How Maori Singer Stan Walker Reclaimed His Identity With a Song From Ava DuVernay’s ‘Origin’

When Stan Walker, a New Zealand-based singer of Māori descent, first saw a rough cut of Ava DuVernay’s searing “Origin,” he’d never even heard the word caste before. But he was floored by the film, which is less an adaptation of Isabel Wilkerson’s 2020 bestseller “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents” than a movie about the writing of a book that finds links between worldwide systems of inequality.

“I didn’t know what the word meant, but it resonated with me in a big way,” said the singer, who has had hits in Australia and New Zealand since he won the seventh season of “Australian Idol” in 2009.