Growing up, Yanika Reed felt disconnected from her Māori heritage.
She wasn't sure how to identify, due to her appearance - she has blue eyes and fair skin - and lack of knowledge about her whakapapa.
But in the past month, the 28-year-old has made it her mission to dig into her ancestry and now feels more connected to te ao Māori and her tīpuna.
She had been using Ancestry.com to research her tīpuna, digging through census records, police gazettes and old newspapers.
The Tauranga woman - who is Austrian on her father's side and Fijian-Indian, Māori and British on her mother's - describes her journey of learning about her Tūhoe ancestry as an "awakening".
Yanika Reed with her mum. Photo: Supplied
"There's something quite touching about seeing your ancestors who lived in a completely different era and seeing their faces... seeing names on paper and census records... some history as well around the Urewera raids and the confiscation of land," she said.
"It's been quite special to see and it's been really nice to reignite their stories. I feel like a lot of these stories have been lost for so long and no one's really told them."
Maungapōhatu chief Te Iwikino. Photo: Supplied
One of those stories is that of her fourth great-grandmother's brother, a chief of Maungapōhatu named Te Iwikino, who was an important figure around the times of Rua Kēnana.
"It's quite cool to know that I had a relative along the the line living and breathing during that time... just learning about how he himself actually travelled to Wellington to be a voice for the reclaiming back of lands in the Ureweras, in particular Rūātoki and Tāneatua.
"There's a beautiful photograph of him where he was the voice with some other chiefs of Tūhoe to get their land back."
Reed said her science background meant she had been thorough with her fact checking, to prevent going down a rabbit hole of thinking someone is a relation.
"I could still be wrong, a lot of those historical records were oral and might have been the truth in those times either. So I can't really say what I found is 100 percent but I hope that what I have found is respect to family that are still living and also who have lived and that I've kind of portrayed them in the best way I can."
Yanika Reed's second great-grandfather. Photo: Supplied
While researching her tīpuna, she had also uncovered some police records.
"I've seen a few awesome mugshots, and it was quite cool to look at the documents and see their name, their hapū and also a description of them and what they looked like, and what they were charged for. Quite often the ones I've uncovered was a little bit of petty theft."
She said it was heartbreaking reading how her tīpuna were described with greater and unnecessary detail, compared to European defendants, who had very little description.
Researching had been a process she described as the untangling of colonisation.
"My mother's not well-connected to that space, neither was her mother... I see the world quite differently now and see the Māori world quite differently too from undergoing this journey. Most definitely the untangling of colonisation mindset within my whānau, and I can only hope that my family members and those after me go through this process as well."
Friday, Matariki, is also Reed's birthday. She will be using it as a time of remembrance, looking backward to honour the dead and forward to the new year.
The star in the cluster that resonates most with her is Waitī because of its connection to her hapū, Ngāti Kōura, which is based in Tāneatua, Rūātoki and Whakatanē in the Eastern Bay of Plenty.
Yanika Reed's great-grandfather Frederick William Pattison, husband of Te Paea. Photo: Supplied
Reed's middle name is Te Paea, which was her great-grandmother's name. She said she was honoured to have that name, but initially had shame around it as she was not connected to te ao Māori or embedded in the culture.
"I think there was a sense of shame because I didn't look Māori, I couldn't swing a poi as much, I couldn't speak te reo, and it was essentially a shame of not fitting in into one particular group.
"But I've since learned that it's not really about fitting into one. You're a kind of fusion of them all and a strength of them all, which has been a journey of mine too."
She was now encouraging other Māori who feel disconnected or are not sure about their whakapapa to jump on the waka.
"It has brought me so much connection, and I feel like richness in my life. I feel like it's really filled my cup a little bit.
"I would recommend to just get started with Ancestry.com, start online. There's so much information out there, even your local library. I haven't even scratched the surface of reading paper records. Really just throw yourself into it and uncover, it's quite addictive and you do spend a lot of late nights looking into it."
She said one of her relatives told her that her appearance does not change the fact that she is Māori
"You don't need permission to be Māori, and you don't need permission to not be Māori. No one can tell you whether you are or you're not, only you know that and only your whānau know that.
"If you have whakapapa Māori you have whakapapa to look into it and pull on that strength of your ancestors. You have blood in those areas, and that's your birthright."
