Puhoro Trip To Houston

In the recent school holidays two of our students, Shelby Nicholson and Ruairi Daniela, travelled to Houston, Texas as part of the Pūhoro Māori Science Academy. They were away for a total of nine very intensive days, where they got to visit both scientific and cultural attractions. The following is a detailed account of the trip written by Shelby:

“Ruairi and I were selected to be a part of an amazingly lucky 15 from across schools in the Manawatu. We travelled across the globe to Texas, USA where we were able to experience so many unbelievable programmes, meet so many life-changing people and really understand the significance of our culture back home in New Zealand.

We all visited NASA and were taken on tours around the campus, being shown Rocket Parks, Lunar rovers, robotics labs and mission control rooms to really understand the variety of roles involved in such amazing missions into space. We visited Ad Astra which is an upcoming company founded by renowned astronaut Franklin Chang-Diaz who has been on 7 space missions. His company has been developing the revolutionary plasma engines rather than chemically run engines in spacecrafts. 

We also visited the FIRST Robotics Championship and spoke to Chris Reilly, an ambassador for Tesla and good friend of Elon Musk. He spoke about the new developments for Tesla and in eco-friendly sustainable energy that will hopefully reach all over America and toward Australia within the next 10 years. 

Later we visited an annual Native American ceremony, Pow Wow, which celebrated unity of the tribes and remembered the losses. We were welcomed with a traditional song and dance and a Texas barbeque. It was amazing to be included in such an intimate cultural experience and it was eye opening to see the similarities between their culture and ours as Māori people. 

We were lucky to be included in the Native American culture and to really form a connection with life back home and a bond with the people we met on the trip. It was seriously an unforgettable journey for not only Māori students in STEM but for also finding a community and an identity in our own culture.”