Harris Puanaki-Devon | Te Arawa Whānui, Tūwharetoa, Te Rohe Pōtae, Te Awa Tupua, Ngāti Toa, Kāi Tahu
Tāne te wānanga
Nāu rā te karanga
Mā te hiringa i te mahara
E tūtuki ai
Engari i mahue
Atu nei rā ai e koe
Ko ngā whakawhiunga o wehe
A tauiwi e
Ka rewa ko ngā Toa
Te ope tauā o ngā hoa
Nāna te reo i ora
I puāwai ai
I hanga i ngā whare
O te mana motuhake
Te Huinga Rangatahi
E mihi nei e
Nō reira e ngā rahi
Hāpai ake ngā mahi
Kua whakatauirahia mai
E ngā iho pūmanawa
Tomo mai ki te whare
O mana, ō ākonga mate
Anei Te Huinga Tauira
E mihi nei e
Ka huri ki ngā Api, ngā Kapu, ngā Ruka, ngā Rangi
Te Ngoi o te manawa
Te Haenga o te marama
Te Ata-i-ngā-rangi-kaahu
Hei whakaRata i te Matiu
Kei ngāi wānanga
Tēnā koutou
Hutia te rito o te harakeke, kei whea te kōmako e kō? Kī mai ki ahau, he aha te mea nui o te ao? Māku e kī atu, he tangata, he tangata, he tangata. (Pull out the shoot of the flax bush, where will the bellbird sing? Say to me what is the greatest thing in the world? I will say the people, the people, the people.
From the rope that hauled up the North Island, to the piupiu adorning our kaihaka, to the woven walls of our wharenui, our pā harakeke symbolise the unequivocal strength of Ngāi Māori. The shoots represent our youth, the inner leaves represent our parents, the outer leaves represent our elders and the roots represent our whakapapa.
With roots older than the footsteps of our tīpuna and whakapapa longer than that of our uri whakaheke, the intergenerational knowledge intertwined within our pā harakeke represent not only our past, but also directs us into our future.
The tumultuous upheaval of our social, political and cultural landscapes in 2024 have had detrimental consequences which continue to perforate our Māori communities, our pā harakeke. However, as Māori it is important to remember that we are more than our colonisation, and the adjudications and statistics that have been superimposed over us through foreign laws.
Therefore, this piece is a celebration of Māori tertiary education, a reflection on the legacies of those who paved the way for Te Mana Ākonga, and the importance of pā harakeketanga.
Titiro whakamuri kia haere whakamua (Looking backwards into the past, to go forwards into the future).
Te Mana Ākonga is an outcome of the international protest movements of the 1960s, a decade that saw mass movements for feminism and black liberation, and against US wars. This period signalled an era of societal change in the wake of the world wars. These movements permeated throughout the Pacific and eventually arrived in Aotearoa.
Universities are supposed to be the critics of society, however, as Māori, we were often the victims of said critique. Universities and tertiary education were powerful tools of colonisation, employed to disseminate racist propaganda in order to further perpetuate Māori oppression. From universities came racist literature which published that Māori were unintelligent, unmotivated, unhealthy and unsuccessful. However, they failed to see that Māori were unwavering, unforgettable and most importantly, undefeatable.
The reign of colonial education systems and colonial supremacy began to erode as Māori entered into tertiary education. This was the birth of the pā harakeke of Te Mana Ākonga.
Ko te waka hei hoehoenga mō koutou i muri i a ahau, ko te ture. Mā te ture anō te ture e āki. (The canoe for you to paddle after me is the law. Only the law can fight the law).
This whakatauāki is from Te Kooti Arikirangi, and notes that Māori need to utilise the tools and systems which were weaponised against us in order to benefit our own. This was recognised by our predecessors, who fought for the right of Māori to succeed in higher education.
The Te Mana Ākonga anthem, written by former Tumuaki Te Wehi Wright, acknowledges some of the iho pūmanwa who have contributed to Māori culture such as Tā Apiriana Ngata, Ruka Rangiāhuta Broughton, Kuini Te Atairangikaahu and Matiu Rata.
The gateway to tertiary education for Māori was the polytechnics, as they offered an alternative route to tertiary education other than universities. Polytechnics specialised in skills-based teaching, which benefitted Māori as they migrated into the cities during mass-urbanisation, in order to support the labour backbone of the economy. However, this exposed the poverty of Māori education in the tertiary curriculum, as Māori content was not taught at the time.
As Māori eventually progressed from the polytechnics and into the universities, this movement ignited a wave of decolonisation within tertiary education. The fight for equality led to the establishment of our Māori tertiary protest groups, namely Ngā Tamatoa and the Reo Māori Society.
Succeeded by them were our Māori Students’ Associations from each university. Te Rōpū Māori from the University of Otago, Te Akatoki from the University of Canterbury, Te Āwhioraki from Lincoln University, Ngāi Tauira from Victoria University, Te Waiora from University of Waikato, Tītahi ki Tua from Auckland University of Technology and Ngā Tauira Māori from University of Auckland and Te Tira Ahu Pae from Massey University.
Our ancestors fought for a language they did not get to speak, for classes they did not get to attend, for us to attend the very universities which persecuted and excluded them. They did not get to reap the fruits of the seeds which they planted, they missed out on the flourishing of their own pā harakeke. Therefore, the fight for our pā harakeke is a never-ending journey, and it is our role as members of our pā harakeke to ensure that it continues to flourish.
Ki te kāhore he whakakitenga ka ngaro te iwi (Without foresight or vision, the people will be lost).
The importance of a collective vision was highlighted by Kingi Tāwhiao, our second Māori King. In the same way that our mats are woven, many individual strands combine together to form a collective. The collective vision of Te Mana Ākonga is a decolonised, barrier-free tertiary education system which honours Te Tiriti o Waitangi.
At the end of last year, we were presented with a question from a kaumātua: what happened to the protesting tauira Māori?
What happened to the marches from the top of the North to Paremata? What happened to those who collected 30,000 signatures for te reo Māori? Are we too comfortable conforming to Pākehā paradigms of consultation, limiting ourselves to boardrooms, offices and council chambers?
Te Mana Ākonga comes from grassroots activism; therefore, to honour our history, we have returned to our roots: Māori protest. Unapologetically we have stood in support of Te Tiriti o Waitangi, Palestine and all other indigenous students throughout the world. We have targeted Māori student housing, Māori homelessness and the winter energy subsidy, as well as the public transport subsidy. And we continue to advocate against all judicial and legislative avenues of the Government, which continue to undermine our mana Māori motuhake.
The theme of our Te Huinga Tauira this year is ‘Toitū Te Tauira Māori’. Our theme recognises the inherent strength required by Māori students to contribute to a system which has taken so much from us, in order to ensure that our future generations do not endure the same struggles that we face—just as our ancestors did for us.
For too long, generations of Māori families have been deprived of the right to tertiary education, a perceived public good that purports to support all. Our future pā harakeke will boast lineages of Māori scholarship that are so deeply entrenched that the first in-family graduate will be the exception, not the norm.
The end goal of Te Mana Ākonga is to not exist anymore. To have empowered our students so greatly that there is no need for advocacy because tertiary is truly equitable. One day, there will be cohorts of Māori students entering Universities unaware of an exterminated predetermined fate, with the only worry that they carry being which of the plethora of degrees will they choose to flourish in.
Stand strong te reo Māori, stand strong Te Tiriti o Waitangi, stand strong te iwi Māori,
And forever and always,
Free Palestine
Kia tau iho te tōmairangi a te wāhi ngaro ki runga i a tātou katoa
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