Kelly Klink

I’m currently writing children’s books giving tamariki stories that remind them: the ocean is not just water. It’s whakapapa. Our ancestor. Our teacher.

Kelly’s moemoeā…

When I wrote my PhD, the moana was my greatest teacher. Not the libraries, not the archives, but the tides, the winds, the silence you feel when you drop below the surface. I remember one day, diving out from Aotea the kelp forest had been stripped back by kina. It was bare, almost lifeless. And as I floated there, watching the emptiness, I realised this is what colonisation looks like in the ocean. When balance is lost, everything suffers. That moment taught me more than any academic text could.

But the moana also teaches hope. I’ve seen places where restoration work is happening; where we replant kelp, where we give Tangaroa space to heal and the life comes back. Fish return, birds feed again, the whole system begins to breathe. That’s when I understood that resistance is not only saying no. It’s also about restoring, creating, giving life back.

These are the kinds of lessons I want our tamariki to inherit. That’s why I write children’s books. So when they sit with a story, they feel that same truth; that the moana is alive, that it speaks, that it can guide them just as it guided me.

The Tonganui Scholarship will give me the resources to take this vision further. It will help me expand our restoration work on Aotea, creating more training and diving opportunities for rangatahi. It will support the writing and publishing of our bilingual children’s books, so more tamariki can grow up with these pūrākau in their hands. It will also enable me to walk alongside kaumātua in cultural reconnection journeys; strengthening those whakapapa ties across Te Moananui-a-Kiwa that give meaning to all our work.

Most of all, it will give me the capacity to bring these threads together, ecological restoration, cultural renewal and intergenerational learning; so our people, our moana, and our stories continue to thrive.