30 years Birthday of Te Wananga o Aotearoa

30 Year celebration of Te Wananga o Aotearoa

This week marks the 30th year of Te Wananga o Aotearoa which is an indigenous institution of higher learning for Maori and all peoples from every nation. It also boasts in being the 2nd largest tertiary institution in NZ (in terms of student population).


It has been a real privilege and a great learning curve for me to have experienced working and transforming my educational philosophy within an indigenous tertiary educational setting.


It was back in the late 1990s that I had the opportunity to visit UBC the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada and there I was really amazed to be amongst PhD students critiquing main stream education and paradigms in society that had been quite detrimental to them as First peoples nations in Canada.


At the time, I wasn't aware of the movement of Maori to set up alternative university type settings and now in working in one I can say that it has been a blessing to see things very differently to the perspectives that I was educated in at the University of Auckland and most recently at AUT University.


The privilege I see is that my perspectives have changed in that through Te Wananga o Aotearoa's principled approaches, I see through 5 different perspectives:

1. my spiritual lens as a evangelical 'born again' Christian
2. through Maori principles of Takepu (Taina Pohatu)
3. my own cultural lens as a NZ Samoan (hence the Samoan classes continuing)
4. through the lens of other cultures of my colleagues/students
5. through western mainstream paradigms of thinking/theories (my past mainstream educational experiences as a student and educator)

These perspectives were not all embraced or understood in any of my prior schooling experiences growing up in Mangere, in being a student then a teacher in South Auckland schools and even when working on Ministry of Education contracts for many years or/ and as a post graduate/tertiary educator.


These things I wish to challenge our mainstream education system about in that in embracing and learning through these (at least) 5 perspectives our Pasifika students would particularly become even more confident in who they are, in what they bring and in how they can make a positive difference in NZ society.


It's a University paper that I'm thinking about writing sometime in the future... but now right now I still have some of my own stories to write first.


Malo le taumafai Te Wananga o Aotearoa ua fati le faiva... Happy 30th Birthday with many more to come...