"We would love to make it so there is no need to celebrate it, because we are celebrating it already," Huata-McRae said.
"It's just like a normal day to us," Pokai Ngere said.
Huata-McRae said both her parents travel the world working with te ao Māori through performing arts, and she had been immersed since birth.
She said the best word she could think of to describe how it felt to be able to immerse herself in her culture was "privilege".
"It was a big privilege to be able to learn my culture."
She said it was especially important with the history of suppression and what still remains of anti-Māori sentiment in New Zealand society.
"It is great to see that there are a lot of rangatahi, teenagers, who don't care what they think. They're like, "We're Māori and that is who we are."
Huata-McRae got a moko kauae in July of this year and said it she was driven to get it because she felt something was missing.
"I didn't exactly know what it was for a very long time, but a lot of my whānau, our teachers, had a moko kauae," she said.
"I started looking more in-depth into it - thinking how people would react and all that, but in my mind I just thought that, 'This is for me, I am proud of who I am'."
Pokai Ngere said the start of her te reo journey came a bit later, when she was about eight years old.
"My parents weren't really into te ao Māori, it wasn't until I started getting closer with my dad's side of the family," Tyla said.
"I went into a wharekura in Rotorua. I was there for about 10 to 11 odd years until I recently moved here."
The pair have both been accepted into Massey University, where they will each study a bachelor of education.
Huata-McRae said there were not a lot of places that had the privilege of learning Māori culture through immersion like her school, so she wanted to teach in mainstream schools and possibly travel the world.
Pokai Ngere said she planned to study kaupapa te reo Māori, and return to teach in kohanga reo.
