Newly graduated landscape architect Jackie Paul is urban Maori, born and bred in South Auckland, but she calls the Far North home. “It’s where my father’s from,” Paul explains. “It fills my wairua cup, it’s a spiritual connection. When you grow up in a city everything is so busy. For me when I go back there it just brings me down to earth.”

Now that she’s finished Unitec the 24-year-old has just reached out to her local trust up North. Her next 10-year plan is to return to the Takou Bay area (where her father is from and grandparents are buried) to support her whanau plan their papakainga (housing development on ancestral land) and marae development.

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