Te Ngaki tribal programme

Tu Tangata, Issue 13, 1 August 1983, Page 32

Te Ngaki tribal programme

Young Maori men and women who are interested in a career in tribal and community development should take note of a degree programme offered by the Waikato University.

Te Ngaki is a programme which seeks to train people to work with land trusts, incorporations and marae enterprises rather than pursuing an individual business career.

Next year Te Ngaki offers 12 people the chance to train in the management of tribal programmes. Emphasis is placed on three areas:

1. Students work for the 3 year Bachelor of Social Sciences Degree or the Bachelor of Management Studies Degree at Waikato University. Some study of the Maori language is required as part of the degree. A coordinator assists with degree planning and study.

2. Students live together at Whakamarama, a hostel provided by the Department of Maori Affairs for university students. Each year’s intake works with a designated Maori community.

3. Work experience with industry and commerce is organised where appropriate over the long vacations and directly relates to the study programme.

Basic requirements for Te Ngaki are

a pass in U.E. or U.E. Bursary preferably with maths at 6th forms level; a commitment to Maori tribal development objectives; a willingness to pursue a degree in Maori studies and either computer science or business management or social administration.

A contact point for those interested is Mr Stafford Smith, the Liason Officer, University of Waikato, Private Bag, Hamilton or your nearest community officer of the Department of Maori Affairs.

selves of the man are represented: the one that is to be inherited, (ie. the continuation of his function ) and that which corresponds to an intrinsic and regenerated form that he should have built up for himself in the course of life itself.... The whole purpose of life has been that this man should realise himself in this other and essential form, in which alone the form of divinity can be thought of as adequately reflected.”

Conclusion

This it seems to the writer is the essential quality of traditional Maori carving. It will not have escaped the reader’s notice that there is a gulf between its underlaying philosophy of life and that implicit in the humanism supported by Hamilton.

His intended compliment to the Maori as “a racial type of a high order”, carries with it acceptance of elitism. The real compliment was in saying that the Maori “never seemed to have acquired such a mental ideal”. Perhaps the real value of Hamilton’s criticism is to make New Zealanders pause and think more deeply about what that ideal in fact was and how it so admirably found expression in traditional carving.