It was a difficult meeting. There was lots of objection. The meeting went on for a couple of hours and afterwards I was quite desperate for a cuppa.
During the post-meeting cuppa, a lovely older woman came over to talk to me. It was a pleasant conversation until she told me that the problem with Māori people was that we did not know how to walk in the modern world.
Yes, it was somewhat ironic that she was talking to a Māori lawyer and MP who clearly was doing just that. But it was also a good reminder of how far some people were at that time from the generational experience of Māori.
To be Māori in Aotearoa New Zealand is to be bicultural. It is necessary in order to navigate our colonised country. We must know how to behave on marae, at tangi, in hui, with whānanu and hapū. We also know how to conduct ourselves at school, at funerals, in board meetings and with our Pākehā communities.
It was that poor woman who was culturally bereft. It was her and too many like her whose monoculturalism makes them awkward, tentative and anxious around Māori people and in Māori environments.
It is they who do not know how or when to speak in a hui, how to support their spokespeople, how to manaaki — uphold the mana — of others. It is they who are pridefully "Kiwis" while forgetting that kiwi is te reo Māori.
Monoculturalism is a handicap — a disadvantage that makes achieving in Aotearoa New Zealand much more difficult. Biculturalism is an essential life-skill in our modern country and this modern world.
It was with real pleasure then that I read the Dunedin City Council (DCC) had resolved to implement a Māori strategic framework into their work. The strategy is called Te Taki Haruru and is a plan to assist our council to meet its obligations under the Local Government Act (LGA).
The plan is not wildly ambitious. Neither is it particularly onerous. It generally follows the pattern of many such strategic plans.
The first aim is to build cultural competency and confidence in staff so that the workforce has more skills to engage with the LGA obligations under the Treaty of Waitangi.
That is very important because whether you like the Treaty or not, or have widely divergent views of what it means, it is a historical fact that it formed the basis of the modern New Zealand state and therefore, like all constitutional documents, creates responsibilities.
Everyone, whether working at the DCC or elsewhere, needs to have the life skills that make them Pākehā- and Māori- culturally competent.
The second aim is to have the strategy inform future plans, policies, procedures and projects. That is also very important. Every strategy of the council has to be visible in its output. Council constitutional, community and legal obligations have to be seen to be met.
As residents, we see those obligations in all the services that council provides. We can already see how Te Taki Haruru is influencing design in the city and, frankly, it is beautiful.
The third aim of Te Taki Haruru is to help staff with their direct engagement with mana whenua. We really value those engagement and communication skills in council staff. Communication with communities was really important in the recent one-in-100-year rain event.
Councillors have been leading the campaign to retain our new hospital as promised, engaging with the whole of Dunedin to rally support. Council staff have been working closely with communities over the new South Dunedin library and community complex for a few years now.
Not every engagement is perfect, but the more skills the council has, at councillor level and at staff level, the better.
Te Taki Haruru will help to build those skills in engaging with mana whenua and therefore communities all around Dunedin.
Biculturalism is not a Māori problem. We are there already and have been for generations.
It is important now that other New Zealanders become more competent and more skilful in their growing biculturalism.
So congratulations to the Dunedin City Council for helping to make that happen.
■Metiria Stanton-Turei is a senior law lecturer at the University of Otago and a former Green Party MP and co-leader.
