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National | Award

2022 Blake awards honour three Māori leaders

Matauranga Māori and earth sciences academic Dr Daniel Hikuroa, nutrition advocate Carlos Hotene and poi empire queen Georgia Latu all received Blake leadership awards on Thursday night at a function in Auckland.

The awards (previously known as the Sir Peter Blake Leadership Awards) also went to epidemiologist Professor Sir David Skegg, sustainable business social entrepreneur Brianne West, paleoclimatologist and glacial scientist Dr Richard Levy and “Bugman” and conservation advocate Ruud Kleinpaste.

Nutrition advocate

From a young age, Carlos Hotene dreamed of growing up to be a professional sportsman. He achieved that goal, working his way through the ranks of rugby league until he earned a two-year contract with the Cronulla Sharks in Sydney.

Eventually, it was time to come home.

“I thought I was coming back to nothing,” Hotene says.

“But I came back a hectare of māra kai and food sustainability – and from there, really, it’s been all about nutrition.”

The centre of Carlos’s new life is Papatūānuku Kōkiri Marae in Māngere.

The marae’s gardens produce enormous quantities of kai. Water tanks have been installed. Solar panels are planned.

Hotene describes the outside world as “ordinary” and the inside world – the world of the marae – as “extraordinary”.

Planted 80,000 kūmara

Far from ordinary is Carlos’s own role in the Kai Ika Project, a mission to reduce his community’s visits to fast-food chains.

He has worked relentlessly towards this goal by personally planting over 80,000 kūmara in the marae’s gardens, which have expanded in line with the increasing needs of the community.

Apart from kūmara, the gardens also produce lettuce, kale, rocket, beans, chillies and herbs.

“Our process is around micro-greens, planting our seeds, building fertilisers,” Hotene says.

“We’re also picking up offcuts – fish waste – from our big fishing companies. We pick up the offcuts, we bring it back to the marae, we process them into our heads, wings, frames, and then we use the guts as a fertiliser.”

About half of the produce goes to churches, community groups, and the whanau of volunteers. Another 30 per cent goes to Ooooby (Out Of Our Own Back Yards), a social enterprise that supplies locally grown food to about 500 Aucklanders. The remaining 20 per cent is kept for seed.

‘Harvests leaders’

According to the woman who nominated Carlos for the Blake leader award, Zara Motutere of Te Puna, Carlos’s horticultural skills are as much figurative as they are literal.

“He plants values, grows confidence and harvests leaders,” she says.

“Carlos constantly demonstrates the characteristics of a great leader through his interactions, mahi and actions.

“He is passionate, inspirational and driven. He is honest and open. He is kaupapa-driven, and he works hard to get the mahi done while encouraging, supporting and empowering the people he works with.”

Zara says that, in four years, Hotene personally made over 880 pickups, volunteered nearly 3000 hours of mahi and diverted over 125 tonnes of fish heads, frames and offal.

When it comes to food sustainability and waste reduction, Zara says, Hotene is not only a leader. He is also a speaker, a singer, a cook and a cleaner. In short, he works in multiple roles at all levels of the marae.

“My parents are a big inspiration,” Hotene says.

All about whānau

“My mum’s the manager here at the marae, Valerie Teraitua, and also my dad, Lionel Hotene, who’s our garden manager here.

“They’ve been here for about 11-12 years, off the smell of an oily rag, doing it from their hearts. Not expecting anything, and I guess that’s definitely rubbed off onto me.”

Apart from his parents, Carlos is also inspired by other leaders at the marae – especially kaumātua and kuia. He finds that their mana rubs off onto himself and others, including those who are much younger.

“Our next generation are the ones that are going to be holding down the fort of this world, our planet here, looking after Mother Earth,” says Carlos.

For that reason alone, it’s “perfect that this marae is able to grow our own kai and get resources so that we’re able to feed and serve our community”.

Challenges

Every great leader must overcome challenges and, for Carlos Hotene, these can be surprisingly mundane.

“Weeding, bro,” he says.

“The challenges would probably just be weeding.”

And his future goals?

“I’m really keen to make an impact in my leadership and what I’m doing at the moment in terms of growing our next generation to be sustainable.

“It’s all from the heart,” says Carlos, “and I love it with a passion.”

Business pioneer

Georgia Latu, the 16-year-old founder of Pōtiki Poi, was only weeks ago one of the winners at the Ngā Taumata Rau Aotearoa Māori Business Leaders Awards

Thursday night she was awarded the Blake leader award for rangatahi.

By the time she was 12, Georgia Latu was already someone who enjoyed making gifts for her friends and whānau.

So when she found herself facing the challenge of getting to a wānanga in the North Island, it was natural to put those skills towards a fundraising effort.

Within three days, she’d raised $1000. She was shocked by her success – but it was just the beginning.

“My auntie said, ‘We’re having a 48-hour boot camp for start-up businesses, so why don’t you guys come?’

“And at that time, we thought this was just a hobby, just a fundraiser. We went there and won people’s choice awards and thought, ‘This is much bigger’.”

Sustainable poi

Latu and her whānau were soon hard at work in their lounge, making poi.

Right from the start, Latu was committed to an environmentally friendly approach. She and her mother, Anna, would comb the local op-shops looking for clothes and other cheap materials they could recycle into taonga. They also gathered wool or fabric waste from people in their community.

Within a short time, she had added jewellery, prints and clothes to her line of poi – all while sharing the mātauranga Māori which has fascinated her since childhood.

This fascination with her heritage sparked another project during lockdown – writing a book.

“We have just published a brand new book talking about whakapapa of poi, because we do know there’s a big knowledge gap, that people know what poi are but they don’t know where they came from.”

Latu named her main business Pōtiki Poi after her ancestor Tahu Pōtiki, who led her people to the South Island, and after Api, her little brother. Pōtiki means ‘youngest brother’ in te reo Māori.

‘Making a difference’

Latu’s business ventures have been daunting and difficult, but the rewards are many.

“The biggest challenge for me is being young and a Māori wahine.

“It’s quite hard for me to venture out into this business world, which not many young people are doing at the moment. But one of the highlights coming from the challenges is being able to find those people making a difference.

“I won a GirlBoss of New Zealand award 2019, and that was an eye-opener seeing other young wāhine making a change in our community and doing awesome things, and I thought, ‘How lucky am I to be amongst this change and making Aotearoa a better place’.”

Latu credits her whānau with helping her to overcome her challenges.

Her whānau is also an inspiration – especially Api, who was born with trisomy 21, or Down Syndrome. He is part of the reason for her commitment to employing people with a diverse range of abilities and making sure they are fairly rewarded for their efforts.

Not alone on the waka

“I’m not on this waka alone – I’m on it with my people, so I’m encouraging everybody to get on this waka to make a change.

“I know that without my mum and dad, I wouldn’t be here, without my nannies and uncles helping to start the business – at the start, it was quite tough in the lounge.

“We needed to give back to the community, and in that way, we were actually creating change, and getting people employed – living wage, not minimum wage – and getting everyone involved.”

Three years after founding her business, it has grown into a successful enterprise and Latu is considering her next steps. With the support of whānau, she is expanding into the field of education.

It’s a natural progression for a young woman whose mother is a senior lecturer at the University of Otago. Latu herself is a student at Te Kura Kaupapa Māori Ōtepoti in Dunedin and has hosted workshops on the whakapapa of poi.

Now she has opened Kura Poi – a contemporary poi dance academy, a school of arts, teaching how to use our poi. She has also established some really large contracts, stocking her poi in over 30 Countdown stores across the motu. Her most recent contract has seen her make over 30,000 poi for the Women's Rugby World Cup in just three months.

Revitalising taonga

“We want to make sure our taonga don’t get lost, but we also need to contemporise how we use it. We have poi and we’re revitalising them for everyone.”

Looking further ahead – maybe 10 years from now – Latu sees herself becoming even more involved with revitalising her culture and preserving Māori taonga, perhaps in the field of tā moko.

“Ever since I was a little girl in kohanga, I’ve always loved everything Māori – arts, weaving, mahi toi, anything Māori I was drawn to.

“I see myself revitalising and being a tā moko artist.

“Now that I’m older I realise that’s a huge pool of knowledge that not many people know or tap into, so I want to make sure that doesn’t die like a moa – that it will be revitalised to its fullest potential.”