In Issue 2 (2007) we highlighted a Te Waka Kai Ora, the national Maori Organics Authority of Aotearoa. Over the last year this organisation their "Maori Indigenous Organic Standards"(IOS) framework. Te Waka Kai Ora has now reached the stage where their draft (that has primarily being developed in Te Taitokerau) can now be taken around as many rohe as possible in the next few months – for contribution to or comment on.

Te Waka Kai Ora aims to hold 8-10 national hui (as necessary) to discuss the following areas of Maori Organics:

1. Presentation of Organic Aotearoa New Zealand's advisory programme for Maori
2. Discuss key issues around developing a Maori Indigenous Organic Standards (IOS)
3. Discuss key issues around developing a Maori Indigenous Organic Branding (IOB)

Click here to view the draft of the current Framework of the Maori Indigenous Organic Standard for discussion. We will keep you updated as to hui dates and locations.

1. If you think there are Iwi/hapu/whanau/individuals in your area who are interested in any of these topics – please pass this panui on to them.
2. Contact Hinga Marsh to arrange a hui for your rohe and the AgriQuality/OANZ/TWKO group to attend.
3. Let Hinga know what other issues around organics and organic production you would especially like to include.

Replies can be made promptly to this by contacting Hinga Marsh, 09 834 0519 029 201 4249.

The Maori Party has begun promoting a private member's bill that would see it illegal to produce or sell tobacco. Te Tai Tokerau MP Hone Harawira recently announced the details saying that such tough measures were needed because the anti-smoking message alone was not working. The Maori Smokefree Coalition is welcoming the chance to cut the supply of tobacco off at the source. If New Zealand were to ban tobacco, it would be the second country in the world which banned the sale of tobacco. The Himalayan country of Bhutan banned both smoking in public and the sale of tobacco last year. Click here to view TV3's video coverage of this issue.

Te Pumanawa Hauora, the Maori health research programme, based at Massey University will get $2.3 million in Health Research Council funding, with other Maori health programmes allocated $2 million.

Te Pumanawa Hauora has been running since 1993, and the HRC funding supports the second half of a six-year programme. Centre Director Chris Cunningham says the team is really excited to be able to continue its work. “The new funding will allow research to continue into particular programmes around child health, health of older people and mental health, as well as contributing to building Maori research capacity. Where work goes next includes examining the relationship between physical activity and ageing… what makes for good health as you age as a Maori person?”

Work on children's health will move to a pilot study of about 400 children and young people in the Bay of Plenty, both speakers and non-speakers of Maori language, using a self-assessment questionnaire to see how children and their families feel about their health.

“We know there is a relationship between your self-assessed health status and health outcomes,” Dr Cunningham says.  “We want to see how children rate their health and what things they consider important.”

Other projects to receive funding are the Whariki Maori Research Health Group which will be receiving $852,482 for work on the health implications of conferred privilege and structural advantage and $813,650 for research into media, mental health and wellbeing in New Zealand.

The Whariki Research Group developed in 1994 when Maori researchers within the Alcohol & Public Health Research Unit began to work as a team and to develop their own autonomous areas of expertise, under the name Whariki. Its aim is to provide high quality research by Maori for Maori. Its focus is on health promotion, health policy, injury prevention and health service delivery.

We had the chance this Sunday to listen to this week's Ahi Kaa, it was really informative, it discussed the challenges that Maori artists face in today's commercial world and reflected on the challenges which the media faced in trying to represent our diversity. Definitely worth a listen if you have time. Click here to check it out Te Ahi Kaa for June 10 (duration: 47'48?).

There is a small yet wonderful exhibition celebrating the anniversary of the closing of Te Maori: Te Hokianga Mai at Auckland Art Gallery. A lovely tribute display has been created utilising photographs, newspaper clippings, ephemera and publications from the USA and Aotearoa tour. What follows is part of the korero about Te Maori. This tribute is on at the gallery from now till end of September 2007.

Te Maori: Maori Art from New Zealand Collections was a watershed exhibition of taonga or Maori Art treasures, borrowed from twelve leading New Zealand museums. The exhibition of 174 taonga opened at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in September 1984. From there Te Maori travelled to the Saint Louis Art Museum, the de Young Memorial Museum in San Francisco and closed in 1986 at the Field Museum in Chicago.

At dawn on the 10th September 1984 Te Maori opened at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York with full Maori ritual through a 'dawn ceremony' which quickly became a hallmark at each venue. In New York over 202,000 people visited the exhibition. Many more were exposed to Te Maori through cable and national television coverage and the exhibition made the front page of the New York Times. The success of Te Maori was in large part due to the foresight of Maori elders who believed it was a timely exhibition and agreed that beloved taonga be allowed to leave the country.

This twenty-year anniversary display marks an unparalleled time in New Zealand exhibition making in the twentieth century. Taonga were presented as art that is part of a continuum of a living culture rather than ethnographic objects. The scope, importance and the range of support given to Te Maori varied from museum kaitiaki or carers throughout the country, Mobil Oil who were the major sponsors, the American Federation of Arts, the New Zealand Government and the people of New Zealand.

The exhibition met with such success that a New Zealand tour entitled Te Maori: Te Hokinga Mai travelled the country from 1986 starting at the National Museum, Wellington (August – October 1986), Otago Museum, Dunedin (November 1986 - February 1987) and the Robert McDougall Art Gallery, Christchurch (March - May 1987) and finally to the Auckland Art Gallery (June - September 1987).

Te Maori was an insightful exhibition that bridged understanding between Maori and Pakeha enabling each to more appreciate Maori art and culture. Many elders have since passed away including famous icons from our history such as the Maori Queen, Dame Te Atairangi Kahu, Rt Hon David Lange, Sir Hugh Kawharu, Dame Whina Cooper, Sir James Henare, Sir Hepi Te Heu Heu, Dr Henare Tuwhangai, and Sir Monita Delamere. They led by example by standing behind the exhibition's three-year tour, providing tribal and community stories and participating in formal and Maori ceremony.

As an historical moment, the exhibition raised the mana of Maori art, revitalised Maori culture and drew the people of New Zealand closer together. Curators Professor Hirini Moko Mead, Douglas Newton of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and David Simmons, former Auckland Museum curator, presented to the world an exhibition, that was a profoundly moving experience for international audiences as much as it was for all New Zealanders.

A unique feature of the exhibition was kaiarahi or Maori gallery guides. Elders selected interpreters who were then trained by June Te Rina and Hirini Moko Mead. Interpreters increased the mana of taonga and by extension their ancestors, by providing a unique world-view. The mana of the exhibition and the emotional relationship to the taonga was reflected in the wholehearted commitment given by the elders, guides, educators, Maori Wardens and gallery staff.

'The Te Maori Manaaki Taonga Trust (TMMTT) was established to distribute the income derived from investing the profits of the Te Maori Exhibition, which toured the United States of America from 1984-1987. The principal purpose of the Trust is to 'encourage and provide for education and training of Maori in the skills required for the care and display of taonga Maori'. In particular, the Trust Deed refers to 'the training of Maori as curators, conservators and other officers whose jobs involve the care and/or display of taonga Maori'. The Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage and the Minister of Maori Affairs jointly appoint the Trustees for terms of up to 3 years. The Trust does not receive any funding from Government. It has an endowment of approximately $1 million and funds its activities from the interest revenue.'

The Chairman of the Trust is Piri Sciascia and other members include Te Aue Davis, Paora Tapsell and Ngahiraka Mason (Ngai Tuhoe, Ngati Whakaue, Ngati Pango). Professor Hirini Moko Mead recently retired as chairman.

Event Manager - Janise Eketone
021 227 5815
07 856 5027
maniapoto_festival@ihug.co.nz

Secretary - Hirere Moana
0273 010 059
07 878 7773
maniapoto_festival@ihug.co.nz

Grace has just returned from Crete, researching her latest project, a non-fiction book about Maori Battalion soldier Ned Nathan who fought there during World War II and was harboured by Greek families during the German occupation. He married a local woman, Katina, and brought her back to New Zealand to live. The couple's sons approached Grace and asked her to write a double biography about their deceased parents' colourful lives.

She was awarded an honorary doctorate from Victoria University in 1989 and has won several literary awards for her books, which deal heavily in Maori culture and language. Her novel Dogside Story was shortlisted for the 2001 Booker Prize and the 2002 Montana New Zealand Book Awards, and Tu won the Deutz Medal for Fiction in the 2005 Montana awards. She won the Arts Foundation of New Zealand's Icon Award in 2005 and the $60,000 Prime Minister's Award for Literary Achievement in fiction last year.

A research project to develop an eel management plan in the Ngati Raukawa iwi region, from Bulls to Otaki, is being hailed as an outstanding example of inspiring a community to get involved in sustainable management. The research, conducted by tertiary institution Te Wananga-o-Raukawa, grew out of concern among Ngati Raukawa about depletion of eel stocks in their local waterways and wetlands and a dream to restore the fishery to plentiful levels of the past.

The three-pronged project involved collecting narratives from elders about the traditional eel or tuna resource, assessing current stocks and habitats and ultimately producing a management plan for the lower North Island area. The Foundation for Research, Science and Technology committed $196,000 over two years to the project.

Foundation Business Manager Rawiri Faulkner (Te Arawa/Ngäti Whakaue/Ngäi Te Rangi/Tapuika) says 24 hapu were consulted about the project and gave it their support with 18 actively taking part, delivering a unique degree of end user participation and researchers adopted a purely Kaupapa Maori approach says Environmental Researcher Pataka Moore.

Royal and Moore believe commercial over fishing is partly to blame for the significant decline in eel population as well as diminishing size and type. They say the quotas introduced over the last seven years are unsustainable, given the time it takes for eels to grow to maturity. The minimum weight of an eel allowed to be taken by a commercial eeler is 220 grams, with an eel of that size likely to be around 16 years old. According to Royal it can take up to 70 years for eels to reach breeding age and the quota numbers are not currently sustainable.

While the findings of the research are sobering, Royal and Moore says the good news is that restoration measures combined with the exclusion of commercial eelers are an effective solution. Other measures under consideration for inclusion in the Ngati Raukawa ki te Au o te Tonga Tuna Management Plan include limiting access of cattle to waterways, restoring wetlands and restocking them with eels, controlling noxious weeds and opening floodgates at strategic times of the year to help with the migration and breeding cycles of native fish which eels feed on.

Moore says while the current project has been completed, more oral histories are planned together with further research into the sustainable management of eels. “We now have the information to make informed decisions about tuna and have given new knowledge and skills to our people – that's a great outcome,” says Moore .

To find out more contact: Pataka Moore, Environmental Researcher 06 3647820 and Rawiri Faulkner, Business Manager, Foundation for Research, Science and Technology 04 917 7821.

Successful field days have been held on the farms of the three regional finalists and Mr Acland, and fellow judges: AgResearch Maori and Innovation Judge Roger Pikia, and BNZ Financial and Management Judge Paul Buist, have completed judging the regional finals.

Farming an effective area of 720,000 hectares worth an estimated $7.5 billion, Maori are the largest natural grouping of pastoral farmers in New Zealand.

The $120 million Atihau Whanganui Corporation whose Pah Hill Station is this year's Southern Regional finalist, runs 10 stations and 210,000 stock units on land between Mt Ruapehu and the Whanganui River. It is the largest farming enterprise in the region. On a net asset value alone it is bigger than 60 per cent of the companies listed on the stock exchange.

The North Central regional winner, the Tuaropaki Trust, runs a livestock farm 26 kilometres northwest of Taupo. Like an increasing number of the larger Maori trusts and incorporations Tuaropaki has managed its assets judiciously - diversifying into a $30 million geothermal power generation plant, and 30 acres of temperature controlled horticulture (export tomatoes and paprika), and satellite/wireless communications both in New Zealand and Western Australia.

Matariki Partnership, the Eastern Regional Winner, runs two adjoining properties in the Waiomatatini Valley north of Ruatoria. The partnership, which supports 3,000 owners, runs sheep and beef on a total of 2,480ha, 1390 of which is pasture. Exotic pine is planted on 150 hectares, 80hectares is in native bush reserve and the remaining 860hectares is in unusable gorse and manuka-covered hillsides.

They recently announced a half-year profit up $3.4 million from the same time last year to $18.4 million. Nick Churchouse of the Dominion Post suggested that this was a positive sign "for an industry suffering from the continuing strength of the NZ dollar and high fuel prices".

This was an encouraging start to the year in the face of some very significant challenges both economic and political" said CEO Robin Hapi. Aotearoa Fisheries, which is owned by Te Ohu Kai Moana, had recently expanded its processing operations by 50 per cent, buying Whitianga-based OPC Fish and Lobster.

Mr Hapi, who was also just appointed Chairperson of Sealord Group Limted, following the resignation of Mr Robert McLeod, is looking forward to his new role as Chairperson of AFL and Sealord, building on the work already undertaken and helping to shape the future of these two very important investments for Maori.