Cost of reconciliation: Iwi face financial burden with new histories curriculum

Friday, 27 January 2023

Military barracks, photographed in 1870, were built on top of Marsland Hill during the Taranaki wars.

The new Aotearoa New Zealand Histories curriculum will be implemented in schools this year, but is the country ready – and who will bear the cost? Federico Magrin reports.

The kākā chief

In the second half of the 19th century, Pūkākā Pā was levelled down by several metres to accommodate the needs of British settlers in Taranaki.

The green hill dotted with red pōhutukawa flowers has always been a strategic outpost in New Plymouth.

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Damon Ritai, one of the leaders at Ngāti Te Whiti, is the Māori educator Taranaki schools go to, to learn local stories.

The name of the hill comes from the call of kāka, because during the 15th and 16th centuries, Pūkākā Pā was a place where you could still hear the bird’s call.

There are not many educators who know this story, but Damon Ritai (Te Atiawa, Ngati Te Whiti) is one of the few who does. He is the person local schools go to, to learn local stories.

Pūkākā Pā, sketched in 1842, when the top was still intact.

Ritai is certain about one thing: the stories have to come from the local marae, local hapū and local iwi.

Pūkākā Pā is just one of the thousands of places filled with stories ripe for the telling, and the new Aotearoa New Zealand Histories curriculum represents a chance for these stories to finally be told in schools – but teachers and Māori are being asked to learn and build these stories with insufficient resources.

The Ministry of Education has been working alongside 43 iwi and hapū across the country and has spent around $3.85 million to create 124 pūrākau (stories). Developing ancient histories from their original oral form has been a strenuous job for Māori educators, and the $3000 licence fee paid to storytellers has seldom been enough.

Dean Jay Ruka says Te Whare Hononga will play a central role in educating teachers in Taranaki.

The missing metres on the top of the hill were the fortress of Ngā Pōtiki-taua hapū says Ritai, a former school principal who is now the Māori achievement collaborative iwi liaison for schools in the rohe. The kākā was a bird that had been a symbol of Ngāpōtiki-taua rangatira, so the place where the chief resided was to be called Pūkākā.

Ritai’s voice is sonorous as he narrates how Ngāpōtikitauā, which he describes as a “hybrid tribe”, occupied the site. Only the terraces have remained. Everything else has changed and cars can be heard running on Carrington Rd past the base of the hill.

The occupation of the pā site was significant back in the 1700s, as the hapū on the hill would hold an advantage over other tribes. But the vantage point didn’t always play a major role. When Waikato tribes descended on Taranaki in 1832, seeking revenge for the battle of Motunui in 1822, the people staying at the Pūkākā pā fled and went to Ōtaka Pā – a settlement closer to the shore in what was soon to be renamed New Plymouth.

Ritai describes Māori history as full of significant migrations, treaties and battles.

Stories from mana whenua will be told at Te Whare Hononga in Taranaki.

Since the 1800s, Pūkākā Pā has been known by a different name: Marsland Hill. What is now a reserve in the heart of New Plymouth, was a military outpost during the Taranaki wars.

The legacy of the British Empire looms over New Plymouth.

The British name came from an officer, John Marsland, who had no connection to the whenua. The combination of early Māori fortification and subsequent British colonisation up that hill is an example of how the history of New Zealand is not an easy task to be taught.

‘Reconciliation is a journey, not a destination’

Coastal Taranaki School principal Scott Walden say local schools have banded together and collaborated to tell the same Māori stories.

At the bottom of Marsland Hill stands the stony Taranaki Cathedral Church of St Mary. The man responsible for looking after the site is Dean Jay Ruka (Te Ātiawa, Ngāti Mutunga), who describes Pūkākā Pā as a textbook example of what not to do in terms of reconciliation.

Ruka has been working with Ngāti Te Whiti and Ritai to learn and teach local stories from a tribal perspective. He has been the dean of cathedral for the past 18 months, as well as the director of Te Whare Hononga – The House that Binds, a new education centre that was recently unveiled next to the cathedral. The centre is likely to play a role for schools in the new curriculum.

Next year, after Te Whare Hononga is fully working, the centre will train teachers by supporting mana whenua to tell their stories.

A painting by Emma Wicksteed in 1843 depicts Pūkākā before 40 feet were taken off the top in 1855, to be levelled for military barracks.

Ruka says importing new ideas without an adequate conversation with mana whenua is a recipe for disaster. Especially ideas charged with the religious motifs for which he is responsible. The cathedral, a religious symbol reflecting people from another land, was built without consultation with iwi in 1846.

The tall, slim dean is wearing a pair of sneakers and a hoodie, and his grey hair belies a relatively young age. Ruka represents a generation of Māori who have come to terms with their ancestral path, after too long spent away. When he was living in the UK, more than 15 years ago, he began thinking about his heritage as Māori. A sense of belonging had grown within him – he had to come home and embrace his Māoritanga.

The enlightenment resulted in a change of name, from Jay Lucas to Jay Ruka. His great-grandfather had to change his name from Enoka Ruka to Robert Lucas during World War I. Reconciliation with his past for Jay Ruka meant adopting tikanga and understanding the depth of te ao Māori.

Dr Ruakere Hond says connection with iwi and hāpu were vital for schools.

“Reconciliation is a journey not a destination. You don’t necessarily arrive at a point of being reconciled, you arrive at big milestones, you arrive at some pretty big moments in time.”

The history curriculum is one of these big steps.

Local stories from iwi archives will now help students gain an understanding of the past. Primary and secondary students will hear about the history of Aotearoa New Zealand from teachers and educators – and iwi and hapū have been at the centre of this change.

‘We are developing the content for our own people’

Coastal Taranaki School principal Scott Walden (Te Atiawa, Ngāti Haupoto) says schools are places where civil society can meet iwi and students can learn tikanga. Telling local histories is a necessary step to shape the future of the country, he says, and mana whenua and tangata whenua must be prioritised.

Schools in the area have collaborated to create a network called Te Ara Taiao. After meeting with hapū and iwi members, all the schools which are part of Te Ara Taiao agreed to tell the same Māori stories.

Academics and teachers around the country back the change which started last week, but some add that whether it’s successful will depend on grassroots application.

“The big idea is so courageous, but it’s the next level down that counts. The implementation on the ground,” Midhirst School principal Graham Sands says.

Ngāti Toa education advisor Bianca Elkington says iwi around the country will need “millions” to keep the Aotearoa histories curriculum going.

He is also the cultural lead of Te Kāhui Ako o Taranaki Mohoao. Based around Stratford, the group is one of many localised networks of teachers (Kāhui Ako) co-ordinating this change and looking for authentic stories coming directly from iwi.

Speaking to Stuff in June last year, Taranaki Māori educator Dr Ruakere Hond said that although iwi and hapū had preserved local, oral stories intact for centuries, at the end of the month, schools will be trusted to tell these stories to the next generation of New Zealanders – and therefore connections with iwi were vital for the new curriculum to be rolled out successfully.

But none of the schools spoken to received extra funding to pay iwi.

‘We are talking millions’

Iwi and hapū around the country have been working closely with schools. Some had long-lasting relationships because they anticipated this moment would arrive. Some didn’t, quite often as a result of a lack of workers.

In 2019, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Minister of Education Chris Hipkins said any extra funding for the Aotearoa histories curriculum was unnecessary.

Ngāti Toa Rangatira is an 8430-member-strong iwi situated within an urban environment. It has been establishing relationships with local schools in the Porirua region and those connections date back to the early 2000s.

It is time-consuming and expensive work, and while teachers will be paid to learn the new history curriculum it’s less clear what value will be placed on local iwi and hapū who share their indigenous knowledge with those teachers. In many cases, there’s an unspoken expectation that iwi will donate their time and resources as a kōhā to Aotearoa.

Ngāti Toa education and employment lead Bianca Elkington says she’s been reassured by the experience with Aotea, Mana and Tawa colleges, but adds that iwi need proper support to help develop local educational resources that are respectful of mana whenua.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has unveiled New Zealand’s new history curriculum, which is set to be rolled out in all schools next year.

“It is of the foremost importance to know who is in front of you,” she says.

Conveying local stories and setting an educational arm is not piecemeal. Ngāti Toa connected with schools thanks to the whānau and the teachers that joined the iwi with knowledge around the educational system, says Elkington, and iwi in densely populated areas will need “the proper amount of money” to deliver the history curriculum on a long-term basis.

The funding would enable iwi to hire knowledgeable, local Māori, who would then work alongside schools to give a mana whenua perspective.

NZ History Teachers’ Association chair Graeme Ball has contributed to the draft of the curriculum but says iwi will need support.

“We are talking millions,” Elkington says.

The Ministry of Education has funded short-term contracts to support the creation of books that contain localised stories, but challenges will arise once long-term investments are required.

“The Ministry of Education should invest into the developments of those resources long-term, and support iwi in particular to have a plan to produce resources continuously,” Elkington says.

“Those shouldn’t come out of the ministry, they should come from the local people.”

A possible solution, Elkington says, could be the establishment of a fund that could be distributed to iwi annually. In the case of Ngāti Toa, it would be close to $1m per year, which would allow them to fund a functioning education machine.

Minister of Education Jan Tinetti said the curriculum made it clear how diverse communities’ histories should be included in teaching and learning.

The biggest expenses would be employing staff and connecting with schools, hiring the right premises, designing the books and training teachers.

However, teacher training remains a contentious subject.

No systemic funds

In major projects such as the new history curriculum, there are no systemic funds flowing to iwi.

Aligning teachers’ knowledge with the old-but-recently-unveiled oral histories is an immense job. Professional development for teachers and ongoing training on the new history curriculum was one of the biggest challenges the ministry faced when it launched the new curriculum in 2019.

At that time, in a joint press conference, then Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and then Minister of Education Chris Hipkins deemed unnecessary any extra money for the implementation of the history curriculum. The ministry had to use the money it already had.

But in April 2021, $22m was allocated to the history curriculum over a four-year period from 2021 to 2025. On top of that, the ministry has contracted companies to develop training programmes for teachers.

May Road School principal Lynda Stuart says Aotearoa New Zealand “must be prepared for the future, by going back into the past”.

Networks of expertise such as the New Zealand History Teachers’ Association and the Aotearoa Social Studies Educators Network have started receiving money to train teachers, with online sessions and face-to-face courses delivered to up to 700 teachers at a time, says association chairman Graeme Ball.

Ball contributed to the curriculum draft and is satisfied with the work done, although he says the combination of changes in the curriculum at the same time as changes to NCEA might have frustrated a few people.

Ball, who is also head of social sciences at Northcote College in Auckland, says the ministry is aware iwi need support, but he is glad professional development has been funded over the past year.

Others in the education sector are not so sure. New Zealand Education Institute – Te Riu Roa union chair Liam Rutherford says most schools are still “coming to terms” with the impending change.

The War memorial on Marsland Hill rests amongst wild fennel and onion weeds.

“It’s not simply about giving a curriculum document, or one afternoon of professional development.”

He says the ministry has done a great job in communicating its expectations to start at the end of the month, but Rutherford, who chairs the country’s largest education union, says teachers have been grappling with classes of over 30 students.

Professional development for the new curriculum should not be treated as a flash-in-the-pan success story, he says, and teachers will need five hours of paid time every week to learn how to implement it correctly.

Rutherford argues implementation of the curriculum has to be done on a longer timeframe: “we should avoid putting a date and treat it as a tick-box”.

Curriculum Leads, from within the Ministry, have worked with schools to help connect with appropriate support, such as professional development.

In an email statement, Minister of Education Jan Tinetti considered the $3m allocated for the creation of pūrākau and the development of ancient histories from their original oral form sufficient and encouraged schools to build longstanding relationships with iwi and hapū.

“Schools are encouraged to find ways to create productive partnerships with whānau, hapū, and iwi on a regular basis. However, this influx of interest from kura and schools can be burdensome for some iwi and hapū organisations. While the Ministry of Education have people that can help schools to connect with iwi and hapū it is recommended that kura and schools seek support from their community and from groups such as Kāhui Ako/ School Networks and communities of practice.”

She reassured teachers, who were “implementing Aotearoa New Zealand Histories into their learning and teaching programmes”, she will “continue to monitor the implementation of ANZH and Te Takanga o Te Wā to understand the opportunities this work provides to them and to identify any issues (including funding) which need to be addressed”.

The Minister said the curriculum made it clear how diverse communities’ histories should be included in teaching and learning.

But wouldn't significant funding be needed for major projects such as the new history curriculum?

Last year, Treasury chief accounting adviser Ken Warren wrote a research paper for Victoria University’s Policy Quarterly Journal suggesting a design change for public sector funding.

Projects should be funded based on the mana of the collective that would receive the funding, Warren said, which he called a “collective operating model”.

Meanwhile, some schools still need to build local relationships with mana whenua but have no funding to offer as koha.

Past, present, future

One school has found a creative solution to the lack of specific funding.

The demolition and replacement of a building in Auckland’s Mount Roskill was the starting point of a relationship between May Road School and Te Ākitai Waiohua, and Principal Lynda Stuart says the new design will incorporate stories from the iwi.

“We are in the present, but we must be prepared for the future, by going back into the past.”

When a team of archaeologists found a midden, they realised the site had been the home of a small hapū in the 1800s, and Stuart says May Road School shows there is no one way to learn the stories of local iwi.

Back on Marsland Hill in New Plymouth, archaeological excavations were carried out by Roger Fyfe in the 1980s to classify the site as a historical reserve. Now, a green tongue of lush vegetation runs up the hill to the observatory atop Pūkākā Pā.

The excavations found fragments of glass, slate, buttons and bullets from the military establishment atop the hill during the Taranaki wars. Remnants of a past buried under layers of clay and dirt; a discovery that helped build a clearer understanding of New Plymouth’s history.

Now, Aotearoa’s understanding of history will be further enhanced by the new curriculum, although it is not yet clear who will bear the full cost of this fundamental change.

One message is clear: it’s not fair to ask tangata whenua to pay for schooling tangata Tiriti.