A rap song addressing the oppression of African Americans in the US was the inspiration for a poem confronting Maori stereotypes which went viral after it was posted on social media.
With his performance Jai Selkirk from Dilworth School helped the Auckland school to become the 2017 Word – The Front Line champions.
Jai Selkirk's performance at the Word: The Front Line Poetry Slam has had more than one million views and been shared more than 20,000 times after it appeared on Facebook on September 21.
"It's been crazy logging on to see all these beautiful comments left by people," Jai told 1 NEWS NOW about the thousands of comments he received for the video.
"Just everyone leaving nice words - nice message for it makes it feel really worth it."
In his viral poem, Jai, of Auckland's Dilworth School, takes a verbal sledgehammer to stereotypes of Maori, calling them "not true".
The 16-year-old says it was a rap song by Joey Bada$$ which inspired him to write his poem.
"I heard a song called Land of the Free which was a song talking about the oppression of African Americans in America and I thought we had the same thing going on here in New Zealand.
"I wanted to use my personal experiences to relate to that song, to try and get something out of it."
"Every day we are put down under stereotypes so I think that it's really important that we try to break away from that."
Jai's performance helped his Dilworth team of The Boys - Jayden Osbourne, Philip Toriente, Nathan Su'a and himself - to earn an invite to the first ever Upside Down Youth Poetry Conference in Melbourne on December 4 as well as the Melbourne Spoken Word Prize.
"I can't wait for that," said Jai. "I've never been out of the country.
"So for my first time to be representing New Zealand and to be with my friends doing the same thing - it's wicked."
Watch Jai's entire performance here.
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