Rautaki Māori

By Paige Sillaby, 2nd year MDP student 
 

Paige in front of the Te Whānau o Waipareira office

It’s been a month since I completed my international field placement at Te Whānau o Waipareira, and I am missing my Waipareira whānau, as well as the breath-taking mountains of Aotearoa New Zealand. Words cannot describe how deeply this summer’s field placement has impacted my personal and professional development. 

During the first month of field placement, I spent a lot of my time reading through documents to help me understand Waipareiratanga, which loosely translates as the unique way in that Waipareira operates as Māori organization. Some of the documents that I reviewed were; Te Whānau o Waipareira Strategic Plan, and the Waitangi Tribunal.  I would say that much of the information I learned this summer came from speaking with members of the Strategic Innovation team, as well as Wai- Research team about Maori culture, and the history of Aotearoa.

Mount Eden

My primary research project at Waipareira was to work alongside key staff to research and document the Rautaki Māori – Work-Placed Language Revitalization Strategy pilot. The culmination of this research is a summary report with a toolkit that can be used to implement language revitalization strategies in other Indigenous organizations. The overall purpose of the Rautaki report was to gather feedback from key participants in the Rautaki Māori model and designed to meet the following three objectives.

•          To determine and understand the impacts of Rautaki Māori on Wai-Atamai and Wai-Intel,

•          To identify strengths, challenges, and opportunities of the Rautaki language strategy

•          To document Waipareira Rautaki Māori model as a strategy for workplace language revitalization.

At the end of my placement, Waipareira generously printed out the Rautaki Māori report, which was put together by the Graphic Design team. I was not expecting Waipareira to do this, and I am so appreciative that they provided me with copies to take home and share with Indigenous organizations elsewhere.

Through my time in Aotearoa and especially working on Waipareira language revitalization strategy, I have truly been inspired to learn my Indigenous language. During my three months at Waipareira, I learned a little bit of Te Reo through the Rautaki Māori initiative. One of the Rautaki activities was to build a pepeha. The pepeha is a way of positioning yourself within a Māori worldview.  I am proud to share my pepeha;

Ko Horseshoe te maunga

Ko Simcoe te roto nui ake

Ko te Alantic te moana

Ko Big Canoe te rangatira

Ko Georgina Community Centre te wharenui

Ko Chippewa ki Georgina Island te hapū

Ko Ojibway te iwi

Ko Paige ahau

I would like to say chi-miigwetch/ thank you to Waipareira for hosting my field placement. Also, I recommend checking out #WaiRauMaori on twitter to see some of the awesome Rautaki Māori activities from with summer!

Ngāpuhi