Sandra Coney: I have always had strong Māori women role models in my life

Auckland Māori Girls College 1954 Queen Victoria Prefects. Photo / Auckland Museum/Facebook

OPINION

There's a big focus on racism in New Zealand, and specifically institutionalised racism.

I've just read an account by a woman who talks about the racism she faced as a Māori in the education system.

I do worry that in the focus on racism, we might obscure/marginalise examples in our history where Pākehā and Māori people got along, had respect for each other and co-operated.

That we won't write out of history the multiple examples of brilliant Māori entrepreneurship, leadership and innovation throughout our shared history.

Things like the food production and export industry Māori created in the early years of contact.

Later, the Māori Women's Welfare League, its housing surveys and inauguration of Te Kōhanga reo.

I went to Auckland Girls Grammar School and one of the things that happened there was that, in their 5th year at secondary school, the girls from Queen Victoria came to AGGS.

Sandra Coney. Photo / NZME

How we looked up to those girls. They were impressive, dignified, a bit like goddesses: we were quite in awe of them.

They were excellent at basketball/netball and other sports, and wore a string of medals and badges on their gym frocks.

There was a Māori club, and Hoani Waititi taught them te reo.

So, we AGGS girls always had the model of Māori girls as achievers and leaders.

I'd like to think this made a difference for the many Māori and Pasifika girls who attended Grammar from the suburbs of Ponsonby and Grey Lynn, which at that time had been widely settled by people coming to the city from the islands or rural New Zealand.

I wonder if any ex-Queen Vic girls are my Facebook friends? I don't want to romanticise that experience, and would love to hear how it was for them.

The photo (above) is of the Queen Victoria School prefects in 1954, and it was taken in the period I'm referring to.

So while these were at Queen Victoria, they are just like the girls that came to Auckland Girls Grammar School - even the uniform looks the same.

Sandra Coney, 77, is a long time local-body politician, writer, feminist, historian, and women's health campaigner.