Mātauranga Mihinare: An Introduction
Ētahi Pātai – Key Questions
We have developed this resource to provoke wānanga throughout the Church around being Mihinare (Anglican) in this ancient, God-given context of Aotearoa and the Pacific. It guides our voyage into the future.
This associated resource contains a list of questions tied to the video that may help facilitate these wānanga.
Pacific Origins and God-given gifts (2:39-4:09)
In this section, Archbishop Don speaks of Māori having “deep connections to Polynesia” as the whakapapa for Mātauranga Māori. He speaks, too of his hope for Tikanga Pasefika being able to “express the pieces of the divine that they hold as a contribution to who we are as Te Hāhi Mihinare.”
How do these connections with Tikanga Pasefika / The Diocese of Polynesia inform your sense of what Mātauranga Māori and Mātauranga Mihinare look like?
What would it look like for your Tikanga to “express the pieces of the divine” that it holds?
Awareness (9:39-10:43)
Archbishop Philip spoke of his experience in southern India – being greeted as being from the land of Te Whiti and Tohu and his journey to understand what that meant – as his “kind of first step in conscientisation.”
What were your first steps in conscientisation around Mātauranga Mihinare?
What are some of the things that you have found useful in helping others in their journeys of conscientisation (whether around mātauranga, discipleship etc)?
Specificity of Mātauranga (11:14-11:43)
Archbishop Don asserts that “mātauranga has to be understood in its layers and in its context. You can’t just generalise it. Mātauranga, in the end, is best understood as being very particular.” Earlier, Associate Professor Aroha Harris spoke similarly of rangatiratanga, with it understood as being exercised “in quite a local sense, in the hapu sense, versus a universal rangatiratanga that encompasses the whole of the Māori world.”
What are some of the consequences for the priority given to contextualisation?
What is some of the Christian whakapapa that you could refer to, to help explain the priority given to local expressions of mātauranga?
Te Oranga Ake – flourishing (13:52-14:45)
Archbishop Don states that “the intention of the Gospel of Christ is that people should flourish.” He offers us the challenge “to measure ourselves” against this on a parish by parish, individual by individual basis.
Te Oranga Ake is an emerging theology across Te Pīhopatanga of Aotearoa which draws on the best of global wisdom and theological understandings as well as being grounded in mātauranga-a-whenua. How could you helpfully respond to, or engage with, this?
Some episcopal units have a sort of measuring approach built into their ways of being. In what ways have you found, or could you imagine finding, this helpful?
Tā Apirana Ngata – fishing the river (14:46-15:16)
Sir Apirana Ngata shared the imagery of mātauranga Māori and mātauranga Pākehā being two banks of a river with the fish being in the middle of the river.
How does this whakatauki resonate with you?
What are some practical expressions for this that you would like to see in future?