Tutekohi Waihi

Making change with Tikanga - Story & Photos by Himiona Grace

Ngati Porou/Whakatōhea

The son of a prison officer, Kohi grew up within prison villages. Firstly at Rimutaka in Upper Hutt, moving to Rangipo in Central North Island and then on to the Hawkes Bay. The families were predominantly Maori within the prison villages and tikanga and kawa were second nature to young Kohi. 

He attended Te Aute College and Hastings Boys High but upon leaving school Kohi was still unsure what career path he wanted to take. 

“I joined the Navy and trained as chef before starting a job at the local freezing works. Something I remember clearly was the advice one of the older men on the ‘line’ told me. He said,’ You don’t want to spend the rest of your life working here.’ I was 21. My mum was working for CYFS at the time and she asked me if I wanted to train as a social worker. So I studied while I was at the freezing works, building my career without really knowing what it was going to mean for me.”

Moving into a Social Service career path.

Starting in the Department of Social Development in 2004 Kohi was one of six Maori staff. “I was fortunate enough to be surrounded by role models. This helped to maintain my ability to connect with my people and continue to practice our tikanga, a value that I hold dear.”

He spent six months as a care and protection social worker before being seconded in to the youth services team. “After a few years I started my role in youth justice as a social worker. I was asked by my manager what I wanted to do to continue my career. He said now is great opportunity for a supervisors role.”

And within a few months Kohi took on the role of youth justice manager in Rotorua. 
With his skills gained he was able to continue to build community relationships with local iwi, hapū and whanau. “This allowed me to build my own resources to support the mahi I was doing. I had a good bond with Ngati Raukawa in Tokoroa. And Tuwharetoa. Coming from Ngati Porou it was hard to able to speak in different tribal areas. But I was given the confidence by many of the elders. My grandparents were staunch about knowing who you are and where you are from.” 

Kohi knew that this is fundamental to being Maori and learning the korero, history and whakapapa from other areas wasn’t just the respectful thing to do, it helped to build trust with people he worked with. Being able to talk openly with people and using tikanga as a basis for his work Kohi not only allowed for better communication with whanau but this also empowered them to make decisions that ensured a better outcome for them.

“My job as manager I wanted to promote that, to uphold the kawa and tikanga in the places I worked. I remember in my early days there was a certain way we interviewed. There was always a push to meet timeframes. I would do enough to meet the timeframe but always left the mana with the whanau, rather than having to come back or push them into a corner. Being Maori gives you a great understanding of how things work in our world”.

Bringing Tikanga to the Capital

In 2013 Kohi was given the opportunity to work in the national office as senior advisor in Youth Justice. Another secondment presented itself which involved working directly with Ministers and looking at social practices across the country. Projects have been placed as part of a Maori working group under the strategy of ‘ma matou, ma tatou to ensure a lot of the work that comes through CYFS has a Maori lens on it”.

Working in these fields can be very challenging. But some of the biggest challenges for Kohi are also his fondest memories. 

“When I first started in CYFS there was a lot of bad publicity. The other thing was being Maori and having to turn around and give responses to my own people. They didn’t understand the system and I was just starting out so didn’t know how things were. [My] greatest achievement was learning how the system operated and using that knowledge to our advantage. Thats what I hold dear”.

But making change in the department is also a huge challenge. In the past “the vision has been  quite narrow. In the whanau situation things are quite wide. And when you narrow things down it becomes about the individual. When in [the Maori] world it isn’t the individual, it is the whanau and wider community. A young person isn’t bought up as an individual. They're bought as a whanau. And thats our connection to the world. Its the greatest thing we have in our culture.

I think in CYF we have a chance to change the culture.” 

And it seems there is an openness to that change. Throughout his career Kohi brought something with him to every role he has worked in. That is the pride and security of knowing who he is and where he is from. And living by the tikanga and kawa that he was bought up with. And it is these values that have been recognised and introduced in to his work environment.