Sometime after GtN came out, Tamsyn Muir made a post where she gave a bit more detail about her characters’ looks, talked a bit more about how she imagines them. And I remember noting that she talked about race and ethnicity in a distinctly New Zealand way. She described multiple characters as Polynesian: Tongan, Samoan, Maori and mixed Pasifika. She used a New Zealand-specific word, pakeha, to describe white people, and specified that a Chinese character was New Zealand Chinese. The Sixth, described as Middle Eastern, are the only people not explicitly tied to NZ, (although of course Middle Eastern people do live on NZ, too.)
At the time, I thought Muir was simply making a reference to her own New Zealand background, adding a touch of Aotearoa flavour to her fictional world. After NtN, I’m genuinely shaken. I don’t think John revived anyone else. Guys, I think everyone’s a Kiwi.