Tau mai te wairua mai i nga ira atua ki te ira tangata. Tihei mauri ora. Welcome to The Hui, Maori current affairs for all New Zealanders. E taro ake nei ` a legacy restored. - I want to wear it for my whanau, my tupunas that never got a chance to. - We follow one Ngai Tahu whanau as three generations receive their moko kauae. - It is an act of decolonisation. But before that, it's a personal decision, and it's something that we wanted for ourselves. - It's very emotional doing it with my aunties and my daughter. - Then we're on Aotea, where a unique Maori skincare business has taken root. - I would like to see the business an expression of Maori creativity, an expression of Maori drive, resilience and pride. Captions were made with the support of NZ On Air. www.able.co.nz Copyright Able 2022 - As Matariki and Puanga celebrations reach their zenith, it's an important reminder of the enormous strides Maori have made in our cultural renaissance over the last few decades. For Ngai Tahu whanau, who recently received their moko kauae, it signifies the restoration of a taonga that was lost for generations. Kei a Annabelle Lee-Mather tenei purongo. - A whanau raised an Otautahi when it wasn't OK to be Maori. - It had its impacts on me. I had to be tough, because you used to be called 'hories'. I felt like I was a black girl in a white world. - Together, undertaking a powerful act of decolonisation. - It's defiant of those systems that were built to eradicate us. It is an example of what it means to be wahine toa, to stand strong in your identity and in your belief that you deserve to be there and deserve to exist in your own land. - Three generations reclaiming the legacy of their tupuna wahine. - I think us getting moko kauae is a very important step for showing all the generations that come that we're really proud to be Maori. And to do it as whanau with aunties and my daughter, it really speaks to who we are. - It's my birthright as a wahine Maori to claim this. - This is a day generations in the making. In the idyllic settlement of Rapaki in Waitaha, the Stone whanau have returned from around Aotearoa and Australia for their first whanau mokopapa. - ...feel sorry for us and buy maybe one or two. - (LAUGHS) A little nervous ` not about getting it; I want it; but... a lot of people have mentioned a bit of pain, and I'm a little 'ooh', cos I am a little` sometimes I think I'm a bit of a chicken. But, you know, I'm ready to meet the pain as well. - And she won't be meeting the pain alone. Jeni-Leigh is receiving her moko kauae alongside her aunties Herena, Rita and Mate, as well as her 21-year-old daughter, Kura. - Some people might think that getting a moko kauae could be seen as radical, especially at such a young age. But I think that's the opposite of what it means to me. For me, it's to make casual something that should always be... normal for us to have. - Before the mokopapa begins, Mate, who lives in Perth, starts the day with a swim in her moana. For her, the idea of a kauae has been floating around for more than a decade. - I thought, 'Right, that's it. I'm getting my moko kauae.' The time is right. I've come to the point where I've grown as a wahine Maori, and I'm ready. I am so ready for this. - # ...aroha mai. (BOTH SQUEAL) - Homai tera taora! - Beautiful. - And I told Rita, and she says, 'Oh, I've always wanted to get it done.' - I also want to wear it for my whanau, my tupunas that never got a chance to, because of, you know, the situation back then, racism and all that sort of thing. So I'm so looking forward to it. I'm ready. - Nau mai ra, e te whanau e. Haria mai o koutou tini mate ki te po e. - And finally, after numerous COVID delays, the mokopapa is about to begin, Led by Ngai Tahu ta moko artist Christine Harvey. Many of the wananga I have helped about kauae, have been as much about decolonisation as it is about reclaiming or taonga. - For Jeni-Leigh and Kura, it's a day they thought they might not see together, after Jeni-Leigh underwent treatment for breast cancer last year. - I think the added challenges that she's had to go through and that we've had to go through together definitely add another layer of gratitude that I feel towards the event, that we can be in this room together, receiving our moko kauae, when we didn't even know if she would make it to my 21st birthday. I'm honoured to be able to get my moko kauae alongside my mama. - Now one of the things I 100% do is... not just seize the day, but I... take every moment I have, and I want to express who I really am in it. And doing this of my daughter, I want to show her how important it is to me. I'm not gonna tell her to do it; I will show her I will do it too. - For the Stones, the decision to become wahine mau moko is an important step towards healing the pain of the past. Although they spent time in Rapaki growing up, they were raised over the hill in Christchurch, where being Maori was looked down on. - It felt like we had a life at home, which was very much Maori support, and at school it was this Pakeha world, which was very different. It felt lonely at times. And one instance I recall when I was probably about 7, my friend from school invited me to her house, and I went around, and her mother was at the door, and she looked at me and she looked at her, and she said, 'You can't bring her in. She'd better go home. We don't like Maoris.' And that was heartbreaking. Yeah. So that's kind of just one example of, you know, the pain, I guess, of being... the other. - Christchurch is not the best place for Maori sometimes. Just getting to school every day was a mission and a little scary, because you'd have to go through, say, the city, and there's always White Power. - It's a world away from the life Kura has experienced growing up in Tamaki Makaurau. - Mum grew up in the racism, but I didn't, because she did everything she could to make sure that I wasn't ever going to be around it. Even with all that she did to separate me from that, I still have experienced racism, and I've still experienced people looking down on me because I'm Maori or because I'm a wahine or because I'm a wahine Maori. The triple combo of... (LAUGHS) of who's going to get the beat down of life. (GENTLE ACOUSTIC GUITAR MUSIC) - I'm in awe of her confidence, and I'm in awe of her... knowing what she wants, and how she wants to move forward is with a moko kauae. And I'm... more than proud. - And she's not the only one. Also here is Kura's paternal grandfather, esteemed Tuhoe kaumatua Te Whare Kotua Turuwhenua. - My upbringing has been heavily influenced by my koko, my grandfather. I was effectively raised by him, my nanny, my parents and my auntie. I told him that I wanted to get my moko kauae, and I asked him if it would be appropriate if I could have my great-grandmother's moko kauae ` his mum. And he didn't say yes or no. He said, 'I've got a good photo of her somewhere around where you can see her moko kauae better.' And that, to me, was the ultimate acceptance was... 'Here. I'll help you to do it.' (GENTLE MUSIC) (INDISTINCT CONVERSATIONS) - The Stone whanau meet the pain with joy. After a few hours, a legacy lost for generations is etched into their skin and reclaimed once more. (SOBBING) Kura's is the last moko kauae way to be completed. Joining her hakui and mama as a wahine mau moko. - To me, it's courage. But it's also an example of the extreme love they have for themselves, for their people, for where they've come from. And I think that it's important to know that all of this comes from a love for our culture and our identity. - Like the Stones, the face of Christchurch is also changing. The city that was once so monocultural is undergoing a makeover. - The whole landscape down here's changed. Everything has changed ` the city, the people, attitudes. And I'm so thrilled I get to see it in my generation, but knowing that my aunties, myself, my daughter, we're all getting our moko kauae, it's part of the change. - A change Kura hopes more wahine Maori will feel empowered to make. - The moment that you into this world as a kotiro or as a wahine, that moko kauae became your birthright or became something that you are entitled to. You don't have to be fluent. You don't have to be 90 years old. You don't have to be some mystical, magical, wise Maori woman. You just have to be a wahine Maori, and that's all, because it's there for you, and it will always be there for you if you choose it. - Kei roto i o tatou toto. - Pono marika. E tika ana tera korero. Na Annabelle Lee-Mather tera purongo. After the break, I speak to the new Police Minister, Chris Hipkins. - It is an act of decolonisation. that can lead to Maori being overrepresented in the criminal justice system. The findings were released just days before Chris Hipkins took over the police portfolio in a cabinet reshuffle. Next week, The Hui will release the results of a special poll on how Maori view the police. But here to share his whakaaro and priorities for the police portfolio, I'm joined now by Minister Hipkins, who's beaming in from Te Whanganui-a-Tara. Tena koe. - Kia ora. - Morena, Minister. Tell us, what are your priorities for this portfolio? - Well, look, I think immediate priority is to address the increasing concerns around public safety. There's no question we've seen an escalation in gang-related activity. We've seen some concerns around some high-profile youth offending. And we do need to take action to address those. We've got firearms reform underway at the moment, and we need to see that through. I think that's going to make a difference to the level of safety in our communities. But we've still got quite a lot of work to do in that area. - If I can go back to in the intro, I mentioned the results, or the early results, of that investigation that was launched last year by the Police Commissioner Coster. 15 months on, it seems to be that there's not a lot of detail that they can tell us. Are you wanting to give them a hurry up on that? - I think, you know, there's a lot of work happening in police around making sure that all of their systems and processes and practices are aligned with the sort of approach that we might expect in the 21st century. And, you know, I think the police are working with haste, but these things don't change overnight. And so we do need to be realistic. You know, we're talking about, you know, quite a comprehensive set of work that they're undertaking. - Yeah. I guess the issue, though, is that they can't identify where in the chain, in the police chain, you know, assures to even start the action plan. So, I mean... So are we to take it that nothing's happening at the moment because they don't know where to start. - Oh, no. I think if you look at what the police are already doing around, you know, understanding police delivery, it's happening. You know, there are conversations about that happening at every level of the police. When I travel around the country and I speak to, you know, police who are engaged on the beat, every single one of them wants to focus on continual improvement. They want to make sure they're doing the best job possible for all of the communities that they serve. And that does involve, you know, critical self-reflection. And you'll find that the police are highly engaged in that, and their leadership is very, very engaged in that. - Yeah. So I mean, and that is often the issue is that at the leadership level, we have some real engagement and acknowledgement of some of those issues. But there's somewhere down that chain, something's not working. So how do you identify if for 15 months, a review hasn't been able to identify it, what's` you know, how do we find it? - Well, I wouldn't say that the review hasn't been able to identify 'it', because I don't think 'it' is a single thing. I think that, you know, if you think about the police force, they are a broad cross-section of New Zealand society. And if we look at the history of New Zealand society, have there been practices, have there been views and attitudes in the past that don't reflect the the type of society we aspire to today? Yes, of course there have been. And so police are no different. But, you know, where I go around the country and I meet police, I find that, you know, the police are engaged in this topic, they do want to do a better job of making sure that they are saving all of the communities of Aotearoa. They do want to reflect critically on their practices and say are there things that we're doing which create biases within, you know` within policing? I found that police are even, you know, at the grassroots level, you know, community policing, there's a real level of engagement in there. - Yeah, I mean, people will agree with you, because, you know, and often people have good experiences with the police, but that doesn't` you know, when we look at those statistics and Maori are just so overrepresented at every kind of stage of their interaction with police. How do you turn that around? - Well, it's not just police. So, we have to look at this right the way across government. So, Maori have worse educational outcomes, they have worse health outcomes and all of those things cumulatively point to major challenges that we have to address as a country. So we can't just put all of this on to police. I think that would be really unfair. - But in terms of this portfolio, though, where do you start? - Well, I think you start, actually, in those other areas as well. So police connecting up with education, for example, to make sure that all of our young people are engaged in education or employment. That's a really good place to start. And we've seen some, you know, examples of good programs where the police are working with schools to get kids back into education, because if we're doing that, then they are least likely to be getting into trouble, you know, and we acknowledge that, you know, Maori have been underrepresented ` or overrepresented I should say ` in some of those poorer educational outcomes. So police working with the education sector to help turn that around, that's gonna make a difference. So it's not gonna be a single silver bullet. There are gonna be a whole range of different things that police do in conjunction often with other arms of government to make sure we're getting more equitable outcomes. - You know, when you come into a new portfolio, you get a briefing that's handed over to the minister. In the briefing that you've received, was there any acknowledgement of unconscious bias in there? - There's certainly discussions within the police about that. And I think what police are looking for, though, is` - But was it something that they handed on to you as an issue that needed to be addressed? - Well, they've got a lot of work going on at the moment, which looks specifically at this ` so understanding policing, the work that they've` They've got Kim Workman involved in some, you know, good research there to give them a good evidence base that they can base their decisions on. So, yes, I've been briefed on that work, and I fully support it. And, you know, it's just one of many programs that are looking at exactly these areas. - The last time we had a police minister on, I asked him if ` it wasn't Poto Williams; it was Minister Nash ` if he thought that there was institutional racism within the police. And I wanna ask you the same question. Do you think there is? - I think if you look` As I said before, if you look at the New Zealand police, they are a cross-section of New Zealand and will there be attitudes within that that we want to work on changing? Yes, of course they will be. Same with teaching. Same with the health workforce. - We're not talking about individual police officers here. We're talking about the system. Do you think the system has institutional racism? - Well, I think that's what we have to develop an evidence base around. And that's exactly what the police are doing. I don't think that, you know, just applying labels without evidence is going to be` - But evidence is` The evidence, Minister, is in the statistics. The evidence is already there. There's decades and decades of evidence. What more do you need? - Well, you can't` But you can't separate those statistics alone from the wider societal factors that contribute to that as well. So, you know, poor educational outcomes absolutely contribute to the overrepresentation of young Maori within the criminal justice system. So I think we do have to make sure that we're looking at this holistically. Are Maori overrepresented and in the criminal justice system? Absolutely. Yes, they are. - Would you agree with the police commissioner who said there is an unconscious bias? - Some of our communities are more policed than others. - Kia ora. Thank you for your time. - I think you'll find unconscious bias, yes, in the police and, yes, in education and, yes, in a whole lot of other areas. - Tena koe. Thank you. Hei muri i nga whakatairanga, ka huri te kei o te waka ki te motu o Aotea. - It is an act of decolonisation. Aotea is a range of Maori-made skincare products utilising traditional rongoa and supported by scientific research. It takes its name from Great Barrier Island, and its community is the inspiration behind the brand. For entrepreneur and founder Tama Toki, Aotea is a true labour of love. Kei D'Angelo Martin tenei purongo. - In a far-flung corner of Tikapa Moana, on the island of Aotea, a unique Maori business has taken root. - We have a range of health care products, but hose key tenants are things like kumarahou, things like kawakawa, manuka as well and harakeke. - Lawyer-turned-entrepreneur Tama Toki has created a leading skincare range in one of Aotearoa most isolated and challenging environments. - Where we are as not only remote as an island but there's no utility for power or water, so to actually produce here, we have to have solar; we have to have our own water systems. And so that takes time. - Not only his products sustainably produced, it's skincare with a kaupapa. - Me whakau tonu te hapori e noho kei Aotea. You're actually making everything on Aotea. We're creating jobs on Aotea, and we're doing it under our own steam. - 31-year-old Tama Toki isn't your average skincare mogul. - I tupu mai i te taha o toku kuia me toku koroua. And as a consequence of that upbringing, you start to pick up little things. And so in the winter, for example, there's always kumarahou steeping, things like that, which were pretty special but not unique to our community, our hapori. So, I suppose from, yeah, that was, like, the origin, I think, of the journey, and those experiences have kind of manifested themselves into what we do today. - And what he's doing today is selling Aotea skincare both domestically and offshore, with distribution deals in Japan and Hong Kong. - We've got kanuka and manuka on here, and we` all the manuka and kanuka is grown here naturally. We've got maybe a little nursery, if you can call it that, as well. - After starting out in 2017 selling at local farmers markets, Tama now has his own high-end store in a sought-after location. - This is our shop in downtown Auckland, Commercial Bay. So it's a bit of a step for us. We've got 10 staff, which is pretty cool. And, yeah, the last five years have been pretty challenging but pretty rewarding at the same time. - Most rewarding has been the ability to invest back into his own hapori. Aotea doesn't have a high school, but Tama was lucky enough to go to Auckland Grammar, then study law before getting into business. Now he's creating educational opportunities for other Aotea rangatahi. - A lot of the kids I grew up with didn't go to high school in the end. So since day dot, we've had scholarships. The mandate has always been to create opportunity for those rangatahi to get to a school like Auckland Boys. And we've sent boys to` or support the journey to Auckland Boys and all that kind of stuff. It's nice to be able to do that support through those scholarships and things of that nature. But, again, the products are a vehicle. This is a vehicle to kind of help. - With the production and manufacturing of the business based here on Aotea, Tama says being self-sufficient is a must. What were some challenges that you faced when setting up the farm? - Lots of challenges. The main one is the isolation. You know, even putting down concrete, you have to get the water, you have to get the aggregate and the cement over. All these things take a little time, a lot of effort, and it's quite expensive. - Do you have plans to extend the plantation here? - We do have plans to extend the plantation. As a business, you have to have the ability to meet demand to scale. And so at the moment, you know, we've got a block here. We're hoping to double that in the next six months or so. - All the products are handmade in small batches. Not only is Tama behind the business and marketing of Aotea, he's also the chemist and engineer, building his own sophisticated system to extract manuka and kanuka oil, Aotea's own liquid gold. - As the vapour rise to the basket, it rises a gas, and then once it hits the condensing pipe, because we're pushing cold water around it through the water jacket, it collapses, or it condenses, back into a liquid. And this is it. Manuka oil. It goes into all our products. Super antibacterial. Super good for the skin. You can see how hard it is to get, so, yeah, precious stuff. We do everything ourselves here. Harvest, extract, make this cap and label, and then it sits on our shelves in Commercial Bay and online. - Tama has big plans for the future, including broadening the business from therapeutic products to Aotea solar energy. - We're still investing back into the island. We're still building on the island. We're still looking at concepts around battery technology and around solar technology. - And while Tama has high hopes, his definition of success is grounded in his Ngatiwai identity and the teachings of his nanny and koro. - Maori are natural entrepreneurs. I would like to see the business an expression of Maori creativity, an expression of Maori drive, resilience and pride. - Kotahi te kakano, he nui nga hua o te rakau. - Na D'Angelo Martin tera purongo. Kua hikina Te Hui, e hoa ma. Noho ora mai ra. Captions were made with the support of NZ On Air. www.able.co.nz Copyright Able 2022