Ō Rangaranga with Kirsty Lawrence

Ko Kirsty tōku ingoa, no Whanganui ahau. He kaitohutohu kōrero matua i Oranga Tamariki.

As a pakeha coming to Ō Rangaranga, it was really daunting. This is my first time ever staying at a marae so that was you know in itself quite scary knowing what to bring, what the processes were but I think it’s a great experience.

I’ve been made to feel really comfortable at the marae, there’s a awesome group of people here and I think more people at Oranga Tamariki, if given the opportunity should jump at something like this.

Some new experiences that I’ve learnt while here are definitely discussions around kind of as a pakeha where our space is in te reo māori and you know in māori world.

Heading back into work, into the office what I’m taking with me is definitely the knowledge around how we use mihimihi and pepeha, karakia in our meetings. I think often we can get into a routine of feeling like we’re ticking a box or feeling like we’re doing things because we’ve been told to do them. So it’s really good to step back and actually think about why these things are important.

So many of the organisations that we work with in media are māori media so making sure that we’re making a space that they can come to us and they feel comfortable interacting with us too.

I think one way to make Ō Rangaranga even better would be to target groups that we don’t see represented here. I think it’s easy for look at something like this, especially non-māori and see it as too daunting, too overwhelming and so I think by targeting sort of groups that we aren’t seeing here, it’s a great way to spread the knowledge through the organisation.

I think Ō Rangaranga’s contribution to building cultural capability within Oranga Tamariki is getting us to have discussions amongst staff that are hard and the things that we wouldn’t necessarily have in our day to day life.

It’s getting us all to step back and think about what our role is in the workplace and how we can support our māori or non-māori colleagues into feeling like this is a space they can step into and they can feel comfortable in.