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New training facility opens

Twenty-four weeks to prepare and help young people to get into jobs is the Māori Trades and Training 'Mahi Whakaara' programme's goal.The programme's new facility on Sutherland Terrace will open its doors on May 2 and should welcome about 12 trainees from 15 to 24-year-olds.Four programmes will roll out in the next two years to learn about painting, building, fitting, tertiary, fitter and turner, silviculture and Te Ao Maori.Mahi Whakaara tertiary learning tutor Tarina MacDonald said the aim wa...

Poor pay puts strategies

OPINION: Liz sipped her coffee, thinking over that morning’s appointments. First had been Emily, a 15-year-old Pākehā transgender female. Emily had initially been guarded, but had slowly opened up, describing family violence, bullying; seemingly unwanted at both home and school. They’d established coping strategies, breathing techniques, ways to shrink the anxiety that at times seemed to be crushing Emily. Liz winced, conscious of the tension between this hard-won trust and the loomin...

A lifetime of whakairo —

As master carver James Rickard chips away at the wood beneath him, he balances one leg on a rickety stool and the other on the base of the pou he is carving.His quiet workshop echoes with the rhythmic beat of each strike before he calls his tauira (students) to take over.“It’s nearly there so you can take that like that and come up higher, then you can worry about the rest,” he tells them.The tohunga whakairo (master carver) watches on, offering tips and encouragement to the second and thi...

Suicide leading cause of death

A newly released report by the Helen Clark Foundation Mahi a Rongo reveals suicide as the leading cause of death during pregnancy in Aotearoa.The report, Āhurutia Te Rito | It takes a village, identifies the stress factors contributing to poor mental health among new and expectant parents in Aotearoa, and how public policy can be used to alleviate these stressors and support parents.Primarily, the analysis found that better support for perinatal mental health would be transformat...

Crown signs $58m deal with iwi housing provider

$58 million deal between the Crown and an iwi housing provider is promising to deliver a minimum of 170 affordable rental homes across Taranaki, Tokoroa, Blenheim, Thames and Tāmaki Makaurau.The partnership between Ka Uruora - a collective iwi consortium focused on housing and financial well-being - the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development and Te Puni Kōkiri was announced in New Plymouth this morning.As well as delivering affordable rentals the partnership the deal will have a focus on pr...

Street name changes

The decision to rename Von Tempsky Street to Putikitiki Street and nearby Dawson Park to Te Wehenga Park is supported by the Kiingitanga and Waikato-Tainui.It comes after debate for the city to revisit street names honouring colonial figures such as Gustavus Ferdinand von Tempsky, Sir George Grey and John Bryce."These name changes reflect an earlier part of our history, and it is important that their narrative and kōrero is known," Kiingitanga official Ngira Simmonds said.Despite the decision, ...

Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei

Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei's application to be declared sole mana whenua in parts of Tāmaki Makaurau was declined in the high court in Auckland yesterday.Justice Palmer said the debate over land ownership between Ngāti-Whātua Ōrākei and Hauraki Marutūāhu would be best resolved between the two groups.Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei deputy chairperson, Ngarimu Blair said getting both parties to resolve the issue defeats the purpose of going to court."We believe the courts are there and available ...

Less than quarter of region's Kāinga Ora properties

When Kāinga Ora tenant Amanda* went to Work and Income New Zealand to ask for help with her power bill, the agency told her it was “exceptionally high”.Amanda, who asked to remain anonymous, is as frugal as possible with her heat pump. However, with children at home, and having suffered from asthma and croup, it was important she kept the home as warm as possible, she said.Looking for a solution for winter heating, she turned to the public housing provider.Link to article: Less than qu...

About all the 'Māori nonsense'

Just getting to 1987 was not an easy road. It was a battle that had already been fought in our families, towns, schools, workplaces, churches and yes, newsrooms for decades. In 1972 the Māori Language Petition carried more than 33,000 signatures to the steps of parliament calling for te reo to be taught in our schools and protected. Organised by the extraordinary Hana Te Hemara from her kitchen table, well before the internet, this was flax roots activism at its finest.Hana mobilised hundreds o...

Christchurch te reo Māori eatery

Expanding a business takes cash, so a Christchurch restaurant and takeaway business is having a public whip-round as it plans new outlets.Anton Matthews, along with his wife Jess Matthews and sister Maia Matthews, opened Fush in the suburb of Wigram in late 2016. Now they have launched a crowdfunding campaign as they work towards opening four new restaurants around the city.The business has become well known through its focus on te reo Māori, and through Anton Matthews’ pu...

Murihiku researcher

Researcher Dr Theresa Pankhurst will help improve health outcomes for Māori after being named the inaugural recipient of the Te Urungi Fellowship.Pankhurst (Ngāi Tahu, Ngāti Kahungunu, Ngāti Porou) said it would allow her to blend two of her biggest passions: immunology and Te Ao Māori.The three-year programme would give her the opportunity to expand her expertise in immunology research and help her understand how to direct her research towards improving health outcomes for Māori, she said...

Tikanga Māori

Tikanga Māori underpins the fashion designs of Erihi Donnelly, who began her study journey at EIT in 2019 and is now in the final year of her Bachelor of Creative Design (Fashion).Erihi (Ngati Porou), who grew up in Gisborne, says it was always her dream to follow a career in fashion."I have had a passion for fashion since I was about 13 and I began making clothes and studying textiles at school. But it actually began before that because my nana was a sewer, so I began sewing – not fully maki...

In New Zealand, Māori co-governance is already underway –

One of the ironies of David Seymour, the Act party leader who’s insisting on a referendum on “co-governance” between the crown and iwi, is that one of his own ancestors was a signatory to Te Titiri o Waitangi (the Treaty of Waitangi). That doesn’t quite make Seymour a hypocrite, and nor does it necessarily make him a disloyal descendant, instead it reveals one of the contradictions at the heart of New Zealand politics: that few politicians can agree on quite what our founding d...

Great Minds: Mental health support gave Tauranga teen Frankie Perry

"You can get help before you get to those dark points."That's the message of 16-year-old Frankie Perry who is sharing her story as part of Great Minds, a major NZ Herald and NZME editorial project launched yesterday. The project will examine the state of our mental health and solutions for improving wellbeing as the country recovers from the pandemic.The project comes as new research shows the number of New Zealanders struggling with mental health problems rose sharply during the Covid...

Couches, blankets and a broken pram -

Couches, blankets and a broken pram are just some of the items that have been dumped in an empty section in the Tauranga suburb of Hairini.While illegal dumping happens everywhere, it is the final straw for some residents who are frustrated with a lack of action from Kāinga Ora.The 10 lots on Haukore St are owned by the state housing agency and despite being fenced off, have become a dumping ground and are overgrown with weeds.Most of the lots were cleared of the 1960s houses in preparation for...

The struggle to embrace

If you were to ask me where I’m from, I’d say that I was born and raised in Auckland, New Zealand. If you were to ask me about my ethnicity, I’d awkwardly admit that I’m half Māori and half Niuean. That’s not something I was ever proud of when I was growing up. Throughout my life, “Māori” and “Niuean” were just boxes that I ticked on forms rather than cultural identities that I felt any real connection to. Growing up in Auckland, I had surprisingly little exposure t...

New bilingual traffic signs for schools

The Land Transport Rule: Traffic Control Devices (Kura/School Signs) Amendment 2022 came into force on April 5 2022. It sees both the te reo Māori word for school - kura - and the English word featured on the signs. Waka Kotahi NZTA said the kura/school signs would be used when existing signs needed to be replaced or new signs were put up.Link to article: New bilingual traffic signs for schools to replace English-only (1news.co.nz)...

The tragedy of being Māori

My family are the only Māori in South Taranaki who can’t sing. Perhaps there’s a gene we’re missing or our tongues are too fat for our mouths. Either way, long drives have always been a problem. Here is how the public has described Carpool Karaoke with the Ngarewas: “Couldn’t tell what was them or their worn brake pads.”“I felt like Beyonce by comparison.”“The audible equivalent of stepping on glass.”Waiata is a significant part of Māori culture. Whether sharing kai in...

How Matariki will

I failed fifth form science because I hated it. I couldn’t see a connection between me and the periodic table — until I got my head around the fact that, actually, the periodic table is genealogy. It is whakapapa connecting each element to the next.From a Māori point of view, there’s no use understanding something in science unless you go on to understand how it’s connected to everything else. A piece of knowledge can be taken out and explored on its own, but, for us, it only has re...

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 ...