The time for feedback has come

Tu Tangata, Issue 14, 1 October 1983, Page 9

The time for feedback has come

Maori communities have had enough of being squeezed dry of information by researchers and then discarded says Maori Affairs Department’s Dr Tamati Reedy. Too many people have been going into Maori communities for many years to do research, ostensibly for the good of the community, and then not going back to the community with the results says Dr Reedy. “It’s obvious people have gained academic status without acknowledging the community that uplifted them”. Dr Reedy says it’s time that the information was feed back to the Maori communities throughout the country, so that the information base was strengthened. He says that was the idea behind him returning from a Fullbright Scholarship in the United States to feed the knowledge he’d gained back to his people of Ngati Porou through the Ngata Lectures. He says the lectures spread over a week in August drew many people from

all around the country who were hungry for the information contained in the lectures of Sir Apirana Ngata. “You could see the people feeding themselves on whakatauki, whakapapa....” Dr Reedy believes that the negative thinking of the 60’s and 70’s has been proved wrong by the response to hui such as the Ngata Lectures. Then, he says, with the urban drift of the Maori, it was felt that there wasn’t a need to retain kinship ties in a city setting, and instead new city identities would be formed. But he says that was a negative view, because now Maoris are seeing kinship ties are the main strength of the Maori people. “Tu Tangata, Kohanga Reo, Maatua Whangai all these rely on using kinship ties as real strengths.’’ Dr Reedy seas the Ngata Lectures as becoming an annual event drawing the people together. “The taahuu has been laid. “We know where the backbone is, now we will build the heke of specific ancestors.”