come out on top,
and sometimes I would take a beating and pay for my misguided anger.
My mother then thought to take me to see my grandmother.
I was about 6 or 7 years old at the time.
I was taken to her so she could sort me out.
So she said to me,
"Let me tell you about where your name comes from."
"That name Te Waihoroi signifies one of the most humble acts of Jesus
"before he was crucified."
"The night before, he washed the feet of his disciples,
"and it is this act of his that you are named after.
"No matter where you go in this world
"it will remind you to always be humble."
From that day to now,
I stopped beating people up because of my name,
and it no longer bothered me.
When I was 26 or 27 years old, I finally met my birth mother.
It was she who said at our very first meeting,
"Son, you probably have a million questions you want to ask me."
To that I replied,
"I don't really have any questions,
"because if I had the chance to choose the parents I wanted,
"I couldn't have chosen better ones than those I received".
My mother who raised me
was the epitome of a caring and loving woman;
my father was caring too.
That is why I say I was blessed.
Also because of the language
they instilled in me.
A lot of people I have met tell me
I am lucky to be able to speak my language.
I tell them it's because of my parents.
The language falling from my lips
is a testament to my mother and father.
Here's what my parents were like:
I didn't leave my parents' bed til the day I attended high school.
I slept in my parents' bed
right up until I went to St Stephen's boarding school.
As far as I know,
my brothers and sisters never slept in my parents' bed.
There were so many of us in our house,
along with all our foster siblings,
it was hard to find places to sleep.
But Wasy already knew he was sleeping in our parents' bed
every night.
One thing you might hear my sister tell you:
there was only one of us kids that called our mother 'Mummy';
it is the person sitting in front of you.
As Wasy grew up,
he called my mother 'Mummy' and my father 'Papa',
but as we were growing up,
we called our parents by their names.
As for me, 'Mummy!'
That's what I'd call out,
and at those times,
when you heard me say 'Mummy',
then I'd better get what I asked for!
It was those kind of things,
and every time I think about it, I realise how lucky I was.
There wasn't a day I went hungry
or felt the cold for the lack of warm clothes.
It's hard for me today to think of us as poor back then,
and when I hear people say
that Maori communities were poor back then,
I remember my parents.
My parents didn't have a lot of money.
All the families in Matawaia were the same.
There were no rich families
that would place themselves above any other family.
I am very adamant that we never felt the pinch of poverty.
If there wasn't any meat,
you would just go down to the river to spear eels.
And when it floods,
you'd go to set your punga and the family would catch eels.
In those days,
a lot of families would go when it flooded,
as the eels would just be floating around.
So for about 4 or 5 days,
the whole family would be out catching eel.
So there would never be a shortage of meat.
Yes, we were lucky back then.
That was our livelihood
and what made growing up back then special.
The only other thing you had to worry about was going to school,
and that's another story.
I have vivid memories of my days at Matawaia School.
That is perhaps the beginning
of some of the fondest memories I have today.
We saw how important the school was to the community back in those days.
The big events that involved all the families and kids of Matawaia -
events like calf day.
That may well be why our sub-tribe is called 'Te Kauimua',
because our calf would lead in front of us!
So every year we got to show off
the best calves in the region.
We would bring them to school for one day to get judged.
The main thing was the whole community
came together to celebrate
and support one another.
You also saw some things
you wouldn't see today,
like how they used to put a hangi down.
In those days they would put the meat straight on to the rocks.
The adults would be eating the food that came out of the hangi
while we kids would be eating the leftover potatoes and kumara
that were still stuck to the rocks.
It's those special things that when you look back on,
you remember how this community used to be.
When I think back,
that's probably where my inquisitive nature began;
that yearning to see what was beyond the dusty roads of Matawaia.
Not that there's anything wrong with Matawaia's dusty roads,
but you come to a point
where you want to know what lies beyond those dusty roads.
When we were at school,
we were lucky to have the calibre of teachers we did.
It was as though they were sent to Matawaia just for me.
If it weren't for them,
I'd probably still be there chopping wood.
But let me put it like this:
you are affected by all the people who come into your life.
I was lucky enough
to have the right teachers
who turned up at the right time
when I had matured enough to appreciate them.
Now, there is one such person that I can say changed my world.
He was an in-law to our elder Sir James Henare, Rome.
If I were to search for a person
that had guided me through one of the many crossroads in my life,
Rome would be that person.
He was the one that instilled in me the belief
that the pursuit of education was a good thing.
The year was 1965
when my bags and I were brought here
to St Stephen's College.
Who would have known I would spend six years incarcerated here
before being released into the world.
It is my opinion that at that time
the man that stands before you had been fashioned.
Here at St Stephen's my eyes were opened to the world.
I met the vastness of the Maori world.
If there was a melting pot of the Maori world,
St Stephen's was that pot.
No matter the iwi,
its descendants were there.
You soon realised that this world was much bigger
than the one I came from in Matawaia.
You also heard their proficiency in the Maori language
was much better than yours.
In Matawaia, you were the big fish of the pond,
but at St Stephen's, you were just a little fish.
That's how it was.
Because when you first arrive,
you'd see these fine specimens playing rugby
and you were instantly scared.
They were like fully grown men!
Yes, rugby was our life.
If there was one aspect of that school you were immersed in,
it was rugby.
But with that drive to be successful in rugby,
you would also learn to be successful in other fields.
That confidence grew within you.
So whether it be a test on the rugby field
or a test in the classroom, there was no difference.
You strived for both of them with the same passion.
You got used to winning.
When you won in one arena,
you didn't like losing in any other arena.
And then there were the calibre of teachers
of which I would not see again anywhere in the world.
The likes of the elder, Rawhiti Ihaka and Sir Tamati Reedy -
those were our teachers.
Then I look back on my love of performing.
Back then there weren't many school groups around
performing and traveling the country doing kapa haka like us.
So you got a chance to feel what it was like
to stand on a stage and perform.
If I think back to where my passion for performing on a stage came from,
it probably started back then.
You become fearless about performing in the Maori language,
and if you look at all the works I have done,
most of them have been conducted in the Maori language!
It usually has to be in Maori for me to get the call!
Whenever you get a call these days, you go,
because there will come a day when those calls will stop,
but that's how it is these days.
What followed was my foray into broadcasting
through Te Karere, Te Tepu and such.
But it all goes back to standing on that stage
and being fearless about performing in front of a big audience.
All of those things I learnt from this school,
that is why I say
at the end of my time at St Stephens's College,
the man before you had already been fashioned.
As time went on, my world changed again.
I was again lucky to meet people like Don Selwyn.
Even though I had met him years before,
our paths seem to have diverged again.
It was he who pushed me to get into acting, script writing
and other things in the industry.
So he became my link, the director I followed,
which eventuated into the play The Merchant of Venice.
It started as a theatre production.
Then 10 years down the track, it became a feature length movie.
It was released to the world and gained much acclaim.
It was in those 13 to 15 years that Don and I worked together
along with the rest of Maoridom.
I got to learn at the feet of the master.
In 2003, I was awarded the NZ Film Award for Best Actor.
Maybe it was because of the Maori language,
maybe it was Shylock or The Merchant of Venice.
Yes, you could say it was all those things.
In the end, Waihoroi was the actor,
but it wasn't about reaching that level of achievement;
it was more about believing it was possible.
Last year I may have reached
the very pinnacle of the theatre world.
I was lucky enough to be a part of the Maori production
of the Shakespearean play, Troilus and Cressida.
The production was taken to the Globe Theatre in London -
the very theatre that William Shakespeare himself built.
For Maori people to go to London
and perform on that stage was an honour.
When I think back to who paved the way for that to happen,
it was Don.
In conclusion, one of my elders of Matawaia said to me,
"Waihoroi, take heed.
"You have gone out into the world and done your thing there,
"but we are still searching
"for one thing you have done for us here at home."
"What have you done for us here?"
Then I got the call to return home and work for Te Runanga o Ngati Hine
of which I am now the chairperson.
I travel back home now
more than I have ever in the past,
even when my mother was still alive.
If she was still here,
she would be so happy to see me coming back so often.
But it's true;
the time has come for me
to bring back all that
I have learnt in the world home.
Because the time might come when you pass on
and your people will say,
yes, he was famous,
but what did he achieve here at home?
It's true.
Even though I have long lived away from home,
I will never forget where I come from.
I will fight the whole world for my home,
and I will defeat the whole world for my home.
I don't say this to make myself feel important;
I say it to convey my love
for those who had a hand in my upbringing,
those who have given me all that I possess,
all that I have taken to the world.
There isn't one thing that I have achieved in this world
I don't attribute to the place I was raised.
There is so much more of my story I have yet to tell.
I haven't even talked about my own family,
my children, grandchildren and wife.
I have just touched on one part of my journey.
That other part of me
I want to keep close and protect
for now.
That is probably one thing
a person holds dear to their heart,
because it doesn't matter what I have achieved in life,
good or bad,
it is through my children and my grandchildren
I will live on forever.
So thank you for stopping by.
Next week...
My dream was to see how it all worked.
Rikiriki Rakena of Ngati Tamatera
worked in the train industry for over 40 years.
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