April 13, 2021
Pandemic shows need to tino rangatiratanga
The executive director of Te Pūtea Whakatupu Trust says the response to the pandemic shows why Māori need to drive their own economic and social development.
The trust, which is funded from the Maori fisheries settlement to promote Māori education, training and research, has commissioned two independent research reports on how COVID-19 has impacted Māori from education and economic perspective.
Te Pūoho Katene says they identify how long-standing inequality affects the ability of Māori to withstand such shock.
The Māori response through tikanga-led action such as iwi checkpoints and the distribution of kai and hygiene packs shows how Maori can get on top of the problems by harnessing their own collective sense.
"For a change, whether it be in our education system or in our wider Māori society, for that change to be sustainable in our communities, that has to come from us, and it must to be organic and native to us, so those changes need to be authentically and unapologetically Māori in both design and execution to be sustainable and intergenerational, and that is not something the government can give to us," Mr Katene says.
Te Pūoho Katene says to generate the kind of shift from low to high skill jobs needed to put Māori on the path to equity, the number of rangatahi Māori leaving school with university entrance needs to more than double to 3800 a year.
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