- Ka rere a Manu ki uta. Ka rere a Manu ki tai. Ka rere a Manu ki nga ao o te rangi, ki kora tangi mai ai. Hui hui mai e te tini. Hui hui mai e te mano. Hui, huihuia mai e nga iwi. This week on The Hui ` Te Runanga Nui o Nga Kura Kaupapa Maori is fighting to keep their autonomy at an urgent Waitangi Tribunal hearing, and we look at the joint marae programme that's connecting tamariki, rangatahi and their whanau to nature. - You can see the penny drop, you know, the instant that they actually grasp something. - # Ko to manawa, ko toku... # - Plus, to celebrate the start of New Zealand Music Month, we catch up with Maori singer-songwriter Anna Coddington with her hit waiata 'Aho'. - I keep referring to it as my Maori funk album, (LAUGHS) but I don't know if funk's really that much of an accurate term, but it's definitely` it's a lot more, kind of, upbeat, fun... www.able.co.nz Copyright Able 2023 - E nga mate tuatinitini, e nga mate tuamanomano, haramai, haere. Tatou kei te ao turoa, tihewa mauri ora, and welcome back to The Hui. An urgent claim brought to the Waitangi Tribunal by Te Runanga Nui o Nga Kura Kaupapa Maori o Aotearoa. The body which oversees kura kaupapa Maori concluded its first week of hearings at Hoani Waititi Marae in West Auckland on Friday. At the core of the claim is the ability of kura kaupapa Maori to continue to exercise their tino rangatiratanga and also a lack of understanding and support from the Ministry of Education. Joining us now live from Te Whanganui-a-Tara in Wellington is the co-chair of Te Runanga Nui o Nga Kura Kaupapa Maori Rawiri Wright. E kara, Rawiri, tena koe. - Tena koe, Julian, otira, tena koutou katoa. - Nga mihi nui ki a koe. Mou i whai wahi mai ki a matou. For the uninitiated, let's just start with how many kura kaupapa Maori there are, and what is the core tenet or the core tenets that underpin kura kaupapa Maori? - There are 62 official kura kaupapa Maori Aho Matua throughout the country, and we've got eight others who are in` going through the process of becoming established as kura kaupapa Maori. Now, the core tenet is we are asking for the establishment of ` for want of a better word ` a ministry of matauranga kaupapa Maori, of a Maori... stream of education to run parallel to that of the existing system. The rationale is... Well, who knows? Who cares? Who even gives a toss? Education in this country is 207 years old from the establishment of the first kura. Kura kaupapa Maori is 38 years young. In 207 years, Maori are still at the bottom of... that education system in terms of, you know, educational achievement and things like that. There have been improvements in recent years. What we're saying is 207 years is enough, and the sooner there is a Maori stream ` kaupapa Maori education stream in this country ` the better. - Let's talk further about them, then. To oversee that Maori stream, as you put it, or that 'ministry' I think was the word that you used earlier, is this in effect something like Te Aka Whai Ora, the Maori Health Authority? - Yes, but there is a... a fundamental difference is that... with Te Aka Whai Ora, everybody has the same single choice, and that is if you're sick, you have to go to hospital. In the education setting, there are lots of options. What we're saying is it is time to formalise the... matauranga kaupapa Maori stream. It exists informally already through kohanga reo, kura kaupapa Maori Aho Matua, kura a iwi, and the wananga. What we're saying ` it's time to allow each of those identities to come together as one so that there is a Maori-language, matauranga Maori... stream that anybody who chooses to participate in it can, to be overseen by Maori. - And as you said, though, there are a number, a higher number and proportion of Maori students who attend mainstream schooling. What do you think the impacts of this idea, if it comes to fruition, will be on those who still choose to attend a mainstream school for their tamariki Maori? - Kei te pai. Kaore he` Kaore he... he raru. You know, no problem, no issue with that. But what... part of our claim is that... we believe` we're saying that if the Ministry of Education had been... had better resourced and... had worked harder to put policies and processes in place to support the development of kura kaupapa Maori Aho Matua, there would be more than 62 kura. We would have more than the 7500 students that we do currently, and, um, their inertia... has actually prohibited thousands more from attending. This is not a takeover. You know? This is working in a parallel paradigm, and if you like, embodying... the words, the tenets and the principles of Te Tiriti o Waitangi, similar to what is being envisaged in the health sector. - Rawiri, what do you think the Waitangi Tribunal can realistically do to give or help give effect to this when, as we all know, the tribunal's recommendations are not binding on the Crown? - Ah, there have been a couple of instances where the tribunal has been able to make binding recommendations. We don't know if this is going to fall into that category. However... the government, whoever the government is, needs to ask itself, is it happy to see Maori students failing in the education system, or is it time to give them a realistic opportunity to participate in an education system that looks like them, that sounds like them, that... sees the world through their eyes? Or what? Or do they still want us to see the world through tauiwi lenses? Do they still want us to only teach our student what they select is... valuable knowledge? Matauranga Maori, tirohanga Maori are way different from matauranga tauiwi and tirohanga tauiwi, European perspective and European knowledge. Our tamariki... need to be` They need to know who they are, where they are from, and what their purpose is in this world in order that we can continue to sustain te ao Maori. - How realistic do you think your ultimate aspirations are considering there are political parties right now who potentially could be in the position of becoming the next government, who do not support the kind of policy that you are looking to adopt and implement? Who do not support` Who would say, for example, that this kind of approach is separatist? And again, what actually New Zealand should look like, should feel like, should be, particularly in the education system. - Yeah, so our papa, Professor Graham Hingangaroa Smith, reminded the tribunal of the tensions between... party political aspirations, the state responsibility to provide an education system, and departmental functions. At the moment, party political preference is... trumping everything. It doesn't matter what the state responsibility is to te ao Maori as determined and as already recognised in Te Tiriti o Waitangi and in the United Nations Declaration of Rights of the Indigenous people. So the government, whoever the government is, needs to ask itself, 'Are they gonna continue to put their party political preferences 'ahead of what is in the interests of the people, 'or are they just going to rule according to their own mantras?' This is not separatist. This is working in parallel. This is what Te Tiriti o Waitangi was all about. You know, one of the things about this government, the previous government, is that they run a mile when anybody talks about co-governance, whatever label you put on it. You know, what are they afraid of? - Tena koe. Tena koe, Rawiri. - You know, all of the statistics are telling us that in... by 2050, New Zealand is gonna be more brown than it is anything else` - Tena koe. - ...and whoever the government is needs to wake up. - Ehara i te mea he poroporo i a taua korero, engari me hurumutu. Heoi ano, e mihi atu ana ki a koe i whai wahi mai koe ki a matou. Me tuku matou i a koe kia hoki ki te kura. Thank you so much for your time. Rawiri, tena koe. - Tena koe. Hei kona ra. - Kia ora mai ra. That is Rawiri Wright, co-chair of Te Runanga Nui o Nga Kura Kaupapa Maori. Coming up next on The Hui ` we look at the marae programme connecting tamariki, rangatahi and their whanau to nature. (LAUGHTER AND CHATTER) (LIVELY MUSIC PLAYS) (PEOPLE GASP) (BELLOWS) Call this a feast?! Fetch more foodage! (DRAMATIC MUSIC) M'lady. (PEOPLE CHATTER) (EPIC MUSIC) (PEOPLE CHEER) Is this Greek salad? Nah, it's from New Zealand, eh! VOICEOVER: Four Square. What'll it be today? - Ko te reo o Te Hui e paorooro ana i nga pari karangaranga o te motu, nau mai ra. Six years ago, three Tamaki Makaurau marae came together to devise Te Pu-a-Nga Maara, a charity to connect tamariki, rangatahi and their whanau to te taiao, the environment. They're using matauranga Maori ` korero tuku iho to grow an appreciation for the taiao for future generations. Ruwani Perera went to meet the clever kaikokiri behind the conversation and conservation kaupapa. (LAID-BACK MUSIC) - What are these? Native or introduced plants? - KIDS: Native. - Native. - Teaching tamariki about their taiao. - I'm Whaea Krissy. We're gonna go for a hikoi with Nau Mai. - Youse gonna go out and find these plants. - So we're on, like, a bit of a speed date. 15 minutes. Let's go. - Krissy Bishop is a project manager for Te Pu-a-Nga Maara, a South Auckland charity that encourages young people to connect with nature. - So on the bottom of the karamu or the karamuramu, it's got nostrils. Can you see those? - Yeah. - So that's how the plant breathes. - For some of these Year Six children, it's the first time they've ever seen or heard about native plant varieties. - I think all our babies in schools should be learning that, you know, this is where you live. That's an introduced plant; this is a native plant. You know? Both may be good, but have different benefits or effects on the whenua. So, there's two different varieties. This is manuka. - And then these are... kanuka. - Kanuka. How do you tell if it's manuka or kanuka? - The leaves are softer, and the flowers are smaller, and the leaves are smaller. - Yeah. You can see the penny drop or ka taka te marama, eh? You know, the instant that they actually grasp something. Krissy's passing on her ancestral knowledge to the future kaitiaki of our environment. - You OK? Same one. I've always had a passion around the taiao. I've never trained in anything. It was just a ngakau mahaki work for me. You know? Something that I was passionate about, and that was the same with Zara. You know, I guess it's, um... contagious the passion between us. - Tena koutou. We've come here today to play some takaro Maori with you guys as well as learn a bit about some of the native trees that we've got in this area. - Together with Zara Motutere, the pair have been with the programme since it was set up in 2017. - You guys know what a pukana is? Yeah? - KIDS: Yeah! - Have youse played pukana before? - Yeah! - Sweet. - Using fun activities and games, they believe that engaging and educating kids about the taiao at a young age is crucial and hope their enthusiasm for the kaupapa will rub off on them. (KIDS LAUGH) - My passion has been around the taiao and working in the environment and drawing on ancestral knowledge or our tupuna matauranga to help us to restore Papatuanuku to her... prior state. - Pukana! (LAUGHS) - Zara got involved in her first conservation cause aged 11. - So, horse mussels ` it's a delicacy in the community that I'm from in Tauranga, and they were just getting decimated completely, so we did, like, a research project, and one of the major findings was that trawling was pretty much destroying their beds. Kia ora. - Kia ora. - Nga mihi. - Zara and the Te Pu-a-Nga Maara team are keen to get involved with their South Auckland community, attending events like this maramataka masterclass last month,... - From the deepest parts of the awa to our Rangi, to us and the whenua, we are all connected. - ...at Puhinui Stream in Wiri. - Get it! Don't let it go into the water. - (YELPS) - Just having the kids engage with the awa here, having their whanau alongside them to see them engaging with the awa as well, and then just to see them buzzing out that they're catching tuna, you know? - In 2010, the awa, which feeds into the Manukau Harbour, was considered the dirtiest of all 31 waterways monitored by Auckland Regional Council. - The Puhinui itself is super important. It was a traditional highway for the people that used to live here back in the days. This is an artificial pond that is just catching rainwater, holding it, and then it's just becoming silty, and then, you know, it ends up impacting on the water quality of the rest of the catchment, so to renaturalise this space is really important. - 6 tons of rubbish were removed by 2000 volunteers in 2016 in a push to clean up the awa. But they're still battling the dumping of waste here, and that's still having an effect on the water quality. - This one here is a ammonia test. Do you know what ammonia is? - Um, no. - It's pretty much poos and wees. - Oh! - Ew. - It changes colour depending on whether or not the chemical is present. Goes from yellow to green. If it's green, there's heaps of ammonia. If it's yellow, there's not a lot. Our young people are getting upskilled while they're having all these experiences or being exposed to nature, cos I reckon you don't actually know you're passionate about something until you've had a tutu at it. Mm. - Rangatahi help design the interactive activities for rangatahi. Even these clever water testing kits were devised by Year 10 students who had been inspired after going through the programme. (INDISTINCT SHOUTS, LAUGHTER) - KRISSY: Do you know what these ones are? - And there's a huge focus on training up the next kaikokiri, or conservation champions of the future. - Kawakawa can be used for anything, so we use it as moisturiser, antiseptic... Yeah, heaps of things. - We're all about developing our rangatahi. Even though we're a taiao-focused kaupapa Maori organisation, it doesn't matter where they wanna go, just as long as we're there to akiaki them and support them in whatever they wanna do. - What is it like having that youth-led injection as well into it? That must give it much more, like, life. - Life. Yeah. The youth and their ideas. You know? There's never a dumb idea. Every idea has merit until you've tried it. Every cool thing was an out-of-the-gate idea at the beginning. - Their give-it-a-go approach and hard work has been recognised, winning them several accolades, including a mayoral award in 2019 for their efforts to enhance Tamaki's environment. - So, and I have stayed pono to our kaupapa. You know, that it is around kaitiakitanga, supporting mana whenua, whanaungatanga, our relationships and how we interact with other people. - What have you got? Koromiko. Uh... Is that that one over there? Te Pu-a-Nga Maara has just allowed a space for me to... like, I'm not a rangatahi any more, but it has allowed a space for me to be able to achieve some of my biggest hopes and dreams from when I was a rangatahi. Yeah, so I feel pretty fortunate to be a part of the kaupapa. - Haramai. E ao te kaupapa. Stay with us. After a short break, Ngati Tuwharetoa singer-songwriter Anna Coddington kicks off our Music Month series, profiling the talents of Maori musicians this May. - Katahi ano tatou ka tae ki tenei marama hou, ara ko te marama whakanui i nga waiata me nga puoro o Aotearoa. Today marks the first day of New Zealand Music Month, so we're showcasing some of our Maori artists who are making a name for themselves in the New Zealand music scene. Throughout the month, we'll profile different musicians, but this week we kick it off with Ngati Tuwharetoa singer and songwriter Anna Coddington, who's been busy working on something special. Te tuahine, Anna, tena koe. Thank you for talking to us. - Tena koe. - It's great to have you with us. Can I start by asking, how is your whanau? - Kei te pai matou. Yeah, we're OK. We've had, um... a bit of a bad time as lots of people know because our house flooded. We actually lost our house in the Auckland floods. But, in saying that, we were completely overwhelmed by the tautoko and, you know, the support, generosity that everybody showed us through that time and still now as well, so just feel really lucky more than anything. - Yeah. - Been really, really well supported, and we're all good, yeah. Just back into the madness of life. - What does that mean? What are you doing at the moment? - I have been working on a new album, actually. - Wow. Who knew? - Yes. Te Mangai Paho-funded. So, yeah, it's going to be bilingual. Reo rua. So, yeah, in English and Maori, and I keep referring to it as my Maori funk album, (LAUGHS) but I don't know if funk is really that much of an accurate term, but it's definitely... it's a lot more, kind of, upbeat, fun, danceable tunes than most of my existing catalogue, so I'm really excited. - What's motivated that? Is it tamariki or whanau or...? - (CHUCKLES) I can tell you almost exactly what's motivated it. I mean, I've always enjoyed listening to that kind of music anyway, you know, like, disco, funky stuff. My first instrument was the drums, so drums have always been really important to me. Like, if the drums suck, I can't enjoy it kind of thing. - (CHUCKLES) - So I've always been big on rhythm sections, so that was a big part of it. But I've got a really great band at the moment, like, great musicians and great people as well, and I love performing with them, and I get a lot of solo gigs because my songs translate well to a solo performance, but I... it's more fun playing with your friends kind of thing. So I wanted to make music that was more suitable for, like, playing at a party with my friends and having a nice time, so... (CHUCKLES) - Talking my language. (LAUGHS) - ...that's what we've done. Yeah. So, we've made that that album. - What's it like, though, writing in te reo for you? Because I know your whanau. He kaha te whanau ki te korero Maori. Kei te kura kaupapa nga tamariki. Era mea katoa. - Mm. Well, um... I mean, kei te ako tonu au i te reo, i te reo rangatira. So I'm not, like, 100% confident of my abilities, and I also... place a lot of value on lyrics, so that combination is like... I still feel like I need support in that area, but in saying that, making this album has been really good because it has been collaborative. Actually, I've had a matanga reo, Ruth Smith. Yeah, I've worked with her, and she's been amazing cos we're both Geminis, and we're both, like, crazy in the same way, which is great. So she has helped with translating some stuff, and we also wrote some songs together at the APRA Reo Maori SongHubs, and that was cool cos I've realised my reo is at a level where I can contribute and, like, change things for myself and, you know... - Ka pai. - ...so that's been really encouraging for me because... yeah, lyrics are important to me, so it's not OK that I can just string a sentence together in te reo Maori. It has to be, you know, the same standard I would hold an English lyric to, so Ruth's been brilliant for that. # I pikia he maunga # ki te taumata, # te haeata i taria. # I rukuhia te moana # ki te takere, # te wairua i hurere. # Po noa mai ra # ka kawea taua ki hea. # He aho whirirua # te toro ki nga whetu. # Ko to manawa, # ko toku manawa # ka irikura e. # Paetata, # Pae tuatawhiti, # ka irikura e. # Ko to manawa, # ko toku manawa, # ka irikura e. # Paetata, # Pae tuatawhiti, # ka irikura e. # I hoea he waka # ki we moana # marino pounamu. # Te wai whakaata, # he rerehua # te mara a Ngatoro. # Po noa mai ra, # ka kawea taua ki hea. # He aho whirirua # te toro ki nga whetu # Ko to manawa, # ko toku manawa, # ka irikura e. # Paetata, # Pae tuatawhiti, # ka irikura e. # Ko to manawa, # ko toku manawa # ka irikura e. # Paetata, # Pae tuatawhiti, # Ka irikura e. # I pikia he maunga # ki te tihi. # I rukuhia te moana # ki tona papa. # He mea nui, # kia taupiri, # kia tauawhi, # kia kotahi taua. # Ka irikura e. # E... # ka irikura e. # Ko to manawa, # ko toku manawa, # ka irikura e. # Paetata, # Pae tuatawhiti, # ka irikura e. # - Ka rawe, e te tuahine. Next week on The Hui ` the ugly past of Pukekohe is coming to the surface. More than a quarter of the country's produce is grown here, but an ugly chapter in Aotearoa's race relations history was uncovered beneath Pukekohe's fertile soil. - It's very hard to imagine that it actually was in New Zealand. - We want an apology for all the suffering, the abuse, the racial discrimination, the hell we went through. - 60 years on, the town's public cemetery remains a reminder of its prejudiced past. - These are the unmarked graves of pepi. Our rangatahi. You know, from our community. - They're silent. So I'm going to be their mouthpiece. - To do nothing is not an option. - Kia ahatia, kua hiki ano ta tatou hui ki tenei raro potehetehe nei. You'll find links to our stories on our Facebook and Twitter accounts or at newshub.co.nz. Until next week e nga iwi, kia mau ki te turanga o Taputapuatea. Haumi e, hui e, taiki e. Captions by Sam Baker. The Hui is made with support from New Zealand On Air. www.able.co.nz Copyright Able 2023 - Ko te reo te take. - Na Te Puna Whakatongarewa Te Hui i tautoko.