I’ve been reflecting a lot since our iwi strategy wānanga.
Not so much on the strategy itself, but on what it feels like to stand in service of your own people.
I’ve spent close to thirty years standing in front of rooms. I’ve facilitated workshops, spoken at conferences, led emergency management responses, taught, presented to Ministers, Boards, chief executives and communities across Aotearoa and beyond. Standing in front of people has become a familiar part of my life.
Yet, when I stood in front of our own iwi, I felt something I hadn’t felt for a very long time.
A decrease in confidence in self-belief.
As I stood there, I could feel the whakamā rising. All of those quiet questions that many of us carry somewhere deep inside suddenly became very loud.
Am I Māori enough? Am I the right person to be doing this? Do I belong here?
The interesting thing was that I knew exactly what was happening.
I’ve spent years learning about psychology, systems, leadership, intergenerational trauma, colonisation impacts, and human behaviour. I could almost observe my own mind as it happened. I recognised the thoughts. I understood where they came from. I knew they weren’t telling me the truth.
But understanding something doesn’t stop you feeling it. Knowing the psychology doesn’t stop your heart from racing.
Knowing your whakapapa doesn’t always stop you questioning whether you belong. Knowing that you’re enough doesn’t always silence the generations of stories that taught us otherwise.
And I suspect I’m not the only one who experiences this.
The more time I spend serving within our iwi, and the more I observe across Pare Hauraki and many other Māori communities, the more I find myself noticing something that feels incredibly important.
We are all carrying something.
Some of what we carry belongs to us personally.
Some of it belongs to our parents.
Some of it belongs to our grandparents.
Some of it has travelled through generations and quietly shaped the way we see ourselves, the way we trust, the way we respond to challenge, and sometimes even the way we treat one another.
I don’t say this to place blame on anyone.
Quite the opposite.
The more I observe people, the less interested I become in blame.
Instead, I become curious.
What has this person experienced that I cannot see?
We are they in their matauranga of impacts of colonisation?
What has their whānau lived through?
What have they had to reclaim?
What have they had to lose before they arrived in this room today?
Every time I ask those questions, my perspective shifts.
Because every person who walks into an iwi hui arrives carrying an unseen history.
Some are reclaiming their reo.
Some are reconnecting with whakapapa.
Some are learning tikanga for the very first time.
Some have spent their whole lives immersed in it.
Some have returned home after decades away.
Some never left.
Some carry confidence.
Some carry uncertainty.
Most of us carry a mixture of both.
And then I realised something else.
We’re all at different stages of coming home.
Different stages of healing.
Different stages of reclaiming our identity.
Different stages of trusting one another.
Different stages of understanding who we are as Māori.
Different stages of understanding who we are as an iwi.
Perhaps that’s why iwi/hapu service can feel so different to every other form of leadership.
In many organisations, you’re simply trying to deliver outcomes.
Within an iwi, you’re also navigating generations of history, identity, belonging and hope.
You’re trying to honour the past while building the future.
You’re rebuilding systems while many of us are still rebuilding ourselves.
When I look through that lens, something else begins to make sense.
Sometimes we unintentionally look for what another person doesn’t have before we notice what they have chosen to bring.
We notice that someone doesn’t have fluent reo.
Or they don’t know enough tikanga.
Or they haven’t grown up on the marae.
Or they don’t have governance experience.
Or they haven’t been around long enough.
We become very good at noticing absence.
Yet every person who has chosen to contribute has also brought something that wasn’t there before they arrived.
Some bring cultural knowledge, business experience, legal expertise, education, technology, relationships, creativity, lived experience – and some simply bring a willingness to stand up and help.
Surely all of these are taonga.
If our aspiration is truly intergenerational flourishing, then perhaps one of the greatest gifts we can offer one another is not perfection, but encouragement.
A korowai of tautoko.
The confidence to know that we don’t have to arrive fully formed before we are worthy of contributing.
Because the truth is, none of us are finished.
Our iwi is still becoming.
Our stories are still being rediscovered.
Our reo continues to grow.
Our understanding of tikanga continues to deepen.
Our governance continues to evolve.
Our confidence continues to strengthen.
We’re all learning.
We’re all contributing.
We’re all finding our place.
Perhaps that is what kotahitanga looks like.
Not that we all arrive with the same knowledge or the same experiences, but that we recognise the value in every person who has chosen to walk beside us.
I don’t know whether we’ll ever fully heal from everything that has come before us.
Perhaps healing isn’t a destination at all.
Perhaps it happens every time we choose curiosity over judgement.
Every time we choose encouragement over criticism.
Every time we make it a little safer for someone to stand, to speak, to learn, to contribute and to return home.
If there is one thing I hope for our people, it is that we continue to become the kind of iwi where every person who brings their gifts is met first with aroha.
Because our mokopuna won’t inherit only our whenua, our assets or our strategies.
They will inherit the way we treated one another while we built them.