Rua
Rautau – He Tirohanga Whakamua
Some
years ago in 1959 I ended up at the conference of young Maori leaders. To some
extent I thought that we really had gone up there to have a free hangi and to
enjoy ourselves. The major part of the hui was when Pat Hohepa got his degree.
He was one of the first of that time and Dr Pat Hohepa got his degree. I think
they spent three days celebrating the degree and didn’t really do too much
about the conference.
I
attended the conference because there was a gap between the people at home and
those people that had gone overseas and the fact that a lot of them didn’t
return. In the fifties it became quite obvious if we didn’t take our own
destiny in our own hands, one day we would not be able to keep up with the
changing world. So the late Matiu Te Hau and Professor Stewart Morrison were the
people that concentrated on Young Leaders’ Conferences. We owe a lot to them,
especially the time they put in to arranging the conferences, looking for the
topics and selecting people to attend as speakers or whatever. At that time you
either had to get on the bus or the train to get to the conference. You just
didn’t have a car sitting outside waiting to pick you up. Under those
circumstances it was quite a struggle.
On
the third day they selected whom they thought were potential leaders of the
group and there were ten of us who were selected. We all had to get up and give
an address on what we thought, or on what we may do, that would enhance the
progress of Maori.
I
drew the most awkward marble because the topic I had to concentrate on was
legislation. It was during those moments that I wondered what the devil I wanted
to go to Wellington to learn about legislation for. The old man that was running
the hui, Sir James Henare, said ‘you must go to Wellington because in that
area we don’t have experts. You are not to concentrate on anything else but to
learn the legislation and what governs us. I came wandering on down to
Wellington; we slept on the floor out at the Gear meat-works hostel. At that
particular time there was no way you could get a hotel because you couldn’t
afford it. It wasn’t until around 1967 or 1968 that what Sir James had said to
me started to ring a bell. 1967 saw the Maori Affairs Amendment Act and while we
all didn’t like the act nobody really knew how to attack it before a select
committee. So my learning started from that time and that select committee.
As
we progressed in life, quite often people would ask you ‘what are you doing?
Or ‘what is the Maori Council doing’? The
Maori Council grew out of that 1939 conference that the Prime Minister made
reference to. They met in Wellington in 1943 where they put together the Maori
Social and Economic Advancement Act. That act was to guide us into the future.
So that was what the Maori Council has been doing, following that act. It is the
only act that hasn’t been amended since it was instituted in 1962 and the act
has directed us to where we think we should be, trying to work with existing and
proposed legislation.
When
we got into the 1980s, the whole country was changing. We were in the era of
user-pays and that meant that Government was ready to sell off everything. It
was because of the education that I received from the old people that I was able
to go to court and serve an injunction on the crown. We went there on a number
of occasions, but the major issue was fisheries. Although I haven’t had any
fish from the fishing allocation yet, there is a chance I might see some
someday. The forestry and the land, and for good measure te reo and television
were other cases that would advance our people that involve going to the courts.
Now I don’t think that was bad leadership for those people who prepared the
way for us, in fact they were spot on. We were fortunate to have people right
around the country like Sir Turi Carroll, Sir Henry Ngata, Sir Charles Bennett,
people that were full of wisdom and had all the patience in the world to work
through their responsibilities. We are now in a situation where we have got to
find leadership to take us ahead for the next forty years and it will probably
come from amongst you people.
Probably
I am the only one that’s left in Kaitaia who attended the 1959 conference.
Most of the people who attended the conference have passed on, but they left
behind a will to do something and do it properly. So the Maori Council was
entrusted with that responsibility and we have carried it out ever since.
Last
year or about eighteen months ago I asked all those young people, generally
known as the radicals, to come to Wellington. I asked them to come to Wellington
because I thought that well, the Maori Social and Economic Act has taken us
fifty years down the road and we have actually lent on the knowledge of our old
people in the past. What we need to do now is to lean on our own knowledge and
to develop the leaders that will take us down the road. We have coined a phrase
that may help, and I am sure that Donna [Hall] will be able to explain the whole
idea around Rua Rautau.
My job was really to come here just to say ‘if you think you can’t do it then you won’t do it, but if you think you can do it you should do it’.
The
people will need your guidance far more over the next fifty years than ours did
in the past. You have got to remember that we were in an era where we didn’t
have motorcars, we never had dope, we never had all these extras that come along
in life. So we will go into the new world that you will lead us into and we must
be prepared to work hard to listen to the people. The hardest job is to listen
to the people. To listen to the people, to pick up the challenge and take your
race forward into tomorrow. That is the message that I want to leave, that is
the challenge that you are fighting now, you must lead and you must take
responsibility.
I
went to see an old person not long after I was made chairperson of the New
Zealand Maori Council because I was as afraid of being Chairman of the Maori
Council as anyone else. He asked me what I was worrying about’ and I said
‘well what do I do’? He answered with
‘Well son its like this, you are now elected as the Chairman of the New Zealand Maori Council and if you don’t lead you will be led. You must lead, but if you don’t you will be led’.
And
this other old fellow said to me
‘Now that you have set out to lead the people make sure that when you arrive at your destiny you have still got the people with you, otherwise you have wasted their time and you have wasted your own time’.
And
the last one, this old fella also said to me
‘You know power is like an intoxicating liquor, too much of it and it goes to your head. So learn to cultivate that power’.
That
is the message I want to leave you with, the world in front of us. It is your
responsibility and you must develop that world so that our Maori people that
will follow you in days to come will be equally as proud of their position
within this country as we are today.
Tena
koutou, kia ora koutou katoa.
Rua
Rautau
Good
morning class, this is a very special moment for me, I’m Donna [Hall] and we
have two whole days. You have had yesterday and you have today about Maori
leadership, well I want to say that I have been especially asked to speak about
Rua Rautau, the detail.
But
something happened this morning that I want to tell you about it, I have worked
with Maori leaders called Te Atawhai Taiaroa, our convenor over here and Sir
Graham and as a rule whenever I stand up to speak this is what these Maori
leaders do to me. Archie usually calls me to speak about five to midnight when
everyone is asleep in the meeting house, he does it as a rule and now I have got
him he has to sit here and listen. Not to be outdone another Maori leader, Sir
Graham Latimer he had his way of doing things too. When he didn’t like what I
was going to say, he would call me five minutes before lunch and at three
minutes before lunchtime he’d start saying grace. So I have them both sitting
here so get comfortable. Oh oh, Sir Graham has disappeared; see this is Maori
leadership in action.
The
first thing about dealing with a Maori leader is to be persistent. I did want to
say just a few things on leadership before we go into Rua Rautau. I think that
it is not for our people, its not about gaining power and control over others,
so much as leadership being leading by example. It requires clear thinking and
plain talking, honesty and respect for others, commitment, hard work and most of
all a great deal of courage, a great deal of courage. Our people won’t follow
you if you command them, but they might seek to follow a good example if they
believe in it.
I
thought I would just raise that and say that some of the examples of outstanding
leadership that I have worked with all seem to share a common theme, they have a
very kind way of thinking about people, think kindly about people and say things
and develop the skill of saying things with gentleness, always mindful that you
have got to come back and work together another day. They put hard things, tough
questions gently, it’s a skill and Te Atawhai Taiaroa and Sir Graham Latimer
for all that they bring me on at midnight, these men have perfected that skill
and I give great credit to them.
Rua
Rautau, its about goals and monitoring, its about evaluation and response, and
these words goals, monitoring, response. They remind me of just how prone we are
to capture from current international fashion. Maori have an old and tested way
of doing things, and it has been tested out over time, and we will lose our
distinctiveness if we let it be cast aside. I will explain simply what Rua
Rautau is, and then what is its kaupapa.
The
whole thing stands or falls on the correctness of the underlying kaupapa or
philosophy. The call is for all of us to debate the programme, not in terms of
personalities that has been the tendency in the past, but in terms of the
kaupapa involved because the programme is to be development over the next forty
years. It is going to depend on us and not on Sir Graham and Te Atawhai.
Waitangi Rua Rautau represents a commitment by the Tai Tokerau District Maori
Council to develop a programme to rebuild harmonious relationships between Maori
and Pakeha, culminating in the bi-centennial of the Treaty of Waitangi in 2040.
The District Maori Council is responsible for the annual Waitangi Day
celebrations on the Waitangi Treaty grounds.
The
programme itself has yet to be developed but there are some ideas being mooted
and advanced. It is geared out to 2040 in five-year steps; the first step was
the launch in 2001, this year. Planning is in place for the next one. It is
geared over a five-year plan, which has been done very deliberately to tie it
into the Government’s census that runs every five years. It is also to tie it
in to planning for the Maori electoral option. We have just closed this year’s
Maori option, we were tapping on the door of the eighth seat; we did not secure
it. We were about nine thousand transfers off from taking out the eighth Maori
seat.
I
can say now in hindsight, having helped put the programme together for the
national organisation, had we started the planning three years earlier, we would
have that eighth seat today. We started planning too late, getting ready takes
longer than six months. We will never have enough money to do the job the way we
would want to do it, that’s going to be the stand for the option. We need to
start planning now for the next option which will run in 2006 and for Waitangi
Rua Rautau every five years, as these major programmes come up they affect long
term planning and direction for Maori. We are going to be there, planning for
ourselves first. The census is the way that the Government plans for all New
Zealand and us. We are passengers in the census programme at the moment, we
don’t fill out the forms and when we do they are only half completed, so our
contribution, our ability to be there, to plan over the following five year
programme always starts with us coming off the back foot. Waitangi Rua Rautau is
saying we are going to try and get ourselves geared to come to it off the front
foot, on our terms.
Now
the programme is still being developed, one of the suggestions is to take
Waitangi back to a two day hui, traditionally it was two days. In 1840 the
people talked on February the fifth and signed on the sixth. Perhaps in the
future, the first day there might be Waitangi debates where Maori and Pakeha
leaders review some of the trouble spots of the preceding year.
Then we can expose some of those areas to debate and provide a variety of
different points of view. There would also be an annual Waitangi Assessment of
the year’s progress in treaty terms. The thought is to run an annual Waitangi
lecture series. In these, experts in a range of disciplines will give their
views on topics of concern to the country. Topics in the present year might
focus on such wide-ranging matters as globalisation, or genetic manipulation and
the human genome project. Another proposal is to focus on major achievements in
arts, sports and entertainment. A third is to refocus the Maori forum to treat
specifically on areas of concern to Maori.
A
present concern is to strengthen the Maori value system to remind ourselves of
what it is to be Maori, I know Te Wananga o Raukawa was here yesterday and
Petina and Turoa spoke. I think Te Wananga is the most outstanding academic
institution in the country. One of the concepts that Professor Winiata has
talked to me about is a principle that he calls ‘he toto Maori’: Maori by
blood. We have almost 600,000 Maori who are Maori by blood ‘he toto Maori’
When we have a population of that size now you can be sure that in the next
millennium there will be many more people who are Maori by blood. We know there
will be because there are so many of us now.
It
is another question to be able to say that there will be a hapu like the one I
come from Ngati Rangiteaorere, which will have Maori who will maintain the
identity and the uniqueness of what it is for that hapu to be Rangiteaorere. You
can be Rangiteaorere by toto but have you given anything to maintaining the
special values and cultural beliefs that keep that little hapu special?
That is the issue coming from Te Wananga o Raukawa, it is the kind of
thinking which will ensure that Raukawa ki te Tonga has a very visible
identifiable presence in the next millennium that is distinctly and unique to
them. For us of Rangiteaorere, it is a challenge we are going to have to look at
it very carefully, we are going to have to plan for it. We are only small in
numbers, not good in many areas and so we have to sit down and plan. Our little
hapu has picked up the challenge of Rua Rautau. We are going to plan from this
year on to 2040 and beyond.
We
are going to be at Waitangi in 2040, the two hundredth year of the signing of
the Treaty. I would think that when we get there in 2040 we know we are going to
be around in the next millennium because we have done our homework, we have got
our plan, we have tried to develop the values we wish to hold onto and we are
going to try and work in with Rua Rautau because there is a national perspective
there which will help us. That is the working plan behind Rua Rautau. It is a
vision for a future where we plan for ourselves and we stop having others plan
for us. It is something that hapu elect to join, no one is required, it is just
an idea but it is a plan, and for those of us who wish to pick it up and run
with it, it is geared to 2040.
Chair
Awesome korero, both Donna’s and especially Sir
Graham’s and I guess the lessons we can take from them especially for the
young people is that we really walk forward on the blood and guts of the
foundation that they laid on the smell of an oily rag. That is an awesome thing
to follow because these days we have so much laid on for us. We talked about the knowledge economy yesterday and here are
these fellahs who couldn’t even fly to the destinations, they had to get
trains or cars, and that showed real kaha. Kia ora Donna for painting the
picture forward and telling us that we have got to get in there. We have got to
be able to vote, we have got to be able to wield our collective power. We all
talk about kotahitanga on the marae and places like this, but if we are really
serious about that we better get in there, Pakehadom is happy with where we are
now, because as a well organised, united lobbying group we would be untouchable.
Taking up from that korero yesterday Kara Puketapu said ‘if you have got a
place, if you’ve got an identity and you know who you are, then that makes you
unstoppable. So that is an awesome combination. Questions?
Question
I would like to ask Donna Hall, how does Rua Rautau benefit urban Maori
who don’t fit in to the hapu structure?
Donna
Hall
The position of urban Maori communities has been fairly heavily lobbied
as we have worked our way through the fisheries case. The difficulty has been a
struggle where the hapu, the tribes say they should be the sole managers of
Maori assets and direction. There is some anxiety that modern urban authorities
will cut across that and it does require some balancing. The reality is that
these modern urban Maori communities exist, they are here to stay and many of
them have grown out of a time of great need. They came up to the cities during
the fifties and sixties in the massive urbanisation of Maori.
Some other things we need to keep in mind when we talk about urban Maori
authorities; there are many communities that operate in the cities that do not
call themselves an Urban Maori Authority but they are communities that represent
interests of Maori who live in their local area. They do not call themselves an
Urban Maori Authority.
In
answer to your question, I think it is important to get some things clear, we
need to be flexible today to deal and work with and to respect Maori in the
communities in which they chose to live. The test is what community are Maori
choosing to mix and move in, It may be that it is an Urban Maori Authority, it
might simply be an urban Maori community like Mokai Kainga, which is a local
centre here in Wellington which services Black Power, does great pork bones on
Fridays. I go to Mokai Kainga when I am looking for help on certain things. We
are a ‘hobble-gobble’ of Maori who live in Wellington and this is how we
operate, but not as an Urban Maori Authority. I would like to think that
community could be considered as important too. You have Catholic communities
operating, many in Auckland, what brings the people together as a community is
their belief in catholicism. There are Maori from many hapu who go and mix in
those communities I think they count as well. So my first point is, when we talk
urban Maori we are referring to many communities, not just the Urban Authorities
although they are very important, but so too are the traditional communities,
the hapu, they are important as well.
I
would like to think that Rua Rautau and the Fisheries Commission would find a
place for all communities in which Maori mix and move today. We can find a place
for all these communities, so let’s not get too fussy about whether you are a
hapu or whether you are a group that operates out of a garage in Otara, if you
are doing good things, if you are looking after the people in the area that you
live in, you count too. The balancing is ‘how do we make sure that the hapu
are maintained’. Why is that? Because they are so important, because they are
the cultural font, they are the cultural bases. It’s a balancing that is
needed. The hapu are important but so are the modern communities, Rua Rautau
looks to make a place for all these communities
Question
I would like to ask our rangatahi, I come from an education background
and I now work in health and I have heard all this bandying about of the global
economy but how can we become a global economy when the health of our rangatahi
and all our people is still unsatisfactory? The Hau ora of the people isn’t
that great, so what are we doing wrong? I
work in the schools with the rangatahi, and we have still got the highest
statistics in teenage pregnancy, smoking, and alcohol problems. You name it we
need your help. What are we doing as health professionals what are we doing
wrong and what can we do to support these people?
Donna
Hall
I think that is one of the questions that I have been asking myself over
this hui and after seeing that knowledge wave economy conference last week which
freaked me out a bit mainly because all the korero, (you see it happening in our
universities at the moment). It’s a real issue, we need to address our
education systems because they are becoming commercialised, and the main
motivation of bio-technology is to make a dollar. Not once did I hear in any of
the korero anything about the people, or what that knowledge will be used for,
and to me it is all disconnected from Papatuanuku.
There
seems to an inevitable move in the world to become globalised, meaning we are
going to be functioning more as a single global market. There is a lot of risk
involved in that, especially if there isn’t any tikanga with that movement.
That is where the answer lies, for us as indigenous people. The thing that makes
us different, unique, is that we are tangata whenua, we have that relationship
with the land. We have the ability to ground this ominous globalisation to bring
it back to the whenua. As tangata whenua we also have the ability to take things
back to the essence and one of the whakatauaki that comes to mind is one that
was left by Tawhio he said ‘maku ano e hanga toku nei whare nga poupou e
hinau, he patete te tahuhu, me kowhai’ Now to me what he is saying there is I
will build my house out of those things, those types of wood bits of timber,
that are weak that one wouldn’t normally use to build houses. So what is he
saying there, he is talking about ‘things come and things go and the more
things change the more they stay the same’. What never changes is that we need
to remind ourselves of and that is the essence. So take away all the exterior
things, this is what our people are good at. Don’t worry about living in a
garage, it is not the best but we will live with it, we will get on with it. But
to bring it back to the essence of that korero and that is the answer to that
question. Once we know ourselves, once we bring it back to all those things that
are not new, our tikanga, our mana, our tapu, our wairua, ihi, wehi, bring it
back to that. Once we know ourselves then that is the foundation to start
addressing some of these issues that face us.
Question
I am a Maori health provider. As you know we have got a new health and
physical education curriculum document. My feeling as to why our kids aren’t
getting the idea in schools is that the teachers don’t really have an
understanding of Maori kids. So more training put into that area would be cool.
Question
Kia ora koutou. First and foremost I really like that question, but the
answer is that it is time that we actually controlled things for ourselves and
we made our own decisions. We are sick of having people make policies for us
that don’t meet our needs and until we get the decision-making in our hands we
will not change the teenage pregnancies, we will not change the health
statistics of our people.
I
just wanted to add further I was heavily involved in doing the research of the
mixing of the human and cow DNA case up in Ngati Wairere. One of my biggest
concerns is that we are putting a dollar figure on our knowledge base. As far as
I am concerned our knowledge base is not for sale and I am sick of hearing that
term come up at this forum over the last couple of days. Genetic engineering is
all part of that knowledge base. It is not for sale. One thing that concerns me
is that we have got a whole lot of people in this forum today if we are really
serious about the genetic engineering issue we should be marching on parliament,
giving up our lunch break today and going up there and giving a strong message
as rangatahi that we are opposed to GE. That is how Maori leaders actually make
their mark, not by all the talking that we do but by walking the talk. No reira
tena koutou.
Question
Kia ora I would just wanted to say along those lines that we have
collected nearly two hundred signatures for our petition, so for those who do
decide to go on this march I believe we will table our petition on the march and
have a voice for rangatahi Maori. This debate has really remained in Pakeha
circles. You know it is really patronising when that happens because we are
kaitiaki of our lands, not them. We need to be starting to speak out about
issues, I am sick of hearing Tauiwi talking about what we know best, so kia ora
tatou
Question
Ae. Kororia, honore hareruia ki nga manukorero o te motu. E mihi nui atu
ki a koutou nga rangatira e tu ana ki reira, e noho ana ki reira, e mihi mai ki
a matou, a tena koutou katoa ae. Ae. Ko tenei taku patai ki a Donna. E tautoko
ana aua korero e pa ana ki a koutou kua hikoi ki te whare paremata e tautoko ana
tera. Engari tenei taku patai ki a koe e Donna. E pa ana ki te Rua Rautau he aha
te wahi kei roto i tera mo te turanga mo te wahine? Na te mea, tenei te mea tino
nui ki ahau. E mohio ana ahau, nga wahine, nga kaimanaaki taiohi, kaitiaki o
tatou pepe. He kaupapa nui ki ahau e pa ana ki tera strategy.
Just
in regard to Rua Rautau, what is the position and the absolute turanga of wahine
within that? Because at Waitangi in 1999 we saw Titewhai [Harawira] really
speaking out. What she was saying was okay it seemed that it was okay for the
Pirimia to be there, she could be there but what she saw was her own young
people outside wanting to have a voice on our marae. They were out there and
they were crying, kei roto i o ratou ngakau kei roto i o tatou katoa. E tangi
ana o tatou ngakau. E mau mai ra ki te taima o Tumatahina. Ko tana korero i
reira, ruia, ruia, tahia, tahia, kia hemo ake ko te kakoko. Kia herea mai te
kauau koro ki tana pu karo hae karo, he kuaka marangaranga, kotahi te manu e tau
atu ki te tahuna tau atu tau atu. Kei a tatou ringa kuaka. (sic) We are all
those birds and we all say and we all talk about kotahitanga. Still that
conversation continues, that conversation lives within each and every one of us
and that is why we are here. So I
have gone into two areas, and so I am sorry to the panel.
My
first question to Donna Hall was the turanga wahine i roto i tera strategy. The
other is to all of us, that when we look in the mirror and we see our reflection
it is not just our reflection that we see, we see the reflection of our tupuna
and also of the babies that are yet to come on the path that we are forging
ahead of us. So, ko tenei taku nei korero ki a koutou katoa, ehara taku ngakau
ki te kitea i a koutou katoa. He tino ataahua hoki nga wahine mo tatou tamariki,
kei o koutou kei o tatou kainga e noho ana. So tenei ta matou inoi ki a koutou
katoa, it is our calling, it is our hearts that cry, but we know that if we look
in the mirror and we look at our reflections, we can make a difference. Kia ora
mai tatou, tenei ano te mihi ki a koutou katoa.
Donna
Hall The
place of Maori women in Rua Rautau, the big canoe up at Waitangi
Ngatokimatawhaorua, the big huge canoe there, in 2040 I will be just this side
of eighty and I am going to be rowing it. So there is a challenge for Rua
Rautau.
Rua Rautau is a concept, it is an idea and communities and hapu and
modern communities can make it what they wish it to be, it is an opportunity to
take Waitangi Day and to take issues like the role of Maori women and to debate
it in a structured forum so that we put the issue of the place of women onto the
forum floor. The intention is to develop the Waitangi Lecture Series, it might
be that one of these series is given over specifically to issues concerning
Maori women, access into many areas, closing gaps (oh I’m not allowed to use
that term anymore) improving performance for women. The intention is to try to
make a place available so that these issues can be debated by us with us
together on a national basis, remembering Waitangi may go back to a two day hui.
At
the time we signed, we debated, all of the groupings at Waitangi debated on the
fifth and it wasn’t till the sixth that they signed. We are looking to take
the fifth and to make it a day for exactly the kind of issues that are coming up
here. Health, I heard is another issue. That is one where it would be a very
good idea to have it as one of the issues to be debated in the lecture series
and in the forum. So that is what Rua Rautau is. It is an opportunity where we
can come together and actively debate a plan for ourselves looking at it in
five-year blocks out to 2040, but yes of course there has to be a place for
Maori women.
Question
Kia ora tatou, nice to see everybody this morning. This response is to
our tuahine concerned about issues facing rangatahi Maori i roto e nga kura
tuarua. It’s more in response to what we could be doing right and I think it
is timely our paths crossed and that our journeys meet. I have been working in
health for the last two and a half years and I have just made a transition into
education, it is quite timely. One of the highlights of my journey with health
and especially with rangatahi Maori was that it seems we are faced and
confronted with five keys issues: alcohol, drugs, sex, gambling and tobacco.
These are the real things that jump out for me, and I think for rangatahi Maori
too. They seem to be five things that are quite trendy. For many rangatahi it is
really quite cool to participate in those five areas.
As
we know, if we are participating in one of those things we can generally count
on the rest being in there somewhere too. Each motivates the other or
interrelates with another, so one of the things that we could be doing is
looking at how we replace what is trendy. On this hand you might have alcohol,
drugs, sex, gambling and tobacco and on this hand we might have other things
like ‘For the price of that tinny bro you can go white water rafting, for the
price of that box of purple cheese you can come with me to go rock climbing, for
the price of that ounce of weed bro we can take you to Bali for three days, for
the price that you are going to pay in child support brother we can go to
Disneyland twelve times and probably around the world. And that comes from
experience too, as you can see I haven’t been quite around the world but I am
glad to be here. Kia ora
Question
Kia ora koutou, Ko Hikurangi taku maunga, ko Waiapu te awa, ko Ngati
Porou taku iwi, ko Porourangi te tupuna, ko Apirana Ngata te tangata. I am going
to speak English so everyone knows what I am on about. I am standing to tautoko
every one that has spoken over the last two days. Ahakoa te whakaaro o tena
kaupapa o tera kaupapa, I would like to tautoko everyone. One thing that I have
noticed is that we are all here on different kaupapa, and that’s kei te pai. I
came here to network, to meet new people, to meet different people who are here
doing their thing with their rangatahi. The one point that I picked up on this
morning is that leadership does come in many different forms.
I think what we really all need to do is work out what we want to be
leaders in, ourselves. We are all worried about benchmarks for ourselves in
terms of a Pakeha framework. The biggest things for me are the rangatahi and I
don’t say rangatahi Maori I say rangatahi o Ngati Porou. That is where my
value base comes from, that is my iwi my hapu and my whanau it is not about
being Maori for me it is about being Ngati Porou. I really want to encourage all
of us. We have all got our own dreams, we have all got our own aspirations,
don’t let anyone stand there and say ‘no you cant do that’. We all know
that we have all come here to share in positive things, and if we let negative
things get in our way they are just obstacles, nothing happens. What we all
really need to do when we go home this afternoon, when I go back to Hamilton, to
Waikato, and when I go home to Ruatoria where I am from I think ‘oh well this
is what I want to do, this is what I’m going to do’. I encourage all of us
to keep pursuing those dreams. Let’s benchmark our success for ourselves.
Don’t let anyone else tell us how we can be successful and when we don’t
reach it in a Pakeha framework that’s not success. If we are taking little
steps for ourselves, every step we climb is our success. Kai ora