Donna Kerridge (Ngāti Tahinga, Ngāti Mahuta) is the founder of Ora New Zealand. She is currently an advisor and chair of the NZ Accident Compensation Corporation Rongoa Advisory Panel, the principle advisor and contracted negotiator for the NZ national collective of rongoā Māori healers (Te Kāhui Rongoā) with Ministry of Health and provides advisory services to a number of NZ Universities, research, professional and private training organizations and has served on a number of Government expert advisory groups representing the practice of rongoa. Rongoā is more than Maori bodywork, lotions and potions and a few prayers.

Rongoā is an entire philosophy of treatment embedded in a Maori world view. One of the key principles of rongoa is to care for and protect the mana and the mauri of both people and place in order to establish a culture of wellbeing.

A healthy thriving whenua is the blueprint for our own wellbeing. It is through caring for the land and applying the matauranga bequeathed to us by our ancestors, that we learn to be well ourselves. Nothing exists in isolation and nothing heals in isolation. Re-establishing our connections to Papatūānuku and Te Ao Mārama, the natural world, is our species’ lifeline. The Tīwaiwaka principles remind us that we are part of a much bigger ecosystem to which we have responsibilities in order that we too may thrive.

“Ka whangaia, ka tupu, ka puawai” That which is nurtured, blossoms and grows.

Dr Anna Rolleston is Managing Director of The Centre for Health and has a vision is of a healthcare system that works for you and with you. Where you are fully informed of your choices and where you get to choose your own pathway to better health and wellbeing. The philosophy at The Centre for Health is grounded in values that come from a Maori worldview and acknowledges an all-of-person, and culturally appropriate approach to health and wellbeing regardless of your cultural context.

Anna is a leading voice in health. She is a recognised health practitioner and health researcher and holds various governance roles within the health sector. She is currently co-director of the Healthy Hearts for Aotearoa New Zealand, Centre of Research Excellence hosted from the University of Auckland which is a collective of researchers, health professionals and community organisations focussed on improving heart health outcomes for Māori, Pacific People and women. Anna combines a robust scientific and academic background with an understanding that change comes from within, but that we often need a good deal of support to facilitate that change.

Tīwaiwaka as a philosophy fits well with a Māori worldview of hauora. Anna recalls the day that Pā Ropata issued a wero. “He said to me, what you do [at The Centre for Health] for people, is great, but if you don’t care for the whenua, how can the people be well?” This challenge has re-shaped the way Anna and the team think about supporting people on their health and wellbeing journeys and Tīwaiwaka is an avenue to connect who others from many different walks of life to learn, share and progress that ideal.

Through working in mental health promotion for over a decade, Pippa has become fascinated by the mind-body connection and how holistic approaches support the multilayered picture of our health.

She has spent years exploring wellness tools and healing modalities and is a longtime yoga practitioner and meditator.

In her own journey to wholeness, a big piece of the puzzle landed for her when she began seeking an understanding of connection to whenua in Aotearoa as a Pakeha descendant of colonisation. She began taking Pā’s Rongoa courses and finding a sense of “home" she hadn’t experienced before. She is committed to bridging indigenous wisdom to a modern world in critical need, which inspires her mahi for Tīwaiwaka.

She has worked in radio, television and media since university, but has spent more time in communities, ashrams, retreat centres and her van Florence over the last 5 years, exploring worlds outside the capitalist-based paradigm she had known since childhood.

Other projects and passions include, building regenerative community, trauma and grief work for transforming society, reconnection to te taio, the natural world for personal, environmental and societal wellbeing.

(Ngāpuhi, Te Rarawa, Te Whakatōhea, Ngāi Tūhoe) Kiri is a kairangahau - Environmental scientist. She is a Taiao ora specialist, environmental health specialist who applies her research to mobilising mātauranga (Māori knowledge) with iwi (tribes) through digital platforms.

Kiri is the designer of the ‘WAIOra’ app (Ngāti Tahu Ngāti Whaoa, Tapuika, Ngāti Hine) and ‘NGAHEREora’ (Ngāti Rangi) customised, iwi specific, mobile applications which are mātauranga-based monitoring and assessment tools.
She has also designed other mātauranga based digital resources such ‘Eko’ the ecology game www.eko.nz (National), ‘Karanga a Tane Mahuta’ the VR experience and ‘Kaitiakitanga i te Au Warawara’ graphic novel (Te Rarawa) apple store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/kaitiakitanga-i-te-au-warawara/id1533915392,

Google play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kiwamedia.android.qbook.TAN0015.

As grandmother, clinical medical herbalist, and former film-maker Ange has always been fascinated by and engaged with human responses to environmental challenges. Co-producing an international climate justice documentary, ‘2 Degrees’, over 4 years took her insight into these issues to a deeper level. The psychology of sustainability and community engagement was a key part of the film and Ange aspires to understand and help implement cutting edge models to achieve an accelerated shift to optimum resilience. She manages a remote rural property dedicated to the Tīwaiwaka principles.

“The Tīwaiwaka kaupapa perfectly aligns with and combines my areas of experience. It has become fundamental to my work, offering new models of healthcare. I believe we need a coherent philosophical narrative to unify our response to the potent challenges of our time and Tīwaiwaka offers us this simple yet profound guidance.”

Graedon is a graphic artist, social entrepreneur & wellbeing advocate, based in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Graedon creates artwork & graphic design projects from his studio at Mangaroa Farms, with his work featuring on walls, storefronts and crypto wallets in Auckland, Upper Hutt, Peru, U.S.A, Hawaii, Rarotonga and around the world.

As an Edmund Hillary Fellow, Graedon’s creative leadership has been pivotal in the success of health & wellbeing social enterprise Organic Mechanic, well known for their organic living foods & transformational events.

Graedon is involved in a small number of organizations with a focus on holistic health & wellbeing, and the Tīwaiwaka Principles of caring for the whenua (land) as the first priority.

Mel is Kairaranga, weaving all of the strands together for Tīwaiwaka, bringing the team together and keeping us moving forward.

Mel is mum to two teenage boys and lives in Maungatapu, Tauranga. With a background in senior marketing and communication roles, Mel is also a personal development coach, gently guiding others to a deeper knowing, connection with and celebration of themselves and the world around, so they can navigate life with calmness, courage, connection and compassion.

Mel also contributes time to causes close to her heart – youth mentoring, Make-a-Wish, elder joyfulness, rites of passage for youth, living with death, environmental wellbeing, healing and restoration for people and systems, and Waldorf education.

As comfortable up a tree as she is in a freezing mountain stream, Mel has been in kinship with Te Taiao since growing up on the edge of Lake Ōkāreka, near Rotorua-nui-ā-Kahumatamomoe, and learning Rongoā from Pā and Donna deepened this further. Mel is also deep within her journey to explore her Pākehātanga, deepen her constitutional and colonial awareness, delve into her ancestral places, people, stories and rituals, and bring that knowing more deeply into her various roles.

“The way forward for Aotearoa lies in the weaving together of the wisdom of tangata whenua and tangata tiriti, in a way that upholds Te Tiriti, honours Te Taiao and enables us all to feel whole, in this place and at this time.”

ENVIROHUB MANAGER

Envirohub BOP is pleased to support the Tīwaiwaka kaupapa to create a movement to support Te Taiao. The Tīwaiwaka vision aligns beautifully with Envirohub BOP’s vision and our Waiariki Park Region movement to create a greener, healthier, wilder, and more resilient Waiariki. These movements put nature at the heart of what we do to create a better environment for every living thing, now and for future generations. Weaving in the messages of Tīwaiwaka to our programmes guides our overarching kaupapa to help people be inspired to live more sustainably and become more connected to our environment and each other.

Dayle Hunia is an environmental advocate based in Whakatāne with her husband, three children and a kiwi averted dog.

Ko Pūtauaki te Maunga,
Ko Ngāti Awa te Iwi,
Ko Dayle Hunia ahau

Connection to whenua is an essential part of our identity and well-being as a whanau. We support the Tiwaiwaka movement as a pathway of hope, courage and positive action for anyone and everyone. In all the chaos of modern life how often do we take the time to listen to our whenua? Sometimes we struggle to even listen to ourselves. Even the smallest of changes can still be a step in the right direction. But where to start?

I’d like to share a simple karakia that my kids taught me:

Hā ki roto - Breathe in
Hā ki waho - Breathe out
Kia tau te mauri e kokiri nei
- Settle the mauri that stirs inside of me
I nga piki me ngā heke - Through the ups and the downs
Ko te rangimarie tāku e rapu nei - It is peace that I seek

Tihei Mauri Ora!

DIRECTOR - HAEMATA

The work that Pā and the team at Tīwaiwaka undertake resonates strongly with me as I believe that we all have a role in ‘healing the mauri of the whenua’. We should all have a focus on minimising our impact on Papatūānuku and putting back where we can. Tīwaiwaka captures complex relationships in a way that can be easily understood from a spiritual and practical perspective giving us principals to live by.

At Haemata we work with Māori kaiako in both Māori medium and mainstream education and we have had the benefit of Pa delivering the kaupapa of Tīwaiwaka and rongoā Māori to this audience and the flow on effect this will have with kaiako sharing this information.

The challenge is to get as many people as possible on this journey to make a difference.

Toihuarewa – Takutai, Prof and Chair Coastal Science ,
Director Division of Health, Engineering, Computing and Science. Tauranga
Director Coastal Marine Field Station

Tīwaiwaka, and the six principles create a philosophy for our approach to life, to restoration of our natural world, and to our day to day mahi. The principles are drawn from a deep understanding of, and empathy with, Mātauranga Māori, and provide a pathway - a scaffold, to ground our actions based on understanding the interrelatedness of the biophysical elements of our world.

Tīwaiwaka gently, but unequivocally, identifies the urgency of endeavour that is needed to enhance resilience of our natural world, in times of severe and relentless climate change added to the pressures, we ourselves, impart on our environment. Tīwaiwaka goes further still, as it educates us, people from all walks of life, to embrace a knowledge and philosophy that transcends science as we become increasingly aware of mauri.