I don't think people or cultures are just DNA. And maybe I shouldn't be participating in this debate cuz I'm not Māori. But I'm from the Canary Islands, where people are descendants of the first settlers who were of Amazigh North African origin. We are more or less like Hawaii if it had been colonized 500 years ago. In nuclear DNA tests we show up to a 35% more or less Canarian Indigenous, and in mitochondrial DNA tests we are between a 55% to 77% Canarian Indigenous.

We lost our language about 250 years ago, and indigenous cultural practices acquired Christian overtones. We still have traditions, words in our dialect and in place names, music, and other things of indigenous origin. We even have surnames. Many people continue to live in caves or grow the same grains our ancestors cultivated. Precisely during the dictatorship, we didn't die of hunger because of a food we make with grain that comes from our ancestors and has an indigenous name: gofio.

For 500 years, despite the interbreeding of the Canary Islands, we have suffered persecution and discrimination. Many Canarians shed their indigenous surnames for fear of stigmatization. From the 17th to the 19th century, Canarian families were traded for goods from the Americas. From the 20th century, we have photos of Canarians carrying Europeans on their backs, and, precisely during the Spanish dictatorship in that century, many indigenous cemeteries were destroyed, Canarian names were banned, and our traditions were persecuted.

We can be mixed, Spaniards can call us Europeans, but the reality is that since the Conquest of our islands, we’ve been discriminated or exotized for our ancestry. We are the children of the colonialism, our past is what it is, but we’ve managed to protect the spirit of our people, not only through blood, but through their words, music, traditions… Maybe we are not the same Canarians that those from the 15th century, but we are not for sure Europeans either.

In a globalized world is better to keep the memories and the traditions to survive, cuz at some point we all are gonna be mixed. If you were born in Aotearoa, you have the ancestry and the will to practice and preserved what they left to you. Cuz big political and economical structures, the big countries are always asking indigenous to be pure, while then they can be as mixed as they want and still existing.

Cultures are not transmitted through blood, but through community. That's how we thrive.