Maori share experience with Pasifika

The organiser of a conference on Pasifika in Aotearoa says Pacific Island people are coming to realise there is a lot they can learn from the Maori experience.

Te Kohu Douglas from the Foundation for Indigenous Research, Science and Technology says the hui at Auckland's Aotea Centre yesterday and today has attracted an impressive group of young Pacific leaders and future leaders.

Mr Douglas says the foundation drew some fire for reaching out to Pasifika, but the groups have many issues in common.

“Issues of detribalization I suppose you could say, urbanization, moving out of subsistence into a money economy over just one or two generations, the breakdown of relationships between generations. All those issues, they have seen tangata whenua suffering from those issues,” Mr Douglas says.

Many Pasifika communities are now waking up to the need to tackle language loss among their younger people, something Maori started tackling a generation ago.

BUSBY MADE NORTHTEC FELLOW

Waka builder Hekenukumai Busby has been made a Fellow of Northland Polytechnic for his contributions to the region.

The Muriwhenua elder has made 22 waka, including the voyaging canoe Te Aurere and Te Ika aa Maui, which will support the New Zealand team at this year's America's Cup regatta in Valencia.

Polytechnic spokesperson Maria Cowin says other Northlanders to receive fellowships at this week's graduation ceremony were jeweller Michael Hill and oceanographer Wade Doak.

“It's an inaugural special award and it acknowledges members of the Northland community who Northtec’s council believe have contributed very very well and successfully to Northland, and they’re people that we hope that the graduands would aspire after and perhaps use as role models in their own futures,” Ms Cowin says.

HUNT CLUB TREKS TO WHANGARA

The Poverty Bay Hunt Club has broken new ground by negotiating a horse trek over Maori land along the East Coast.

Organiser Bruce Holden says more than 100 riders trekked through normally inaccessible coastal farmland south of Tolaga Bay, taking in Loisels Beach, Titirangi and Raroa Stations and Cook's Cove.

Mr Holden says the climax was a welcome onto the marae at Whangara, famous as the location for the film Whale Rider.

He says it was the first time many of the trekkers had been on a marae, and it included a look through the historic wharenui Whitireia, whose tekoteko is Paikea the Whale rider.

“A lot of them were just blown away, they’d never had that, and quite a lot of them put their fingers in their eyes and that was the highlight of their trip they felt,” Mr Holden says.

The Poverty Bay Hunt Club intends to repeat the trek next year.

MOTUEKA MAORI SEEKING SHARE OF GROUNDWATER

Maori landowners in Motueka are fighting the Tasman District Council over the region's groundwater.

The council refused to accept a joint 20-year resource consent application from Wakatu Incorporation and Ngati Rarua Atiawa Iwi Trust to take enough water from the Motueka aquifer to service its residential, commercial and horticultural land.

The council said it did not have enough information to make a decision, but Wakatu chief executive Keith Palmer says the council's test bore on Wakatu land should have provided enough data.

Mr Palmer says the council wants to divert the water to proposed developments on the Mapua coast, and that angers Motueka people.

“There are a lot of other Motueka landowners, Pakeha landowners, who share exactly the same concerns that the water is being taken away from our area, which we may need in the future. There is a commonality of interest this time of local Pakeha. Obviously Pakeha in the areas where they are going to take the water see it differently,” Mr Palmer says.

Wakatu and Ngati Rarua Atiawa are also challenging the system where leaseholders have more rights to water than landowners.

POINT OF SALE SMOKE AD BAN ADVOCATED

Maori anti smoking campaigner Skye Kimura has endorsed a call from the Cancer Society for tobacco advertising to be banned at point of sale.

Ms Kimura from Maori anti-smoking group Te Ao Marama says smoking kills more than 800 Maori a year, and any initiative which says the habit is not normal should be supported.

She says advertising in stores is particularly effective with rangatahi and tamariki.

“At the moment when they go into shops they can actually see tobacco advertising with cigarette packets being on counters,. The huge contradiction is that they’re next to lollies and things that our children are looking at buying, so when they’re buying like a dollar mixture or something, they can actually still see a packet of cigarettes there, so I think it’s going to be a great strategy,” Ms Kimura says.

NELSON POLY OPENS MARAE

The top of the South Island has its first purpose-built building for Maori Studies.

The new home for Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology's Te Tari Maori was opened at a dawn ceremony this week.

Liaison officer Trevor Wilson who says it's the start of a new era for Maori in the region, with the department a focal point at the heart of the nelson campus.

“It’s another step in our journey regards tea o Maori and it also means that when students come on campus they can see immediately right in the centre of campus this beautiful building that represents all Maori and it all represents Pakeha as well,. It represents the partnership between two cultures,” Mr Wilson says.