Strong in both worlds - giving effect to Te Tiriti o Waitangi

ALEX
Tēnā rā tātou e ngā taringa pīkari. Nau mai piki mai rā ki to tātou nei hōtaka ako. Ko Tangata Tiriti tēnei e mihi kau ana ki a koutou kei ngā hau e whā. E mihi kau ana. Tēnei tētehi o ngā manuwhiri kua tae mai nei nō Ngāti Maniapoto, nō Ngāti Mahanga. Nā reira e te mokopuna o Tainui waka, tēnei au, tēnei mātou e mihi kau ana ki a koe i tēnei o ngā ahiahi nei. Ka hoki ngā mahara ki te tongikura o tō tūpuna Rewi Maniapoto: Kia mau tonu ki tēnā, kia mau ki te kawau mārō. Whanake ake, whanake ake. Nā reira, ko koe tērā e te rangatira i roto i ngā tau nei, ko koe tērā e whanake ake, e whanake ake i ngā āhuatanga o ngā kura me ngā hapori whānui. Nā reira, e te tumaki, e te rangatira – kei te mihi tēnei o mātou o Tangata Tiriti ki a koe.

[Alex greets everyone listening on behalf of Tangata Tiriti. He introduces Robin Fabish who is from Ngāti Maniapoto and Ngāti Mahanga, a descendant of Tainui waka. Alex references a famous saying of Rewi Maniapoto: Kia mau tonu ki tēnā, kia mau ki te kawau mārō. Whanake ake, whanake ake – Let us hold fast to the thrust of the Kawau (Cormorant). Thrust forth together. He likens Robin’s work as a principal and in education over the years to that saying – always ‘thrusting forward’ (whanake ake) – striving for the improvement of the school and wider community.]

ALEX
It’s wonderful for all of you to have joined us today for a great conversation with my guy here, Robin Fabish. A proud descendant of Tainui waka and the embodiment of some of the taonga, the different proverbs, the different provocations that his ancestors have left us to really stay true and persevere for what is right. 

So today we’re going to have a good freestyle, a good organic free-range conversation, Robin, about how you interpret this idea of Te Tiriti-based leadership in a secondary school or school education generally. Kei a koe tērā, e te tuakana. So, for those of you who don’t know Robin, you’ll get to know him very shortly, but he is a Tumuaki [Principal] of Tamatea High School, he’s been involved in education for 20-plus years. 

He’s a proud pāpā, he’s Ngāti Maniapoto and Ngāti Māhanga connections and a lot of other connections around the world. He’s currently a PhD student at Waipapa Taumata Rau, University of Auckland. And his PhD is on Te Tiriti-based leadership in a mainstream secondary school. So when we were thinking about this programme of conversations, I thought this would be awesome to connect with you, Robin. 

I remember the first time I met you was in Kahungunu territory and really enjoyed the teacher-only day we shared. And since then too at Te Koroneihana and we’ve just stayed in touch so welcome, and thank you for your time. 

Kei a koe te wā e hoa, tēnā koe. 

ROBIN
Tēnā koe Alex, ngā mihi nui ki a koe nāu mihi mai ki a mātou nō Tainui waka. Tika tāu, nō Ngāti Maniapoto, nō Ngāti Mahanga hoki tōku whānau. He hononga ā whakapono hoki tō mātou ki Parihaka. Nō reira i te wā o ngā Pōrowhiti e rua rā ko Tohu rāua ko Te Whiti i haere tōku whānau ki Parihaka ki te tautoko i te kaupapa. Nō reira, he tino hononga tō mātou ki Parihaka hoki. Nō reira, mihi kau ana ki a koe.

[Robin thanks Alex for acknowledging his Tainui heritage. Yes, he is from Ngāti Maniapoto and Ngāti Mahanga, and he also has a strong faith connections to Parihaka. Robin explains that at the time of the prophets, Tohu and Te Whiti, his whānau went to Parihaka in support of their cause. Therefore, he also wants to acknowledge his connections to Parihaka as well.]

Thank you very much for your introduction and acknowledgements. And looking forward to this kōrero about leadership in our kura around Te Tiriti o Waitangi.

ALEX
You know what’s cool Robin is it’s hard to find people who get so excited as you when we’re talking about these issues. Most people want to run away when they think of Te Tiriti-based leadership. That’s why I’ve enjoyed connecting with you and getting to know more about your work and your whānau and what you do. 

So, let’s kick it off then with this key question: If a school were to come to you, a secondary school, a mainstream Pākehā school were to come to you and ask the question ‘you know Robin, how do we – what is this thing called Te Tiriti-based leadership? And how do we do it?’ What would you tell them?

ROBIN
I just want to acknowledge what you’re saying there too about most people wanting to run away from the Treaty, Te Tiriti, what whole stuff, you know because I know that space too. It’s only recently when I’ve had the time to actually get my head around, ‘Well, what does this mean?’, that I haven’t been running away or ducking and diving a little bit. And it is something that requires an investment of time to understand what it does mean. 

And so if someone came to me asking that question, I’d be interested to know whether you know what their motivation is. Whether they’re motivated by the moral imperative and therefore what understanding do they have around that? Or, are they motivated by the fact that the 2020 Education and Training Act requires or recognises that one of the primary responsibilities that boards and schools have is to give practical effect to Te Tiriti o Waitangi?

Because that can be – if it’s a kind of compliance, ‘Well we better do this because…’ – then that changes the pathway to follow, really. Because I don’t think you can have one without the other. Well, maybe you don’t have to deeply understand the legal requirements if you understand the moral imperative around Te Tiriti and giving effect to Te Tiriti in our schools. But I don’t think you can just follow the legal, without understanding why that’s important. So, I suppose that’s where I would start. 

ROBIN
Just to explain a little bit more about that perhaps, when I talk about the moral imperative… I actually really enjoyed an article that you wrote [see p3, ‘Our reading of Te Tiriti…’ ], you and your colleagues – I think it was published recently or late last year – and in there there was a little – it was talking about the conference I think you ran, and in there you talked about Te Tiriti and basically the five elements that it was about. We want to have a relationship, the first article is about kawanatanga, the second article about rangatiratanga, third article about mana ōrite and then the fifth part – I’m not sure if this is what you wrote but that’s what I have in my head, but it’s about recognition of religious freedom.

ALEX
Yeah, tika.

ROBIN
And that’s the guts of Te Tiriti, really. That’s what most of our tīpuna signed up to at Waitangi and subsequent places around the motu, and so if we’re wanting to give practical effect to that – and we’re not talking about the ‘Treaty’, because the ‘Treaty’ was a translation that said in some ways the opposite to what Te Tiriti is talking about. But we’re in a context now that the government recognises that Te Tiriti is the document that we’re wanting to give effect to. So therefore, understanding first of all those five things that are in Te Tiriti, so that’s what we’ve signed up for, and then taking the time to understand ‘So, what does that mean for us in our schools?’ because it took me quite a while to get my head around what it does mean. 

ROBIN
One of the things that really helped me with that is understanding Mason Durie’s kōrero. He’s basically saying that after thirteen years in public education, Māori graduates, we want them to graduate strong in te ao Māori [the Māori world], strong in te ao whānui [the wider world], healthy and prosperous. So, a good deep understanding of the Māori world, a really deep and strong understanding of the wider world, healthy and prosperous. I’m thinking who wouldn’t want that? Really to my mind, that’s what Te Tiriti was about. 

You fellas, we’re going to make sure that you still have everything that’s important to you in terms of your mātauranga [Māori knowledge and philosophies] and way of being in the world. We’re going to share our way of being in the world, we’re gonna make sure you’re healthy and prosperous so that everybody benefits. If I think about that, okay, what does ‘strong in te ao Māori’ for a graduate of our school look like, then start unpacking that. 

That gets to be really quite cool and exciting because how we’ve done that is we’ve talked to the students, we’ve talked to our whānau, we’ve talked to our hapū and we’ve talked to our kaiako [teachers] and said, ‘Okay, strong in te ao Māori, what does that actually mean? What does that look like?’ and sometimes they start off with ‘getting NCEA and going to University’ and you go well… maybe. Or is that kind of the Western framework? Because we want that but what about strong in te ao Māori? 

And it’s stuff like, to my mind, when my mokopuna have been through 13 years of education in a Kura Auraki [mainstream school], I would want them to be able to whaikōrero, karanga, set up the marae, do the hāngī, be able to explain about Matariki and the maramataka [Māori lunar calendar]. Know the pūrākau [stories], know their whakapapa [ancestry], know the kōrero about their waka and our tīpuna [history of our people and ancestors], be fluent in te reo and everything about that. Confident as a kapa haka performer – not that they have to, you know, it’s not as a measure of being Māori that you have to do kapa haka [Māori performing arts], but if I need to do a waiata tautoko [song in support], I can. Or if I need to pull out a haka, I can. I don’t have to be going to Te Matatini to be Māori, you know? But if that’s a pathway that I want to go to, I can go and do that. And so those are some of the aspects of what I would say would be ‘strong in te ao Māori’. And then, in te ao whānui, we want everything else too. We want it all for our mokopuna. 

So, to my mind, someone comes to me and asks me about that; first of all we’ve got to understand the moral imperative, understand the why, understand colonisation, understand racism and then know what ‘strong in te ao Māori’ looks like in their context. And then make that happen. 

ALEX
Kia ora. That’s awesome.

ALEX
What were some of the – when you were – I like that real practical element of ‘what does strong mean, in te ao Māori, for your local community?’ What were some of the things that came up for each group? Because you talked about young people, rangatahi, whānau, teachers? – I’m not sure whether they were involved in that process? 

What were some of the key things that came up there that surprised you or that – I mean you’ve already said that some come forward and say we want them to go to Uni and get NCEA, that’s a given, but you were saying yeah, kind of stretch that out. So, that whole process of asking is not naive, it’s not just a ‘we’re gonna go out and ask.’ There’s always gonna be a bit of a dance, a bit of tension going on there right ’cause they might come back with stuff that you might not agree with or…

ROBIN
No, that’s right.

ALEX
So, what did you notice?

ROBIN
I mean that they go to ‘get a good job’ and ‘go to university and get qualifications’, and I’m going well, yes, but to my mind that’s not specifically Māori. 

You know? It’s like – so you kind of take that away and say yeah okay we know that, but what does success as Māori look like in our context? Yes it’s NCEA, yes good job blah blah blah, but there’s nothing necessarily specifically Māori about those things. 

ALEX
You could do that in Australia, or Canada, or the States.

ROBIN
Exactly. So, then it comes back to ‘well, we’d like to be fluent in te reo. We’d like to be able to do the whaikōrero and the karanga [formal speech of welcome and calling people on to the Marae]. We’d like to be able to do the karakia. We’d like to know these stories about our tīpuna and our whakapapa and understand that.

Because a lot of our mainstream kids who look at kura kids who go ‘wow they’ve got the reo, they can do kapas and they can do all this stuff, and why can’t we have that too?’ I have this saying that – if I could wave a magic wand and make you fluent in te reo, would you want that? I don’t know anyone who would say no.

ALEX
I was working in a school a few years ago – 10 now – and we had a whānau wānanga with some young people, all Māori, rangatahi nei. And this issue came up: What is Māori? What does it mean to be Māori? We didn’t phrase it like you did, but this, it was quite a shock really to hear them say ‘we’re not Māori enough’ because we don’t do kapa haka, we don’t have a good waka ama team, our teacher’s only doing te reo once a week and she’s still learning, and the kids up the road, there’s this Whare Kura literally 15kms up the road – they’re the real Māori. 

What broke my heart about that was this whole notion about ‘what is a real Māori’ and this whole authentic notion of Māori – and how they – they even know they had whakapapa to that place, to that whenua, they were from the marae literally 5 minutes down the road, they didn’t feel connected enough to that place.

So, could you talk a little bit about in your school how you’re making that happen and connect to place because that’s one of the major things at the moment with the histories, Aotearoa histories curriculum, with place-based ed., with the changes, the review, it’s very much localising and placing it into whenua and what we’re learning from the whenua. What are you doing there in relation to that question? And bringing it back down to where you are?

ROBIN
I mean, there’s a whole heap of stuff that’s happening at our school at multiple levels which I think is important to get sustainable change. I was at a conference recently, the Secondary Principals’ Association New Zealand Conference. Ran a workshop on giving practical effect to Tiri… Te Tiriti in our kura, in our mainstream kura.

ALEX
Say it fast ten times! Te Tiriti, Tiriti…

ROBIN
I know!

And we talked about Te Tiriti and I said some stuff about what we were doing at our school and then shared a Google doc with them basically with a number of columns, different headings, and asked them what they were doing in each of those areas. The first column was ‘beliefs and attitudes’. It’s interesting that there was, I think, five or six comments in there about things like challenging deficit theorising, and people knowing that this is how we do stuff at our school. 

But I think one of the key things is that people have got to understand, deeply understand, the ‘why’ – like, understand the impact of colonisation and that the challenges that we have in society now come as a result of land confiscations and racism and policy that has said for a hundred and fifty years or more, ‘Māori are second best’. We carry that with us. So, I think to get change you’ve got to have people be cognisant of that’s the problem and that’s the issue that we’re addressing.

ALEX
I was just thinking that when people write ‘deficit theorising’, it’s kind of like we’ve read that, we’ve heard about it, but what you’re kind of saying is well why is there deficit theorising? What’s its root? Getting into some of the root causes of that, that’s what I’m hearing.

ROBIN
Totally. I saw Hana O’Reagan spoke at the conference and she took us on a journey from the Treaty through to… and all the major things that happened which stripped us of our land, dispossessed us of our economic base and then gave us all those messages about, ‘You know, you guys are pretty awesome for indigenous people, but you’re still second best to us British’. You know, the hangover from that now, we still see. So, we have to be conscious that that’s the context we’re in and those are the invisible forces that are pervasive. So, I think starting from that is really important.

ROBIN
Then the next column was looking at boards of trustees. What’s happening at that board level? And the strategic – yes, it’s good that you’ve got a iwi representative or a hapū representative or a Māori on the Board, but what does the rest of the Board know about the history of why we’re in this mess and therefore what we need to do? And about the Education and Training Act, about the NELPs [National Education and Learning Priorities]? Are they all aligned about ‘yes’? Do they get the moral imperative? And therefore are we allocating the resourcing that we need to give practical effect to Te Tiriti o Waitangi? Or is te reo three hours a week? Because that’s not going to get us to the promise of Te Tiriti. 

Then, looking at the leadership team, the Tumuaki, the Senior Leaders, a lot of them talk about ‘I’m learning te reo’, ‘I’m leading karakia’, ‘I’m using it’, which is great, modelling those kinds of things. And some of them talk about appointing Māori DP to lead this kind of stuff, which is great also, so long as there’s plenty of support. So long as it’s not ‘Well, there you go, Hone. You go and sort that out for us’. Everybody’s got to be in the waka. 

Then working through the teachers. Where are the teachers at with this stuff? And the curriculum. I was really interested in some of this data that I gathered. When we’re talking about curriculum, most of the principals wrote about, ‘We’ve got te reo’, ‘We’ve got Rumaki [Māori language immersion]’, ‘We’ve got compulsory year 9 and 10 te reo’, ‘We’ve got kapa haka’ – and that was it. And I’m going, ‘that’s a pretty narrow vision of curriculum’. And that’s not gonna get our kids strong in te ao Māori. That’s good. Yes, we like that, but what about the other curriculum areas, you know? 

In chemistry, are we learning about harakeke [NZ flax] in the dyeing process and how traditionally that worked, How we can analyse and explain it using the scientific – a Western scientific model. And that’s not to say that it denigrates anything, it’s just okay let’s look at the best of both worlds with that. Are we looking at that longitudinal Dunedin study? What’s the stuff in there about Māori that we can use to analyse as part of our learning about statistics? So, how can we use these contexts when we’re looking at te ao whānui? How can we overlap that with te ao Māori so that we’re accelerating the learning that we’ve got, in mātauranga Māori and mātauranga whānui. Yeah. So, I think those kinds of conversations are important. 

Then you’ve got the physical. How does the school look – Ann Milne has done some really good stuff around what she calls ‘auditing the white spaces’. Our phone message is a minute long and it’s bilingual. All our signage, our website, we’ve got te reo is everywhere, which is awesome. In some ways that’s an easy thing to do. It costs money but you’ve also got to make sure that it’s lined up with stuff happening in the boardroom, in the strategic plans and that’s all got to be lined up. 

And then looking at: How am I working with whānau? How are we working with hapū? What are our ākonga [students] saying? How are we using their voice to inform our programmes and what we’re doing? That’s probably a five-year plan at least.

ALEX
What were some of the challenges you’ve come up against in creating this vision, making sure that the vision is linked to action? That’s what I’m hearing. It’s great to have a bilingual website te mea te mea te mea [etcetera], or a whakataukī and a kōrero [proverb and a statement in Māori], which – I’ve looked at your website and it’s all there. But what you’re saying is make it actionable in the classroom through the pedagogy, through the content, so those rich learning conditions are there both for te ao pākehā, well te ao whānui pea, me te mātauranga Māori [the Pākehā world or rather the wider world and for Māori knowledge as well]. 

What have been some of the – maybe I’ll be more specific. Often when I’m working in schools, teachers come through with a couple of things. ‘Oh, I already do that. I already do it. I already integrate… [deliberately mispronounces] mātauranga Māori with Western science.’ I’m like, ‘Do you? Really?’

‘I already do it’ or ‘I’ve got no time’. Those are two big things that come up. I’m not sure whether those have come up in your school but what are some ways of addressing the challenges of trying to create a learning environment that you’re talking about. Getting the visibility, the public position alongside what’s going on in and outside of the class. What are some of the challenges and the opportunities? Because there’s opportunities in that too. If you won’t mind sharing some of what you’ve experienced.

ROBIN
I know some people talk about resistant people. People resistant to change and those kinds of things. One of my supervisors Deidre Le Fevre has written about: challenge that notion of resistance with the suggestion that people are risk-averse. Often fear is a big motivator for not jumping on the waka. 

So just like kids, right? Kids don’t want to get involved with learning because ‘I’m gonna look like an idiot’ or ‘I won’t be good at it’. So, the question that I have is: How do I scaffold our kaiako so that the steps are baby steps and they can succeed while they’re taking them? As opposed to the big leap that could look like they’re going to fall flat on their face and have – The biggest fear is that the Māori kids will laugh at them because they’ve tried something and it’s come across as… yeah. 

ROBIN
One of the things that I can say to illustrate that is you know, in briefing… We used to have a briefing every morning now we have it 3 times a week with the staff. In that briefing, we’ve learned waiata ā-ringa [action songs], to the extent now that there’s probably three waiata ā-ringa that our staff can jump up, without any notice, and perform as a waiata tautoko or a way of celebrating. So, maybe at an end of term assembly or at a prizegiving, the whole staff are up there showing that they can give appreciation in a way that is consistent with tikanga. We’ve scaffolded them to be able to do that. And that builds their confidence. So yes, I’m happy to stand up and do this. 

The te reo in the classroom is a bit more of a challenge because, walkthroughs we do, we don’t hear as much as we would like being used in an authentic way. That’s still one that we’re working on. I think it’s a combination of scaffolding and accountability as well. We need to be going in and saying ‘look this is what we’ve heard’ or ‘this is what we didn’t hear’ to bring that into consciousness. 

ALEX
So, you go through and do a walkthrough, you observe what’s going on and then you have a feedback conversation with the… You’ve created a culture where that’s quite normal in your school to go and share.

ROBIN
But having said that, the last few years with COVID and whatnot, we haven’t really done it. We’re aware that we need to get back to doing that to be having learning conversations focussed on those things. 

We’ve got three annual goals – one of them is giving practical effect to Te Tiriti o Waitangi, second is accelerated learning particularly in the junior school and the third is making sure that our leavers have meaningful pathways. And so with our middle leaders, I’m asking, ‘So what are you doing in your departments to realise those goals?’ I’m wanting them to – we’re wanting to coach them to work with the teachers in their departments. So, what are you doing in your classrooms to realise these goals? What support do you need and how do we share what we’re learning, what we’re doing, so that our students are getting the best of that.

ALEX
You mentioned something really important: this idea of scaffolding and baby steps. Not setting people up to fail. Because for many teachers, they might be totally new to what Ka Hikitia or some of the nice aspirations – in Aotearoa we’re good at putting out great ideas, but it doesn’t always necessarily land with great action because most people don’t know what Māori success as Māori looks like and things like that. So, I like that idea that you’re taking multiple little steps with some accountability loops in there, checking in and not in a moralistic negative way but in a ‘What are we doing?’, ‘What is working and what isn’t working?’ and ‘What next?’ It’s not brain science stuff really, is it? It’s human centred.

ROBIN
We want to model the practice with our staff, our kaiako and kaimahi [teachers and staff] that we would want them to use with our tauira, our ākonga [students, pupils]. So, it needs to manaaki them [take care of them].

ALEX
Have you had any pushback? Because I’ve been working in a school recently that is really addressing ‘The Big R’ – you know racism – in the teaching and pedagogies of the school. And they’ve had some teachers leave who became very defensive, did not believe the data we were generating from the young people from their discussions, from their sharing. They said we’re over it. They left! 

The principal talked about how these teachers who left were actually great teachers but obviously weren’t cutting it and were racist – in that they were making fun of the kids, they weren’t giving the Māori and Pasifika kids any – they were giving the Pāhekā kids more time, describing concepts, giving them the space to explore. Whereas for the Māori and Pasifika kids, they didn’t have that opportunity to go deep and weren’t given the opportunity to explore things further. So, some of those teachers left. 

I guess that’s part of the moral imperative, right? To actually go, ‘We don’t want that kind of… the put-downs, the making-fun-of, the inequitable way of teaching happening in our school.’ Some teachers and principals tell me, ‘We want everyone to be in this together’, but then when there’s a bit of shaking that goes on, they go, ‘We don’t want you to leave, so we’ll just stick with what we’ve got.’

ROBIN
I think as school leaders we’ve got to recognise that sometimes when you change the direction – whatever that means – some people might decide it’s not for them. And pai ana. And it gives an opportunity when we’re recruiting for replacements for us to explicitly say – and this is one of the things that we do when we’re advertising – one of our primary goals as a school is to give practical effect to Te Tiriti o Waitangi. We have a question in interviews about Te Tiriti o Waitangi. And if they talk about the 3 Ps, we go ‘Ooh, hang on! hang on!’

So, I think it just means that we’re wiser about those that we allow to join our kaupapa [cause]. 

ROBIN
One of the things that we’ve consciously done as a leadership team and with board support is recruit Māori and Pasifika kaiako and kaimahi where possible to the extent now that I think 45% of our kaiako are Māori, have Māori whakapapa [ancestry] and a little bit more than that with our kaimahi, with our support staff. That just means that our 50% Māori tauira population see themselves reflected in the staff. 

It means too that when we’re having conversations about racism and the impacts of colonisation, you don’t have the lone Māori voice in the room saying, ‘That happened to me’ and everyone else saying, ‘No’. So, yeah. It’s about being strategic.

ALEX
Yeah. Strategically hiring, being clear about what your vision is, upfront, having the discussion and then weaving it through the school. From the Board all the way through – or from the other way – whānau all the way through. That’s what I’m hearing too, it’s two ways.

ROBIN
The whānau representatives on our board – we’ve got eight members and I think five are Māori, which is great. It makes my job a lot easier. Because of the understanding that they have of what we’re trying to achieve for equity.

ALEX
Bring that to the table so to speak. Even within that, you’d get a spectrum. Most boards can be pretty dynamic places.

ALEX
Oh well, we’re coming up to the end of our time, Mr. Fabish. I just wanted to ask you: With the studies that you’re currently doing, where do you think the next step is? What are you seeing as next in relation to Te Tiriti leadership in schooling? What are you feeling or what’s interesting you at the moment? What are you wanting to explore at this point? And we know it’ll change over time, but just at this moment, what are you thinking of? What are you seeing and interested in?

ROBIN
For my doctorate, I’m establishing a whānau rangahau [research community] comprised of a couple of hapū members and I think, at this stage, seven school principals, a couple of primary and then the rest of us secondary principals from Ahuriri [Napier]. We’re going to engage in wānanga over a duration of a year and use a change framework, a mātauranga Māori change framework that I’ve put together to see if it’s a smart tool that can help our principals and also our hapū members to feed in or things that they can do to give greater practical effect to Te Tiriti in their schools.

ALEX
Awesome. Has that been done before? I think I know the answer to this but has that been done before, this kind of crew coming together, Robin? In a formal way like this? 

ROBIN
I don’t think so.

ALEX
No!

ROBIN
Certainly, the framework that I’ve developed is unique as well, so that’s pretty cool.

ALEX
Robin, the lights just turned on right then so he tohu tērā! Kua kā te rama. [It’s a sign! The lights came on.]

ROBIN
So long as the alarms aren’t going off at the same time, you’re safe.

ALEX
Wow! Well, that’s going to be fascinating to hear how that goes. I look forward to hearing that. If people want to get in touch with you, Robin, how do they do that? What’s the best way? Who are interested in this work and your studies and what you’re doing at your school. They can contact the school, I guess?

ROBIN
Just go on the website. My direct email is on the website. People can get in touch with me through our school website.

ALEX
Awesome. That’s awesome. Kei taku rangatira, e kore e ārikarika ngā mihi ki a koe mō ōu kōrero, mō ēnei take nūnui nei o te mātauranga whānui me te mātauranga Māori. Me pēwhea rā ka honohono me te whakaaro nui kia tū te ākonga i roto tōna ake mana i roto anō i tōna ake ahurea. Nō reira e te tumaki tēnā koe. 

[Alex acknowledges and thanks Robin very much for what he has shared, and for his ideas on how to connect Māori knowledge and knowledge from the wider world. He acknowledges how important it is for students to be able to stand strong in their own mana and culture.]

Robin, it’s been awesome connecting with you and just hearing the snippets – those are just snippets! – of what you’re doing and I’m looking forward to hearing more with your project and just in general around giving effect to Te Tiriti. I’m happy you’re not running away. I’m happy you’re encouraging discussions within your own local place and seeing what happens. It’s creative.

ALEX
Nā reira, tēnā koe kei taku rangatira. E mihi ana. You got anything you’d like to share with anyone before we finish our recording?

ROBIN
Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou e hikoi tahi ki a tātou, ngāi tātou te iwi Māori nā. Koinā noa iho. Mihi nui ki a koutou. [Thank you so much to everyone who is walking alongside us, the Māori people. That’s all, thank you all.]

ALEX
Whanake, whanake, whanake. [Keep moving forward]

Kia ora everybody. Thanks for joining us. And keep it wired. 

Kia ora.