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News from Waatea 603 AM, Urban Maori radio, published until 2012, plus other content

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Location: Auckland, New Zealand

Monday, March 08, 2010

Customer insight needed for forest investment

The manager of Tuwharetoa's largest forestry businesses says Maori need to understand the needs of the global timber customer so they can know where best to invest.

George Asher says Lake Taupo Forest Trust and Lake Rotoaira Forest Trust have a policy of buying out leases as trees are harvested, so they have total ownership of the next crop.

The policy has also been adopted by the Central North Island forestry coalition, which Ngati Tuwharetoa is part of.

Mr Asher says Maori need to invest in other parts of the industry, and his preference would be to buy into the marketing and distribution end of the chain

“We want to understand what our customers want. Understanding that determines what sort of product creates the best value, what sort of trees are best suited to creating those products and that’s the sort of stuff we need to know before investing in any part of that value chain,” Mr Asher says.

TRUSTEES GET TIPS ON RUNNING MARAE BETTER

Marae trustees in the Hawkes Bay and Wairarapa will be given a crash course over the next few weeks on how they can do their jobs better.

Roger Arana, the Takitimu regional manager for Te Puni Kokiri, says the Internal Affairs-led marae planning and funding workshops will give trustees a chance to hear what agencies like Inland Revenue, the Fire Service, Historic Places Trust and the Maori Land Court have to offer them.

He says it's protection for kaitiaki.

“A lot of our people do things from their heart, he Maori tena, but there are also responsibilities that come from being a trustee and there’s liabilities for trustees too so you’ve really got to understand what that's all about,” Mr Arana says.

TAONGA COLLECTION ADRIFT FROM TALES OF LAND AND MANA

A former curator of Maori taonga at Auckland War Memorial Museum says treating the Oldman Collection as a single unit may help people identify where individual items came from.

The collection of Maori and Pacific Island artefacts was put together by William Oldman in England in the first half of last century.

The New Zealand Government bought it in 1948 and split it between museums in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin, who have now agreed to coordinate guardianship.

Paul Tapsell says it's a significant collection with many fine objects, but the specific tribal or geographic origins of most of the pieces are unknown.

“A lot of these things were probably collected by early visitors, be they whalers or missionaries, early settlers, collecting them perhaps for aesthetic, curiosity reasons that had nothing to do with their ancestral connections to landscapes and expressions of mana. That korero is no longer available,” Professor Tapsell says.

There could be clues about some of the items in early writings by missionaries or travelers, or in tribal records, but it will require diligent research to track them back.

WHANAU ORA IN LINE WITH HEALTH SECTOR CHANGES

One of the architects of Whanau Ora says the new way of delivering services to Maori is consistent with other changes the Government is making in the health sector.

Lorna Dyall from Te Kupenga Hauora Maori in Auckland University's School of Population Health says rather than services being developed to suit health professionals, they are now being designed to give consumers and whanau what they want.

She says whanau ora also includes development, which is important for the wider society which is trying to grapple with the needs of an aging population.

“You can only look after an older population and a young population if you work as a whanau so actually helping skills in the whanau to be able to care for each other both now and plan for the future so it’s actually moving from just focusing on me, what’s important for me, to actually how do I contribute to a whanau because a whanau only exists if you all work together,” Dr Dyall says.

The whanau ora idea has upset some people because of the way Maori people make their culture explicit, but the principles can apply to any group.

KIDNEY TESTS COULD SAVE LATER ILLNESS

It"s Kidney Awareness Week, and Maori are being urged to get a check up which can pick up problems like undiagnosed diabetes.

Kelvin Lynn, the medical director of Kidney Health New Zealand, says the disease can be beaten if detected early through a simple test, but left undiagnosed it can lead to kidney failure and other conditions.

He says Maori are twice as likely to have diabetes than Pakeha, and community-based programes are the best way to detect it and treat it.

Professor Lynn says if people know they have diabetes, they can make the lifestyle changes which are the key to beating both diabetes and kidney failure.

FORM TWO STUDENTS SITTING NCEA LEVEL 1 MAORI

The principal of Titahi Bay North School says a group of year 8 language learners are inspiring younger students by sitting level 1 NCEA Maori before they head to High School.

Stephen Caldwell says Te Whanau o te Kakano reo immersion programme complements the mainstream teaching programmes at the school, which has a 75 percent Maori roll.

He says the teachers believe the second formers can pass level 1 NCEA Maori.

“The kids were needing to be extended. They were very fluent. We’re confident they can handle it. We’ve got four kids sitting it this year and we expect it to continue,” Mr Caldwell says.

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Friday, March 05, 2010

Tarawera River deal irks tribal elements

A member of Ngati Rangitihi in the eastern Bay of Plenty says an agreement this week with the operators of the Tasman Pulp and Paper Mill in Kawerau is hot air.

The memorandum of understanding commits Carter Holt Harvey and Norske Skog to work with Rangitihi, Ngati Awa and Tuwharetoa ki Kawerau on measures to clean up the Tarawera River, which is known as the black drain.

But Maanu Paul says those who signed the memorandum don't hold the mandate from the Matata iwi when it comes to the river and the mill's resource consent.

“The claim for the river in the Waitangi Tribunal is in the name of Te Tino Tangatiratanga o Ngati Rangitihi. The appeal to the Environment Court is in the name of Te Tino Tangatiratanga o Ngati Rangitihi. It is certainly not in the name of those people who are purporting to speak in the name of Rangitihi,” Mr Paul says.

He says the small number of jobs Ngati Rangitihi people have at the mill needs to be weighed against the hundreds they miss out on because of the pollution of their waterways.

WHANAU ORA POLICIES COULD CLOSE THE GAPS

New Waikato University emeritus professor Tamati Reedy believes the government's new whanau ora policies could close some of the gaps between Maori and Pakeha.

Associate social welfare minister Tariana Turia highlighted some of the gaps in a speech to the Business Roundtable today, including the fact only 19 percent of Maori students leave school with NCEA level 3 or higher compared to 45 percent of Pakeha.

Dr Reedy, who headed Waikato's school of Maori and Pacific development, says Maori have been pointing to the answers for generations.

CROWDS BRING LOVE AND TEARS TO MARAE

Hundreds of people have been through Otiria Marae near Moerewa to pay their respects to Gerard Ngawati, who died on Tuesday aged 55.

The Ngati Hine man touched the lives of thousands through his championing of Maori touch rugby and other sports and his work for the Ministry of Education, the Hillary Commission and Skill New Zealand.

Tamaki Makaurau MP Pita Sharples, who worked with Mr Ngawati in west Auckland for more than two decades, says hundreds more mourners saw him off at Hone Waititi Marae in Glen Eden before he was taken north.

“The saying on the marae yesterday at Hoani Waititi was the kawa of the marae was violated by love and that’s how it was. We had no control of the whare by the end,” Dr Sharples says.

Gerard Ngawati's funeral service at Otiria Marae starts at 10 tomorrow morning.

LANDOWNERS MOVE TO OWN NEXT HARVEST

One of the country's most experienced Maori foresters says Maori have to stop letting others grow trees on their land.

George Asher, the chief executive and general manager of Lake Taupo and Lake Rotoaira Forest Trusts, spoke to a forestry conference in Auckland today about Maori aspirations for the sector.

He says the Ngati Tuwharetoa trusts have been resuming rather than rolling over leases on their 33,000 hectares of forests, and they have encouraged the Central North Island iwi collective to adopt the same strategy with the 170,000 hectares of forests it has got back from the Crown.

“At least for the Tuwharetoa Trusts, we’ve got skin in the game and we’re progressing towards 100 percent ownership of the crop, we’re over 50 percent of the way there now and we’re fully appraised of the risks and the operations and the prospects of future value added entry into the value chain,” Mr Asher says.

He says the bottom line for Maori business is people, so they need to generate profits which can be used to meet the social and cultural objectives of iwi.

TRUANCY MAJOR THREAT FOR MAORI FUTURE

Ikaroa Rawhiti MP Parekura Horomia says the Maori community needs to get on top of truancy and absenteeism.

Education Ministry figures out this week show absenteeism rates have stayed static for the past three years, with about 30,000 students a day skipping classes.

Mr Horomia says a disproportionate number of those students are Maori, and changes are needed at school and in the home.

The government is spending an additional $4 million a year tackling truancy.

VETERANS WELCOMES TO ORAKEI MARAE FOR REUNION

Ngati Whatua today welcomed a small number of surviving veterans of the 28 Maori Battalion and hundreds of their family members to Orakei Marae.

Kaumatua Joe Hawke says it was a day rich in emotion, and the veterans remembers companions whose graves lie on foreign battlefields.

Maori Affairs Minister Pita Sharples says the turnout shows the support that still exists for the group.

The event has a different structure than previous reunions, with more time given for the 28 veterans to talk among themselves, rather than their time filled with performances.

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