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'Not wanting compensation,

The Māori hearing for the 'Abuse in Care' Royal Commission of Inquiry has closed but for many of those who came forward to speak over the past two weeks, their horrifying experiences in state care continue to haunt them.A panel of Māori experts heard from 25 witnesses. Among the panel was Paora Moyle (Ngāti Porou) who spoke to Te Ao Tapatahi today about the overarching themes during the inquiry.“I've heard about human rights abuses, ethnic cleansing, genocidal practice. I’ve hea...

In search of a place

She once thought she wanted a waewae firmly planted in both worlds, but dedicating a year of her life to study te reo full-time has finally given Meriana Johnsen a safe space to exist in te ao Māori.A large black and white photo hangs on the back wall of our wharenui at Mangamaunu marae. The shaded image shows our tīpuna in their Sunday best. They’re sitting on the mahau, the front of the meeting house, all dressed in white. On one side, they are flanked by settlers of the Anglican faith, th...

Study ties present-day Native American tribe

A genomic study of Native peoples in the San Francisco Bay Area finds that eight present-day members of the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe share ancestry with 12 individuals who lived in the region several hundred to 2,000 years ago.Reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study challenges the notion that the Ohlone migrated to the area between A.D. 500-1,000, said Ripan Malhi, a professor of anthropology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, who led the research...

Historic site restoration

Historic sites in and around Tongariro National Park are to be restored by Ngāti Tūwharetoa hapū as part of a new Jobs for Nature project.The sites include the Opōtaka pā site on the banks of Rotoaira and Te Pōrere Redoubt, both culturally and historically significant to the Tūwharetoa hapū Ngāti Hikairo and listed by Culture and Heritage NZ.Opōtaka is the kāinga and pā overlooking Motuopuhi at Rotoaira, where Hikairo chief Te Wharerangi sheltered the Ngāti Toa warrior and chief Te ...

Covid-19: Māori now have highest rate of community cases

Dr Bloomfield's latest update comes a day after the government announced sweeping changes to its public health protection measures.Dr Bloomfield was confident at his last briefing two days ago that the Omicron outbreak had peaked in Auckland, and case numbers are also slowing in other parts of the country.He said today that analysis confirmed the significant drop of cases across Tāmaki Makaurau and all three DHB areas, accompanied now by a drop in hospitalisation case numbers.In ...

Food banks are a godsend,

That's Rena*, a single mother of five, who recently joined The Salvation Army's new Kiwi Kai co-op in Clendon, Manurewa.As a member of this fledgling co-operative scheme, she gets a large box of fruit and vegetables every week for $15 plus discounts on other essentials like eggs and mince - including $2.25 for milk, which is almost a dollar less than in the supermarket.Members also receive a raised garden box set up at their home, courtesy of the Whenua Warrior community gardening charity, that ...

Abolish school streaming

Streaming should be abolished as it “exacerbates the long-term systemic failure” of Māori students, says new research into inequality in schools.According to Christchurch-based think tank Tokona Te Raki, more than 90 per cent of New Zealand secondary schools operate streaming, which the Ministry of Education (MoE) defines “as grouping students [...] into different classes for some or all subjects based on perceived ability”.Education minister Chris Hipkins does not support str...

Crown not in breach of treaty for rejecting settlement

But it did find the review process undertaken by the Crown in 2015 was flawed, and that consultation could have been a lot better.About 40 people live on the island, which sits about 20km off the coast of Pāpāmoa in the Bay of Plenty.The tangata whenua of Mōtītī - Te Patuwai and Te Whānau a Tauwhao - went to the Tribunal after the Crown said they were covered by its settlement with eastern Bay of Plenty iwi Ngāti Awa.The people of Mōtītī regard themselves as independent from Ngāti Awa...

Taranaki Māori leaders excited at prospects

Iwi leader Wharehoka Wano believes March 17 should be etched in the minds of all students in Aotearoa.Not because it was the day the Government released its “overdue” Aotearoa New Zealand histories curriculum, but for what happened on that day in 1860, when the first shots of the Taranaki Wars were fired.“The fact that most New Zealanders don't know the significance of this day is a travesty and [the reason] why New Zealand and Māori history is so important.”On Thursday, Prime Minister ...

Critical Tiriti policy analysis

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ACC frustrations of elderly Māori

A kaumātua with a broken back was forced to pay for a ramp to access his home after all other efforts to get one through ACC fell flat.It’s just one of the stories told to the Waitangi Tribunal on Thursday by home helper Rebecca Te Kanawa, as part of the Health Service and Outcomes Kaupapa Inquiry.Te Kanawa is a kaiāwhina (helper) at Te Kōhao Health.She works with a variety of whānau, aiding them with housework, hygiene, medication, and getting into bed. She’ll even give the odd cuddle i...

What if we reopened

In April 1854, more than 70 rangatira gathered at Manawapou in South Taranaki. Concerned about the ongoing encroachment of surveyors and land agents, the rangatira met in a large, specially constructed wharenui, Taiporohēnui, to discuss how to protect their land from unscrupulous land agents and an increasingly greedy colonial administration.Many leaders confirmed their opposition to land sales, swearing an oath to resist the further loss of land. “Te tangata tōmua, te whenua tōmuri”...

Abuse in Care:

The Māori hearing for the Abuse in Care Royal Commission of inquiry came to a close on Friday with a harsh message – step aside and free our people.For two weeks a panel of experts in Māori experiences of state care listened as 25 witnesses came forward to share the horrors of their childhood and how those experiences continued to haunt their lives and the lives of their whānau.So many tamariki Māori were snatched from their homes, their culture and their futures, to be placed into the car...

Ardern 'moved'

It was announced in early 2019 that the Government would be revamping the country’s history curriculum from 2022. But last year that was delayed until 2023 in a bid to give schools longer to implement the curriculum, while also working through disruptions caused by Covid-19. Education Minister Chris Hipkins, who is isolating with the virus, announced the new-look curriculum on Thursday via a statement, while Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern launched it at Auckland’s Sylvia Park School...

100 Podcasts

Changing the narrativeThrough wide-ranging voices NUKU showcases diverse representations of leadership, systems change and success. We prioritises and celebrate the wāhine experience: our ceremonies, our knowledge systems, our atua, our kaupapa, our lives. Meet the NUKU wāhine.Link to website and podcasts: Welcome to NUKU – 100 Podcasts, 100 Indigenous Women. (nukuwomen.co.nz)...

NZ Football admits historical discrimination

Little did the students at Mt Roskill intermediate know, they were opening up a window into New Zealand’s sporting future, as Auckland City FC and Māori Football Aotearoa collaborated in a training session at the school in te reo Māori.For former players like Ngāpuhi descendent Gordon Watson, it's a moment he never thought possible."No chance, the era I grew up in football this sort of thing would be complete fantasy."Watson says football was often not a safe environment for him and others....

Omicron peak putting strain on

Auckland reported 6085 cases of the virus on Tuesday alone. Despite the numbers, recent modelling suggests Auckland may have reached its peak. Organisations like Papakura Marae are hopeful that is the case, with fears resources could run out if numbers don’t start to drop off.Link to article: Omicron peak putting strain on Auckland Māori health providers (1news.co.nz)...

Covid-19:

The region recorded more than 4500 new Covid-19 cases today, and has more than 200 people in hospital with the virus.Te Whānau o Waipareira Trust chief executive John Tamihere said the provider delivers about 300 food and medical packs to whānau isolating every day.The demand for help is unprecedented, and Tamihere said the service received up to 750 calls for help in one day alone last week, and is fielding calls from community members and people referred by Work and Income."We get MSD referr...

How an Eskasoni tutor

This story is part of a series from CBC's Eskasoni Community Bureau, based out of the Sarah Denny Cultural Centre. This series comes from weeks of conversations with community members about what they feel is important to see, hear and read on CBC's platforms.Stephen Francis of Eskasoni, N.S., dropped out of high school and left home as a teen to work in the U.S., but after being sidelined by an injury, he enrolled in a GED program to pursue an abandoned dream.CBC Ne...

Mi'kmaw carver gives traditional wooden masks

The Mi'kmaw teachings of the four directions have been brought to larger-than-life proportions by an artist in New Brunswick who has created giant snow sculptures representing traditional hand-carved wooden masks.Gordon Sparks, who is from Pabineau First Nation, N.B., is one of the few practising Mi'kmaw wooden mask-makers, and hopes the sculptures will help foster the resurgence of the cultural practice. Standing eight feet tall at the powwow grounds in Listuguj, on the Quebec-Ne...

Margie Apa:

The new agency becomes the country’s biggest employer with around 80,000 people on the payroll and an annual budget in the billions. It will work alongside the Ministry of Health and the new Māori Health Authority. And at the controls of this new agency is Fepulea’i Margie Apa, who grew up in Ōtara, in South Auckland.Margie came from a job as the CEO of the Counties Manukau DHB — which includes Middlemore, the hospital carrying the heaviest Covid burden in the country. Here she ...

In Alaska,

When she was 14 years old, Quannah Chasinghorse decided she wanted a traditional Indigenous face tattoo. The Hän Gwich’in and Oglala Lakota model—who has since, at age 19, made an impression on the fashion world after starring in Gucci campaigns and landing a Vogue Mexico cover—had grown up in Fairbanks, Alaska, seeing images of her ancestors wearing the three distinct chin lines called Yidįįłtoo. She asked her mother, Jody Potts-Joseph, if she would do the markings f...

Loss of whenua

OPINION: Many New Zealanders wonder why Māori experience inequity across several social outcomes and why these inequities seem to occur in perpetuity. As just one example, Māori adult smoking rates (at 22.3 per cent) are much higher than for the general population (9.4 per cent); other examples abound.For those of us who are not Māori, it is easy to gloss over the long shadow cast by history in helping to determine such outcomes. An important feature of the history of Aotearoa New Z...

'Radical change':

Te Ara Oranga started in 2017 – it's a cross-agency initiative with police, health providers and other community organisations. A recent evaluation report has found that there's been a 34 percent reduction in harm from offending among the people the programme’s helped. And for every $1 invested in Te Ara Oranga, there's been a return of between $3 and $7. How do people get help from Te Ara Oranga?  Police and health providers actively seek out people who mi...

Mild Covid infection can result in

Researchers from the University of Oxford, University College London, Imperial College London and the National Institutes of Health have found the virus reduces grey matter thickness in parts of the brain associated with smell and memory. A 1.3 to 1.8 per cent loss was recorded. They also found tissue damage had occurred in parts of the brain associated with the olfactory cortex — an area linked to smell — along with shrinkage of the whole brain itself.Link to videos and article:&nbs...