Okay tamariki mā, so who knows why we do a karakia before we get started with these classes?
Kia ora te whānau. Ko Sterling tōku ingoa, my name is Sterling, I'm a teacher at the
Auckland Zoo and I like to lead children around and connect them back to nature.
So all of them were together and Papatūānuku and Ranginui and it got
really really cramped in there for they all wanted to do *this*
We always start our Mātauranga Māori sessions with the separation of Rangi and Papa,
the sky father and the earth mother, their children are the ones who were the
gods of the nōhanga or their habitats. Tāne Mahuta is a particularly important one
he looks after all of our forests and he was also the father of the plants and
the birds and then ultimately of humans as well. It's really important to let
kids know that they are a part of nature, sometimes they don't see themselves in
nature all that often, and then it's also important to talk about how we look
after our family and we have to look after our natural spaces because they're
the things that nourish us as well and we can't survive without them. All of
that information is codified in Mātauranga Māori which is just Māori knowledge and
it's how we use that knowledge that makes it really special.
Yes good spotting! You're right, there should be four.
For me I suppose the most important thing about Mātauranga Māori is that we connect
to nature, we connect to our environment but we also connect to each other and
ourselves, because we can't live in isolation and it's just, it's not gonna
work if we try and just keep things separate.
My first introduction to Tikanga Māori
started when I was training to be a teacher, and I enrolled in a Māori art
course. We were asked by the local iwi in Tainui at the Kawhia marae, the Maketu marae.
If we would be able to come and help them refurbish their meeting house.
There was kind of a real spiritual and uplifting feeling about that. At the end
of each day they'd invite us into their own homes. So we were helping them, we
were giving our help and our love to them and they were giving us back their
appreciation, which is very much the concept of manaakitanga, and it was
just like suddenly I was actually part of this culture that I'd always wanted
to be part of. So when I came here, one of the jobs I do in the Information Centre
quite often is the radio check, so just started using kia ora and mōrena and ata mārie
because they're all ways of saying Good Morning. To start with it was just me
but eventually, some of the other people who are responding to the radio checks,
started responding to me in Māori as well and its kind of been
self-perpetuating. The whole basis of the tikanga Māori is the caring and cheering
and the respect and the kindness and the kaitiaki of conserving our environment. If
everybody's working towards the same thing you've got a very powerful message
like we welcome our visitors as friends, we encourage positive attitudes to
conservation. It's like bringing everybody all into one.
I think that's vitally important because lets face it, I mean this is New Zealand.
So we're here in Te Wao Nui a Tāne, our Forest aviary, in here we have a pair of
pāteke or brown teal. It's really special that we get to look after this
endemic endangered species and to reflect that we often try to name our birds
with te reo names that reflect something to do with their personality or
characteristic. Our female is Marino which means calm as she's a nice calm
individual and then we also have our male Matatū - and that means stand firm
because he's a really strong dad and a good protector of his ducklings. Yesterday
we had a clutch of six pāteke ducklings hatch and that's really exciting because
we are kaitiaki of this species and when they get older these ducklings will
be released into the wild. So it's really important that we help protect them in
their environment and restore their habitats in the wild.
Apart from whānau of course New Zealand is my first love and so
working in tourism, that's why I work in tourism, I'm representing. What's great
about our zoo is that we've got an area dedicated to New Zealand which is -
Te Wao Nui that's what visitors come to see, that's what manuhiri come to New
Zealand for; to learn about our kiwi, kākāpō, kaitiakitanga or conservation
but we also include a Māori cultural element and so because our culture is
unique, people want to come and see that.
Just like the zoo is kaitiaki of nature, being Māori I'm kaitiaki of
our culture. So that's important for me to be able to share those stories. I
firmly believe that our culture belongs to all New Zealanders not just Māori
it's up to all of us to engage, learn, be part of the culture, because it's us
who's going to make it carry on for the next generation and the generation and
the generation after that.
Right now I'm studying te reo in an immersion course at Te Wānanga o Aotearoa
I'm hoping that sometime next year or the year after
I'll be confident enough to teach entire lessons in te reo, but it is really cool
when other people try their hardest to pronounce words as well.
Every time I hear somebody use a Māori greeting or say farewell like ka kite
I just stand up a little bit straighter and that's really good y'know?
I would just encourage everyone to incorporate as many cultural words as
they possibly can and just embracing kia ora on a daily basis. That can be the
start. We appreciate when people don't get it quite right but they're giving it
a go and then before you know it, it'll be a big part of your daily lives.