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The previous year, when she was in her final year at high school, Anae lost seven members of her family – five in a plane crash in Samoa that killed everyone on board. She was left searching for answers she couldn’t find in the Bible. She openly questioned God’s cruel intentions but admitted she felt his favour in another way. “I had taken six months out of school to look after Mum, who had Hodgkin’s disease, so it was a miracle when I passed the exams and got a bursary to get into university,” she says. “I was on a destructive, agnostic pathway because I was just so angry. How could God take away my family? Seven of us, gone.”
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Art space Studio One Toi Tū has taken over what used to be the Newton police station. The crossroads is just past Studio One Toi Tū, the old Newton Police Station – another spot where Māori and Pasifika men used to be rounded up at closing time, Strickson-Pua says. It shut its doors as a cop shop in 1969, reopening as an arts centre a decade later. The reverend would be there every Tuesday in his days as a youth worker with the King Cobras. Then a block further down, Western Park, where Ponsonby workers on lunch breaks sprawl in the shade of sculptures offering commentary on the destruction of Auckland s architectural heritage.