Our commitment to Māori and the Treaty of Waitangi
Read this page in te reo MāoriAs a Te Tiriti o Waitangi partner, we are committed to supporting and enabling Māori, whānau, hapū, iwi and communities to realise their own potential and aspirations.
We know that we need to deliver better for Māori. Our Māori clients and whānau have been telling us for a long time that the welfare system does not support their aspirations, and a range of social and economic indicators confirm that Māori are disproportionately represented in the welfare system.
Lifting the social and economic wellbeing of whānau
Our vision for Māori is that whānau are strong, safe and prosperous. They are active within their community, living with a clear sense of identity and cultural integrity and with control over their destiny – Te mana kaha o te whānau!
We have developed a strategy, Te Pae Tata, that embodies a voyage of transformation and seeks to empower Māori to be self-determining. Te Pae Tata sets out how we will work to achieve better outcomes for Māori. You can read more about Te Pae Tata later in this section and on our website at https://www.msd.govt.nz/about-msd-and-our-work/about-msd/strategies/te-pae-tata/index.html
We want MSD people to have the capability to do their best for whānau, hapū and iwi. Te Pae Tata is helping us think differently about the way we work and will help us embed a Māori world view throughout our organisation.
Championing and encouraging the use of te reo Māori
Under Te Ture mō Te Reo Māori (Māori Language Act) 2016, we are committed to the revitalisation of te reo Māori as an everyday language of Aotearoa New Zealand. To show this commitment we support the Maihi Karauna (the Crown’s Māori Language Strategy) to normalise the use, status, domains, corpus, critical awareness and acquisition of te reo Māori in MSD.
Over the years, use of the Māori language has increased in MSD, both in-house and within the community. We are harnessing the good work that has been done by our staff and co-ordinating our efforts to revitalise te reo Māori through language planning with our colleagues at Te Taura Whiri i te Reo Māori (the Māori Language Commission), who are leading the co-ordination of the Maihi Karauna in the public and private sectors and across Aotearoa.
This journey will take time, education and co-ordination at every level of MSD. However, through language planning and our growing relationships with whānau, hapū and iwi, we will honour the expertise of tangata whenua to deliver to our communities and uphold Te Tiriti o Waitangi.
As our first year under the Maihi Karauna, we are seeing how the increased use of te reo Māori fosters a growing awareness of integrating the language and the tikanga into the work we do. Visually, this can be seen in translations of headings, position titles, introductions and forewords in key document, and longer-term projects translating websites, such as connected.govt.nz
For our translations, we use Te Taura Whiri i te Reo Māori certified Māori language translators. Through the translators’ work, we are building a corpus of words and phrases, supporting consistency, and encouraging the acquisition of te reo Māori across the organisation (for example, see Appendix 6, a list of our senior leadership management positions). With the increased visibility of translations, we are inviting the public to come along with us on our reo rangatira journey.