CIARAN FOX: Okay, our next speaker, our next presenter, is Dr Te Kani Kingi.
We're very privileged to have him here with us, Director of Te Mata o te Tau,
The Academy for Māori Research and Scholarship.
And same deal for our good doctor, we asked the same three questions:
"What is one word that would summarise the essence of you?"
And he said, "Quiet."
And one thing you may not know is that he is an only child
and was raised by his maternal grandparents in Poroporone, Whakatane.
He attended St Stephen's Māori Boys' Boarding School in Bombay,
St - what's that street [laughter] - Auckland.
"And my mother is a principal at Māori Girls' Boarding School in Hawkes' Bay."
So there you go. And did we get a line for you about flourishing?
"Looking towards the future with hope and enthusiasm."
So on that note, please put your hands together for Dr Te Kani Kingi.
[applause]
DR TE KANI KINGI: Ko te mea tuatahi, he mihi tēnei ki te whare e tū nei.
ki te papa e takoto nei, ā, tēnā kōrua, tēnā kōrua, tēnā kōrua.
Ki nga aitua maha kua ngaro atu ki te pō.
Haere, haere, haere atu ra.
Ki te hau kainga, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou.
Ki a koe te matua, he mihi tēnei ki a koe, mo tō mihi ki a tātou, ā
tō mihi e whakatau i a tātou katoa.
Nō reira, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā ra koutou katoa.
Well, I'll try not to be too quiet [laughter] during my presentation. I was a bit...
I was a bit concerned when I was asked to speak today.
I was told that the gathering would be a little different.
The last time I was told that we were going to do something different,
I got shipped off to boarding school. [laughter]
Thankfully, that's not the case today.
Culture and mental health - I had to think
long and hard about this question, and how actually culture relates to mental health.
I thought it might be... and if people have questions during my presentation, please...
please fire away. But I thought I might just raise issues for discussion.
I understand there's going to be questions at the end.
I'll try to answer them depending what the questions are.
But I thought I might start with just a definition of what culture is.
Culture is actually... the word culture is actually a Latin word.
Very old word. And it means, essentially, to cultivate.
To nurture.
If you segue that word even more, to flourish.
Lots and lots of definitions of what culture is.
A set of shared attitudes, values, goals,
and practices that characterise a group.
The behaviours that are common
to a particular social group or organisation.
Essentially, it's been explained to me a number of times.
Basically, it's the norms, what people - sometimes people don't realise that they have culture
because it becomes so normalised - behaviours become so normalised.
And we often forget that we have culture - typically when people -
or at least in New Zealand, and these are only based on my own observations,
when we think about culture,
we think about cultural activities.
And there's a few there.
We often think that other people have culture
and that we don't.
It's interesting - particularly for New Zealanders,
we don't think - well, some people don't think that we have culture
until we travel overseas
and realise that other people behave differently.
Well, it's actually not us - it's not them that behave differently, it's us
that are behaving differently,
because we have cultural expectations.
They behave in a different way that we're accustomed to or expect.
There are also other forms of culture that we need to
appreciate - there's culture attached to sport,
there's culture attached - belonging to certain organisations.
People talk about gang culture.
or youth culture.
And quite often, so I'm told,
for youth in particular, it... culture,
which is attached to the ethnicity
or to any other sort of cultural norms,
matters less than what the culture of actually being a youth does.
There's drug culture there,
there's a psychiatrist, and also the... [laughter]
Actually, that's the first image that pops up when you Google "drug culture." [laughter]
And well-publicised - I guess a fairly -
fairly topical issue - the drinking culture that's been getting
a bit of a profile lately.
But when you look at all these groups here,
they typically - well, they can - meet that definition there:
a set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices
that characterise a group.
So culture's fairly broad.
Going broader still, culture also, I guess, can be applied at a national and international level.
People who travel overseas, internationally - or people from overseas.
Who's from overseas?
Just about everyone. [laughter]
Any examples from the audience about that New Zealand or kiwi culture?
Something different.
We probably don't know.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: We don't do conflict and confrontation very well.
DR TE KANI KINGI: Okay. Are you accusing me of something? [laughter]
AUDIENCE MEMBER: You clearly don't like that. [laughter]
DR TE KANI KINGI: That's right - I've been told by, actually, South African friends -
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yes. DR TE KANI KINGI: - that we're far too polite.
They say when they show up at people's houses in New Zealand and they don't want you to be there,
they don't tell you to go, they invite you inside for a cup of tea [laughter] and something to eat.
She said in South Africa, if they're doing something and they're busy, they'll tell you
to go away and come back.
And she found that incredibly interesting.
Anything else?
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Well, you mentioned a cup of tea.
Yesterday, I was at a gathering where they said, "Oh, the kitchen's there, go help yourself."
Which is, you know, the New Zealand sort of thing.
I'm aware, reflecting, my English father-in-law always waits for me to bring him the cup of tea.
He never goes and helps himself.
Well, you know, it's like, very small, but it's a cultural clash.
DR TE KANI KINGI: Yeah... I wish I was English! [laughter]
We have a couple more from the audience?
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Kiwis introduce the first name only.
DR TE KANI KINGI: Yes, very good. Matua?
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Kia ora. Tēnā koe. See, that's the culture straight away. Kia ora. Tēnā koe.
And as I was growing up as a young fellow,
I used to hear kōrero about the culture in New Zealand.
Pākehā culture. Their culture was rugby, racing and beer. [laughter]
That's one of the cultures I grew up with, and of course, there was also Māori culture. Na tēnā tātou katoa.
DR TE KANI KINGI: Kia ora matua. Last, last one.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: I've just come back from India, where everywhere I went,
people asked me where I was from. When I said New Zealand, they said, "Oh, [unintelligible] nation!"
DR TE KANI KINGI: Oh, that's nice to hear. [laughter]
We'll see [laughter].
Actually picking up on that point, too, and relating it to Māori culture and introductions.
Someone mentioned introductions?
Someone told me a long time ago that when you're introducing yourself to someone overseas or internationally,
they typically say who they are and what they do.
In New Zealand, it's typically who you are and where you're from.
Which tends to matter more than your occupation.