COLUMN | WAIRUATANGA / SPIRITUALITY Written by Ricky Lai (he/him) | @rickthelai on IG & Letterboxd | Film Columnist 1. A Man Escaped (Robert Bresson, 1956) The goal is to escape. It’s the only goal. Hours, days, and months pass while Fontaine, a captured French Resistance fighter, chips away at the door of his prison cell. Sweeping away the wood shavings on the floor, he plies the frame of his bed for a wire with which to weave a rope. Bresson is famously a director who

FEATURE | WAIRUATANGA / SPIRITUALITY Written by Niwa van Leeuwen (he/him) | Contributing Writer We, the dreamers, 'neath the tide Breathing where no breath abides Nothing holds currents fold and blend Motion neither starts nor ends Shadows winding between each braid Drowning the past, in motion made The river bends, the shadows dance Drowning in silence, waking in trance What continues cannot return The rivers remember not what burned In an instant, memory relieved

FEATURE | WAIRUATANGA / SPIRITUALITY Written by Stu Paul (any pronouns) | Contributing Writer I considered myself a Buddhist long before I ever realised that I was transgender. I grew up within the confines of mainstream Christianity in a family that was not particularly religious, but with a worldview that I would describe as culturally Catholic. This was a world where men were men, women were women, and queerness was an abnormality to be quietly tolerated but never celebrat

ARTS | ISSUE ONE | TUAKIRI / IDENTITY Written by Natasha Munro Hurn she/they | @ utopia_for_sale | Contributing Writer I crave distortion because it heals me. I am a personal riot, even at times when I desire not to, but then again, I am in a hetero world after all. No one can shut off this queerness because this is my utopia. I am broke as fuck but beautiful and alive!!! My practice is best seen as both an embrace and a release of my experience as a queer non-binary trans

FEATURE | ISSUE ONE | TUAKIRI / IDENTITY Written by Vinti Shiron she/her | @ vintishrnprod | Contributing Writer What makes your identity? The way you dress, the food you eat, the hobbies and interests that accumulate as you age. When we are young, we start collecting each element of our identity. From ma, I inherit my need to create and my strong intuition. From pops, my wit and logical thinking. Everyone I have ever met, and everything that I have consumed, has left a

FEATURE | HANGA / CRAFT Written by Rose Scott (she/her) | @aut_ventures | AUT Ventures For students, identity is rarely set in stone. School is a space of development – where who you’ve been begins to loosen, and who you’re becoming starts to take shape through not only learning, but community. For some, that journey unfolds naturally. For others, it becomes something lived and learned. Poi+ was born from this in-between. Founded by Joe Patuki (Tainui, Ngāpuhi), Poi+ is a m

If you’re a student mourning your OE, craving a change of scenery, or desperate to reinvent yourself in a new city without dealing with passports and visas, a new pilot programme between AUT - Te Wānanga Aronoui O Tāmaki Makau Rau, University of Otago - Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka, and Te Herenga Waka - Victoria University of Wellington may be up your alley.

We’re starting off the year with a theme that can feel insurmountable: identity. It shapes our sense of self, from our bodies to our communities, spanning the personal and the political. For some, it’s a passing thought. For others, it’s a lived reality every day. And right now, identity is being weaponised.

ARTS | TE AO MĀORI | TUAKIRI / IDENTITY Written by Skye Lunson-Storey (shethey) | @uku_rangi | Arts, Culture, and Te Ao Māori Editor Kia whakatōmuri te haere whakamua: ‘I walk backwards into the future with my eyes fixed on my past. In an age of disappearing stories and endless scrolling, there’s something radical about ink on paper. It archives. It refuses to vanish. For Indigenous and minority communities in Aotearoa, that permanence has always mattered. Print has histo

NEWS | TUAKIRI / IDENTITY Written by Caeden Tipler (they/them) @caedentipler | Contributing Reporter Photography by Michelle Beard On January 31st, thousands gathered in Tāmaki Makaurau under the banner Toitū Te Aroha . The rally and hīkoi from Te Komititanga Britomart to Te Waihorotiu Meyers Park focused on countering hate toward a range of demographics, including migrants, refugees, LGBTQIA+ people, faith groups, and tangata whenua. The diversity of the group was shown in