Biculturalism at New Zealand's National Museum by Tanja Schubert-McArthur;

Author:Tanja Schubert-McArthur;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (CAM)
Published: 2019-03-08T00:00:00+00:00

This assumption – although seldom said aloud – is quite widespread. The staff who do attend Māori activities are anxious that others might think they are ‘just going for the fun of it’. I experienced myself how ‘pushy’ or domineering managers can be when it comes to paying for their staff’s participation in Māori classes. I was told in my job interview that I was entitled to attend the free Māori classes, so I joined up and put the extra hours on my casual employee timesheet. Every fortnight, when the manager had to approve my timesheet he struggled allocating the one extra hour per week and contacted me to enquire. This behaviour – whether an intentional strategy to keep staff from attending or not – can result in staff feeling pressured to withdraw, because they do not want to cause friction. Many other managers however, encourage their staff to go to the Māori classes and value it highly as it enhances their skills and understanding of Māori culture that is often necessary in their roles. Te Herekiekie Herewini, a Māori man and Manager of the Repatriation team, stresses:

I encourage all my team to participate. Because I mean, when we as a repatriation programme go and undertake meetings with iwi around the country we actually have to know how to whaikōrero, we need to know how to karanga and we need to know how to waiata, and so those sort of sessions allow us to enhance what we know.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.