Te Ao Māori principles of oranga

Marlane – So thinking about our paradigm shift again, we’ve called out that it’s grounded in Te Ao Māori principles of wellbeing, of oranga. So may be a good place to start is to just reflect on what is a principle.

Leland – You know it’s a real critical point to pause on, to reflect on, because you know in the social work terrain, one of the key things that stood out in my training was specifically around comprehending or understanding the principles guiding your practice. We’ve talked about it being a place where if you understand those it provides you with reasoning, theorising, and also conceptualising but that gives meaning to the type of work we’re engaging with, so that guides it.

Marlane – So you know a principle is a fundamental truth and when you join up all those truths you can do your theorising and your reasoning and they help keep you in a space that’s about being in the paradigm isn’t it. So the principles help you to be in the paradigm, so I’m just thinking for us in Te Ao Māori our principles come right from our creation and if I think of our creation story with Ranginui and Papatūānuku, at the time when their tamariki began to stir about wanting to see what was outside of their space, like tamariki do, Tāne Mahuta exercised the principle rangatiratanga. He set about weaving in that ranga way, weaving his brothers and sisters together, into collective thinking and so he was driving to another principle which is about collective decision-making. So right at the beginning there, the principles of rangatiratanga, and also whakamanawa, you know the rights of tamariki were being upheld in that process. So from right back, there is an example for us.

Leland – I think that people devalue the fact that Māori were quite a complex people and it's fundamental in our thinking, the principles or takepū that guide and allow us to understand more fully the world we’re living in. There’s one illustration for example, if you think about Tāne Mahuta in his role in gathering the family together, not only does that highlight their ability to be able to engage, like you said, or effectively meet with each other, but it started to also create tikanga in terms of the relationships between Tāne Mahuta and all his offspring and then there were illustrations or displays of manaakitanga that emerged out of it as well. I think that the most significant thing too is that there was a valuing of the languaging, how we use our language inside Te Reo. So all of these principles were like an illustration or manifestation of the use of principles.

Marlane – Because you know the principle of aroha is beautifully represented in that creation pūrākau as well because you know the aroha of the tamariki for their mother and they clad her in bush so she wouldn’t lay naked and the aroha for their father, Ranginui, they cast stars into the heavens so that he could look down on his wife.

Leland – The other thing I remember was that the children also turned their mother on her face, so her back was towards her tane so that they wouldn’t be seen everlastingly at each other, knowing fully well that they were in love with each other and couldn’t actually join. So there are a lot of metaphors embedded in that.

Marlane – Lots of principles. So I mean that’s just an illustration of when you’re using principles, you're working with several at one time. That the use of one principle, aroha, encourages the use of another, manaakitanga, encourages the use of another, kaitiakitanga, and so on and so on.

Leland – So they are not disassociated from each other, they’re actually bound together like you mentioned before.

Marlane – They are interconnected, interdependent.

Leland – Āe. Kia ora.

Marlane – Kia ora.