Giving it a go! Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori

This year’s Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori (Maori Language week 14-20 September 2020) saw a dedicated internal programme of activities developed for our team, aimed at promoting and encouraging the use of te reo Māori in our day-to-day mahi.

Encouraged by our managers leading our Rāhina meetings, each team took up the challenge to have a go at using more te reo in their everyday lives. Instructions were shared for installing the Māori language keyboard to help make this happen. Our People & Places team leader developed a lunchtime presentation on pronunciation and greetings, delivered separately for Auckland and remote team members on Rātu Jo Draper, including exploration of how to say some well known place names. 

At our regular Rāapa ‘Baking Day’ catch up, chair impressed with his learnings from the pronunciation session, translating and introducing the tāhūhū rangapū (Chief Executive).

Our Land Development team are familiar with the concept of kaitiakitanga – a term enshrined in the Resource Management Act. This was our word of the day and inspired a discussion of the implications for the team when working on consents. 

We finished the week with a game of Māori language bingo on Rāmere. Anyone who won a line or full house of words had to translate the words before winning some tiakarete. 

The goal for us during this week was to have fun improving our te reo familiarity and pronunciation of key terms. This year’s activities were a first step for many team members here to improve their confidence in daily use of te reo Māori, especially for those new to Aotearoa. We look forward to continuing our learning journey!