Iwi Connect

Waka Huia - Ngāti Kauwhata

Waka Huia is an iconic archival documentary series recording the unique stories and histories of Maori for all New Zealanders.

Poi Making

We were fortunate to have Pania's daughter Aorangi come into school to teach our seniors to make poi. After some learning from this event, we decided to hold a staff meeting for parents and staff to learn to make poi in order to support our juniors.

On Tuesday 15th November, Pania and her husband Damian supported the staff and parents to make poi in preparation for the two junior poi making workshops on Thursday 17th November.

The following photos are from our staff and parents poi making workshop.

Goal #1 Local Iwi Stories

As part of our learning at the regular fortnightly hui via Zoom, we have learned many of the stories associated with Ngati Kauwhata and also other iwi around Aotearoa. This has been a great way to get background information on certain kaupapa but especially on the origins of some of the Māori words and place names. Below and some of the slides presented at the hui about place names that are significant to our local area.

School Murals

Iwi were consulted about planned murals for our school on 24/2.

Funding application put through.

Design 1: Pool

Contains our school houses

Design 2: Bike Container

Contains our school values

One of our goals listed above is to get a Māori name for our school. Recently (24/2/22 we discovered through Anaru what the iwi name was for the Mount Biggs area and he shared some kōrero around this during our hui on Wednesday 9th March.

Below is the slide from our hui talking about the meaning of the name - Whakamoetākapu.

Therefore, the Māori name for our kura is:

Te Kura o Whakamoetākapu