The Power of Values and Community for a Better Future

Kerensa Johnston, CEO, Wakatū Incorporation

The Power of Values and Community for a Better Future

Waiho i te toipoto, kaua i te toiroa[1]

Let us keep close together, not wide apart

There is significant power to a collective group of people with a united mission coming together to influence change.

This is what makes The Aotearoa Circle so special, as we are ambitious about what we are trying to achieve, knowing we can’t do everything alone.

Together, we draw from each other's expertise, utilising the group and the collective mission to influence policy, legal and other important changes, for Aotearoa New Zealand and potentially globally as well.

We need both public and private sector participation to make significant change. For example, when working on water or RMA reform, it must be workable for businesses like ours that are on working on the whenua day in day out, as well as being consistent with the values we share with the Circle.

This is no small feat, balancing the technical elements with large change management processes while collectively staying true to the values we believe in. For it to work on a broader and lasting scale, we need to draw on all expertise from across the board, sectors, and community.

Coming together around common values and using those to really drive change is at the core of our approach. It comes back to what it means inherently to be New Zealanders, touching upon our common values, identity and what’s truly important to us.

Having these pivotal conversations at all levels is the key to long term change and is what makes the Circle unique.

Our process towards systems change at Wakatū is a 500-year intergenerational plan called Te Pae Tawhiti, meaning the distant time horizon. We draw upon a very long-term view of the world, working towards an endpoint by creating an intergenerational plan based on looking backwards, which isn’t unusual for a Māori organisation.

At Wakatū, we tap into the constants that are important to us from a cultural perspective, which are our land, water, people and our Tikanga - our values, practices, and way of doing things.

As a hapū-owned business we use an intergenerational approach as a way of making sure we are heading in the right direction and that the decisions we make are durable and will protect the critical things that are most important to our community.  From there we design commercial, cultural, and other activities and programmes of work around them.

We see some good legislative and policy work happening in the reform space in our country at the moment, but if the constitutional foundations or fundamentals of our country are shaky or broken, then all of that work is vulnerable or compromised.  It puts the work at risk. 

There is a critical need for a constitutional conversation, at all levels of our community, about the future of our country.

You can’t separate natural capital from the people and from our constitutional relationships that underpin everything. A focus on our natural capital has to encompass a much broader view of who we are holistically, and it’s a really exciting conversation for us to have as a country, and as a Circle.  None of it can be treated in a silo way. If I think about the value of our taonga, or our natural resources, if our rivers and whenua aren’t well, we know our families aren’t well. 

We’ve seen what happens when we restore land, restore water, and bring families back to the land at a very localised level.  Wellbeing and health can be restored.  Those tangible improvements motivate us to continue pursuing biodiversity work, thinking about how to restore and enhance the mauri of our land and water.    This work takes collaborative courage, focus and commitment and as many people as possible on this journey to really make these changes.

The Government is currently going through an intense process of consultation on the implementation of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.  This is a very significant piece of work designed to bring the declaration to life in Aotearoa.  At Wakatū, we want to see change in this area, and be part of the work that will be required to make those changes in our country.

Māori organisations like ours are good partners to collaborate with when governments are making national and global decisions about biodiversity and land use.  These decisions impact on traditional land and water, in these cases, it’s the local community and land owners, which includes whānau, hapū and iwi who know these places best.

Lobbying and working directly with government is incredibly important in this sphere to ensure that the best decisions are made drawing on collective knowledge.

I think this work can help us go a bit faster as well as working with others to help achieve common aims. For example, we have a 20-year strategy to transition all of our crops (apples, hops, kiwifruit and grapes) from a conventional to regenerative growing system within 20 years.  We’re the second largest landowner at the top of the South Island, so that’s an ambitious target which we are just beginning - and we just really need help to get there. We can’t do it on our own.  When we look at public sector initiatives it’s about assessing what can help us on the ground to achieve that transition, which ultimately will benefit our entire region and community, as well as Aotearoa.

The reason we’re engaged in this work comes back to the wellbeing of our families, our whānau, and our community. All of these parts are connected: our people, our children, our communities, our land, and we need to keep continually monitoring legislative and other changes to ensure they support our aspirations for wellbeing.

Wellbeing is a broad concept, encompassing cultural, economic and political health, including the strength of our legal, democratic and cultural systems and frameworks, many of which are under stress at the moment. 

This takes time to improve, and that’s why an intergenerational plan is so important.  In that respect, I’m most proud of our tūpuna and old people who made good decisions 50, 100 and 200 years ago, to ensure we are in this position we are in now. Our Aunties and Grandparents had to work really hard at a time when concepts like kaitiakitanga were not widely known or talked about.   These concepts were not understood or appreciated in a way that we are starting to see now. 

I’m most proud of the resolve of our old people who worked hard to ensure the next generations were in a stronger position.  I think that’s really engrained in our DNA and how we think, and it’s what we are trying to achieve now, for the generations to come. 

We’re just one small part of a much bigger picture and plan - and by being clear about our values and tikanga over the long-term, we are ensuring this approach continues on to our children and grandchildren so that they are in a stronger position too.

[1] This whakatauki speaks to the importance of keeping connected, of maintaining relationships and dialogue so that we can keep moving forward together.