Homing in on your why: Three Wellington women named as young trailblazers

Saturday, 22 July 2023

Twenty-five women around the country have been recognised for their achievements as young trailblazers. Hanna McCallum speaks to three who have been advocating for equality, the environment, disability, queer and indigenous rights.

Tylah Farani-Watene spent five years raising concerns with doctors about a constant migraine like headache.

She routinely went back after the headaches began to impact her mental health, falling into deep cycles of depression.

But the advice was always the same: “You just need to lose weight, drink more water, eat better, and take it easy when you exercise more.”

“It never went beyond that,” Farani-Watene (Waikato-Tainui, Ngāti Maru, Te Arawa, Taputimu, and Nofoali’i) said – at least not until she got a job at 21 which provided full health insurance. “It wasn’t till I had money.”

When she finally got an MRI scan, she was diagnosed with Chiari malformation – a neurological condition which caused the bottom of her brain to press on her spinal canal. Four millimetres of that is a cause for concern. Farani-Watane’s had reached 11mm and she went into surgery in 2020.

The sense of being let down by the healthcare system opened her eyes to other institutions in which Māori and Pasifika people’s needs were not being met, the 25-year-old said.

It led her to volunteering with youth groups; leading conferences including the Aotearoa Youth Declaration in 2021 and being invited to the United Nation’s Global Goals Week in the United States in September where she hoped to contribute an “indigenous and Pasifika voice”.

The public servant, working in communications and engagement, was among 24 others whose achievements were recognised on the YWCA’s Y25 list. The women on the list, aged 25 and younger, were announced at a launch event on Thursday, and will all be part of a year-long programme tailored to support their goals.

“I want to really be able to hone into my why, which is creating a better world for indigenous and for people like my little sisters and see what we can do to influence decision making globally but while also empowering people from a local level.”

Raised by a single-mother after her Dad died, she recalled watching her mother struggle trying to adapt to a “Pākehā world”.

The pair faced barriers getting housing and lived in council flats in Karori while her mother struggled to fulfil her desire to study while working part-time. She would be the first in her family to go to university.

Farani-Watene said it was “emotional” to watch her “staunch as” mother struggle and that too became her motivation.

Contributing to changes that would uplift Māori and Pasifika to grow outside of a stereotype of what a Pasifika family “should look like”, would be healing for her mother’s inner child and hers. But she hoped it would also mean her two little sisters, aged 5 and 7, would not witness or experience what she did growing up.

“I want them to grow up in a world where they can see a lot of Pasifika women thriving in leadership so they can aspire to be like that.”

Not having to leave your identity at the door

When Alyce Lysaght (Ngāi Te Rangi, Ngāti Ranginui, Pākehā) began studying engineering at university, it coincided with her journey learning te reo Māori, te ao Māori and more about her whakapapa.

But when she looked for stories about Māori engineers, she struggled to find it.

It was what led the 23-year-old to start a podcast called Māori in Engineering, giving a platform to the stories, journeys and knowledge of Māori who worked in or aspired to be in spaces related to engineering.

Having access to these kind of conversations, especially with ākonga Māori, tauira Māori and rangatahi was something Lysaght wished she had growing up.

She hoped it would empower others – particularly rangatahi Māori, to go into engineering as well as opening up people’s eyes to matauranga Māori in an engineering space – not just the “colonial spec of trains and bridges”.

Now working as a water engineer in Wellington, she wanted to see it better integrated in education and workplaces but in a way that respected where the knowledge came from.

She aspired to see spaces that cultivated a sense of “cultural safety – not having to leave any form of your identity at the door”.

School a ‘really scary place to be’

When Hope Cotton, 18, realised she felt “a bit different” to her peers, the church no longer became her safe space.

“I was terrified,” the first-year student at Victoria University said, when she began to identity as queer. Cotton had panic attacks going into churches and would have nightmares about Christian studies teachers.

“I felt like I had to choose between my faith or my sexuality when neither of them are things that I can change.”

Going to a Christian high school in Wellington but not coming out or being able to be herself felt disingenuous.

She started a Queer Straight Alliance (QSA) group and got Pride week going at school but it was “a really scary place to be”, Cotton said.

It led her to co-leading a monthly LGBTQIA+ affirming church service called Belong.

But for Cotton, who was deaf, it wasn’t the only space she yearned to gain a sense of belonging and acceptance.

When she finally started learning New Zealand Sign Language when she was about 15 years old, she found another safe space and a place of shared experience.

Learning the language was never given to her as an option but it opened up a new understanding of a part of her identity.

Her intersectionality was something she was proud of and hoped to create more accessibility and protections for people who shared the various parts of her identity.

Spaces like deaf clubs brought her strength and last year, Cotton submitted a petition to make captions mandatory on TV and media videos.

It had gone to select committee and she hoped to see it become legislation. “That’s my focus right now.”