Ō Rangaranga with Karen Cherry

Ko Karen Cherry ahau. Ko Senior Advisor Treaty Response external monitoring and reviews. For me this is like Tū Māia. It's the coming together with kaimahi from around the motu sharing this, you know, the kaupapa and further learning into Te Reo has been yeah, really inspiring for me. It was really nerve wracking aye, coming cause I know so many fluent speakers and my journey with Te Reo has been such that I've chosen to take on higher study, doctorate study instead of furthering my reo. That's how scared I am in this space. But being here has been really awesome. We're all learners you know, and for me, that's what ako is about aye, is ongoing learning forever and ever. It's an amazing experience. And if only we could do this every week, spend time in this space. You can't just do a 2 day, 2 1/2 day wānanga once a year with a small group of people and then leave them and then go and chuck it and with another group of people aye?  You've got to keep the ongoing the momentum. I've been studying Te Reo Māori since 1994 in academic spaces. 

You know, when I started my bachelor degree and yet I'm still too whakamā to kōrero Māori. 

Being here as inspired me to just sit in this space more. I, I had already couple of months ago said to my team, cause I'm the only Māori in my team. And so, I had said, ohh, would it be good if we kind of practise a wee bit of Te Reo cause I just noticed some, some difficulty with pronunciation of karakia and stuff and our team meetings. And so, everyone jumped on board and I was kind of like, everyone will bring that learning together. Yeah, with Karl, you know, Karen's doing the teaching and having to prepare everything for them. And so yeah, I'm just going to grab that and just run with it and use it for my learning. You know, you're sharing it with others and encouraging others, but really use it as a space to practise my reo and to put myself out there. 

In my rōpū that I’m in we have all Māori and three Pākehā. I was blown away by the corridor from all three of them who said if you want to as a Māori rōpū just have a kōrero for the Māori kaimahi in that space. We'll just go for a little walk. It's all kei te pai, you know, and I've never, I've been teaching for 12 years prior to Oranga Tamariki. I've never heard Pakia do that before and to understand that sometimes there's a need to just be Māori in a space for a kōrero for a little bit. If, if we can do that on the first day of being here together, then what could we achieve if we had more of this?