Then came the 1980s and the government of David Lange - who once practised as a lawyer in Kaikohe - brought in economic reforms that contributed to the town’s current struggles.

And yet, beyond doubt, the people of Kaikohe are hearty and proud. And the children of Kaikohe - at least those who spoke to the Herald - walk tall with heads high and eyes on the future. In a town of 4400 people, more than half are aged under 30.

In Tai Tokerau, more than a third of the population is Māori but at Northland College, nearly all students are Māori.

That’s the same decade Kaikohe felt the more immediate force of external influence when Rogernomics saw services and state-run industry dismantled, or withdrawn, leading to many of the issues the town experiences today.

Mason grew up in Auckland’s Māngere, in a home with parents who ran a kohanga reo and she spoke te reo as her first language. She moved to the North a few years ago and finishes Year 13 as one of Northland College's prefects.

“I see my town as an improving town - a town that has a lot of room for improvement and continues to try to put things in place, to change everyone else's perspective,” she says.

The challenge is youth - her peers - and the struggles of young people growing up in an area that shows high in deprivation when measuring employment, income, crime, housing, health and education.

Mason recognises this, although from her perspective there has been change in recent years - largely led from within Kaikohe - to address the lack of opportunity for youth, and the consequences of not lifting eyes to the far horizon.

Even so, talk jobs and she speaks of supermarkets, fast-food restaurants, forestry and travelling the 25 minutes it takes to reach Kerikeri, where agricultural work is plentiful, if seasonal.

“Back in the day, it was a striving community with jobs like the dairy [factory] that we had here. I think that is a big factor with getting our youth off the street as well, with no jobs to give them.”

In the decades since the 1980s, Kaikohe has also seen sawmills close, and other employers shift out of town, and even offshore.

Her plans - edging ever closer as the end of secondary school approaches - are different. Next year, she will enrol in Māori and Indigenous Studies at Waikato University before doing a teaching degree.

“I do want to travel with my Māori performing arts because kapa haka is one of my passions. And then come back to Kaikohe and be a teacher.

“I guess it's knowing what the community has done for me. Being brought up in my family, we've always known to give back and to give back to our community.”

For Mason, kapa haka is at her core. It has provided focus and opportunity, inside and outside school through programmes run at Kaikohe’s communal Te Wa centre.

The opportunity to embrace her culture - and to pass on that knowledge through teaching is not lost on Mason. She’s aware and speaks of the obstacles faced by those of earlier generations and, when she speaks of the freedom she has, talks of “honouring” her culture.

“And that's one thing that I love about our country is that it was once a country where we couldn't embrace our culture, but now it's turned around where our country … is eager to learn and to embrace it.

“Looking back, I don’t know how it could have been like that. Like, why couldn't we have our culture then? Like, why do we get to have it now? Like, why couldn't our ancestors embrace what they had and what they were born with.

“And I guess that's what makes it more meaningful to me.”

She clearly recognises the fortune, too, in having a focus that is motivating.

“Being a young person and not having a … purpose would probably be really hard because we're in a place where you have got to find your own.

“People in the city, they've got things all around them, they’ve got inspiration that they can just hang onto because of the stuff that they have around them.

“But it's difficult for students here that don't have a purpose or strive. I am lucky to have kapa haka as one of my purposes and strives but to think of somebody that doesn't, and also my peers that don't …

Mason credits her parents - she has three sisters - as providing direction and example.

“My mom and my dad are hardworking, so it kind of does give me a push to want to tell them that I can do it as well.

“Even coming to school … I want to make them proud for all the hard work that they've done as well.”

Just weeks to go until school ends and Mason mock-shivers at the prospect. “Even thinking about leaving school, oh it scares me. I’ve got nowhere safe to go any more. I see the world as a challenge, but a good challenge. I see the rest of the world as a big opportunity.”

Covid-19 is a persistent presence, as it is everywhere in our world, but the impact of it struck at a recent tangi, the first she had attended.

“It was so weird. And I think at that moment, I actually realised how real Covid was with social distancing and not being able to do the tikanga we usually do on a marae.

“I don't think it's going to go away. I just think that we've got to adapt to how we live now. If Covid is going to keep coming, we can’t keep going into lockdown all the time.”

Her birthday doesn’t fall until next year so voting isn’t an option this election. “I do have a mind where my opinions don't matter at this point because I’m still young. But then, I do know that everyone can make a difference.”