Embodying Te Tiriti o Waitangi in Te Ao Matihiko
It is our privilege to have hosted an amazing session with Janelle Riki – Waaka from Riki Consultancy as she shared her whakaaro on Te Tiriti o Waitangi in Te Ao Matihiko – ngā mihi nui ki a koe,
Watch the video or read the notes below:
Pātai 1: Ko wai koe? (Tell us who you are?) Nō hea koe? (Where you are from?)
Tēnā koe Katie, otira ki a koutou i te whānau Te Hapori Matihiko. He uri tēnei nō Tainui waka, no Waikato Tainui, no Whaingaroa. Ko Janelle Riki-Waaka tenei. Ko Ōtautahi o nga kaiwhakahaere i te kamupene o Riki Consultancy. Tēnā koutou.
Pātai 2: Tell us about your pathway into Te Tiriti, and how you ended up doing this kind of mahi?
It’s definitely not something that you dream of as a 5-6 year old “one day I’m going to grow up and become a Tiriti facilitator”. I’m actually a trained primary school teacher by trade. I taught for just short of 10 years in both kura auraki or English medium, and also bilingual education for a number of years. Then I shifted into consultancy. I had a realisation that I was able to impact the lives of kids in my classroom, but I wasn’t able to change the system for them. I thought if I could work with kaiako in the professional learning & development level, then I might be able to effect change for more of our ākonga Māori. So I shifted into consultancy and have been doing this for about 12 years, specialising in the development and strengthening of cultural capabilities, Te Tiriti o Waitangi education, with a whole bunch of digitech sprinkled in there. I was the South Island team leader for a number of years in a programme called “Learning with Digital Technologies” which was a professional learning system in schools, teaching kaiako effective use of digitech. Then that roller coasted into another pathway, I was the national Māori medium lead for the Hangarau Matihiko, I ended up on the exec council for DINZ, and I am one of the kaihautu Māori for DECA. So that gives my link back into Te Hapori Matihiko where I indirectly work with pakihi Māori in the digitech space. I have had the privilege of working alongside a number of THM whanau supporting them with their Tiriti education and in developing their Tiriti response plan.
Pātai 3: What role does Te Tiriti play in Te Ao Matihiko?
I believe Te Tiriti plays a role in every single person’s life, and every single organisation here in Aotearoa (New Zealand). Was it written with the digital world in mind? Probably not, although our tupuna were innovative and they probably couldn’t have dreamed where we might have got to today. It plays a huge role, there is a beautiful kīanga that I have heard to describe Te Tiriti o Waitangi ‘’he papa pounamu’’. Papa from Papatūānuku, so foundation, and pounamu meaning something solid and precious and beautiful, and I think that’s a beautiful description in te reo Māori of Te Tiriti. So the short answer is he papa pounamu te Tiriti o Waitangi mā tatou katoa, it is a strong beautiful foundation for all of us from which to grow from. It’s a framework that although it was written for a specific purpose and at a time well before now, the intent of Te Tiriti is true today, as it was written. One of my favourite descriptions of Te Tiriti is “what it was meant to do was to form a relationship with two parties (Tangata Whenua & Tangata Tiriti) for the peaceful coexistence of both parties, each whilst retaining their language and cultural identity”. Absolutely you can build your technological aspirations from that sentiment,and so it’s as valid and as real today as it ever has been. Within it are articles that can lead our practice, that can lead our strategy, our intention, our mission and our vision. What it is, is it’s the mauri of your organisation and of your people. I believe at its heart, it’s a message from our forefathers, both pakeha and Māori about how they wished for us to live here in Aotearoa today.
“He papa pounamu. Papa from Papatūānuku, foundation, and pounamu meaning something solid and precious and beautiful, and I think that’s a beautiful description in te reo Māori of Te Tiriti”
“He papa pounamu Te Tiriti o Waitangi ma tatou katoa, it is a strong beautiful foundation for all of us from which to grow from”
“What it was meant to do was to form a relationship with two parties (Tangata Whenua & Tangata Tiriti) for the peaceful coexistence of both parties, each whilst retaining their language and cultural identity”
Pātai 4: How do we create work spaces that are Te Tiriti Honouring?
I’m going to make an assumption that there is a mixture in the room, of those that are in leadership positions, those who work for Māori owned organisations and those who are Māori working in non Māori organisations and I’ll try to speak to all areas. Essentially being Māori is your superpower, that is your first inherited superpower, so we should do business as Māori, we should relate, innovate, strategise as Māori. It is the very deep essence of our superpower that means we will engage, relate, work, create and innovate in a way that is really authentically us. It’s what’s special about many of you and the work that you do, is your whakapapa and your ability to understand two worlds. I often talk about Te Ao Pakeha, which is now a very multicultural place and it’s based on a western premise, and we’ve got Te Ao Māori. There is only one indicator of being Māori and that’s whakapapa Māori, and I’m really clear about that. But what I will say is that there is a varying degree to which Māori have walked, touched, dipped their toe in or even seen Te Ao Māori. Some of us have been born and bred in Te Ao Māori, others have been largely raised in Te Ao Pakeha, and have had time in and out of Te Ao Māori, some have never even put their toe in Te Ao Māori but they’ve seen it and know it exists. Others live far away from that world. But what having whakapapa Māori does is it innately places aspects of Te Ao Māori in you, because of its values and its tikanga based. So for us going forward we need to lead as Māori, there is a lot of talk about decolonisation, and effectively that is Tiriti honouring practise, but my personal opinion is that Māori can’t and shouldn’t lead decolonisation. We can support but we shouldn’t lead it, and the reason we shouldn’t lead it is because we are the colonised. We have a role to play, where we should lead, is re-indigenisation, putting the reo back in our mouths, and our tikanga back in our hearts and the knowledge back into the minds and hearts and the mauri and the wairua back into our tamariki that are coming through behind us.
In terms of going forward, and what role that we have to play. I think about the generations of our tupuna, they all had lots of roles to play, but on their lines there would have been something big that ultimately most Māori did in that generation. For those early treaty generations, their job was to negotiate with the crown to try to learn to live peacefully. And then the next generation following that we started to see urbanisation, we a generation if not two where our reo was lost by design, not by accident, their reo was taken from them, and I’d like to start a conversation today, and to encourage you to have conversations in your organisations of what’s our job? My personal belief is that our job is to create work spaces that are going to not just attract Māori, they are going to empower them and support them in their re-indigenisation. So a lot of workplaces come to me and say, ‘We want to diversify our workspace’’, and one of the first things I say to them is, “What are you going to need to do to get ready for these rangatahi?” because I promise you this next generation is going to change the world, they have a double / triple dose of sass. My daughter has sass like you would not believe, she calls out stuff that I would never have dreamed of, they have an equity agenda, they have a social consciousness bigger than any generation, and they are gonna walk into the workplace demanding, in a respectful way, more than we ever got. In terms of being culturally supported, and their cultural well being not just acknowledged but nurtured. So our job is getting our workplaces ready for them. They are 2-3 years away, many of them are going to be more proficient in reo, having grown more in Te Ao Māori, we want them to not just be safe, but they need to be empowered in their workplaces. So I am absolutely scurrying around to every organisation that I can and saying to them ‘’What are you doing? And how are you going to attract Māori into your workplace, but more importantly how are you going to look after them? Because these are our babies, and you should be so lucky if they choose to come and work for you, because what they will bring to you is a wealth of mātauranga and another depth of understanding of kaupapa Māori that we haven’t seen before.
“What are you doing? And how are you going to attract Māori into your workplace, but more importantly how are you going to look after them?”
“Our kura babies are coming. You should be so lucky if they choose to come and work for you, because what they will bring to you is a wealth of mātauranga and another depth of understanding of kaupapa Māori that we haven’t seen before.”
Pātai 5: What can we do? What are some actions that we can take within our organisations?
If we look at Te Tiriti, Article 1 is Kāwanatanga or honourable governance, if we are to interpret that for a modern workplace, what that means is that Māori need to be seated at the table where the decisions get made. Not any table, not the lunch table or the front desk, but at the table where decisions get made, I also want to be clear that the seat is not enough, because you can sit at a table and be silenced, or you can speak and not be heard, or you can be heard and not be acted on. So the first article really it’s a call to action for us to make sure Māori have a seat at the table. There’s a cool saying, ‘’being at the table is being included, having a voice and having that heard is belonging’’ and that’s where I want us to get too. We are starting to see more presence of Māori at the table, the next jump up is a sense of belonging, and the next jump up is the CEO, or the board chair, now we want that seat. We still have a journey to go.
Article 2 – Rangatiratanga, is that while they are sitting in that seat, we have Mana Motuhake. We have the ability to act as Māori, for Māori, by Māori and we have mana and our mana is protected in the decisions that we contribute to. One of my academic crushes was the late Moana Jackson. I could listen to him read the phonebook, I loved his way of words and the way he communicated what can be quite complicated concepts. I heard him speak once, where he talked about the word partnership. He said we shouldn’t say just partnership on its own, because you can have inequitable partnerships, you can have partnerships where 1 party has more power than the other, so he was an advocate for hibernating equitable partnerships, they go together all the time. There were other words that he liked, things like co-design, co-led, co-governance. At its heart, co-governance is having a sense of belonging at the table where decisions are made. Our organisation has a statement about who we are, it’s an identity statement, we serve Māori first, by working alongside non-Māori organisations to know better and be better. That’s generally what I want to do everyday when I get out of bed. If you are a Māori employee working in a non-Māori organisation, one for the messages I love to give to your bosses when I get their ears, is that they have a responsibility to protect your reputation in Te Ao Māori, because we’re Māori first and we will always be Māori first. Anyone in this room, if somebody at your workplace, or your organisation plays up, we hear about it on the netball court, at kapa haka training, at the marae meeting, we will be accosted by our whanau because we are seen as the ‘person’ in,you know we are ‘’that’’ person. You were for them, and I wanna talk to you about what they are doing. I try to make, particularly pakeha leaders understand that, they have no concept of that, because that doesn’t exist in their world. One of the funniest stories that I have heard, is a young girl that worked in the Ministry of Justice in Wellington in the accounts team, and her nanny rang her from up north and said ‘“ou need to get your cousin out of jail he’s in Dunedin”, all because she worked for justice. But you know she just saw, my moko works there, so she can do this. But our pakeha leaders don’t understand that. I know that if any one of your nanny’s, aunties, uncles came to you and said, you need to quit your job right now, because this is what they did, you would be gone. Because we serve Māori first, that’s how that works. So how do we help the workforce understand that, how do we help HR understand that tangihanga leave is 5 days, takes 1 day to get there, 3 days on the marae and 1 day to get back, and we may go to 5 of them in the year, we hope we don’t , but we might, how do we make sure the system is conducive to culturally empower us.
The last one is equity, so oritetanga is the last article of Te Tiriti, well there are 4, the final one is protecting people’s rights to spirituality, but Article 3 is about equity, and a lot of this within non-Māori organisations a lot of it could be interpreted about equitable resourcing. People resourcing, money resourcing, kaupapa Māori doesn’t come free. You put your resources around it to do it well, and you put the right people in place to do it well and then you step aside. Hand the resourcing over and then step out of the way, your job is now an ally. Resourcing kaupapa Māori inside a western box, that is almost assimilating kaupapa Māori all over again. So they need to resource it, step aside, get out the way and let us do this.
“Article 1 is Kāwanatanga or honourable governance, if we are to interpret that for a modern workplace, what that means is that Māori need to be seated at the table where the decisions get made. Not any table, not the lunch table or the front desk, but at the table where decisions get made.”
Pātai 6: Audience Patai: Do we as Māori organisations or ones working in mahi apply the pakeha version or Māori version of Te tiriti? And do you think we should push whakaputanga?
Ka pai, he pātai pai tēnā. First off, I would say there is only one version – Te Tiriti o Waitangi, and then there is another one written in english. When I do treaty education I talk alot about, we’ve got to stop using the word translation. Because they’re not a translation, they say different things. So Te Tiriti o Waitangi is written in te reo Māori, the Treaty of Waitangi is written in english, they are two different documents that say two different things. So there is an international law called contra proferentem, that basically says, where there are two treaties, the one that is written in the indigenous language and the one of the signatories, the language of the signatories the one that takes legal precedence. So that is the one that we met aggrievance against, it was against Te Tiriti. We can only empower Te Tiriti comfortably and within the law and expectations of government departments. If you are Northland based, or whakapapa to the north, then I think you should absolutely honour the treaty. It is the treaty that they signed. I elevate Te Tiriti and acknowledge he whakaputanga, that’s what we do in our organisation however when I’m in Northland I elevate the treaty and acknowledge he whakaputanga because I’m in their space, and I want to do that.
But in terms of Te Tiriti, as a Māori owned and operated organisation, I want you all to deeply understand that you are all tangata whenua in that partnership document. You might be operating in Tangata Tiriti spaces, but you are tangata whenua, so you have every right and should be empowered to act as such. When you work with people, work with them as tangata whenua, and understand that you are able to have expectations as they work alongside you, that they honour your status as tangata whenua. That they are happy to sit at the table with you in that treaty partnership space, in that co-led, co-designed, co-governed space. Our currency is often aroha, manaakitanga, koha and tikanga. But understand when you operate with non-Maori organisations, please put yourselves in that throne and claim that with mana and with that birthright.
“In terms of Te Tiriti, as a Māori owned and operated organisation, I want you all to deeply understand that you are all tangata whenua in that partnership document.You might be operating in Tangata Tiriti spaces, but you are tangata whenua, so you have every right and should be empowered to act as such”
Pātai 7: The elections are making it feel really tough to lead any Te Tiriti education and embodiment in non-Māori organisations, is that your perception? Is it a press on, press through environment?
Yes. It’s such a kino time. It’s really easy to bite. I’ve gone down the rabbit hole on facebook posts multiple times. The ugliness of the kōrero, I lasted 10 mins into the leaders debate last night, but I just had to turn it off. Here’s what I hope, and please know that I’m not suggesting I’m right, but I desperately hope that I am. We’ve come too far to go back now, almost. I believe far more people, organisations and entities, want morally to do better, than we’ve ever had before. I’m hoping that it’s too late to put the genie in the bottle, that we won’t be able to. I hope that whatever happens during election time, that whoever gets into power, those organisations will go, ‘yeah, cool wow you’re in power’. I hope that people see that there is benefit in this. That just because it’s not mandated, morally it’s still the right thing to do, and morally you should deeply understand that there is real benefit to this. Even just from an economic perspective, the Māori economy is something like 4 billion, there’s a good money reason to be in this space. Morally Māori are awesome, and you should want to have them around and you should want to do kaupapa Māori well and to do kaupapa Māori well you are gonna have to do some things. Iwi / post treaty settlement, they are doing they’re thing financially. I’m going to choose to believe that the election won’t matter when it comes to Tiriti honouring practices and cultural capability. I could be wrong but I hope I’m not.
Lastly, the percentage of Māori is going up, so when I come up against real hard core objectors, I say to them, well there’s a really good chance that your mokos are going to be Māori. So this is a good thing, therefore there is going to be more and more of the future workforce is going to be Māori, the future looks brown whanau, and it’s exciting and I’m here for it.
“The percentage of Māori is going up, so when I come up against real hard core objectors, I say to them, well there’s a really good chance that your mokos are going to be Māori.”
Pātai 7: Can you offer some whakaaro around how businesses and organisations might be able to write their strategies according to Te Tiriti?
There’s lots of different ways to do this and if you’re keen, then this would be another kōrero, I could do a whole strategy session to show you how to use it as a framework. But essentially you have four articles, and it’s about interpreting / understanding what the intent of what Te Tiriti said under that article and then viewing it with a modern day lens and with your workplace lens. So for example, Rangatiratanga was about Māori having agency, self determination, the right to determine how they wish to live by Māori, for Māori, so what does that look like in your workplace today. Ok so it looks like we are measuring success on kaupapa Māori, we use Maori measures of success, leading with Reo first and English second etc. and so on. So those articles frame up a Tiriti response plan, but even just in your wider organisational strategy, and almost all those things you want to achieve will align with Tiriti. Its like whakapapa, draw another link back to the Te Tiriti, make that the foundation document from which all springs from. If we use Te Tiriti, then we can do that knowing that those concepts came from the time of our ancestors, and their true intent, we would lead with that from the outset and beyond.
