Tikanga Rua

In January we (the Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia) held our three tikanga youth event in Gisborne. it was another huge learning curve for many of the Pakeha young people. It was a great event hosted and run by Tikanga Maori. I am grateful for the effort put in by te tangata whenua.

The meeting or hui did not end well. Tikanga Maori offered to co-host teh enxt tye with us, tikanga Pakeha. For a number of reasons, despite my wanting to do it, we were unable to accept this offer. Why am I writing this now?

Because this raised for me how important and yet so often unnoticed is the tikanga rua relationship between Maori and Pakeha. Somehow we have not paid this the attention we have needeed.

This is a big issue for our church, for those in youth ministry, and for our country.

Since TYE, this issue has kept on surfacing in nearly every other issue and meetign I have been at in our church. yet half the time it goes unnoticed. Soemhow we need withing tikagna pakeha to keep this high and the agenda. But it also needs to be raised in such a way that maori are not overhwlmed by our (Pakhea) agenda and vision. It needs to be about listening, and building trust. I have some hope that the three headed primacy will help model that for the wider church.

I am aware of it's implications in our country as well. While Politiicans decry race based health policies and eduaction policies, more research was published last week about the devastating restuls of a one health system for all appraoch, which leads to applaing health demograhics for Maori. I wonder when we in New Zealand will care enough to tell the Politiicans to stop using race for their own beneift and to deal with those demographics in wasy the research calls for.

This is not what I was going to blog about, but there you go.

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