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Whakamutunga o Te Hui (Farewells)

 

 

[Video taping of the farewells was only partially successful and the back-up audio-tape record is sometimes indistinct.  We have indicated gaps in the record with dotted lines - Editors].

 

 

 

Michael Skerrett. (Kaiwhakahaere)

“Kia ora tatou. Kua tae mai te wa mo te korero whakamutunga o te hui nei.   Its time for the final talks of this hui and an opportunity for people to briefly say what they got out of this hui.  We should also thank our ringa wera - that’s the people with the hot hands.  ‘Ringa’ is hand and ‘wera’ is hot. ‘Ringawera’ goes back to traditional times when they cooked with umu and with rocks. Their hands were inclined to get hot, so hence the cooks are ringawera.  When everyone else is finished, your hosts will respond.  Kia ora.  The floor is open.”   Michael Skerrett

 

 

 

Peter Horsley

Kia ora tatou. First of all many thanks to Henrik, and to Ngäi Tahu for this extraordinary gathering at Murihiku. Guy Salmon raised a very serious challenge about how we have to look to our own traditions, our foundation points, Mäori and Pakeha, and to articulate values that can lead us forward. I think my experience has been that in these gatherings we actually have the ability to dig deeper than normal.  Where else do we share rooms for sleeping and for meals, and have the full embrace of all the experiences that make us truly human.  So I’d like to put forward a suggestion if this hui is willing to consider it, that we try and seek funding from some of the larger agencies, it could be Ministry for Environment, it could be DoC, it could be Landcare to have these hui on a regular basis. But it should be nga hau e wha - reaching out to the people of the four winds.  It began in the South - we should go to the West, to the North and to the East and perhaps eventually finish up in the centre, in Wellington.  Perhaps if that was done, by then the people in Wellington might be ready to hear us. Henrik and I had a brief chat and decided you would need about $25 000 for each hui to pay the way.  We know that this hui got a long way by using University resources. Do we want to consider a series of hui to keep up this dialogue on an annual basis, to really work these things through?  We could articulate some key themes and make each hui different.  But we have to really start to celebrate our local diversity and traditions and have this dialogue that really touches us and makes us think.  We must try and work to where we want to go as a society and culture.

 

 

Henrik Moller

Kia ora Peter.  Yes, we would need a fairly substantive putea to have regular hui happen.  FRST have contributed $8000 from our research budget to bring as many people as we could to this hui, but still there were many other people who couldn’t afford to come because of cost, particularly from the smaller iwi and from further North.  Many of the key people to have present are kaumatua who don’t have other incomes of a substantive nature.  I think most of the resources are needed to bring people together.  Otherwise we have used the research grant to keep the registration fee low so that as many manuhiri and tangata whenua could attend as possible.  It’s a guess, but somewhere in the region of $25 000 will be needed to make each hui self-sustaining.  I think it would be a wonderful initiative to have a regular meeting on these themes.

 

 

Sean Weaver

Kai ora tatou. I would really like to reiterate the sentiments that Peter has just expressed.  I came here as one does - knowing some faces and not knowing many others - and I feel I’m going away having met many new friends.  I go with a great injection of enthusiasm that I’ll take with me and which will last for a long time.  It would be wonderful for that fire inside my belly to not be able to go out and to be rekindled in a year’s time.  I would certainly wish to contribute towards that process in any way that I can to support this ongoing wonderful dialogue.  I see a great future in this kind of dialogue and I think that its a treasure that we can’t afford to let slide away.  Kia ora.

 

 

Davina Hunt

Kia ora tatou.  I think its wonderful that you are all discussing what’s happening next, but I am still trying to cope with what’s happening now.  To be honest I feel absolutely shattered. I feel like over the last two days, I’ve really been made aware of what’s going on in my own life, that maybe I’m not following the right paths that I thought I was and that maybe I have to shift tracks to get back on the right path. I know I have got a lot of work to do when I go back to my job tomorrow morning and back to my normal life.  I hope that all those others of you that also have a lot of work to do will follow it up.  Thank you for the opportunity to be here.

 

 

Oliver Sutherland

Tënä tatou katoa. Nga mihi whakawhetai ki a koutou te tangata whenua o tenei marae o tenei rohe. Tënä koutou mo o koutou manaakitanga ki a matou nga manuhiri. Nga ringawera, tënä koutou.  Tënä koutou mo o koutou mahi tino nui, nga kaitiaki o matou tinana mo tenei hui.  E Henrik me nga ‘mahi mob’, tënä koutou mo o koutou mahi tino nui mo tenei hui. I just want to pay a real respect and admiration to you, Henrik, for your vision and your immense effort in bringing all this together.

 

Just one last word.  As some of you might have seen, I have been around for a while and around the science community for a while. In my talk yesterday, I looked back over 25 years or so of efforts to bring Mäori and Western science closer together. I saw as one absolute watershed in that - a hui that was held at Rehua in 1988 on ethnobotany. And a number of the people here who have spoken were at that particular hui.  And I mention it because this is the first similar such hui since then. We’re talking 12 years later. Four really significant things came out of that hui at Rehua and I am suggesting that some similar things will come out of this one.  The things that came out of that hui at Rehua were firstly te hokinga mai o nga kumara - that was Del going off to Japan to bring back the kumara that DSIR had sent over there 20 years or so before. The second thing that came out of it, was the establishment of Te Wao Nui a Tane or the National Ethno Botanical Garden.  Again, Del was associated with that. The third thing that came out of it was WAI 262.  That’s where it started.  It started there and of course both Sana and Del were at that particular hui. And the fourth thing that came out of it, and in some respects one that is just so all embracing, was the Mataatua Declaration.  That is the declaration of Mäori ownership over Mäori intellectual property.  Now those four immensely significant things came out of that hui and I will be waiting to see four equally significant things come out of this hui because I think that we are all capable of it.  Kia ora koutou katoa.

 

[Waiata]

 

No reira tënä koutou, tënä koutou, tënä koutou katoa.

 

 

Del Wihongi

Ka huri to matou waka ki te haukainga. E koutou ma nga tangata whenua o tenei whenua, tënä koutou, tënä koutou mo te manaaki i a maua, a, i a matou ra i heke mai ki te hiku o te ika. Ka hoki matou ki te korero ki to matou iwi, i nga korero i tahia i konei. E rongo ana au te mamae o etahi o koutou, e rongo ana au kaore i tino mohio e au pehea nga korero. Ka rongo au I nga wahine e tangi ana. E tatou ma, kia kaha, kia manawanui.

 

I won’t translate that!  However, we are thankful to be here and we thank the organisers for having us.  More specifically the women that worked behind the scenes because we have a saying back North that if the people in the kitchen are not there, then nothing goes ahead and it always fall to the women.  Thank you for doing that.  We will take some of your oi back with us [laughter].  We actually asked in the kitchen whether we could have some and we are taking it back with us. 

 

There is real need for us today to have some thought about the discussions that we had.  Te Tiriti o Waitangi is the other term that you should be using instead of The Treaty of Waitangi.  Te Tiriti is the one that Mäori people signed, not the Treaty.  The Treaty is only a translation of what comes from Te Tiriti.  Every time you talk about the Treaty, you should say Te Tiriti o Waitangi because that is the real founding document, not the Treaty of Waitangi.  Thank you.

 

Mo konei tatou ma, e nga kaiwhakahaere. We had a very warm sleep last night and the night before too.  We go to all these meetings, and so we live in motels.  And we found that the last two nights we had the best sleep ever.  We really did because we were amongst your wairua and your people were looking after us.  That is the kind of talk that Europeans would never understand. We were here and cared for by your ancestors.  Mo tënä tatou ma, kia ora mai tatou. Ta tatou waiata.

 

[Waiata]

 

Huri noa e tenei.  Tënä koe Kaylynn. Kia ora huihui mai tatou.

 

 

Sana Murray

 

[Mäori speaking not recorded clearly – the Editors]

 

Hello everyone.  Its been a pleasure to be in your company for the last few days.  I thank all the organization, especially the cooks.  That is my favourite saying, whenever I go anywhere:  “as long as I have a kai and a bed, Nana is happy”. [laughter].  All you mokopuna that helped to serve us - it’s been really beautiful. 

 

As we fly up in the North, I am leaving my tupuna’s land for te hiku o te ika.  I am part of this area.  I’m still looking  for our tupuna from Waitaha o Te Waipounamu o Kai Tahu.  In saying this, its been really good to unite us all under the one issue of WAI 262.  No one owns anything in this wide world because it was created for us by the creator.  It is a pleasure for me to say this once and for all.

 

I leave your beautiful land with a lot of aroha and I go back to my blue-eyed, blonde haired mokopuna up there.  I remember what my mother said to me as a Mäori.  “Never forget that her father was a Pakeha”. So I do embrace you all no matter what nationality you are, because we are multi racial.

 

I’ve travelled those oceans where the kuaka was in flight.  Still I hope they won’t put laws on the kuaka so our mokopuna can all have a few of these beautiful birds to eat.

 

My daughter and Del Wihongi came down to help me.  I better hurry up.  They might leave Nana behind [laughter].

 

[Waiata]

 

 

Rau Kirikiri

 

[Mäori speaking not recorded clearly – The Editors]

 

I don’t always find it easy to translate what I’ve said in Mäori into English because a lot of the Mäori that I come up with is pretty gibberish and if I were to put it into English, it would be even more gibberish. [laughter] But there was some truths in what the two old ladies said before me.  To repeat what was said: if things aren’t right at the back, they’re not going to be right out front.  In other words, it is because we were so well looked after by the cooks in the kitchen, that we were able to accomplish what we have accomplished here up front in our talks and discussions. As part of the mark of this thing we call Maoritanga or whanaungatanga or whatever it is: until you are satisfied here [pointing to stomach], you are not actually going to be able to really express yourself here [pointing to head].  So I thank the cooks and those who have looked after everyone in here. 

 

Like Del and Sana, I have spent a lot of time sleeping in motels and hotels and whenever I can get the opportunity to actually sleep in a meeting house, I take it.  And I have slept in hundreds, not just a few, but hundreds of meeting houses.  There are very few meeting houses in New Zealand that I haven’t slept in.  I had never slept in this one before until the last two nights and I will say that I have not slept in one that’s been quite as warm as this one.  Not warm heat necessarily.  But we have been hearing people talk about the spirits, the culture of this place. I saw them.  I felt those spirits sleeping in this meeting house.  If you don’t actually feel the spirits while you are sleeping in a meeting house, you are probably better off going to sleep in a motel, because that’s what its about.  Its about being inside the people - and being inside the meeting house is being inside the people, being with the people.  So, Murihiku.  Kia ora Koutou.

 

Henrik, you and your team - thanks yet again.  You and I go back a wee while. I saw the gestation of this research programme.  I’ve seen it take its tumbles, its tripped here and there, but its always picked itself up and it has culminated in this wonderful hui.

 

I will also echo the point that Peter made about it when he said “Hey, lets have more.” As Oliver also said, this is the first of 12 years of this kind of hui that we’ve had since the 1988 one.  You have to ask yourselves why.  I’d even suggest that we come back here at least once every four years or five years or something like that.  This is where it started.  So if we are going to be thinking about having hui elsewhere, I think its a good idea that we ought to remember that this is where it started.  We need to come back here every now and then.  Come back and replenish ourselves with the spirit of where it all started.  That would be my only addition to what you were saying. Otherwise I hope we all go away from this feeling that we’ve achieved something, and as a couple of the report back sessions did indicate quite strongly ‘Lets do something now’.  We’ve done the talk, lets get out there and walk. 

 

Kia ora tatou. Have a safe journey home.

 

 

Speaker

Occasions like this always end up being sad.  People are crying because they are leaving.  I will have to make it a happy one.  Lets celebrate the fact that we’ve been here and celebrate the fact that we are going home.

 

[Waiata]

 

 

Tungia Baker

 

[chanting] Ki a koutou te roopu wahine kaha ki te whakahaere nga kaupapa, tënä koutou. Te roopu koutou katoa i tae pai mai ki te tautoko te reo i puta mai i tenei takiwa, tënä koutou.

 

It’s been my privilege to be in your company.  Thank you.  Ours has been the privilege to be in the company of someone like Sana.   She is the longest serving campaigner at this hui this weekend.  Without her initiative we might never have had the Treaty of Waitangi Act 1975 which created the necessity for this kind of conversation.  So ours was the privilege.  Thank you from the bottom of my heart for the size of the mental capacity at this hui.  I acknowledge that and celebrate it.

 

Kia koutou te haukainga, ka huri oku whakaaro ki te wa tuatahi i ako i te reo Mäori, whakahihi haere au ki te kuratini ki te whakaako etahi o nga roopu tino hiahia ki te ako i te reo.

 

When I was first learning the reo as a student, I was very up myself.  I went to Wellington Polytech to teach the others the reo.  One of the things I used to do was to take a new kupu into the room and try to teach it in te reo Mäori.  One of the words I took in one day was this beautiful word waiu and I took a milk bottle with me to try to explain what this word waiu was all about.  I couldn’t quite convey to them that this stuff here in this house now was what I was talking about.  So I made the whole class sit down, I’m going to ask you to do it yourselves. I said to them, “I want you to say ko enei aku u”.  So can you all say that?  Come on “ko enei aku u” [repeated by audience].  So you will know forever that these are your u and ko te wai o te u is the milk of your hospitality.  Nga mihi enei ki a koutou i whakaputa mai te waiu mai i Murihiku ki a matou.  So thank you for the warmth of your hospitality and the quality of the waiu.  They have kept us safe and warm and prepared to go home.

 

Kua tae te wa, ka huri te kanohi ki te wa kainga, kua rapopoto te korero. Its been great. Thank you.

 

Tënä koutou te haukainga, ka hoki nei au ki te wa, i tenei wa ki Paroa ki Mawhera ahakoa ko toku kainga ake ko Ngäti Raukawa Te Ati Awa ki Whakarongotai kei Waikanae.  No reira tënä koutou, tënä koutou, tënä ra tatou katoa and gibberish and gibberish and gibberish [laughter].

 

[Waiata]

 

I just want to clarify. The haka I did was a woman’s haka. It was designed specifically for women to reinvigorate the men when they came back from battle like this [gestures with finger drooping down - laughter] to make sure that they were standing up like that [gestures with finger up! Much laughter and clapping].

 

 

Carol West

Kia ora tatou.  Kia ora ki te tangata whenua o Murihiku.  Kia ora ki te ringawera mo te kai tino pai.

 

Its a privilege for me to currently live and work in Southland.  I feel part of this group of people and all the comments that have been expressed so far are great.  My very first hui was the one that Oliver mentioned that was held in 1998 at Rehua marae. Since then, I have been visiting the marae trying to learn te reo as well as trying to understand some of the issues so that we can move forward together.  I think if we can distil anything from this meeting, it is that essential element of trust.

 

So thanks again in English to the people that have kept us warm and happy. 

 

[Waiata ]

 

Finally, thanks also to Henrik for organising this hui.  I know its a big effort to organise a meeting like this and I think it’s gone really well.

 

 

Tane Davis

Tihei mauri ora, Ka tangi te titi, ka tangi te kaka, ka tangi hoki ahau.  Ko .. te manu, ... te ata, ka ao , kao ao, ka awatea. E te tangata whenua o tenei marae tënä koutou, tënä koutou. E nga iwi o  te, te, nga, nga hau..... tënä koutou katoa. Nga ringawera, nga wahine, kei te pai te kai, tu meke. Na reira, tënä koutou, tënä koutou katoa.

 

I’d just like to acknowledge the Rakiura Titi Committee: Stuart Bull, Ron Bull, Lesley Rewi, my mother Jane Davis, Margaret Bragg, Michael Skerrett and my cousin Shane McManus.  Shane came in yesterday straight from hospital to do the kaiwhakahaere and the time keeping work.  He had his tonsils out yesterday, but he could still ring that bell even though he wasn’t capable of doing any waiata.  Thank you there cousey, you done very well!  Morry Trow and Caroll Fife from Awarua are other members of the Titi Committee.

 

I want to give just a little bit of background about the work we’ve done with the Zoology team from Otakou, because I feel this is how this wänanga started.  Henrik came to us to study the titi, our most favourite bird, our tupuna, our manu and our mana.  I know I’m right in what I’m going to say because I feel it so strongly inside me.  It is the titi that’s brought us here because it is the titi that we go to harvest.  There are many of us titi harvesters here, those of Rakiura Mäori descent.  I feel it’s the titi that’s brought this all the way through.  Henrik’s come to us because he wanted to study the titi.  Now you people are here because Henrik’s gone to you.  He drew it to us, we are drawing it to you.  So I acknowledge our bird, our titi. 

 

I’d like to now thank Henrik and team for all the hard work they have done because they set the hui up really well.  Some of those team members come down to Putauhinu Island with us.  Of those who are here today, we’ve had Jamie Newman, Christine Hunter, Jane Kitson over here who’s a Rakiura Mäori and Maggie Atkinson who’s come down from Nelson.  There are many more.  It is good to see these people come back.  Some of them are field workers within the research and they’ve travelled far to come to this wänanga from all over Aotearoa.  My whanauka is here too, and of course there sits Margaret Bragg.  She is not the endangered species [laughter], but I will be if I don’t mention her moko, Cory Bragg.  He worked on the research at Putauhinu and has been studying with the Zoology team. 

 

No reira, tënä koutou katoa.

 

[waiata]

 

Tënä koutou, tënä koutou katoa.

 

 

Kelly Davis

E tu ake nei ki te mihi atu nei ki a koutou. Nga mihi atu nei ki a koutou te haukainga o Murihiku, mo o koutou manaakitanga i a matou kua tae mai i tenei wa. Tënä koe te rangatira, te pukorero o te marae nei, me o tatou ringawera o te wharekai. Kei a koutou nga mihi aroha ki a koutou mo a koutou manaakitanga ki ahau nei ki a matou nei kua tae nei ki tenei hui i tenei ra. No reira tënä koutou. Tënä koutou i a matou e noho nei i roto i tenei whare me a koutou whakarongo, whakarongo nga whakaaro o nga iwi o Ngäi Tahu, Kati Mamoe me Waitaha, me a koutou mamaetanga o te ao Mäori.  No reira tënä mihi atu nei ki a koutou, huri noa huri noa ki a koutou, tënä koutou, tënä koutou, kia ora tatou katoa.

 

I want to stand to first thank the haukainga for looking after us while we’re here and to thank the ringawera because that’s the precious part.  Without those people we don’t have a place to come, so I thank them.  Importantly, I also thank everyone else that’s come along to this hui to listen to us, as Mäori, to listen to the whakaaro that we have to present to you.  I’m hearing some very good buzzes sitting down there.  Yes, we should come back, whether its once a year, twice a year, it doesn’t matter.  We need to focus on “getting smarter and getting started” and I think we need to look at that in terms of first looking back and then going forward.  So your whakaaro is being reiterated in terms of what’s coming back.  Kei a koe.

 

I really would like to thank Henrik.  Henrik, we’ve knocked around together in many things in the past and I knew your passion for your vision about titi.  I wondered where it was going to go when it first started.  But I go along with my cousin Tane over here, because its te ao wairua o nga tipuna matua -  I have said it to you before - thank you for having the courage to bring such a hui together.  I think everybody else here does too.  The haukainga could have called this hui together, but I don’t think we would have had the people that we have sitting here in this room if Henrik hadn’t helped.  So my gratitude goes to you for having the courage to bring it together.  Ki a koe te rangatira. 

 

And I was very, very thrilled to listen to the whakaaro of my relation from across the water.  Kei a koe, Kaylynn.  Me o koutou hoki mai te wairua o tatou tipuna, i waenganui i a tatou i a tatou tipuna matou i konei.  No reira aku nei mihi ki a koe.  I would really like to gift this to you with the aroha and the manaakitanga of this hui and the wairua of our tipuna enshrined in this koha.  In this poha Piko is the wairua of our tipuna to take back to your ancestors. Kei a koe, haere mai. [hands over a gift of a poha].

 

No reira mihi atu ki a koutou kua tae mai i tenei wa, me a koutou poroporoaki i a matou nei te haukainga. Tënä koutou, tënä koutou. He waiata tenei. Me a tatou whakapowai nga whakaaro i a tatou , i a tatou huihui ake nei, he waiata tenei.

 

[waiata]

 

Speaker

We have just come through the last session and everybody is ready to go home.  Our people have a saying...[audiotape indistinct - something about wairua] ... We saw all these faces of the students and people in the Universities full of keeness.  Maybe this is the start for the next generation.  And of our iwi doing our best to give assistance so that our mokopuna, when they are ready in the next five years or so, to have the opportunity to make a better place for all of us.  When the time is right, these things will happen. For us all as a people, we’ve got issues as common.  We need to continue to talk to one another and get together because a hui like this attracts other people, resource people. ....   Sometimes we are sitting in our own work communities wondering how we are going to meet all the requirements that are put on us.  We need to unite and...  We are not getting any younger. [laughter]. ...  You know we say we’ve been oppressed for 150 plus years and they say to you, what’s another 150 years.  You take a deep breath.  But now is the time to take our place....  [then speaking in MÄORI]

 

[chanting]

 

 

Kaylynn TwoTrees

 

[speaking in her native language]

 

There is a song that we sing that says ‘friend do it like this and you will remember’. This hui reminds me of that song.  Our hands remember things that our brains don’t know and this is a gift from the hands of remembering.  So I know that our ancestors are having a good conversation right now.  I want to thank the hands and hearts that made this journey possible for my nephew and myself and that welcomed us here into this whare and made our sleep good and our stomachs full and our hearts warm and our brains grow.  Because I heard things that made me think new thoughts.  So I say [... native American]

 

[singing]

 

 

Henrik Moller

Kia ora tatou.  I have just been told that I get the second to last word! [laughter]  I don’t know where to start.  I am more than a little uncomfortable with all these “thanks to Henrik” when really I am just a frontpiece of the whole waka of the Zoology Department and in the titi project team.  The real power and energy and the science and the enormously hard work comes particularly from the PhD students.  Phil Lyver gave us a flying start.  We still have Paul and Christine and Jane here as key PhD students in this programme.  It’s true, the titi are calling people to the mahi.  We have Sebastian Uhlmann and Ilka Söhle, MSc students who came from Germany - young people coming all that way around the planet to help.  There have been a large number of students and volunteers now, getting on for 25 of them, that have helped in different ways in the programme over the past six years.  Tina de Cruz and Jamie Newman are the Postdoctoral Fellows that helped keep the show on the road.  Darren Scott has had a key role as field team manager.  Detta Russell, our Rakiura Mäori research assistant has put in the long hours of field work - but also she has been our guide and mentor when crossing into her culture’s landscape.

 

A big part of the work for the hui on the day to day running has come from those wonderful students from our Zoology Department’s Principles of Wildlife Management class who, together with the Titi team made up the ‘Mahi mob’.  They toiled on and, as I discovered at 3.00 am this morning, they drank on.  They were the last ones still standing [laughter].  And Ronda Peacock has been the anchor and conductor amongst the support team leading up to and during the hui.  Arohanui ki a koe Ronda.

 

It has been very special to have this conference on Mäori turf - to do it in a Mäori way.  The Titi Committee members usually have to come to scientific conferences of a very different sort to talk about their project.  Margaret Bragg and Jane Davis and I went to Montreal to attend the IUCN World Conservation Congress in 1997.  We had a great time in Montreal that’s for sure. But we had decided we would sing a song at the end of our presentation.  It wasn’t even a very long song! [laughter].  Jane Davis had her feet planted like this, and told the chairman, “I want to sing my song!” [laughter]. But we got shoved off that stage the instant we stopped speaking.  They won out that time by force of larger numbers - there were 2000 people at the Congress and we didn’t hear a single song all week.  Our hui here over the past few days has been a reflection of the reverse - of what happens when Mäori are in their home territory.  How wonderful to come to a conference where the speakers just sing or chant when they want to.  For me it broke up all the stodginess that one normally gets at a multicultural conference.  So I take my hat off to you and thank you all for your music, your joy and of course your tolerance in having us all here in your place.

 

I have learnt a few things about running a hui. I’ve learnt you don’t cross a Kuia.  I was told by Sana Murray’s whanau - “you are not to ring that bell at my mother” [laughter].  That instruction was passed on very quickly! [laughter]. 

 

I want to end by turning back to the Titi people and the Titi Committee in particular. We know about the long hours that they put in.  We often come down to meet them, sometimes after they’d already been going for half a day on their other work.  Then we would add another 3 hours to their hui.  They just work constantly to take back their rangitiratanga and to assert their roles in their rightful place, as kaitiaki in Murihiku.  They are unstoppable.  Directing the research has been a burden on top of all their other mahi.  So I am just passing on our thanks to the Titi Committee who chaired our sessions at this hui. 

 

We will sing one short waiata and then leave it to your hosts say goodbye.

 

[Waiata]

 

No reira, tënä koutou, tënä koutou, tënä tatou katoa.

 

 

Michael Skerrett

 

Kia ano tatou. Kua tae mai te wa ki te haere koutou ki o koutou kainga noho.  The time has come for you now to go home, but first I’ll just share a few thoughts about the kaupapa of this hui.  Henrik’s asks me from time to time for a few words of Mäori or guidance on tikanga and kawa.  When he asked me for a mihi for your information pack, I put in a welcome to you to this conference which I called He Minenga Whakatü Hua o Te Ao.  ‘Minenga’ is a really intense discussion.  Hua o Te Ao are “the fruits of the world”.  The mihi and name talks largely about sustainable management.  And then I put in the mihi ‘na te Mäori i karanga tui, tuia tui tuia’.  That’s really saying that this topic is just so important that the life force is going to attract you and then it will be all stitched together.  And out of that will come some results.  And see how it did attract you!  We started getting really frightened when the numbers of people registering started to mount.  But its all gone fairly well.  I really want to thank you for coming so far.

 

Nga tangata o tawahi,  the ones from overseas,  Kaylynn TwoTrees - thanks very much for coming.  E te iwi whanui, mai i Te Tai Tokerau ki nga parirau o Te Ika a Maui, ko Te Tai Rawhiti ki Te Tai Hauauru, puta ki te puku o te ika, whakawhiti i Te Moana o Raukawa ki Te Wai Pounamu tae noa ki a Murihiku. He mihi aroha ki a koutou.

 

What I was just saying then, was a thank you to all the people of all tribes for coming -  all nationalities, right up from Te Rerenga Wairua to the fins of the fish. That’s to people from the East Coast and the West Coast of the North Island and the merging of the head of the fish, at Wellington, then crossing Cook Strait to this Island of ours, Te Waipounamu, and arriving here.

 

I’m now also standing to respond to your thanks to our ringawera.  Well as you have already heard, without them we are nothing.  And while we are thanking them, we must remember the mahi mob that were really in there helping out too. They were terrific.  And one of the beautiful things about that is when they are looking after you people so well, guess what, I get looked after well too! [laughter] Kei te ora te tinana, the body’s well.  Kei te ora te ngakau, so the heart’s well too.  No reira ki nga ringawera, mahi mob, he mihi aroha ki a koutou.

 

This conference has come out of a working partnership between the Department of Zoology and Rakiura Ngäi Tahu whanui.  That’s been a big step along the road of biculturalism, and you can see that biculturalism working in this hui here.  The workshop I was in yesterday was on that subject: How to improve biculturalism in NGOs.  And one of the outcomes of that workshop was that Keith Chapple from Forest and Bird was really keen for heads of Ngäi Tahu and of the NGOs to get together to talk about this issue.  And then Maurice Rodway of Fish and Game mentioned the same thing to me.  So when we came back with our report to the hui this morning, one of the key outputs we wanted was that this hui endorses those next steps to make sure they happen.   Half of  you endorsed that this morning.  I hope the other half now agree.

 

One thing leads to another, doesn’t it?  This whole hui is an outcome of the partnership that we’ve had with Henrik and the Department of Zoology.  There’s such a lot that have been working hard on this project.  So I want to thank you Henrik and other people that are hard serving too, like Henrik’s wife Fiona.  So I want to mihi ki a korua. No reira, he mihi mahana ki nga kaikorero, a, pai rawa o korero e puta mai.  There were some really terrific presentations.  Mihi ki a koutou katoa, tino pai rawa. Pai rawa nga whitiwhiti korero. And wonderful discussions that went backward and forward.  So a very big mihi to all of you for the part you all played in those.  Also, kei te waenganui i a matou, tatou etahi tangata rongonui.  Amongst us there have been a lot of very well known people, quite famous people around here.  It’s been wonderful that this hui was able to attract them. 

 

Thank you all very much for coming.

 

No reira tënä koutou, tënä koutou, tënä koutou katoa.

 

[waiata - singing]

 

Before we finish we must always remember our ancestors.  No reira, he mihi aroha ki a ratou.  Apiti hono tatai hono, te hunga mate ki te hunga mate, apiti hono tatai hono, te hunga ora ki te hunga ora.

 

I will now close our hui with a very short karakia.  We open with one, we must close with one.

 

Karakia (a prayer).

 

 

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