Te Koronga is a Māori research excellence rōpū that Professor Anne-Marie Jackson and Dr Hauiti Hakopa founded at the University of Otago. The year 2023 marks the 10th anniversary of Te Koronga. Over the past 10 years, Te Koronga has been successfully supporting and producing excellent Māori researchers. A collective of current Te Koronga tauira, many of whom have contributed to other articles in this issue, have written this concluding article of the Te Koronga MAI Special Issue. We are unapologetically proud to be Te Koronga. Why? Because in the academy, where we were reminded often that our way of thinking did not matter, our knowledge did not matter, our whakapapa did not matter and our research did not matter, we found a place where it did, a place where our whakapapa, whānau and mātauranga are the very foundation. As tauira of Te Koronga, we wanted to share some of that story.