August 16, 2013
Tikanga programme ending in tears
The coordinator of a programme teaching tikanga sees it as a way to stop reoffending.
The Kia Marama programme that Waihopai Runaka runs at Invercargill Prison and Murihiku Marae has won this year’s Big "A" Prison Arts Community Award.
It teaches a range of kaupapa Māori concepts including powhiri, tikanga and Māori mythology.
Philomena Shepherd from Ngāti Pahauwera, Taranaki and Ngapuhi says they aren’t interested in what the inmates did to get to prison, but where they come from.
"If we are working with 16 of those guys, probably only four will know how to do their pepeha well. By the time we’ve worked with them over an intense three-day programme, everybody stands up and does their mihi and it brings us to tears, and that’s what we want, for them to gain a bit of ‘I belong to more than this world. More than the world I came from , I belong to a whakapapa of chiefs and a line of strength and that’s who I belong to," she says.
Kia Marama is also done at Arohata, Rimutaka and Christchurch Men’s prisons.
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