Chatting to Woman’s Day after the Aotearoa Music Awards, where she was a nominee, Kawerau-born singer Nikau Grace laughs how the glitz and glamour of the big awards night is very different from the daily juggle she faces living in uni halls and trying to earn enough money to pay the bills.
But a year on from the release of her song He Aha Te Aha, a collaboration with rapper Kings, the 18-year-old says she’s feeling more comfortable in her own skin than ever before and is far more confident than she was growing up as a fair-skinned Māori girl with blonde hair.
“I wasn’t what a Māori should look like,” recalls Nikau, who is of Te Arawa, Ngāti Tūwharetoa and Te Whānau-ā-Apanui descent.
“I’d always been scared of that, instead of using it as ammunition to learn the language.”
Reclaiming identity
But in 2023, she penned the song Tōku Tuakiri to remind herself that she’s Māori because of where and who she comes from, rather than how she looks. And last year, she took up the challenge of learning te reo by undertaking a full-immersion diploma through the University of Waikato, despite being diagnosed with dyslexia when she was younger.
“I was always told I was dumb, slow and stupid,” she says, but the uni course provided her a safe space to revitalise her love of kapa haka and reaffirm her whakapapa to her paternal grandmother, who taught te reo but passed away when Nikau was a child.
A powerful connection
“I never got to kōrero Māori with her, so doing this, I felt this new connection to her that I haven’t had before” Nikau credits her whānau for keeping her strong through her journey and has been particularly inspired by her beloved grandpa Garry Chater, who has recently been in and out of hospital with a heart attack, a shattered hip and near-fatal pneumonia.
Nikau’s mum jokingly calls him a cockroach.
“He’s not a cat – he’s past his nine lives,” Nikau giggles.
“He’s a cockroach who survives everything!”
Her inspirations
Other sources of inspiration include her childhood idols Pink and Dame Valerie Adams, but it was fellow Kiwi singer Stan Walker who made the biggest impression on her after she bumped into him at the music awards in 2024.
Though Stan was clearly in a rush to leave, he stopped to chat to Nikau. It wasn’t until after the ceremony that she discovered his dad had just passed away and that the Take It Easy singer was on his way to the airport to bring him home.
“This man had all that mamae [pain] going on, but he still took the time to talk and take a photo with me,” she marvels.
“It just meant the world to me.”
A second encounter
Nikau was able to thank him for that moment when she spotted him out and about with his whānau in Auckland later that year. “He was so lovely,” she grins.
Coincidentally, she and Stan were nominated in the same Mana Reo category at this year’s music awards, which he won for his track Mō Āke Tonu.
These days, Nikau also knows what it’s like to have a growing fanbase.
“I’m starting to get kids coming up to me and that’s weird because I still feel like I’m one of them,” she laughs.
“If someone wants to have a chat or a photo, I hope I’m always the person who makes time for that.”
Stepping into the spotlight
Her upcoming show Ko Au, Ko Koe, part of this month’s Auckland Live Cabaret Festival, will be her first headline act after years of supporting artists like Sol3 Mio, Hollie Smith and Georgia Lines. In it, she pays tribute to trailblazing women, such as her ancestor Mākereti Papakura, who was the first indigenous woman to enrol at the University of Oxford and made headlines last year when she was awarded a posthumous degree.
Nikau was privileged to be at the ceremony and is working on a single inspired by her ancestor.
“Mākereti was someone who pushed boundaries,” she says.
“She wasn’t just ahead of her time – she changed what was possible for the generations that came after her.”
It’s clear forging new paths runs in the family.
Ko Au, Ko Koe is on Saturday 27 June at The Civic’s Wintergarden. For tickets, go to aucklandlive.co.nz.
