Enriching placement experience in Aoteareo, Land of the Long White Cloud

By Henok Alemneh, 1st year MDP student

For my international placement, I reached out to and arranged to work with World Indigenous Tourism Alliance (WINTA), under the direct supervision of Johnny Edmonds, the Director of WINTA.  This 3-month placement based in Wellington, Aotearoa, New Zealand allowed me  an incredible opportunity to learn both about the Maori people, their culture, and WINTA. WINTA has a mandate to engage in Indigenous tourism advocacy, facilitation and networking activities as recognised by the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) in its endorsement of the 2012 Larrakia Declaration.  I was tasked to work on three major projects: Facilitating Kapiti Island Community Workshop, organizing a Seminar on WINTA’s rights-based Indigenous Tourism Engagement Framework (ITEF) & Reviewing WINTA’s Training Collateral.

Henok and Johnny Edmonds at work workshop planning

The Kapiti Island whanau (family) workshop was titled: The practices we want tour/travel operators to follow when engaging with us.  The workshop aimed at creating a platform that could enable the whanau to collectively share and discuss their expectations of the practices tour and travel operators need to follow when engaging with them. In preparing for the workshop one thing stood out to me was the process of framing and positioning the workshop in a way that affirms the communities’ engagement right from the outset. As my supervisor says “we are not selling something to them. It is the communities’ workshop. WINTA’s role is to facilitate.” We aimed to make sure all activities, presentations and forms align with what the whanau was looking for and we provided progress updates. I found the whole process an exemplary approach by an international organization who considers its obligation to allow the community to guide all elements of the project.

Kapiti Island is about 5km off the west coast of the southern part of the North Island of New Zealand. Part of this Island is a government natural reserve and “of the total 1965 hectares, the local tangata whenua (Maori people of the land) together kept 13 hectares around Waiorua Bay, and this is where the Lodge is today” (https://www.kapitiisland.com). Our team was privileged to visit the island and the lodge. In order to minimise the risk of insects like Argentine ants and pests spreading to Kapiti island, the whanau does biosecurity checks before boarding the boat to the island. Everyone, including whanau members, are required to clean footwear to remove soil, seeds and diseases.  This is an exemplary practice of communities safeguarding the land.  All are required to respect the protocols, including what to bring and not to bring to the Island.

Henok on Kapiti Island

Being part of this project I learned some Maori cultural protocols, including Mihi Whakatau. A mihi whakatau, according to my host supervisor, is a speech of welcome performed by the Kaumātua or kaiārahi to the visiting group and is sometimes followed by a waiata (song). It can be responded to from someone in the visiting group in the appropriate manner, but does not necessarily need to be responded to. Before we entered the lodge, the whanau performed the mihi whakatau followed by waiata . As we  faced each other (visitors on one side and the whanau on opposite), a beautiful Maori song was sung. Another person and I responded from the visitors’ side. I responded in my first language (Afaan Oromoo), starting with a greeting, then acknowledged the Mana Whenua (people of the land), the E Nga Mate (Ancestors) and the Papatuanuku (mother earth) and finally I expressed my gratitude for being there. I wore my own cultural dress and shared a little bit of my culture. I also sang a waiata, that I practiced beforehand, with the rest of our visitor group. 

On completion of our whaikōrero (speech) and waiata, we went around and did the Hongi / Harirū. It is the act of pressing noses, sniffing and shaking hands. My supervisor taught me that it brings both visitor and host together as one. It is so powerful in making one feel welcome. What I felt after that was really like being with family, and among people who love you and care for you. It gave me closeness and openness with many of them afterwards. I think the whole welcoming process created a relationship among all of us that made the workshop very engaging. For me personally, it also connected me to the Maori culture and tradition.

Henok facilitating Kapiti Island Whanau Workshop

The workshop project was very important not only because of its potential value for the whanau, but also because WINTA wishes to create opportunities to further improve future delivery to other Indigenous communities and tourism businesses. Analysis and interpretation of participants’ feedback was undertaken from evaluation forms and through the traditional poroporoaki protocol where anyone can speak at the end of the workshop. It is the communities’ way of stating how the gathering went. The evaluation process helped knowing what we could have done better, both for the whanau and WINTA’s benefit. 

Johnny Edmonds

I believe the workshop indeed provided WINTA an opportunity to test the engagement framework it has been developing and inform improvements for future facilitation of such projects with other Indigenous communities involved in tourism activities. Such projects are also essential steps towards enhancement of rights-based Indigenous tourism engagement. Every task in this project taught me a lot about community workshop planning, facilitation, project evaluation and report writing, and also skills and ways of doing these along with the community and under the guidance of their culture. I clearly understood how important it is to build respectful relationships when engaging in community projects. We couldn’t have achieved positive outcomes through this project, both for the Kapiti whanau and for WINTA, without the connections we built and strengthened through the Indigenous values of kinship, reciprocity, respect, partnership and sharing. Through these values, we acknowledged that we are all related, that we are part of everything around us, that we are interdependent, that we respectfully do our homework before we engage with other parties, that we engage in a mutually beneficial partnership, and that we share information and understanding rather than telling them what to do. 

These lessons have been carried on for the other major seminar project I took part in and I invite you to read my second blog titled ‘A placement that made me feel like I belonged’.