Kayne Peters

Ko Tongariro te maunga, ko Taupō-nui-a-Tia te moana, ko Te Heuheu te tangata, ko Ngāti Tūwharetoa te iwi. He uri hoki tēnei nō Ngāti Toa Rangatira, Taranaki, Waikato, Ngāti Whātua, Te Rarawa. I am a Māori queer tāne who has an identical twin brother. He is the straight one. I’m not. I have three other siblings and we all grew up in Māngere by the shit ponds near the Auckland airport. My mum and dad were teenagers when they had us. My dad was adopted out of his whānau and was treated like shit by the system. My mum grew up in a very connected whānau who were raised on land they owned on Māngere mountain. These backgrounds shaped my upbringing. My dad eventually found his biological parents and siblings. And discovered he was distantly related to my mum from their whakapapa links around lake Taupō. Dad’s father, the man who taught me how to drink scotch, was from the Highlands in Scotland. When my brother and I were 11, we won scholarships to St Kentigern College, an all boys private school in east Auckland. That same year, we were enlisted into our tribe’s ranks as warriors. And we were forced to endure these harsh but uplifting environments. After college, I went on to study acting at Unitec Institute of Technology. But in my first year, my father killed himself. And this devastating blow altered my life. After drama school I gained a role hosting a kids show for TVNZ and Sky TV, which I started writing for in season two. And I thought, maybe this skill could help me gain stable work to help support my whānau. So I willed my way onto a prestigious journalism course at AUT University. And by luck I landed a part time job as an assignments editor for One News (as it was known at the time). Journalism helped me realise everything written in English about my country’s history wasn’t the whole truth. And everything my elders told me about the New Zealand land wars and what the state had done to my whānau, was true. So I embarked on a journey to seek the whole truth by relearning my mother tongue and reclaiming it as a language I speak everyday. A life-long journey that has opened up my eyes to clearly see and understand the indigenous perspective. I went on to report for TVNZ’s Marae programme. And eventually found the courage to create documentaries and develop my skills as a director and producer. I also started acting again, for screen and most recently, for theatre. In 2020 I won the Voyager Media Award for best current affairs long form (video) for Rediscovering Aotearoa, which I co-produced with Re: News. And then in 2023 I was nominated for another Voyager Media Award as a producer for TVNZ’s Waiata / Anthems docu-series. Now, I am reporting for The Hui and working on my craft as an actor and screen writer.