As one of two New Zealand delegates, Te Oranganui chief executive Whetūrangi Walsh-Tapiata presented indigenous items of significance from Norway, Australia and New Zealand, which move from one host country to another in the opening ceremony of each conference.
Walsh-Tapiata said the conference was an opportunity to learn and network “but also to showcase the various mahi of Te Oranganui”.
“I think it’s important that our staff understand that while we work alongside our whānau every day, there are times when it is good to share what we do, nationally and internationally.”
Walsh-Tapiata has been involved with the conference since its inception, which arose from frustrations with indigenous perspectives being overlooked.
“We were tired of going to ‘social work’ conferences and finding engagements that didn’t really allow for indigenous perspectives to thrive,” she said.
The Te Oranganui team gave six presentations at last week’s conference.
Walsh-Tapiata said despite being a relatively new nation, New Zealand was looked to for the implementation of indigenous practices.
“It’s really important that we acknowledge that we’re actually quite young in terms of the traditions, and even of the age of our country, when it comes to looking at indigenous nations.
“Having said that, Aotearoa New Zealand is recognised internationally as being quite advanced in terms of some of the initiatives that we have developed in our own country, those aren’t social-work-specific,” she said.
“For example, they’ve ... talked quite a lot [at the conference] about language and about how understanding language gives us a different view of the world from an indigenous perspective, and how it is we might change and adjust our practices in terms of working with our own people.
“For us at Te Oranganui, even though we encourage our staff to obtain a range of qualifications, some of which are for social work of course, we would not necessarily describe ourselves as social workers – we would describe ourselves as Whānau Ora kaimahi.”
Whānau Ora differed from social work in its approach and inherent use of indigenous knowledge and methods.
“A lot of what you often see in other places is they’ve had to work significantly with trauma, they’ve had to work with abuse, they’ve had to work with mental health. Although we do all of that at Te Oranganui, it’s the approach, it’s our particular practice.
“We don’t blame people, we just accept that if people need support from us and want to look at a wellbeing journey, that’s what we are also committed to,” she said.
“In other words, we are absolutely adamant about coming from a wellbeing perspective, about working with the whole whānau not just the individual, and about having a really strengths positive focus to our work.”
Te Oranganui’s other representatives at the conference were Tracey Robinson, Jamie Procter, Brylee Tauri, Kylee Osborne, Pania Millar and Maurice Te Moananui.
The team were excited to implement new insights in their work.
“We are so passionate about coming to forums like this where we can cement our own knowing and our own knowledge and therefore the learning of others. So being with other indigenous nations and seeing that is quite critical to our practice,” Walsh-Tapiata said.
“We are incredibly grateful to have been given the opportunity to come here and I am absolutely 100% sure that you are going to get a group of staff who return really thinking at the next level about what it is their learning will be from this conference, and how they might share that with their colleagues, share that with the whānau they work with and share that with the community.”
Olivia Reid is a multimedia journalist based in Whanganui.
