You Are Not Being Asked to Be Māori

The More I Learn, the More I Realise I Don’t Know

Every day, doing this work to bring Cultural Wellbeing to the healthcare community, I sit with my own vulnerability. An Australian living and working in Te Tai Tokerau, learning about te ao Māori and the ever-present feeling of imposter syndrome

My connection with our head of cultural education, Mereana Pou, began when I joined my husband as his “plus one” at te reo Māori classes at Whangārei Hospital. I was curious, and acutely aware of how little I knew. At the end of the course, Mereana organised for our class to stay overnight at a local marae. During her powerful Treaty with a Twist workshop that night, something finally clicked for me. I began to understand, in a much more personal way, the ongoing impacts of colonisation.

That understanding has stayed with me. It has strengthened my resolve to be part of the solution and gave me a stronger connection to this whenua, this history and the responsibility we all carry when working in healthcare in Aotearoa.

Since then, the more I have learned, the more I have realised how much I still do not know. I remain conscious of my imperfect pronunciation of Māori kupu, my limited understanding of tikanga and the possibility, well ongoing reality of getting things wrong. Those vulnerabilities have not disappeared just because I am the co-founder and host of Cultural Wellbeing retreats.

In many ways, they are exactly why I am the right person to host them. Mereana often brings me back to one simple question: “Stacey, have we ever asked you to be Māori?”

The answer is no.

That is not what this work asks of me, or of the healthcare workers who join us on retreat. It asks us to care enough to learn the basics, to approach Māori patients and whānau with greater understanding and respect, and to keep doing our best.

As a retreat host, I stand alongside our guests as a learner, asking questions, reflecting and sometimes feeling nervous and inadequate too. I understand what it is like to want to get it right while knowing there is still so much to learn. That shared vulnerability helps create the safety of the space.

My role is to be a bridge. Mereana brings deep mātauranga, warmth and an extraordinary ability to make learning feel joyful, generous and restorative. Together, we create a place where people do not need to arrive with all the answers. They only need to arrive open, willing and ready to learn.

And that is what we do. So you are welcome, wherever you are in your learning journey.