Jenny-Might Clarkson has revealed her new moko kauae forward of the brand new week and her first time with it on tv, expressing her dread for the anticipated emails from viewers and detailing how she plans to embrace her Māoritanga in a brand new gentle.
The Breakfast tv host mentioned her journey to reclaim her Māori heritage in size with 1News, with Clarkson being the primary member of her household to put on moko kauae since her great-grandmother.
Sharing that she “knew nothing about moko kauae rising up”, Clarkson revealed her determination to say a moko kauae for herself was not one thing that ever crossed her thoughts when she was youthful as she “didn’t wish to be Māori”.
“As a toddler I cherished experiencing kapa haka at school. However as I grew older, I started to see a special facet to how Māori have been handled and perceived on the earth I knew, which was primarily a Pākehā world,” Clarkson instructed 1News.
“By the point I’d reached my teenage years in Piopio, I refused to acknowledge that I used to be Māori.”
However after a long time of constructing a profitable profession in netball and tv, which additionally got here with years of self-discovery and reflection, Clarkson has reconnected together with her Māoritanga and located a renewed that means in her life work, together with her job as a task mannequin for youthful audiences who tune in to Breakfast each morning.
“I’d love to inform that confused little child and her older teenage self: someday you’ll love your self. That feeling you get once you stand on stage proudly carrying your kapa haka kākahu, belting out waiata, that feeling of pleasure and belonging, that may stay with you.”
Now, Clarkson has claimed her moko kauae and is making ready for her first present on tv carrying it.
She acknowledged her anxiousness concerning the public’s response to her moko kauae, revealing that she has struggled with what folks would say on the primary day she had it.
Describing her horrible sleep interested by it, Clarkson stated: “Simply very actual doubts began to creep in. What’s all people going to say? I don’t wish to return to work, you already know.”
“I can see the emails, I can see the responses already and all of that was simply going by my head.”
However the fears finally subsided, with Clarkson recalling a sudden calmness that lifted her up and out of her ideas.
“I can’t even clarify to you the way it all simply lifted nevertheless it was gone.”
Clarkson is proud to have gone by the method of receiving her moko kauae and mentioned how a lot it has meant to her. She needed to share the private second with solely her husband Dean, mum Paddy and older sister Alicia.
Describing her moko kauae’s design and the story of her whakapapa that it tells, Clarkson stated: “My kauae represents each my mum and pa. Mum from Ngāti Kahu and my dad from Ngāti Maniapoto, though my son says the 4 koru symbolize him and his brother, Dean and me. I like his pondering.”
Clarkson will embrace her moko kauae on display screen and insists that she’s “nonetheless the identical particular person”. Nonetheless, she acknowledged that some Breakfast viewers will battle to look previous it.
“Everyone is on their very own journey and I perceive if maybe some members of our viewers discover it abrasive. However that is nonetheless me. I simply select to put on who I’m now.”
