All That We Know is a stunning, searing and confronting novel that highlights the true and ongoing human impact of colonisation on Māori in Aotearoa. 

 

This book is humbling and vitally important for all Pākehā (white) and Pākehā-passing Kiwi, and actually should be required reading for us all. I have learned more about the disastrous impact of colonisation from this book than I have ever learned in school. 

 

Shilo Kino bravely crafts the poignant message of the ongoing trauma experienced by Māori through the lens of our main character Māreikura Pohe, a young, wāhine Māori on a journey to reclaim her reo and her identity. Māreikura’s experience demonstrates the many layers of intergenerational trauma, language trauma and the deep roots of colonisation that continue to weave through every day life. 

 

I cried many times during this book. I cried for Māreikura and her justified rage and anguish. I cried for Māreikura’s Gran Glennis and her horrific childhood experience having her reo and identity literally beaten out of her. I cried in shame for my role as Pākeha-passing in upholding colonisation and for the actions of the Pākeha before me to inflict it. 

 

All That We Know also got me thinking about my own intergenerational trauma. I thought about what life must have been like for my Grandmother, growing up First Nations Indigenous in Canada, who is now too traumatised to talk about it. 

 

This is a book that will stay with me for years to come and I am grateful, because we should never ever stop talking about the ongoing experience of Māori at the hands of colonisation and the ways in which we continue to uphold it. 

 

Thank you Shilo Kino, for writing such a vulnerable and visceral story. This is a story to be celebrated.