Maori spiritual victory

An early morning phone call from Italy confirmed what Amster Reedy had hoped to achieve with his work on the New Zealand Olympic Committee's Maori Advisory Group.
The Maori philosopher was an inspiration for one of his charges, a woman skier, while touring with the New Zealand team at the Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy, in 2006.
"I had just got back home (from Italy) to Ruatoria and the phone rang," he said.
One of the skiers in the New Zealand team had wanted to speak to him urgently.
"At first I said, 'what's wrong?'. And she said 'nothing' and said a French skier had won the downhill slalom.
"She said, 'He (the French skier) just called me to say he won the race because of the stuff I told him which was the stuff that you told me'," Mr Reedy said.
The "stuff" referred to his whakatauaki, or proverb, about the spiritual connection people have with the mountains.
"Over there (Italy) I would talk to the athletes about mythical mountains. Mountains need people, people need the mountains," Mr Reedy said.
The analogy had an impact on the skiers and it was one which Mr Reedy shared with those at the National Maori Health Conference in Napier this week.
He used the story and others in his work with the Olympic Committee to draw some comparisons to the conference of "Whanau Knowledge in Action" and how Maori tikanga could be used alongside Western science.
Mr Reedy said he had toured with New Zealand athletes to Athens, Italy, Melbourne and Beijing. At first he was cautious about offering Maori tikanga, as many were not Maori.
He knew some officials had warned others to "watch that Maori stuff" when they heard Amster was coming on board.
But Mr Reedy's philosophical manner earned the respect of each team he toured with and his method was simple.
"I don't shove it down their throats otherwise they will throw it back up, people learn about its worth," he said.
Mr Reedy's knowledge of Maori tikanga, whakatauaki and his work as a philosopher and practitioner are sought internationally.
He has operated his own consultancy, called Nga Kete o te Matauranga, for 20 years and is working on his PhD "on the birth of children". In particular, he wanted to study the effect of popo, or what Europeans call lullaby, on babies.
It would encompass the Maori tradition where children were born already equipped with knowledge of whakatauaki, karakia and waiata, whispered to them while still inside their mother's womb.
Mr Reedy said he had started his presentation to the conference with a karakia to link in with his PhD work.
He explained Maori had karakia for "every aspect of our lives" and talked about karakia as a basis of health and etahi whakatauaki - hauora Maori, or Maori proverbs attesting to health.
"We have a karakia for felling trees, that shows how we care for the environment, there is karakia for rain, if you are burnt by fire, there is a karakia for that, there's a karakia for kai."
Karakia also had the ability to cover areas where science had so far failed.
"Our people have a karakia for the beginning of the world, we (all cultures) ask the same question," he said.
"If science can one day offer our people an explanation, then we will bow to them but they haven't got a hope in hell of getting near."