1.2 Voices from the present

In the first video Maria is responding to the question: Can you describe some of the cultural practices which inform young children’s engagement with the outdoors and nature in New Zealand?

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MARIA COOPER

[NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]

 

My name is Maria Cooper. I'm a senior lecturer at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. Before I explain a few Maori concepts that teachers might look to to support infant's and toddler's engagement in the outdoors, I'll just share a little bit about our context so that there is an understanding of where these ideas come from.

So New Zealand itself, is a small island nation. We have about 5 million people now. It's a very multi-ethnic society, so there's a lot of diversity. We have a founding document called the Treaty of Waitangi. And this treaty recognises the Maori people as our Indigenous community and then everyone else as our special partners to this treaty.

So these ideas underpin our national early childhood curriculum, Te Whariki, which we would describe as being bicultural and bilingual in nature. This means that any teaching practices guided by Te Whariki are already informed by both Maori and Western or English concepts, including this big idea that we are all interconnected and interdependent with the people, places, and things in our world. And because of this view, we all have unique responsibilities to each one of these things.

So in terms of some Maori cultural concepts that can support infant's and toddler's engagement with the outdoors and making sense of what's happening out there as well, I'll share a few. And I just want to say that the way that these concepts come together is they're all about nurturing children's wellbeing and really strengthening the power within children.

So the first one that is very important to our Te Whariki early childhood curriculum, it's also a very centralising concept through a Maori worldview is this notion of mana. So mana refers to one's prestige. It's one's spiritual power and this quality of influence that one might have over others. And Maori believe that all children are born with a sense of mana inherited from their ancestors. So it has a very special significance in the Maori world.

And the responsibility of the adult or the teacher and the early childhood service is to nurture this mana, to strengthen it, and to do things that encourage children to see themselves as capable and competent. So the reason why I mentioned this concept of mana, when we talk about the outdoors with infants and toddlers, is because mana can be associated with our relationship with the land. And this is a term we call mana whenua.

So whenua means land. And mana whenua is the identity and sense of belonging that is associated with place. So a traditional example here that illustrates this idea is when Maori babies are born, the umbilical cord and the placenta is buried in the land to reconnect them to their ancestors. And this practice is said to nurture the child's spiritual unity with the land, its people, and the wider universe. So this practice continues today as well.

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In the next video, Shirlene was asked: How do you view the role of the adult in this practice?

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SHIRLEY MURPHY

[NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]

Yes, my name is Shirline Murphy, and I am a early childhood educator, have been for the past 30 years. And particularly, my particular interest and focus is working with infants and toddlers at a community based centre in Auckland city.

So some examples of that-- it does require, I suppose, teachers to really connect to the outdoors themselves. And so that's been needed to be quite a shift in our thinking and what the actual benefits of being outdoors with infants and toddlers can be for teachers, and particularly with that age group where a lot of the focus is on their routines and ensuring that those everyday routines are being met. And those can sometimes get in the way of us seeing the value of that outdoor space.

So we recently, as a team, spent a day of professional learning out in our park as staff where we were encouraged to connect with being outdoors as adults and what this might look and feel like for children. So we wanted to be able to encourage teachers to really see the magic in it themselves and to feel the special-- what might be special for these children while they're outdoors. So we had to really try and put ourselves into that way of thinking.

And so we spent a whole day where we learnt around those Maori concepts that Maria talked about. We did-- so the water is another unique-- something that, in the Maori worldview, the water has real spiritual significance. And so in our park, we found the waters. And we learnt the stories behind the significance of these streams and what they mean for Maori people to the extent where Maori will use water to bless special treasures, pounamu or things like that. And so they have healing powers.

So as staff, we learnt about that. We learnt about the people who-- the tribe-- we call it the Iwi, but it's a tribe that have guardianship on that land. What are their stories? What are their histories that we want to pass on to them? So as staff, we needed to know those so that when we going back out-- when we did go back out after doing that day, it opened up-- it changed the way that we took children out into the park.

One example is there was a particular hill where we learned a story about-- back in the days, it was where people came together to fight. So it was when the land wars were on. And so this particular hill was named Pukekohe, which means it's sour. It doesn't have a good energy to it. And so what we learnt on that day was, please keep bringing the children out here to change that energy and that space.

And so that is our focus now. We want to change the energy and bring happiness to this hill. And so it's just even learning about those things of the power of what we can do out there with the children.

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