Sustainable memorial for Hawea Vercoe

The whanau of Te Kura Kaupapa Maori o Rotoiti will today unveil a memorial garden for the school’s former principal, Hawea Vercoe.

The 36-year-old was hit and killed a year ago by an Opotiki man, who is currently serving a prison term for manslaughter.

Acting principal Tammy Gardiner says the memorial, which includes a wetland beside Lake Rotoiti, shows the love the community still feels.

WI PERE BOOK IMPORTANT FOR MANA OF IWI

Maori Affairs minister Pita Sharples says a new biography of Poverty Bay leader Wi Pere is the sort of history that needs to be available in the nation's schools.

Wi Pere, from Rongowhakaata and Te Aitanga a Mahaki, represented Eastern Maori for four terms between 1884 and 1905, and spent a further five years on the legislative council.

As well as fighting to preserve Maori culture and customs, he created a sound foundation for his hapu, which is now one of the largest Maori land-based businesses.

Dr Sharples says the book by Wi Pere’s great grandson, Joseph Anaru Hetekia Te Kani Pere, is an impressive work of scholarship.

“It's very important for the mana of our iwi and we’ve got to do this with all our leaders, bring this stuff out, so when we talk about the early settlers, we’re not just talking about the Pakeha ones that came out here and did stuff but our own history which is absent from our schools,” Dr Sharples

TE KANAWA GOLDIE SETS RECORD PRICE

A growing interest in artworks with Maori subjects is being credited for the record price for a painting at auction in Auckland on Friday night.

A South Island buyer paid $573,000 for a Charles Frederick Goldie portrait of Rutene Te Uamairangi , popularly known as Forty Winks, out of the collection of Dame Kiri Te Kanawa.

Richard Thomson, the director of the International Art Centre, says there is no recession when it comes to such works.

Another work in the auction, an 1865 painting by an unknown artist of a Maori selling crayfish on the Auckland waterfront, sold for $18,000.

KEY KEEN ON WHANAU ORA CHANGE

The Prime Minister, John Key, says the launch of the first Whanau Ora centres is a pointer to the way health and social service delivery will change.

Centres were opened in Hamilton and Taumarunui last week by Toiora, a Waikato-based public health organisation funded by the Ministry of Health.

Mr Key says the focus needs to shift from treating people as isolated individuals.

“The aim is to reorient things back in the family. It’s a combination of personal responsibility, but also trying to recognise that within families it’s a complex unit and just the Crown coming in or the government coming in and dealing with one issue won’t fix all the issues that family faces,” Mr Key says.

TAURANGA MOKO SHOP A WHANAU TRADITION

Visitors to Tauranga’s Historic Village will now have the opportunity to get a traditional tattoo.

Moana Moko opened its Te Rua Moko studio on Friday, providing a permanent home for Pohe and Rikirau Luttenberger and their cousin Stu Wararahi McDonald.

Pohe Luttenberger says there are eight active ta moko artists in the whanau, and they see it as being a family tradition, with their whakapapa including many not only tohunga ta moko but tohunga whakairo or carvers.

Moana Moko expects to be inundated with work in its new home, especially in the run up to Christmas.

MILKY BAR KID A KURA KID

A Rotorua kura kaupapa student says she feels overwhelmed at being chosen the new Milky Bar Kid.

Eight year old Hinetaapora Short got more the 11,000 votes to get on the shortlist.

She’s looking forward to coming to Auckland today to film a television advertisement … and to get paid so she can go shopping.

Hinetaapora Short, who is at Te Kura o te Koutu, is fluent in Maori and she is also studying Spanish.

Hapu claim struggling for hearing

The chair of Nelson's Te Kahui Ngahuru Trust, James Wheeler, hopes tough talking by the United Nations will help towards direct negotiation of its claims.

As part of its four-yearly review of New Zealand’s compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the UN Human Rights Committee urged the government to talk to the trust, rather than wrap it in with a comprehensive top of the South Island settlement.

Mr Wheeler says while the trust is part of the Tainui Taranaki ki te Tonga group, its WAI 56 claims belong to specific families within the hapu.

“We know where every piece of land is. We know what was taken. We know what the mismanagement that happened with the Public Trustee over the decades. We know where the Public Trust took loads of our land and we’re sick of it. We’ve had enough. We should be able to sit down with the government and negotiate our claims, our distinct hapu claims,” Mr Wheeler says.

There are many precedents for the government negotiating direct with hapu, outside the current policy of dealing with what it calls large natural groupings.

CANTERBURY SUBSTANCE ABUSE ADMISSIONS ABOVE NATIONAL

Canterbury District Health Board wants to know why Maori are being admitted its hospitals for drug and alcohol related problems at twice the national average.

The board's first overview of Maori health found there were 108 Maori admissions per 100 thousand for substance problems compared with 45 per 100 thousand nationally.

Hector Matthews, the board's executive director of Maori and Pacific health, says while the total number of people presenting is relatively low, it can affect future provision of services.

“What we will need to do is monitor our admissions and presentations around these instances and if the rate continues to climb we will notice the pressure on our mental health services and particularly on our kaupapa Maori providers out in the community,” Mr Matthews says.

The rate of admission for problems related to opiates such as heroin and morphine was particularly high with a regional rate of 31 Maori per 100,000 being more than ten times the national rate.

SCHOOL OF GOLDIE COMMANDS AUCTION DOLLARS

The auctioneer who sold a painting by a pupil of Charles Goldie for a record $12,000 says the politically incorrect subject matter of a Maori woman smoking a pipe may have added to its sales appeal.

Kapai Te Toriri - Tobacco is Good by Vera Cummings fetched five times its expected price.

Richard Thomson, the director of the International Art Centre, says with original Goldie's doubling in the past five years, collectors are jumping on what they see as the next best thing.

“We sold a Goldie in March 2008 for $454,000 and it had a valuation of $200,000. The prices of Goldies have really shot up so it would be a natural progression for an artist like Vera Cummings to also go up in value,” Mr Thomson says.

RUGBY APOLOGY NEEDED FOR APARTHEID YEARS

Rugby legend Jim Maniapoto is joining the call for the Rugby Union to apologise for the way it kow-towed to South African calls to exclude Maori players from tours to the republic during the apartheid era.

The Ngati Tuwharetoa player was a schoolboy star for St Stephen's in the 1960s and part of a Ranfurly Shield dominating Auckland team.

The mobile lock, along with his brother Manu, was selected for the Maori team, but never made the All Blacks.

Mr Maniapoto says the fact an apology is still needed is a sign Maori rugby might be better off moving out from under the NZRFU umbrella.

“Since Super 12 and a few other things have happened, Maori rugby has been shoved in the background. I’ve always thought we need to go out and do our own thing,” Mr Maniapoto says.

He says there's merit in Bill Bush's idea of taking a Maori team on a South American tour.

MORE MAORI CREMATED AS TRADITIONS SLIP AWAY

Rotorua district councillor Maureen Waaka is lamenting the increasing number of Maori who choose to be cremated.

The trend was noted by Rotorua's reserves manager, who attributed it to the increasing number of Maori not identifying with their culture.

Mrs Waaka says cremation is not the Maori way, but it is becoming popular among younger people because of its perceived convenince.

“It’s a breakaway from how we think traditionally as Maori. It’s returning to the land and burial and urupa and the old way of putting them in the caves was all part of that. There is no treatment of the body to the extent they were burnt or anything like that,” she says.

Mrs Waaka says traditionalists are staying loyal to burial in family urupa.

DARGAVILLE IN THE BAG FOR FIRST SHOOTING

Dargaville is gearing up for excitement with the crew of "It's in the Bag" hitting the Northern Wairoa War Memorial Town Hall tonight.

Co host Stacey Morrison expects the audience to get into the mood ... shouting out encouragement and advice on whether to take the money or the bag.

She says Maori Television's bilingual twist on the Kiwi classic doesn't phase the contestants, and many people are able to say more in te reo than presenters expected.

It's in the Bag will also visit Kawakawa, Whangaroa, Kaikohe, Opotiki, Kawerau, Murupara, Rotorua, Otorohanga, Te Awamutu, Raglan and Huntly before filming the final live at Maori Television's Newmarket studio later in the year.