Ki te Hoe – A Personal Perspective

By Ken Whitney, Board Chair of Philanthropy New Zealand, Tōpūtanga Tuku Aroha o Aotearoa

Recently Philanthropy New Zealand launched its Ki te Hoe capability building framework to support funders to engage with Māori in a meaningful and mana-enhancing way. This insightful resource has been carefully composed by its skilled authors. The journey that the PNZ board has been on to improve its own relationship with Māori may also be of interest to others contemplating a similar course.

Many organisations say in their mission statements that they honour Te Tiriti, but do they really and what does this mean? For a long time we have had the right words in our strategic plan but somehow they seemed to lack conviction. It was time to take a fresh and focused look at honouring our commitment.

PNZ is fortunate to have a diverse board which is informed by Te Kāhui Pūmanawa, and our special relationship with mana whenua, Te Āti Awa, now represented on our board. With their guidance we began our own Ki te Hoe journey, first with a hui which included our board members, Te Kāhui Pūmanawa and mana whenua to explore what a good relationship might look like and what principles might underpin our understanding and realisation of Māori aspirations. We followed this up with a very moving couple of days at Waiwhetū Marae in Lower Hutt where we learnt first hand of the tragic colonial history that is still raw and painful to our hosts. We were humbled by the generosity of Te Āti Awa in welcoming and encouraging us on our voyage of discovery. I found it an enriching experience and would encourage others to take a similar path to understand and embrace Te Ao Māori. Indigenous knowledge has stood the test of time and has much wisdom to teach in returning us to our core values and taking a long term view.

We asked ourselves how can we embed this experience into our organisation? A good starting point is to adopt a values-based approach and put relationships before resources. It takes time and sustained effort to win trust and develop a true partnership, but nothing less will suffice. Like life itself, a thriving relationship with Māori involves an ongoing process of learning, listening, reflection and reciprocity, graced with humility and respectfulness. There is a joy in co-creating new ways of working together which draws on diverse strands of knowledge to find robust and inclusive solutions to our nation’s problems. By incorporating Te Ao Māori and its core values into our work we can breathe life into that rich and uniquely Aotearoa model of philanthropy that we are striving for.