Our Stories

Te Taite's Story

The life and times of Te Taite

In the 1940's my PhD was a sentence from my mother's mouth, about twice a year.

The 1950's I felt I was sentenced to Hato Paora, a Māori boys boarding school. It was this time of my life I decided I really hated school.

The 1960's, I escaped to Canada and became a Canadian Citizen. After becoming a Greenskeeper on a golf course in Vancouver in the 1970's, and having to sit fertliser and poisonous substances exams, I realised I also hated exams. The 1980's established for me that higher education was just a dream and to make it a reality would be a nightmare.

The 1990's I was home in Aotearoa and went to work at Victoria University on the marae, Te Herenga Waka. It was in 1991 while at Vic, I started my academic journey beginning with the Dip. Māori. Before I realised it I had finished a BA in Education and a MEd. While starting off to do a BA in Māori the idea of exams again haunted me, so I switched to Education which was all internally assessed.

It is now the year 2004, and the nightmare of a PhD is fading, for hopefully I will finish my Doctorate in 2005 and the dream will finally become reality. I will be 65 in August of 2005, and I want to say, education is a lifelong thing.

Within the whānau of Mai ki Pōneke, prevails variables of age, gender, life experiences, intelligence, potentialities, hopes, aspirations and dreams. Thus we are the hotbed for change, and the seedbed for the future, a whānau who can cement the interpersonal relationships of close individuals, or be the timely adhesive to unify communities, for we are a star cluster, each individually bright on the black hair of night.

But ask any one of us. It hasn't and isn't coming easy, and at times it has been a nightmare.

Te Taite