Tū Māia 2025 - Mataatua Reflections

Paora Bedford: I work with young men from 13 to 16. Most of them are of Māori descent. A lot of them don't have a father figure, or poppa figure in their life. And that's what I'm finding a lot of the boys will come to me and talk to me about, but I enjoy it. I enjoy the mahi.  

  
Scott Johns: I'm a Child Protection Social Worker, but in our tari in Taumaranui, we work what they call generically. So we will receive the sort of intake information about a whānau and we will go out and meet with the whānau. We will understand the issues that the whānau is facing and it's really about understanding what's going on for them.  And I suppose essentially the bottom line for us in care protection is keeping the tamariki safe in that space, whatever that looks like.   

Scott Johns: You know with your whānau you can say, well, you're in a dark place at the moment and that’s this place of Te Kore and Te Pō is potential. There is a seed in there.  So let's not look at this darkness and say ohh that's all bad news.  Let’s look at the seed. The potential.  There’s a reason we're here. It's part of the cycle.  You're not gonna stay here. We're gonna move in the cycle as nature always does.  So you bring it back to nature and bring it back to seasons. And that's a good way to sort of, I suppose you'd start that metaphorical understanding of where the whānau is at.   

Iysha Edward: Tū Māia you know, stand strong for te ao Māori was catching not only to the eye, but to the soul. So yeah, I reached out.  I was a late enrolment, but I had someone telling me knocking on the back of my door saying you need to do this  

Paora Bedford: I'll be honest, it took a bit of encouragement. I’m a hands, on man. I've always worked with my hands. I’m ex-military being in the classrooms, a space that I'm not often in.  I actually spoke to my rangatahi about it. I always encourage them to try and at least have a go give it a go. And one of my boys said, bro, you're telling us to to give these activities a go and you don't wanna go on the course. And it was a reality check for me and he basically told me I needed to step up. But I also got a good encouragement from my management. They've been really cool. It's been really good.   

Rose Hawkins: I've been supported to come along transport. We've got, you know, beautiful marae to stay at wonderful Manaaki and the wānanga has really assisted us in every way.  So it's kind of all put there for you. It's all on tap for you and you just have to turn up. Listen, kōrero,   

Rose Hawkins: You want to be able to act and there's a lot of sensitivity and that and I guess there's lots of supervision that's needed around that to work out some of those things and actually what's going on because it's not necessarily straight forward.  

  
Rose Hawkins: All these little activities that are broken up by, this is actually the learning. So when we're walking down to harvest some kawakawa to the way Wairere waterfall, which is one of the tohu of this rohe that's got a whole lot of history behind it as to how people came here from Hawaiki. We got to know a little bit about the use of the traditional uses of the rongoa. That whole tinana thing is so important to wellbeing, to oranga which is what we're about. The people felt wonderful afterwards.  

Brad Tipuna: The treaty is relevant.  Again, it's probably along the same lines of whānau feeling disempowered in a system that isn't beneficial to them.  So the more support we can wrap around them to feel like they do have mana in a system that doesn't, let's be honest, I guess promote mana for whānau.   

Rose Hawkins: It's a safe place to be. There's huge manaaki, you can express whatever views you have.  There are some, there are some different views and, and everyone's coming from a different angle. Everyone's got a different background.   

Paora Bedford: I think it's exceeded my expectations.  I had a basic understanding of tikanga, but I think it was the second noho and the lead up to it. We were starting to talk about systemic racism, equity and those sort of topics. I was actually able to look at tools I could use at work to use to my benefit and also look at other ways, not only my team, actually the wider team to use tikanga and start really pushing it throughout the residence. And it slowly is working. It's been really, really good doing this course.   

Scott Johns: Yes, there's been some challenging kōrero, some stuff, some conversations, but all in all, the spirit of it is very inclusive. And I think I've learned a huge amount more. I've probably learned a lot more than I thought I would.   

Sarah Andrews: Putting names to faces, making connections with people that we otherwise wouldn't have met, you know, yet we all work for the same organisation.  

Iysha Edward: Tū Māia staff are incredible.  They give you different ways of learning. Everyone learns differently. So I think it's a really advantage to us students because it's not just reading, you're listening, you're watching, you're doing activities, it's hands on.   

Sarah Andrews: Just really appreciative of being able to have this experience. And with the cohort that we have, you know, everyone comes with their own knowledge, and you know, knowledge is not knowledge if it's not shared.  

Paora Bedford: This is the first real course I've done in 30 years.  I'm terrible on computers.  I'm scared of failure, but I've jumped on this. I've done every journal, I'm up to date, I'm getting great feedback from the tutors and I've been awhi not only by the tutors but the rest of our tauira. It's magic. Get on board.