FINALLY HOME: NIQUE MILLER for Wavelength Magazine
Published in Wavelength Magazine
Finally Home: In Conversation With Nique Miller
Words: Sophie Everard
Photos: Yoshi Tanaka
Nique Miller is a multi-skilled athlete and leading light in a new guard of water women blowing the doors of the surf industry.
After growing up on the US mainland, she made the move over to Hawaii in her late teens and began steadily making a name for herself on the local longboard and stand up paddleboarding circuit.
In the last few years though, she’s blasted into the wider surfing consciousness, gaining global recognition for her blend of grace and athleticism, landing a sponsorship deal with Billabong, numerous magazine covers and notching up a cool 102 thousand followers on Instagram. Her multi-racial heritage (“I'm bi-racial, even though I look more black, I am equally Mexican, so to me, I represent not only black girls, but Mexican girls,” she says) has not only made her an inspirational icon to women of colour within surfing, but also a figurehead for a wider shift taking place within an industry somewhat bereft of diversity in the past. While Nique’s Instagram showcases her smiley surfing life in Waikiki, with its unmistakable turquoise water and rolling peelers, it’s been a tough road to this point and as we delve into her life story it becomes clear that nothing she’s achieved has come without the need for serious tenacity.
Growing up far away from the ocean in Michigan, how were you first exposed to surf culture?
A lot of it was watching movies and so when I swam I would pretend to surf on little boogie boards. Since I was little, I've always been a water person. My mom never learnt how to swim and she always told me stories about how she felt really left out, sad and embarrassed. So when she had me and my brother, she wanted to make sure that we never felt the way she did and that we were really comfortable in the water. She had me in little kids swim classes before I was even able to walk.
When did you first try surfing?
I learned on the mainland as a teenager. In Texas, I lived pretty close to the ocean and one day my friends just said let's go out and surf! They didn't really know anything about it, but they kind of coached me a little. I would paddle and just try and stand up, and I sucked, haha! I felt like I was out there for about an hour before I finally caught my first wave. I just remember that feeling of like, wow, this is amazing. After that, I did a little bit here and there, but I didn’t really get into it until I moved to Hawaii.
How do you reflect on your experiences growing up on the mainland as compared with your life now?
In Hawaii, everybody's so accepting. I've never felt discrimination within the lineups for being dark-skinned. When I moved here it was the first time I felt like I could be myself. I could finally be more in the sun and get darker, have my hair natural...I didn't have to straighten it. On the mainland growing up, it was really, really tough. All throughout my whole childhood, I experienced a lot of racism. I was the darkest kid wherever I went. My dad was never in my life, so it was just my mom and me and I was raised by my Mexican family. A lot of my family's either Mexican or half-Mexican, half-white. And all my friends growing up were Mexican or white. I actually didn't have a black friend until I was in college.
In high school you were a top lacrosse player and one of the best cross country and track runners in your state. What motivated you to become so successful across so many different sports?
It was really hard in school, people like me just weren't the popular kids. That's why I got really heavily into sports, because that was the only way I was going to get fully accepted. If I'm a top athlete and winning for my school, then people are going to be a lot nicer to me than if I'm just a nobody. And it was honestly true. Plus, I didn't grow up very wealthy. I just saw with my family the only way I was going to get somewhere was with hard work. When I switched to surfing, I already had that discipline from my younger years.
Is there a defining moment from your early life that you feel really shaped you as a person?
I remember one time when I was little, I was at the store with my Mexican grandma. We were sitting on a bench, and someone came by in a wheelchair. I remember pointing and being like grandma, look at that person. That was the first time my grandma ever heavily disciplined me. She said, “don’t you ever say that. Don't you ever make fun of that person.” In my head, I was like, I’m not trying to make fun of them. I just had never seen someone like that, but my grandma took it a different way. She said what if that was me? Would you still be pointing at me and saying mean stuff about me? I was like, no grandma,I would never want that. I'm so I'm sorry. I just remember that moment in my head, my grandma telling me, “you respect everybody, you treat everybody the same.” I was five years old. That moment is just ingrained in me and it’s become the foundation for my outlook now. Like with the surf industry, why is there not more representation? I've seen amazing surfers who are amputees that rip. Why are there not women that are in their 60s on the cover? There are Auntie's out here in Waikiki that rip!
Tell me about your decision to move to Hawaii?
So, in my final years of school, I started to gear more towards track, and for college my best scholarship offer was for running at the University of Hawaii. So, I chose that!
There, I was like the third best on my team, but we were competing against all these colleges in the US, going up against the best of the best. Instead of being in the top 10, the top five or winning, I was placing around 100th. After that, I just kind of had a moment where I was just like, yeah, I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to be at the top of running.
Some of my teammates and friends were surfers, and they invited me to come out with them. At first, I sucked, but I started trying hard to get better. I made friends with a lot of the Beach Boys down here in Waikiki and they would let me use their boards for free. I would just go out by myself every day, watch the best surfers and try and emulate what they were doing and practice as much as possible, because I already had it instilled what it takes to be a top athlete. You're going to have to put in hours of work, you can't just go out there and surf twice a week and think you're gonna be Kelly Slater!
Surfing seems like quite a contrast to the regimented routine of competitive running...
I know that surfing is kind of more free-spirited and all of that but, but for me, it wasn't so different...to me it was very similar. If you're going to be a good surfer, you have to put in the time. You have to surf in all sorts of conditions. Just like running. If you want to be a top cross country runner, you have to be able to run flat ground and hills, you can't just be good at one. It’s the same with surfing, if you want to be a professional surfer, you can't just be good at small waves, you know, you have to be well rounded.
Where did you get this powerful athlete DNA from?
My dad, who's never been in my life, was a very good athlete according to my mum. He got scholarships to play football and he was a very good track runner. I think I have genes like him because my mum is the opposite. She says that just the way I look and my physique, I resemble my dad a lot. Even though I'm a lot smaller, he was like 6’4, a big black football player guy, obviously I'm not like that. But she just says that even though I never knew him, she would see me standing on the field and I would put my hand on my hip just like the way he did when he was resting, little things like that. She was like, how on earth does Nique know how to do this! She's never met her dad, she's never watched him play football, but she has the same sort of mannerisms. So, I think that I got his genes and his competitive drive.
When did you decide to give being a professional surfer a go?
After a while, my friends in the water and the Beach Boys told me ‘hey, you're getting super, super good, you should try to enter some of the local contests.’ I entered my first local contest in Waikiki, and I got second place. And then I was like, well, I am pretty good at this, and I want to keep getting even better because this feels amazing. For me, it was the same sort of feeling as scoring a goal in lacrosse or winning a race. I was really passionate about it. I said, okay, I think I can be a professional surfer. And, I'll be able to get more exposure, and it'll just be better for me than running.
The first professional contest I did was for the standup World Tour here on the North Shore at Turtle Bay. I was thinking, here in Waikiki, I’m one of the better surfers, so going to my first World Tour event, I thought I was going to dominate. And then I got there, and I got knocked out in the first round. It was such an eye-opener, just like in college, seeing some of the best girls around the world do the contest. After that, I just went back to the drawing board and was so inspired. I just thought, now I know what I have to strive for.
So beyond a love of the sport, were you also driven by long term career goals?
Yeah. From a young age, I always felt like I was making those kinds of decisions, asking myself what, in 10 years, was going to be best for me, or which sport was going to allow me to be most successful. I'm very determined and I'm sure if I had put everything into it and just worked and worked and worked, I eventually could have been a professional runner. But I just felt like with surfing, it was going to be easier, and it was going to be better for me.
Especially being a woman of colour, I thought, well, I'm probably going to stick out a lot more, because normally I’m the only one that looks like me at the contests. I thought that would afford me better opportunities, but in reality, it didn’t. I feel like white runners and black runners are treated the same. Like it's just whoever's the fastest. But in the surfing world, I feel like people of colour have it a lot harder.
My whole life, even though I felt all this discrimination, I was just used to it. But I thought, within surfing, that it might work in my favour because I knew the sport originated from Hawaiians and Polynesians. It wasn't until I started competing professionally I was like, oh my god this isn't what it's cracked up to be. The bigger brands were not sponsoring people that looked like me. I was having to work five, six days a week, my mum had to take money out of her retirement fund, just so that I could try to do all the professional contests. That’s when I realised I couldn’t afford just to be average.
Sometimes I would call my mum crying like, what's wrong with me? I don't understand why no one will sponsor me. I don't understand why I have to make a GoFundMe page just to go to this contest. I don't want people to ever feel like that anymore. Whether you're white, or black, or green, who cares? If you're a really good surfer, that's what should matter.
Since then, you’ve picked up a few major sponsors and it seems like we’re starting to see more diversity in pro surfing as a whole. What’s driving that shift?
Ever since Black Lives Matter, a lot of these brands are starting to get wake-up calls. People want diversity. People want to see themselves reflected and have someone represent them.
Because for years, most girls that live in communities that are predominantly brown or black or Hispanic haven’t seen themselves represented in surfing and they don't have anyone to look up to. I've had so many people message me on social media telling me, oh, you know, I wanted to try surfing, but when I called my friends and family, they told me I couldn't do it because it was a white sport, they told me that I should just do basketball or track, because that's what our people do. I don't know where mainstream media made surfing out to be like what it is now. Like I said, surfing originated from Polynesian people, people of colour. I and I still think that a lot of Hawaiian girls don't get the respect they deserve.
What’s your goal with your social media platforms?
I try to make my Instagram and my platform very encouraging and uplifting. I represent anyone who has a dream, because I've had so many people in the past telling me oh, you're never going to get sponsored by Billabong, they're too big. If you have a dream or a passion, don't listen to other people just believe in your heart and go after it!
It looks like Waikiki is the perfect place to share that message from. How prominent a role has the place played in forming your identity?
When I came here, it was the first time in my whole life I felt like it was okay to be me. It was the first time I ever felt beautiful. The first time I actually had people tell me I was beautiful, which was pretty rare to hear outside of my family before that. There's just so much aloha here. I constantly get people cheering me on, taking photos of me, helping me financially, and helping me whenever I need...people really believe in me over here. I definitely consider Waikiki my home and I feel like the people in Waikiki embrace me. My heart feels Hawaiian. Growing up as a little kid, I would always go outside and go on my swing set and I would just dream of the future. I hated most days growing up in the mainland, besides being with my family. I just knew in my heart I was not supposed to be there. So when I got to Hawaii, I finally felt like I was home.
I always gravitate to this place even when I travel, it’s the first place I want to come back to. I love it so much. I think it's the best wave in the world and it's probably where I'm going to keep surfing until I die.
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