Miriama Kamo was a 28-year-old journalist in her dream job. She had a visa to move to London but an offer came through in 2002 to work on a new TVNZ current affairs show called Sunday.
But the role and working for TVNZ was far from perfect. She was the lone Māori wahine on the team. Māori issues were of little consideration. Stories that didn’t associate Māori with crime or imprisonment didn’t get greenlit.
“I could not get a good Māori news story across the line,” Kamo told Anika Moa on the latest episode of the RNZ podcast It’s Personal.
“I am going through a little bit of trauma about that at the moment because I am finally able to consider it and what it was like,” she said.
Kamo worked for Sunday as a reporter and host for 22 years before it was axed by the network earlier this year. She continued to host Marae, the Māori current affairs programme on TVNZ. Kamo is also a children’s author and passionate zero-waste advocate.
Even before Sunday was cancelled, Kamo took a step back from her role on the show at the start of the year to better her te reo Māori. She grew up in a Christchurch home that was immersed in Māori culture and activism. Yet, speaking te reo fluently has so far eluded her.
Kamo described herself as a “militant Māori teen” when it came to activism. Her school offered her the position of deputy head student. She declined it because there was a pattern of offering the head student role to Pākehā students and deputy position to Māori.
“I won’t play second fiddle because that puts Māori in a lesser place,” she said, recalling how she felt at the time.
Following university and a stint hosting a kids show, she wanted to position herself as a journalist who is Māori rather than a Māori journalist. Part of that was to do a good job in the “dog eat dog” culture at TVNZ and across all news media.
“When I got to be this journalist, I wanted to just fight for things in general, not have to come in here and feel like I need to keep fighting for things Māori,” said Kamo, “but that was so sad when I think back to that.”
A pivot occurred after she was “rightly confronted” about her approach after speaking at a marae in Rotorua several years ago.
'When I got to be this journalist, I wanted to just fight for things in general, not have to come in here and feel like I need to keep fighting for things Māori,' Kamo says.
Then there was also the incident when former broadcaster and Labour MP Willie Jackson accused Kamo and other prominent journalists of being Māori in face only and lacking a “Māori perspective”.
Kamo hasn’t escaped those earlier years of brushing off racial discrimination at TVNZ.
“I’ve had to work through that a lot and, as I say, forgive that young woman. ‘You were on your own, you were on your own and trying to survive’.”
Not being Māori enough is something Kamo has felt before – when she moved to Auckland. She grew up on marae, was involved in kapa haka and was influenced by her parents’ activism as prison chaplains. But there wasn’t much te reo in the home, which was more common in Auckland due to the prevalence of kōhanga early learning centres.
On moving to Tāmaki Makaurau, she said: “I was like ‘Oh wow. Hang on, I didn’t know I had to vouch for myself”.
Kamo continues to educate about how to take a zero waste approach to life. She is a patron of the New Zealander of the Year and is a trustee for Kotahi Rau Pukapuka, an organisation that publishes books in te reo. Politics is a possibility in the future.
