In my late teens, when I was studying jewellery-making at Whitireia, I developed a friendship with my grandad, Morrie, who was living in Elsdon, Porirua. He had learned jewellery-making at the Disabled Servicemen’s League after the Second World War, and he was still creating jewellery in his home workshop. However, he was finding the work difficult as he got older. Throughout his career, he made extensive use of silver and pāua shell. He had produced pieces for Te Arikinui, Dame Te Atairangikaahu, using Kīngitanga designs for thirty years or so and asked me if I wanted to take on the future commissions. I felt it would be wrong given that I was a woman and Pākehā, so I declined. That was a hard thing for me to do, and I felt a sense of guilt for not carrying on the work for him.★☆★For around a decade, I drew on the coastal and rural environment I lived in. They were confronting times in terms of witnessing the exploitation of the whenua and ingrained colonial attitudes in the communities I found myself in. I approached making as a woman and mother and had a make-do attitude. I used a lot of found materials: cow hair and horn, plastics washed up on beaches or found in burn piles on the various farms I worked on, and some shell. These were a little protest against the messed-up system my family and I were a part of. I long avoided using pāua myself. But after my grandad passed away in 2007, I felt a pull and started using it. I only wanted to use his pāua, and I wanted use it in a different way—making my own forms and using different parts of the shell.★☆★This period helped me figure things out, see the value in my own stories, feel more confident to share my views as an artist, and not shy away from using the inherited material pāua. Over time, my uneasiness has changed and I have started to see aspects of pāua souvenir jewellery as valuable. I have been able to take a deeper look at the craft that fed my mum, aunties, and uncles, and helped heal their dad after the war. In making this body of work, I am thinking especially about a tiara my grandad once made as a gift for Dame Te Atairangikaahu. It is not clear whether he gave it to her or simply told her he had made it. In any case, he was politely told that the specific designs used were related to whakapapa and could not be worn on the head, so the components ended up being dismantled and made into separate pieces instead.