Aaron Smale

Aaron Smale (Ngāti Porou, Ngāpuhi, Pākehā) has worked as a journalist for 25 years, winning a number of national awards including Feature Writer of the Year, Best Investigation and Best Maori Affairs Reporter.

He has done extensive investigative work on the abuse of children by the state that includes the podcast series The Lake and the documentary film The Stolen Children of Aotearoa.

His series on forestry slash on the East Coast was published as a book, Tairawhiti: Pine, Profit and the Cyclone, by Bridget Williams Books. In 2019 he was an Ochberg fellow at Columbia University's Dart Center for journalism and trauma. He is currently enrolled in a PhD at the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University.