13 July 2026
Byron Rangiwai's Story of a Lifetime Hiding in Plain Sight
Byron Rangiwai's story is one of the human stories behind Kanorau ā-roro, the first nationally linked picture of neurodevelopmental conditions in children and young people across Aotearoa, commissioned by Te Kāhui Mātai Arotamariki o Aotearoa | The Paediatric Society of New Zealand and Health New Zealand | Te Whatu Ora.
PSNZ spoke with Byron as part of our coverage of the report, and his story now features in the New Zealand Herald: ADHD underdiagnosis in New Zealand revealed in landmark study.
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Photo / Matt Crawford
Byron Rangiwai (Ngāti Manawa, Ngāti Whare, Ngāti Porou, Ngāi Tūhoe) has been called bright for as long as he can remember. His school reports said so, in almost exactly those words: "Byron is a bright child but needs to focus." His teachers could see his intelligence; what they couldn't see was that his struggles were more than behaviour and choices.
He wasn't choosing anything. He was masking, often by playing the class clown, unable to achieve, and slowly internalising the belief that something was fundamentally wrong with him.
Rangiwai is now an Associate Professor of Māori and Indigenous Research at Unitec (Te Whare Wānanga o Wairaka) and holds two PhDs. He was diagnosed with ADHD at 43, and it was only after his diagnosis that he understood why he had done both degrees.
"Before my diagnosis, I'd say I did two PhDs because it was fun," he says. "After my diagnosis, I know it was because I still didn't feel good enough. I knew when I did the second degree, and I still didn't feel enough, that nothing I achieved was ever going to give me that."
For many adults who receive a late diagnosis, this feeling is familiar. The labels accumulate. So do the setbacks, the self-doubt, and the quiet belief that you are simply not quite right.
"People who are diagnosed when they're older seem to mourn," he says. "They go through a grieving of things that could have been. I'm over that now. But I really felt a deep sense of lost potential."
The weight of not knowing
For Rangiwai, the cost of not knowing was not a statistic. It was decades.
He left high school with only a qualification in English, a marginal pass, the one subject where he could write his way through. Everything else, he failed. He eventually went to university as a mature student, and the struggle continued: walking into an exam, writing his name, waiting out the clock, and leaving. Debt accumulated. Courses were started and abandoned.
"My dream was to be a lawyer," he says. "I know now that being a lawyer shouldn't have been out of my reach; I could excel at that job, but I just couldn't get through the study. With the right support, I know that could have been a possibility for me - that's the worst thing about it."
He eventually found his academic voice at Te Whare Wānanga o Awanuiarangi in Whakatāne, where for the first time he encountered a learning environment shaped by Kaupapa Māori values and saw people who looked like him in the faculty. That environment changed everything, and he went on to complete two globally recognised PhDs.
"If someone had said at primary school: this kid's got ADHD, let's get the treatments, the pedagogy, the scaffolding all around him, maybe I'd be a lawyer right now. It would have made all the difference."
Reframing ADHD through a Māori lens
For Rangiwai, this isn't only a personal story; it's shaped his academic work. He has focused on developing Māori frameworks for understanding ADHD, not to replace clinical knowledge, but to sit alongside it, doing something a deficit model cannot: restore mana.
Central to that work is his Pīwakawaka Framework, which draws on the behaviour of the fantail as a culturally grounded way of understanding ADHD. Where clinical language sees deficit, the pīwakawaka offers a different lens, a bird known for its quick movement, curiosity, and ability to change direction mid-flight. Qualities that, in a Māori worldview, are not symptoms to be managed but traits to be understood and valued.
"Western deficit models define ADHD only as a disorder," Rangiwai says. "Māori need frameworks that reframe neurodivergence as strength, not weakness. Undiagnosed, untreated, unsupported ADHD is having serious consequences for our people. But the diagnosis itself also needs to be decolonised."
He's clear the two approaches aren't in conflict; good evidence and good policy can hold multiple worldviews. He believes the best outcomes sit at the intersection of Western medicine and Kaupapa Māori frameworks, with Te Tiriti as the guiding foundation.
"What benefits Māori benefits everyone," he says. "If Te Tiriti were truly at the centre of everything, things like ADHD and Māori perspectives on it would look so different."
An all-systems question
Rangiwai is direct about what needs to change, and where the responsibility sits.
"It has to be an all-systems approach. If you think about some scholars estimating 20% of the population as neurodivergent, that's a lot of people who could be doing things differently, or just struggling unnecessarily, in every part of life: education, justice, employment, and health. The justice system and ADHD rates in prison perfectly illustrate what early intervention could prevent."
Asked what he'd say if he could go back and sit with his younger self, the clever, funny, struggling kid in Murupara who couldn't sit still, couldn't concentrate, and was still being hit across the knuckles with a wooden ruler for it. His answer was simple:
"I think I'd tell him he's enough. Right now, as he is, he's enough."