Case study

Te Aho Tapu

What are the links between environmental integrity and the health, wellbeing and wealth of Indigenous communities?

Ensuring the sustainable management of our natural resources is increasingly becoming an issue of national and international concern, and understandably so.

In 2004 Dr Kepa Morgan embarked on a pilot project based around an idea of combining rammed earth technology with muka (flax fibre) – effectively integrating mātauranga Māori with science and engineering, to create low-cost housing solutions. The result was whareuku.

Associate Professor Leonie Pihama, from the University of Waikato led the project Tiakina Te Pā Harakeke, which was focused on looking at Māori childrearing practices within a context of whānau ora.

Te Pōhā o te Tītī is an online tool designed to help whānau keep track of annual muttonbirding harvests, and look after future populations of the manu. (http://www.titi.nz/)

In an expression of the growing application of NPM projects into digital and online environments, the project Te Pōhā o Te Tītī was initiated in 2012.

“To generate good health policy you need to ensure that the younger population doesn’t miss out.” THE FIRST STEP in fixing any health challenge is to understand what you most need to focus on, says Bridget Robson. For an epidemiologist this view may not seem surprising. But as Director of Te Rōpū Rangahau Hauora a Eru Pōmare (Eru Pōmare Māori Health Research Centre) at the Wellington School of Medicine & Health Sciences, the University of Otago, she has shown that the picture of New Zealand patient health can change quite markedly depending on the statistics you use.

“We are taking a strengths-based approach. So that teachers can go from where they are now to where they want to be.” AS EVERY CHILD knows, learning to read means first cracking a code. The next challenge is reading to learn – when you move from just identifying the words to extracting deeper comprehension.