Child of the Rainbow Warrior

The people that killed your father went back to France and then got promoted, honoured by France. Now that offends my sense of what’s right and what’s wrong. And a lot of people blame me for that. I’ve got my own defence to that. I don’t, in that sense, blame myself at all, but it’s still a lurking sadness. I can’t dismiss it. I wish that it hadn’t happened that way.

– Former Prime Minister David Lange, talking to Marelle Pereira in his Mangere electorate office

I walked over to her [mum] and I said something has happened to my father, isn’t it, and she said, yes, he’s missing, we don’t know where he is. I said how come, she said he was on the boat and there was a bomb and he’s missing, they can’t find him.

– Marelle Pereira, on hearing the news her father had been killed

What are the French trying to achieve with it? They’re just killing people with it. They are just destroying lives of adults and of these children … Maybe in 50 years there won’t be an island anymore.

– Marelle Pereira expressing her anger about the effects of nuclear testing in French Polynesia