Maori Women's Welfare League Annual Conference

I have been asked to address the following question:

Where do you see Maori Women’s leadership in 25 years time?

This question suggests a comprehensive platform from which to explore a number of social, economic and cultural responses.

Such an engagement speaks to the integrated and holistic ways in which Maori knowledge informs and underpins our tikanga and kawa.

To do otherwise would be to treat you with the utmost dis-respect: to address you from a western analytical framework.

In the projects of Maori Development that we engage, if the engagement ITSELF is not recognized by Maori, as Maori, then we must surely take pause and ask what legacy we are creating for future generations. The League itself has pioneered this notion in its 1984 study `Rapuora – Health and Maori Women’.

In the forward the Hon Koro Wetere, then Minister of Maori Affairs wrote:

“The publication of this report … is a pioneer venture by Maori women into large scale research – a scientific field fraught with obstacles… The League has shown that Maori women have the ability, adaptability and most importantly the cultural sensitivity to plan, carry out the field work, analyse the responses, and put forward ideas for a healthier Te Iwi Maori”. (Murchie, E., 1984: Pg 5, Rapuora – Health and Maori Women)

Each of us is able to connect to a rich tribal history which our forebears gifted to us.

Whether we know about that tribal history in detail, or whether we have been detached from it by the ravages of colonisation, our whakapapa ties us to specific places and provides us with a key to cultural exploration: to mountains, to rivers, to lakes, to marae, to history born of place and time.

Those tribal histories are replete with stories that inspire, uplift us and that lead us forward in innovative and creative ways.

This is where the seeds of leadership are sown.

Innovation and creation which has global impact as much as it does national or regional: that is what we can learn from our histories.

This is a story from my forebears, from Parihaka.

I will read part of it to you as it appeared in the original Waitangi Tribunal report.

8.17 The Invasion (5 November 1881) (The Taranaki Report, 1996, section 8.17)
On 5 November 1881, the militia and volunteers arrived at the gates of the undefended settlement… The troops were equipped with artillery and had been ordered to shoot at the slightest hint of resistance… At 9.30 am … the force marched but slowly and surely on Parihaka. The troops were first confronted by about 200 little boys who danced splendidly. A second line of defence was then formed by 60 girls with skipping ropes.
“There was a line of children across the entrance to the big village, a kind of singing class directed by an old man with a stick. The children sat there unmoving . . . and even when a mounted officer galloped up and pulled his horse up so short that the dirt from its forefeet spattered the children they still went on chanting, perfectly oblivious, apparently, to the pakeha, and the old man calmly continued his monotonous drone.
Among the children was one who was to become the first Maori medical practitioner and Minister of Health, Sir Maui Pomare. For his life, he carried a limp from having been trampled by a cavalry horse. The girls skipping parties, Messenger added, were forceably removed, to the amusement of the watching soldiers.”
The League Conference is perhaps the last place for a Maori man to be talking about `Maori women and Leadership!

I confess to feeling a little like Russell Crowe when he first entered the coliseum as Maximus the Roman General!

`Sans’ skirt, I hasten to add!

The League, its Presidents and thousands of devoted members over the years have traversed the length and breadth of this country in celebration of its guiding kaupapa.

Over fifty years ago Maori women read the signs and committed to a new organisation which provided a national structure from which to advocate for the rights and needs of women, children and whanau.

That advocacy has always championed Maori language and culture.

Indeed, one of the early recommendations of the League addressed the significance of te reo Maori.

The League is an excellent barometer of what change is needed and where in Maori society.

This is no call to flattery. Would I dare?

The assertion is based more in empirical research.

As well as the pioneering research in Maori Women and Health mentioned earlier, the League has taken leadership roles in:

Maori Women and Business (through the creation of the Maori Women’s Development Incorporation); and,

Maori Women and Whanau Development (through the research on intervention for high need whanau, Whanau Toko I Te Ora).

The League has been the embodiment of the kind of leadership proposed by Te Kopae Piripono (Taranaki’s only Maori immersion early childhood centre)

In its research on whanau development and parenting, Te Kopae Piri Pono is studying leadership.

Their research question asks:

How does whânau development at Te Kôpae Piripono foster leadership, across all levels, to enhance children’s learning and development?

Leadership at Te Kôpae Piripono is about four key responsibilities
•Te Whai Takohanga - Having Responsibility,
•Te Mouri Takohanga - Being Responsible,
•Te Kawe Takohanga - Taking Responsibility,
•Te Tuku Takohanga - Sharing Responsibility.

The following well-known Waikato whakatauki (saying) embodies the essence of the aspirations for the children and whânau of Te Kôpae Piripono.

“Ko koe ki tçnâ kîwai, ko au ki tçnei kîwai o te kete”

Embodied in the whakatauaki are valuable lessons on leadership.

The concept of the “handles” of a kete (flax basket), denotes the idea of both individual and collective responsibility.

In order for two people to take hold of each kîwai (handle), there needs to be communication, cooperation, consideration.

How then will the Crown respond to the leadership of Maori women?

A number of critical government agencies have developed policies to work in partnership and to dialogue with Maori in programmes in which being Maori and retaining tribal identity are pivotal.

Key emphases here are partnership, and dialogue.

Some of the most valuable strategies, and the agencies leading them, are:
•Te Puni Kokiri:Maori Succeeding as Maori
•Realising Maori Potential
•MOE: Ka Hikitia
•MOE: Nga Huarahi Arataki (ECE 10 Year Strategic Plan)
•MSD: Strengthening Families.

As the lessons in the whakatauaki Te Kopae Piripono is guided by suggesting that each party needs to take `leadership’ in the way it takes hold of its handle of the kete:
•Individual, and
•Collective Responsibility.

Real leadership in the handling of the kete will require:
•Communication:
•Co-operation; and
•Consideration.

You ask where do I see Maori Women’s leadership in 25 years time’?

I see it 25 years away in the girls who are the youth today … in the faces of the audience here today … as I saw it in the faces of my kuia and those I knew in days gone by …

In your activism;
•In your stoic determination to progress Maori Development; and, to take everyone with you – men, children, the Crown and our partners to the Treaty – kicking and screaming if necessary!
•In the gracious celebration of `te ihi, te wehi, te wana o nga iwi Maori o Aotearoa’ that is: mana wahine.