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Search for whānau of Māori Battalion soldiers

But more than 600 of the battalion's 3000 soldiers never got their medals.Fixing that has become a personal quest for lawyer David Stone, who has launched a major effort to track down the whānau of those soldiers.Now, a list of those soldiers who never received their medals has been released, with the hope their whānau can be tracked down for ceremonies to be held later this year.It is all the work of a personal inquiry Stone said spun out of control. Sitting eating lunch one day, he wondered ...

A day in the life

I wasn’t intending to write an ode to my university life. Having recently resigned to focus on my own consultancy business, I would rather slip away, comfortable with my personal decision to move on to new challenges and new freedoms. But then something happened. I decided to attend an online seminar run by the School of Medicine Board of Research at Auckland University.The email invite, which had been sent to all staff in the medical and health sciences faculty, said that we’d hear fro...

Kura kaupapa founders,

Kura kaupapa founders who have been pushing for an autonomous Māori Education Authority through a Waitangi Tribunal claim have now entered mediation with the Crown.The claimants said they were agreeing to mediation to show “good faith” to the Crown, despite the Crown indicating it would rule out an independent Māori education authority.In February, Dr Cathy Dewes, who headed the claim, said the Ministry of Education and the Crown had failed to honour the princ...

Haunting image of Kamloops residential school memorial

A haunting image of red dresses hung on crosses along a roadside with a rainbow in the background, commemorating children who died at a residential school in British Columbia, won the prestigious World Press Photo of the Year award Thursday.The image was one of a series on the former Kamloops Indian Residential School shot by Edmonton photographer Amber Bracken for The New York Times."It is a kind of image that sears itself into your memory. It inspires a kind of sensory reac...

Wellington polytechnics boost Māori and Pacific services

Two Wellington polytechnics are backing an iwi and Pasifika-led approach to support services in an effort to break down barriers and keep more students in higher education.And the National Māori Tertiary Students’ Association is calling on institutions across the country to offer more iwi-led support to students as the Covid-19 pandemic has heightened existing disparities.Whitireia and WelTec will boost staffing numbers to deliver new and expanded pastoral care programmes ...

Largest ever investment into Māori housing

So far, 206 houses have been built, more than half of those are papakāinga homes, and 257 houses have been repaired. Māori Development Minister Willie Jackson said the Government has a clear strategy. "Māori housing ownership has dropped back over the last few years and its a long road but we'll get there," he said. "There wasn't a lot of money available for papakāinga but we've upped that pūtea, and its hugely significant because people want to bring their whānau back, and papakāinga is ...

It's official:

For Professor Rangi Mātamua, a Tūhoe astronomer who has become the go-to on Matariki and the Maramataka (Māori lunar calendar), Thursday was a day of absolute elation.The bill making Matariki an official public holiday passed its final reading on Thursday afternoon, which means Aotearoa will have its first Matariki public holiday this year, on June 24.Te Pire mō te Hararei Tūmatanui o te Kāhui o Matariki (the Matariki Public Holiday Bill) received 77 votes in favour, with National and...

More than one in six Māori can now speak basic te reo,

More than one in six Māori can understand and speak at least a basic form of te reo, and nearly a third can understand it, a survey has shown.Information from Stats NZ revealed 17.62 per cent of Māori aged 15 and up could speak te reo at least fairly well. That was the highest rate since the early 20th century.The survey was answered by nearly 8500 people of Māori ethnicity and/or descent.Link to video and article: More than one in six Māori can now speak basic te reo, highest since ear...

Tariana Turia:

Moana Jackson’s bio in Imagining Decolonisation says everything about the man.“Moana likes telling stories to and for his mokopuna and hopes they will grow up in a land where Te Tiriti is finally seen as the base for respectful political relationships. Then there will be other stories to tell.”Moana adored his mokopuna, and he was a gifted storyteller. His life’s work was for them. Such was the humility of the man that he never presumed to speak for or of anyone else. Yet,...

Moana Jackson —

Moana Jackson was a quietly spoken intellectual and Māori leader who challenged the Crown with his incisive writing and analysis. But he was also a kind and generous man who cared deeply for his people. Aaron Smale reflects on a life that will go on giving.When I first got to know Moana Jackson I was drawn to his immense intellect and gentle demeanour. But what I often found strange was that he always wanted to know what I thought. He once sent me a draft of something he was writing and asked f...

Moana Jackson:

No New Zealand leader’s legacy has ever seemed so important.He’s the person who, like others who’ve paid intelligent attention to the Treaty, understood the power sharing in that 1840 deal — and he’s the one above all others who has explained how such a travesty was made of that arrangement by the waves of white colonisers bringing their comfortable and hopelessly faulty assumptions about white superiority.That made him unique. And he was all the more distinctive because of his gen...

Justice Joe Williams:

I went to Moana’s tangi on Saturday. It was at Matahiwi marae, not far from Hastings. I was part of an ope of a hundred or more predominantly Māori judges, lawyers and law students from throughout the country.It was a predictably large tangi, skilfully led by Moana’s hapū — Ngāti Hāwea, Ngāti Hori and Ngāti Kautere — and the wider iwi, his beloved Ngāti Kahungunu, the source of most of the stories he drew on when he taught.Tūhoe had brought him down from Waimana the day b...

Couple at centre of Māori land occupation

The couple, who purchased the land more than 10 years ago, weren’t aware of its cultural significance until a local Hapū began camping on their property.The section is in the coastal community of Ahipara at the southern end of 90 Mile Beach.What was supposed to be a paradise to retire to, the beach side property has become a nightmare for the pair.Link to video and article: Couple at centre of Māori land occupation desperate for solution (1news.co.nz)...

Culturally significant site

Over 60 hectares of land, including culturally significant sites, are being transferred into iwi ownership.Kākā Hill is being transferred to Ngāti Koata ownership via an agreement between shareholders involved in the Maitahi Village development.Koata Ltd chief executive Hemi Toia said in a statement about the arrangement that Kākā hill had significant cultural history for local iwi, and was believed to be the site of an urupā (graveyard). He said ownership of the hill was “incredibly sig...

Mauri stone laying at Te Āwhina Marae

Twenty new homes for whānau are to be built at Te Āwhina Marae in Motueka – the first stage of a proposed $28 million redevelopment.The new homes are to be constructed as part of a $12.3m papakāinga development, in a partnership between the marae and Te Puni Kōkiri – Ministry of Māori Development.It is the largest papakāinga project Te Puni Kōkiri has supported, with the Government investing nearly $10m.A mauri stone laid on the grounds of the marae at dawn on Monday marks the lo...

Whangārei school goes above

Manaia View School is part of Fonterra’s Milk for Schools, Fruit in Schools and KidsCan food programs, and also has a breakfast club to ensure students are able to learn with full bellies. Principal Leanne Otene told Breakfast families are “most definitely” doing it tough, adding that "most schools across New Zealand will have children and whānau who are struggling at this time". "It’s about responding to that need and ensuring that we’re doing everything we possibly can so that our t...

Almost 500 children,

The agency says it is improving its care but has previously "acknowledged the vast improvement needed in compliance" across its social work practice.This was noted by the Independent Children's Monitor, in its recent inaugural annual report, that found Oranga Tamariki was fully compliant just two percent of the time across all 12 of its own practice requirements, and that it still lacks the data to know if it's taking proper care of children or not.It was compliant across six or more practice re...

Cree singer to perform anthem

A composer, DJ and "huge" hockey fan from Quebec's most northerly Cree community will perform Canada's national anthem at Montreal's Bell Centre before Saturday's game, in East Cree, French and English.Pakesso Mukash has been busy translating the lyrics into his language, and trying it out on his baby girl."I've been singing it to my daughter every night for the last three weeks, and thankfully she's not sick of it," said Mukash. "She actually does fall asleep to the anthem every night."Link to ...

“It’s About Damn Time”:

Thirty-two-year-old Ashley Callingbull has been the first many times: the first kid from her First Nations territory in in Alberta, Canada, to model professionally; the first Canadian and Indigenous women to win the Mrs. Universe title in 2015; and now—as of last week—the first Indigenous woman slated to appear in an issue of Sports Illustrated Swimsuit edition.“It feels great to be the first for a lot of things, but it’s so important that I’m not the last,” Callingbull told ...

Auckland Council

Auckland Council will start formal consultation with iwi and urban Māori from next month on the creation of Māori seats in time for the 2025 election.But a decision on how many wards will be established and their make-up will be left to the incoming council and mayor elected in October’s local body elections to decide. And that doesn’t sit well with Independent Māori Statutory Board chairman David Taipari.Link to article: Auckland Council set to kick-off consultation on Māori seats ...

Māori Public Hearing

Māori Public Hearing on Livestream...

Stepping up

There’s no good reason for any of us to be applauding the way power is shared in Aotearoa — especially in view of what was agreed at Waitangi in 1840, and especially given how so many Māori have fared since then.Fortunately, the injustice, unfairness and inefficiencies have been a frequent focus for some of our leaders including leading thinkers, most notably Moana Jackson and Margaret Mutu. That focus has been particularly powerful and clear-sighted since an independent Māori gro...

The flickering genius

When I reviewed Auckland Art Gallery’s Toi Tū Toi Ora: Contemporary Māori Art exhibition in April last year, I described it as a mind-opening experience. The 300-work exhibition, spanning seven decades of art-making by 110 artists, was an invitation to a wānanga on Māori cosmology and worldview. In its assertion and provocation, it also felt as if a cultural bombshell had landed in the venerable central city institution. Now the experience of that landmark exh...

'I just don't know where it's gone':

There’s no pulling punches in talk around the rising cost of living in Aotearoa.Putting food on the table, filling your car, keeping a roof over your head – life has become a struggle for many Kiwis.And those bearing the brunt of this perfect storm of rising living costs, a pandemic and a war in Europe? Many of them are working in our hospitals, our supermarkets, our care homes – the critical workers who held the country together on the frontline during Covid lockdowns.Link to video a...

National Maori Authority calls on a boycott of XERO

The Chair of the National Maori Authority, Matthew Tukaki, has called on Maori organisations, Iwi and Hapu to pull any products, software or investments from some of New Zealand’s richest businessman after David Seymour thanked the for donating to his party on the eve of mounting a campaign against Maori through the calling on of a referendum. In email to party faithful ACT Party Leader David Seymour thanked Rod Drury, Graeme Hart, Stephen Jennings, Craig Turner, Grant Baker where he also ment...