Roimata's life-saving moment 'THE WAKE-UP CALL I NEEDED'

A scary diagnosis led the lawyer to write a book that benefits all Kiwis

- Kasia De Vydt-Jillings

After two decades in a high-pressure legal career, representing iwi in the Waitangi Tribunal and Treaty settlement negotiations, being diagnosed with thyroid cancer shocked Roimata Smail into taking stock of her life and health.

“It was a really good wake-up call that I had been working too intensely for 20 years and needed to downsize my cases,” says Roimata, 45, who was sent for more testing after noticing a lump on her face in 2023.

“A surgeon put a camera up my nose and into my throat, and I heard him say, ‘It looks cancerous.’ That was my first experience with a health scare and it was very scary.”

It turned out to be two small cancerous lumps that were thankfully diagnosed early and removed surgically soon after.

In the quiet of recovery, something surprising happened – Roimata finally had the time to write a book she’s been contemplating her entire career. The result is Understanding Te Tiriti: A Handbook of Basic Facts About Te Tiriti o Waitangi. (Te Tiriti o Waitangi is the reo Māori version of New Zealand’s founding document.)

“The idea just kept coming back and I felt really called to see if I could write something simple from what I had learned about Aotearoa and our history,” explains mother-of-two Roimata.