Source: Eastern Institute of Technology
1 day ago
Laureen Kelly (Ngāti Porou, Ngāti Kahungunu) enrolled at EIT to keep her son from quitting his Māori studies and to learn the language she wasn’t able to learn growing up.
Six years later, the 55-year-old has just graduated with a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) Māori from EIT’s Tairāwhiti Campus.
Laureen Kelly with her mum Herrick Williams when she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts (Māori) in 2023.
The journey began in 2019 when her son Joshua, then in Year 12 at Gisborne Boys’ High School, told her he wanted to quit his Māori studies.
“I said, if I go back to school and learn, we could support each other, and that gave him the incentive to carry on,” she says.
At the time, Laureen was also grieving the loss of her husband, while her brother had recently begun learning te reo Māori.
With her daughter urging her to get out of the house and do something, enrolling at EIT felt like the right step for the mother of six.
“I thought I needed to pick myself up and help my children. I couldn’t keep wallowing. I had to come out of it, or else my children would have suffered more,” she says.
While Joshua, now 23, went on to complete his studies through to Year 13, Laureen continued her own journey after completing the NZ Certificate in Te Reo Māori (Level 3).
“I haven’t stopped.”
Growing up in Tairāwhiti, Laureen did not speak te reo Māori. Her mother was fluent but, like many of her generation, had been punished for speaking Māori at school and did not pass the language on to her children.
“When I first started at EIT, I knew Monday, Tuesday in Māori and how to count to 10, but that was about it,” she says.
Through her studies, Laureen developed a deeper understanding of the suppression and colonisation her tīpuna had experienced and began to untangle the shame she had carried for years.
“From knowing nothing about being Māori to what I know today, I knew nothing, but now I know just enough to understand being Māori and not being ashamed of being Māori,” she says.
Laureen credits the support of EIT’s Tairāwhiti Campus and the tutors at Te Whatukura with helping her through her journey.
“The tutors were fantastic. Not just Te Whatukura, but the whole campus.”
Having completed her honours degree, Laureen is now looking ahead to postgraduate study and, in time, plans to write a series of whakapapa books to help others reconnect with their ancestry.
“Hopefully anybody who cannot find their whakapapa can actually look in the book and say, ‘oh, here’s my line’,” she says.
Her message to others who feel disconnected from their language or culture is simple: “You’re never too old to learn”.
“You’re never too old to go back to school. It may awaken what you have been missing.”
Angela Tibble, Programme Co-ordinator and Lecturer, Te Uranga Waka, says Laureen’s journey embodies resilience, whānau commitment, and the power of lifelong learning.
“We are immensely proud of her perseverance through grief, study, and growth. Her success honours her tīpuna, inspires our tauira, and shows that reclaiming te reo Māori is transformative at any stage of life. Tuwhitia te hopo! Feel the fear and do it anyway. Ka mutu pea Laureen!”
