Te Māoritanga WELLBEING AND IDENTITY Kapa Haka as a Vehicle

kapa haka that my sister was in at the time, and my passion for composing and
tutoring began. Then during this time I was lucky to spend a few years under
the tutelage of kaiako 6 from Te Arawa waka, Ngāti Hine and Ngāti Kahungunu
in senior groups. I learnt a myriad of skills and had a number of experiences in
kapa haka and Māori weaponry, all of which aid in my understanding about Te
Ao Māori and kapa haka in general.
It has been my shared tutoring mahi with my Hoa Tāne 7 that has most
opened my eyes to the potential of kapa haka to influence one’s decisionmaking
in their lives. We constantly battled with the rhetoric that the ‘naughtiest’
kids in the school were the ‘best’ students in our group. I cannot recall that I had
to discipline any students that other teachers were constantly threatening to
throw out of school, in their four or five years in the kapa haka. I saw the impact
that success had in students and their families’ lives, and the re-connection
process that I myself had gone through was playing out before me, time and
time again. The same experiences were repeated in Senior groups I had been
in. I also saw that those who had grown up with Te Reo Māori and kapa haka
as part of their lives from birth viewed kapa haka as an integral part of shaping
who they are today.
I am currently a lecturer in Māori health and development and Māori
health promotion at AUT University. I teach and learn with students about Māori
health, the impact of colonisation on Māori health status, and the influence of Te
Tiriti o Waitangi 8 on the re-emergence of Māori health initiatives. I teach Māori
and non-Māori students at all different levels of understanding about health
promotion and Māori concepts of health. Every class that I’ve taught has at
least five students in it whose outlook on life in New Zealand significantly
changes from learning the material. It isn’t traditional content, it is information
that is readily available to anyone who searches hard enough, and yet the
papers in Māori health represent a way of reconnecting or confirming their
sense about being Māori. For Māori and non-Māori alike, the information has
promoted discussion, debate amongst the peer group and transferred into home
discussion.
6 Kaiako = Teachers
7 Hoa Tāne = Husband
8 Te Tiriti o Waitangi = The Treaty of Waitangi
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