Speak Up- Kōrerotia8 March 2017

Indigenous women in leadershipMale This programme was first broadcast on Canterbury’s community access

radio station Plains FM 96.9 and was made with the assistance of New Zealand on Air.

Female Coming up next conversations on human rights with “Speak Up” – “Kōrerotia”, here on Plains FM.

Sally E ngā mana, E ngā reo, E ngā hau e whāTēnā koutou katoaNau mai ki tēnei hōtaka: “Speak Up” – “Kōrerotia”. Tune in as our guests “Speak Up”, sharing their unique and powerful experiences and opinions and may you also be inspired to “Speak Up” when the moment is right.

Kia ora, welcome to “Speak Up” – “Kōrerotia” on Plains FM 96.9. I’m your host Sally Carlton. We’re doing a slightly different style of presentation for this show; we recorded three live presentations at a Human Rights Commission event to promote the UNDRIP (United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People). There’s a series of Speakers’ Forums that are being held around the country in the lead up to the 10 th anniversary in September of its adoption by the United Nations.

What is the UNDRIP? Well it’s the most comprehensive international human rights document that we have on the rights of indigenous peoples. It particularly emphasises the rights of indigenous peoples to self-determination, participation, non-discrimination, the right to access and use land and resources, and culture and language as well. It also highlights the responsibilities of states to protect these rights and stresses the rights of people to look after these rights for future generations, not just for today.

Now, the three speeches that we recorded were on the topic of indigenous women in leadership and these kaikōrero were invited to outline their thoughts on the topic. They were asked particularly to focus on their own leadership roles, how they think that Aotearoa is doing in terms of indigenous women in leadership and how it might be done better as we move forward.

As we listen to three talks you will note several key themes throughout. One of them is a critical analysis of the concept of leadership, particularly in relation to indigenous and western constructs of this idea. A second issue is the importance of connection to be able to act as an indigenous leader: connection to your whakapapa or your genealogy and connection to knowing who you are coming after, who you are following not only in

terms of your family but also in terms of other indigenous leaders. Another key theme that emerges is the importance of knowing and remaining true to the kaupapa of leading: Why is it that you got into it in the first place? A final theme is that leadership, as interpreted by these three women, is fundamentally about supporting and developing others.

The first speaker is Sacha McMeeking, who is Head of Aotahi, the School of Māori and Indigenous Studies at the University of Canterbury. She was previously General Manager of Strategy and Influence at Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu and before that an activist for indigenous rights including advocacy efforts at the United Nations regarding foreshore and seabed legislation.

Applause

Sacha Tēnā rā tātou. Mauri ora ki te whare, ki te Kāhui [Tika Tangata] kua whakarite i tēnei hui. Ka mihi rawa atu. Ki ngā maunga whakahī, kua haere mai nei kia whakanuia te mana wahine. Ka mihi rawa atu. Ki tōu tātou tauira ataahua: ka mihi anō.

Ko wai au? He uri o Tahu Pōtiki, ko Kāti Huirapa, ko Kāti Hateatea kā hapū. Ko Sacha McMeeking tōku ingoa. Nā reirā tēnā rā tātou katoa.

It is beautiful to be with you on a lovely summer’s evening. Thank you to the Commission for convening this event, it’s our honour to have you in our whare and for me personally this is a really important and meaningful opportunity because when I reflected on the nature of Māori women’s leadership in the context of the rights of indigenous peoples as protected under the Declaration, I realised that the first thing I did as an attempting to be grown up in a professional capacity was to right an intervention for the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues which paid homage to Whaia Tariana Turia so she is one of the heroes who sits deepest in my heart and when I am doubting what I am doing, thinking what would Whaia Tari think keeps me honest and true. So the opportunity to be in an event which brings me full circle back to where I began is really powerful, so thank you for creating this opportunity.

What I’d like to talk about tonight is the nature of leadership in indigenous contexts, how that relates to the recognition of indigenous rights and what that means today for the place of Māori women. So we’re used to leadership because there is currently a cult of leadership obsession in the world, as we know. If you Google ‘leadership,’ what happens is you get a raft of advertorials trying to convince you to do a leadership programme, that’s how obsessed we are with leadership. And in that context we see lots of different types of leadership which ultimately come down to, I think, a lot of hero worship and I think the nature of leadership that we’re seeing the western world has never applied to te ao Māori and never will. So we see different leadership styles whether it’s the authoritative style who commands that action must happen or the transactional style of leadership which gives you a whole fabulous set of

tasks on your to-do list; very tidy, not particularly emotionally resonant. There’s increasing work on facilitative leadership where you bring people along with you and the like. That is really singular leadership and that notion of singular leadership I don’t think is ever operated within te ao Māori.

What we have always had is a distributed network of leaders who worked collaboratively and I think that’s often not seen because we’re so used to celebrating our great taniwha like Tā Tipene or Tā Mark, we’re used to seeing these figureheads at the front but the reality is that there is a distributed network that enables a whole community of leaders to emerge and to drive together and as I’m sure will be talked about tonight. The whole meaning of rangatira was about the ability to weave people together and through our distributed network of leadership. If we look to the time of the Settlement, well Tā Tipene was the fiercest advocate in all of his brilliant and slightly maverick ways, he had a team of other mavericks who were helping him whether it was Uncle Trevor who was working out how to finance the Settlement or Matua David Higgins who was doing his work with the Fisheries Settlement or Aunty Janey who was there as part of the decisions. Tā Tipene is remarkable and he deserves every accolade he has received and equally he was part of a team of leaders that worked together and inside that team of leaders were some remarkable Māori Ngāi Tahu women who were doing things that the story books have not yet celebrated, in due course I think.

Because the most important part about leadership within the Māori community is the ability to build a community of support behind any direction, the vision, the action - it only has meaning if there are people there. And in creating that community of support, our women have always had a critical role - and I’ll come back to the place of women and where I think we could be heading after talking a little bit about how those styles of leadership have related to our journey in rights recognition.

So if we look at New Zealand’s history we know the short version: once upon a time Māori were fully in control, then there was a Treaty that said something and then there was this period of forgetting that the Treaty existed and Māori rights being eclipsed. We know that story but happily we’ve got the second part to that story of periods of rights being recognised within New Zealand and globally and those rights have been recognised in periods. It wasn’t all at once. So, first we had rights of recognition to notions of partnership, then we had rights that were recognised about land, then we had rights that were recognised about collective identity - and the Declaration I think is the quintessential part of that rights recognition journey. And through those rights recognition we had powerful grand debates as a nation about what we believed or were willing to agree to as a nation about the rights that we would recognise for iwi Māori. And I don’t believe that rights recognition journey has finished, there’s still a work in progress to get to tō tātou tino rangatiratanga. Thankfully that job is on my tuakana Arihia's shoulders and I wish you strength with that mission, I have faith too.

So we’re still on a journey but when it’s been about the grand debates - Should Māori be recognised? Should there be a right for such a thing? - it’s been critical to have people like Tā Tipene at the helm, the fierce advocate that could drink whiskey with Ministers and convince them, the orator that could debate on television and in the media and convince people through the power of his wit, it is absolutely critical.

What we saw with Ngāi Tahu, with the transition from Tā Tipene as that fiercest of advocates to Tā Mark - it does seem that if you hold a leadership position for a long time you’ll get knighted! - what we’ve seen is a move to peace-building and bridge-building which I think is natural. Once the settlement had been achieved and the core substance of Ngāi Tahu rights had been recognised in the settlement, it’s a time for a different type of person at the helm with peace-making and bridge-building being the next step and that’s critically important. What I think is more important to recognise, though, is that the fundamental nature of our leadership has not changed through the various periods of our rights being recognised. No matter what the nature of the fight, we’ve always had a distributed team-based leadership style where everyone has a place, everyone has a responsibility and a contribution to make. What we’ve seen is that the person at the helm is the tactician of the day: so in the period where it was about grand debate, the tactician that we needed was the orator and advocate; at the time where we needed this space to implement the rights that were transferred from the settlement, we needed someone who would create a space to implement and vision and create in our own image. So we needed a peace-maker to clear that space. And I think, as we look at what we need now, there is an ever-critical role for Māori women who are remarkably stepping into leadership roles - whether it’s our very own CEO Arihia; whether it’s the Deputy Kaiwhakahaere Lisa Tuamahi, whether we look at the recent appointment to Te Mātāwai, our new reo entity. We have Māori women in really powerful important leadership roles and that’s important, and I think we will continue to see that because increasingly, I think, what this space of Māori development, Māori pursuit of tō tātou tino rangatiratanga looks like is about creative solution-building and I think that’s where our women have always been powerful. We make things happen.

Have you ever seen the cook that’s run out of an ingredient in a marae kitchen? She still comes up with something amazing! Our women have always had a creative place to be in building the future. That said, it doesn’t mean that everything is going to be easy. I had a conversation with my taua, my grandmother, a week ago about whether Ngāi Tahu could embrace a woman as Kaiwhakahaere. As many of you will know, we’re in that time of finding a successor and defining our leadership needs for the next tranche of our journey and my taua - who is feisty and powerful and the thing that she commends most is people having fire in their belly- still does not believe that Ngāi Tahu is ready for a woman as Kaiwhakahaere which I find fascinating and puzzling at the same time because she has always been someone that has driven our world down

home, she expects all of the women - we’re really good at making girl babies, in our family - to be powerful and stand in their own skin. But the place and the way that we do that will continue to evolve, I think.

Having said that, what has my contribution been in this space? So the first is that the language of leadership makes me feel deeply uncomfortable. And I think that I am not alone in that because when we talk about the nature of leadership - team-based collaborative leadership - the other thing that is constant in our notion of leadership is about service and contribution to kaupapa. I don’t know any Māori leaders that I love and respect who are in it for the knighting or the job description; they’re in it for the kaupapa and that’s why we trust them. If we live in a community that is about team-based leadership with everything, everyone pulling together on a common vision, the only thing that will guarantee that that occurs is a shared commitment to the same kaupapa.

And with that, I think, comes the greatest distinction between western leadership and indigenous leadership. Western leadership has been about hero leadership - the hero at the front, the charismatic personality cult-based leader - whereas within te ao Māori what we have is servant leadership. The person who attracts support is the person to whom we have complete faith in the integrity of their commitment to kaupapa.

So for me, I have never pursued a role because of what the job title was, I’ve pursued it because of what I believed I could contribute in that role. And I had the remarkable opportunity, I think, to move through three different realities in that way. So the first was as an upstart, the opportunity to be part of the United Nations proceedings on the foreshore and seabed, that was because I was a provocateur who said well why don’t we go to the UN? And some really powerful people said OK, and then I fell over and then we worked out what to do over a number years. But in doing that, in being a provocateur, those were recycling the deeds of people who had come before. I was not the first Ngāi Tahu woman to participate in UN things; Irihapeti was there before me, there were many others. It’s about pulling through the deeds that have been done before to contribute to the kaupapa of the day - at that time, as an upstart.

The second opportunity that I had was to be, as was said, in the Strategy and Influence team which is not a very subtle job title, you can kind of hear me coming: I am here to influence you! And in that role what I believed the kaupapa was, was continuing the journey of the Ngāi Tahu settlement. The Ngāi Tahu settlement was the most remarkable contemporary point of transition for the iwi but just because the Crown says that Treaty settlements are final does not mean we believe that. So I saw my job as being to invent second generation mechanisms that complimented the settlement and that team still has that responsibility, in my opinion. I think in that space - and this was not achieved during my time but I am confident that it will be - I think we saw one of the consequences of there being space for more women in our settlement team. So what the Ngāi Tahu settlement very much focuses on is

mahinga kai and whenua which is critically important and absolutely right. What the Ngāi Tahu settlement does not have a mechanisms about our people. So the settlement doesn’t have mechanisms that address social disparities; it doesn’t have mechanisms that are about the relationship between our people and institutions of the state that work with those issues of equity - and I question whether if there had been more women involved in our settlement journey whether our settlement would have been mahinga kai plus he tangata, he tangata, he tangata.

The third role, that I am in now, very much continues that train of thought. So I had absolutely no intention of ever returning to academia. So much so that I threw away all of my lecture notes from my previous incarnation three months before applying for this job -you can see how well planning goes in my life! So I didn’t come into the Head of School role in Aotahi because I had any desire to be a proper grown up academic or because I wanted to run an academic department, I came here because it is a place that is about growing our people and I think my journey and the evolution that has gone through my journey, I think represents something that is consistent across Māori women’s leadership: that the means might change but the kaupapa never does. So whether I was being an upstart or trying to invent second generation settlement mechanisms or here trying to look after the next generation, it’s always been about “Mo tātou a mō kā uri a muri ake nei” [Ngāi Tahu whakataukī: “For us and our children after us.”] The kaupapa changed, the tools change, the tactics of the time change but the reason why never does. Kia ora tātou.

Sally We were just listening to Sacha McMeeking talking on her perspectives of indigenous women in leadership. Now we have our second speaker, Hana Skerrett White. She’s just completed a master’s in Education having been a teacher, one who is actually endorsed in te reo bilingual and immersion teaching which is pretty cool and you will notice she uses a lot of te reo in her talk. Hana exercises leadership in different places including in her iwi, hapū and university as this year’s president of the Māori Students Association at the University of Canterbury.

Hana E hoka taku manu ki te tihi o Aoraki. E whātaretare ana te titiro ki te awa a Rakahuri e rere atu, e rere mai. Ki a Waitaki anō hoki, ki taku waka e teretere mai ana, Tākitimu ki runga, Tākitimu ki raro, Tākitimu ki tai, ki uta e. Tau ana taku manu ki te Tumukuku te pā harakeke taku pī tokatoka e. Ko Māhunui te tuarua te whare whakaruruhau. Ko Ngāi Tūahuriri, Ngāti Rakiāmua, ngā hapū, Ngāi Tahu te iwi, tēnei rā te mihi nui ki a koutou katoa. E mihi ana ki te Komiti whakahaere, mō koutou i pōhiri mai ki tēnei manu pī karere. Ki te whakawhānui i ētahi whakaaro e pā ana ki tēnei mea, te rangatiratanga o te wahine. Me te whakahirahira hoki o tērā kaupapa, e tino ngākau nui ana ahau ki tēnā kaupapa. Nō reirā tēnā koutou, otirā ngā rangatira, o ngā waka o ngā iwi, o ngā marae puta noa i Aotearoa tēnā rā koutou katoa.

My name is Hana Skerrett White and I hail from Ngāi Tahu, Tainui and Te Arawa on my mum’s side and I hail from Taranaki on my dad’s side.

I’m a teacher, recently appointed as the Tumuaki for Te Aka Toki which is the Māori Student Association. Yes ka tika tērā kōrero, my passions are who I am really is everything to do with my Māoritanga, tāku reo ngā matauranga, ngā tikanga, ērā āhuatanga katoa

I’m going to go a bit of out of the box strategy here but ko tāku, he kapu atu i ngā kōrero o te kuia a Eva Rickard. So it was Eva Rickard that said - and she was one of the kuia that was a very staunch Māori woman leader and activist in her time, one of the founding members of the Wakatū Corporation - and she said “Somewhere in my past is my destiny” and so I’ve used that whakataukī, that quote, I’ve used that to guide me in this discussion. And so I will be taking you on a journey into my past to uncover, to unmask some of the leadership qualities that exist within my whānau, within my tīpuna and I will also be looking at the transmission of those leadership qualities, those values, tōu tātou reo matauranga, the intergenerational transmission from one whakatipuranga to the next.

We’ll start with my great-great-grandmother Kaataraina Te Urumahue Hona hails from Ngāti Rongomai and Ngāti Pikiao,. She was a weaver of people, beautiful native speaker of te reo Māori so a weaver of language, a weaver of people and it was my tupuna that was the mastermind… it was nānā te whakaaro - it was her idea to establish Taurua Pā and the whakaaro behind it was that it was a place to weave together people, bring people together - ka whakahuihui ai ngā uri whakaheke. Unfortunately she died just before the opening of it but that’s her legacy because that’s our whare and it is a place that we often gather… Nō reirā, e mihi ana. If we look at… I know my tuakana Sacha talked about rangatira and we look at the breakdown of that kupu, āe: he ranga - to weave; te tira - a group of people, te tira tangata - and this here, my kuia here was the example in my whakapapa, the example of just that.

So this is my great-grandmother and also my namesake Raiha Serjeant. So my nan was… I was fortunate enough to have known my nan in my lifetime, she was in her 90s when she died, very strong, strong woman. She was one of the founding members of the Māori Women’s Welfare League and her leadership approach was more the hands-on approach, she was very much a servant of her people, engaged in what was happening in communities and whānau at the whānau level so she was known for taking kai around to so and so’s whare, be taking clothes over there, she was a bit of a hoarder because she knew that there was a place for everything, she could find a place for everything. Very passionate about people, very passionate about her iwi and to uplift the mauri of te iwi Māori. She was also a staunch advocate of the Māori language movement because even in her time she could see some of the damaging effects of colonisation on her people, on her whānau, so she was on one hand working at that level trying to dismantle, if you like, some of those colonial structures but also working at the grassroots level to uplift the mauri of our iwi. So she was the one that said - and I quote her on this - “Ko tāku hiahia kia hoki ngā tamariki ki ako i te reo Māori,

kia hoki mai te mana a ō rātou tīpuna ki a rātou.” So it was quite a radical… Even now it’s a radical whakaaro but I feel that my kuia here very much ahead of her time. So what she’s saying there is that all Māori children in this country - all children in this country, in fact - should be learning te reo Māori because that is giving you access to te ao Māori, mātauranga, tikanga Māori and through that journey you are uncovering what it is to be who you are and that way, the mana of your ancestors will always be alive. Nō reirā e mihi ana ki tēnā whakaaro. To my nanny, Emily Jemima Skerrett. So she married a Skerrett from Bluff, he also has his connections here to te Pātaka o Rākaihautu, Ngāi Tuahuriri. He was a staunch mutton birder but my nanny was the real boss of that whare so raising children in the ‘50s and the ‘60s in the face of adversity, in the face of urbanisation, moving from city to city, mum and them were brought up… I think mum was born in Dunedin and then Auckland, they were just from city to city. But Nan always - she really made sure that mum and all her siblings that they knew who they were and where they were from so she was… Pōua was always taking them mutton birding or back to Te Roto-iti and keeping those home fires burning.

She was a woman of few words but whatever she did say had a lot of impact so she was the whakatinanatanga or the embodiment of the leadership quality that I feel is a very important quality which is humility - te whakaiti. In fact, te pono and te whakaiti, those are the pillars of leadership in the teachings that I’ve had throughout my lifetime: being true to who you are (te pono) me te whakaiti, which is humility.

So as a practitioner for many, many years in kōhanga reo mum has always… You know, Sacha talked about kaupapa, the kaupapa te tuatahi. Mum’s kaupapa has always been about te reo and kia whakahokia te reo ki ngā waha o ngā tamariki Māori. So she dedicated and is still dedicating her life to the tino rangatiratanga movement and the language revitalisation movement. She started Te Amokura Kōhanga Reo which is a home based kōhanga reo, really cool for us growing up because we had our mates come over every day and sometimes they would stay for weeks which was really cool and that kaupapa through te Kōhanga Reo o Te Amokura, there have been many lifelong relationships, people weaving and whānau weaving and it’s just an incredible, incredible journey. So mum attributes a lot of her mahi to the kōhanga reo movement and she was very, very much involved with that kaupapa.

Mum was always… Part of what us growing up and being involved in the kōhanga reo movement Mum would always take us on hīkoi, on marches whether it was for the foreshore seabed, I think there were some fiscal envelope marches there, there were some funding cuts for kōhanga reo marches that Mum would organise and there were all sorts of things that we would be organising and they were these little but significant acts of resistance that we grew up knowing the why factor, the importance of the

why and I think that was what kua tuia ki te whatumanawa; it’s really cemented. When you know that it’s not just something that…. It was a struggle and it’s important to understand that and to be a part of that as well and not to just take things for granted because I see my generation as being the hua of kōhanga reo kura kaupapa, whare kura. We were the ones that sort of the reaped the benefits and sometimes we can become a little bit take it all for granted but it is important to know all that history.

This is a quote from my Mum, I actually asked her… I said Mum, if there’s one quote that you could give me that encapsulates your tino passion, she sends back this email and it was like a thesis and I was like oh goodness Mum, just one quote! So this was her…. “Māori language is central to the freedom thinking needed to dismantle colonial architecture, disrupt colonial rule and disturb colonial expansion”! So yes, out of all my… The manu kura that you can see through the generations, Mum is definitely the one with the tinorangatiranga flag that’s staunch advocate for the movement.

Linking in with what Sacha said, the whole point of me taking you on a journey into my whakapapa is to actually say, I am not just a random isolate and I am who I am because my whakapapa, because of my whakapapa. And I think that’s really, really important, because leadership is something that can be transmitted through the generations.

One thing that I thought that I could contribute to this discussion is about te reo o te karanga, te reo o te wahine. So we know that te reo o te wahine. So we know that te reo o te wahine ko tērā te reo tuatahi o te marae, e rangona ana i te marae. So it’s so important that that reo because it is the only reo that can transcend through the spiritual realms to this ao kikokiko, this physical realm, it is a very, very special and unique voice and it has a very special job and through our histories our voices have been muted at times but I think it’s always important and I really love that this is an opportunity to really whakamana that reo. And so that’s my passion, that’s my way of looking at it and through my mahi as a kaiako in matauranga is more of the same work that my Mum has laid down and my kuia before me. They laid down that huarahi and I’m just carrying it on, part of that journey that is already set out.

Because I’ve just spent a couple of days watching Matatini - ultimate distraction - I just want to acknowledge Te Waka Huia, want to acknowledge Pimia Wehi because I thought that she was absolutely the embodiment of what I am trying to get across today. When you see her up there leading her kapa and she’s wearing the manukura wahine korowai, which is the leadership korowai, and she dedicated that korowai to her whānau. And I thought yes, yes and that’s the whole thing, that’s what it’s about, that she’s up there, she represents who she is, she represents everything and everybody that has gone before her. And so their whole bracket was attributed to the late Koro Ngāpō Wehi and all the teachings that he’s left behind. But I see her and I see how authentic she is and I just think oh my goodness, they’re still alive through you.

And it’s really, really amazing. And she is, to me, the embodiment of this, that leadership isn’t singular - ki mua, ki muri, ki ngā tahataha. And it’s about that distribution of mana and distribution of leadership, that’s what rangatiratanga is. Nō reirā, i runga i tērā kōrero, mihi ana ki ngā tupuna, te tirohanga kanohi o te rā ki a tātou e tau mai i tēnei pō.

Sally The third and final speaker you’re going to here is Arihia Bennett. She’s Chief Executive of TRoNT - Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu - the governance body of Ngāi Tahu iwi, and has been in that role since 2012. She previously held other positions within Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu and has a background as a social worker. One particularly cool thing that I’d like to mention is that in 2008 Arihia was endorsed as a member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to Māori and community so that’s pretty amazing. So our final speaker is going to be talking also around her perspectives on indigenous women in leadership.

Arihia Tuatahi o te rā: kei te mihi ki a koutou, a ki tēnei wā, ki a hui mai nei ki tēnei rā nō reirā tēnā koutou.

Ko wai au? Ko Arihia Bennett tōku ingoa. Ngāi Tahu, Ngāti Porou ōku iwi. Nō Tuahiwi ahau. Ki ngā kāwai o ngā pohio kei te Tai Poutini tērā āku hapū. Ki a Arahura ki ngā kāwai Tainui o tērā rohe. Engari, kei Ngāti Porou ki te taha o tōku pāpā ki te whānau a Iri te Kura.

Kia ora and thank you so much to the Commission for inviting me here to share with our other wāhine this evening. And I really just want to labour on that part because here we have two young women who are really epitomised and set the scene for the future in terms in terms of intergenerational sustainability and future in terms of leadership so I really do mihi to you both. I’m going to share a couple of comments but I really want you to think about and resonate on both hearing Sacha and Hana in terms of the acknowledgement of indigenous rights of women and actually taking it through from the history of your whakapapa to where we are today and thinking about actually how we’re going to transform that and take it on into the future. Let’s not forget and the kōrero that has gone before, the courageous leadership and the humility of women who are not only at the front but they are at the back. And as Sacha described that, let’s not forget all of those women, our mothers and our grandmothers etc. who were at home driving and raising families. And that’s why this whole kaupapa for me in terms of children, young people and their families and communities resonates. It’s something that I’ve driven all throughout my career in terms of being a social worker and I am just in another social worker’s role right now in terms of being at Te Rūnanga because as you know chief executives come and go. So it’s important for me to hold strong to actually what that kaupapa is for me.

For those of us who know about Te Puia and I think about my Ngāti Porou side there is not a time that goes by when we’re up there that we’re always reminded of the energy and her place, walking in the shoes

of others and actually that awhi and tautoko that she brought in terms of raising families, the wellness, the importance of being a mother and being a partner and being part of an iwi in terms of driving and building those families. And if you’re lucky enough to be as old as I am in regards to living and breathing and actually seeing the leadership, the spirit of enthusiasm and that real courage and confidence in taking people forward and when I think about Dame Whina and I think about what she did at that time, think about the ‘60s and ‘70s and it helped some of us who were starting to…’70s and ‘80s, started us on this journey in terms of standing up for actually who we are and what we’re about in that whole sense of identity. So I pay honour here to these women. And where would we be without Tariana? And when I think about whanau ora, not the sort of technical concept of whanau ora, whanau ora is about It’s actually about me, I live in a home in Tuahiwi and I live now in a four-generation home and my folks are older and that caring for them I now find myself being in a role of actually supporting and caring for my parents - although they’re great cooks, I must say, and the gardeners - but that living and breathing whanau is so important and not only the physical but the emotional, the social and the cultural wellness that helps build those generations in our family is actually around whanau ora. And we know that Tariana now that she’s even moved on in that formal role and the formal role probably wasn’t anything because she was whanau ora before and she’s whanau ora afterwards.

So let’s come to the sense of wellbeing and wellness driven at the whakatipu, driven at the hapū, and so I want to think about the contemporary nature of indigenous women and indigenous leadership and think about the opportunities that came out of the Christchurch earthquake. Here we have a number of young women taking on traditionally what was probably seen as male roles but actually now driving and becoming real leaders and actually at the top of their game in terms of graduation, when it came to their apprenticeships being completed. So we’re seeing from our history right through into this contemporary nature that we have indigenous leadership everywhere and the notion - not only the notion but the practice of He Toki ki te Rika - is not only just about the technical aspects of their work but it’s actually imbuing that whole kaupapa of te ao Māori, the world of Māori, and taking it into this forum so there we see indigenous leadership continuing and being carried forward.

As we move through these generations and the youthfulness we see here younger women going into other employment that is again traditionally probably seen as male oriented. Great young leaders in whenua kura in terms of being able to take on roles on our farms, Ngāi Tahu farms, but not only take on roles but take up the learning that actually will take them from not only their starting role but into leadership roles in whenua kura. And it’s this sort of leadership that Te Rūnanga, the communities and in the learning institutions are getting behind to actually foster and develop our young women - and again very similar to He Toki ki te Rika - it’s about imbuing it in a culture of a world of te ao

Māori and bringing through that strength and that kaupapa of being Māori on the farms.

And it’s probably since I’ve been in this role at Te Rūnanga, some of the things that when I looked at the kaupapa this evening and I thought actually it’s worth raising this because when we look across the country and we look at tribal leadership, we don’t see many women in the front and we have to ask ourselves, actually do we need to be in the front, spouting forth or do we need to be in the back actually probably making things tick and actually making the leaders work? And I’m not fazed by that because as I’ve just talked to you, actually women leadership is everywhere whether it’s at the front or at the back.

And one of the things for me that stands out in terms of leadership and one of the things that I’ve been driving as a leader is that there is a bit of… there’s probably what I would call the three C’s that I undertake when I’m in any type of leadership role. For me that’s actually about having some competency, so it’s actually having a brain and knowing what you’re doing and actually understand why you’re doing it and actually having some evidence and some rationale to be able to articulate and lead. It’s also about being compassionate, being able to walk in the other person’s shoes, being able to have that empathy, that sense of emotional intelligence. Because what we heard earlier was actually it’s about weaving relationships and so if you are stepping into a role such as mine there’s no point just putting on the chief executive’s hat if I haven’t got that sense of actually using my brain in terms of competency but also fusing that and weaving that with compassion. And the third C that I go by is actually having a bit of character; nobody wants anyone boring. I think the idea is that we’re all unique and we all have character and our role in terms of leadership - whether you’re at the front or at the back - it’s about being yourself and being unique and enabling yourself to come out and actually with courage and confidence that is you.

Recently I was having a conversation with somebody and he said to me oh, if you could talk to the younger Arihia here that’s 20 years old (which was ten years ago!) what would you say to her now, if you reflect back in terms of your learning about becoming a leader, what would you actually say to her now that you wished you had have done? And the thing that I would say now - and for all of you young women - is actually be confident and courageous and speak your mind, speak your mind, have a coach mentor, have somebody along beside who actually pushes you and actually takes you that step and takes you out of that comfort zone and don’t hold back. Because I think I came into the role far too late, I came into this in my 50s and I think there was a lot of things I did and I’ve had quite a different background which has always been about engaging with people but people would say to me on the way that oh you’re going to move into a manager’s role or supervisor’s role and you’re going to be a good leader etc and I never believed that - and I think it’s because I suffered from that courage and confidence thing and so when someone

that, oh don’t be silly, that’s not me and I used to think oh that’s sort of a humble me and it was because it’s about me walking in the shoes and being next to somebody walking alongside them, not getting in front of them and taking over - unless it’s my brothers!

I’m looking at all of you younger women: have somebody alongside you and be courageous enough to actually get them to push you and go that extra mile and take the stretch and go further because it’s at this age here that you have sown all of those seeds and you are ready to bloom and blossom and you can take that forward and you can show us what leadership is like at a younger age rather than waiting until you’re a bit older like me. And remembering also that we’re in a time where there’s so much change going on and there’s the complexities that exist today, you’re actually living and breathing those now. For older folks like me when I get a new phone it takes ages to work the thing out; you’ve worked the phone out before you’ve even got it and then you’re figuring actually when you’re going to get the next phone. So your ability to be able to juggle so many things and live and breathe that sense of kaupapa Māori, you’ve got a lot going for you.

So these sorts of things here I say to myself, do they need to be out the front? Do you need to be the Iwi Chairs Forum where there were 67 people sitting around the table and less than 10% are women? Do you need to be there? Actually you need to be where… First of all where you want to be and what brings you happiness and what brings you joy and be in a place that’s actually about developing and growing others because that’s what we’re great at in terms of nurturing.

The other point I want to make here is in creating opportunities, it’s the responsibility of our iwi, of those who are leading in organisations, to actually find ways to actually enable and support people to actually graduate into those leadership positions. So don’t be surprised if you get tapped on the shoulder to actually step forward and undertake a leadership opportunity in a surprising way.

Women leading in their homes, leading in their schools, leading in their place of business and leading in their marae and leading in their communities and take the opportunity to celebrate it. As a woman, we get on and we do stuff, shit happens and we just get on and do it. Some people like to talk about it - talk the talk - but we actually just get on and walk the talk. So don’t be afraid to actually stop for a moment and actually celebrate it. Young women who are students and looking to actually lift themselves and create… Become a sense of a leader in their own right and in their own particular way. Let’s not forget our sense of leadership and where we draw that from. So, Hana, you reminded us this evening around that, where we take that leadership from and actually what you’re going to be able to do as you pave that way for your children after you.

I just want to finish off because this is what it’s all about, this is what it’s

all about and when I look at my role and I think about what am I there for, this is why I’m there and this is what I’m looking to create and for as long as I be there you will see things coming out of there that are about children, families and communities. Kia ora.

Sally That presentation by Arihia Bennett concludes the three speeches on the topic of indigenous women in leadership promoting the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People and International Women’s Day of the 8th of March. As I noted at the beginning, there are several key themes that were apparent in each talk, including the importance to notions of indigenous leadership of knowing why you conduct leadership and who you are and who you come after.

I’d like to finish this, though, by noting a question from one of the audience members who noted that each of the three speakers are very rooted in their whakapapa, their genealogy, and thus in their identity and what are the implications for Māori who are not so connected in this way in terms of leadership? In response to the question, all three of the speakers stressed the need for everybody to take on responsibility for helping people connect, find their sense of identity, and Hana specifically referred to the genealogy of the word ‘manaakitanga’ - to foster or support someone’s mana or someone’s spirit, someone’s influence, someone’s sense of being. So I’d like to conclude this episode of Speak Up-Kōrerotia by stressing the same message, look out for, respect and help foster the mana of those around you. A tērā wā; until next time.