About careers using Field Māori subjects

Would you like to go to a kura? Or study Māori NCEA subjects or get a Māori qualification but not sure?

Studying te reo Māori or a te ao Māori can set you up for future success.

Jobs are in demand for reo speakers and writers and those with tikanga Māori knowledge.

1 in 5

Māori speak te reo Māori

324 to 791

increase in number of jobs for te reo Māori speakers in 2022

$48 to $80K

average pay for a kaiwhaako Māori

Video transcript

[Music]

Grace Davies:

Kia ora

Ko Tainui te waka

Ko Whitireia te maunga

Ko Porirua te awa

Ko Takapūwāhia te marae

Ko Ngāti Toa Rangatira te iwi

Ko Grace Davies tōku ingoa

Yeah, so what I'm doing now is I'm actually a policy analyst at the Ministry of Health in the Māori Health directorate.

Prior to that I've been working at the DHB, the District Health Board, here in Te Whanganui ā Tara,

helping out with the Covid response, and prior to that I was working for my iwi in the Covid response.

Yeah so, for the iwi I was working with our whānau on Covid vaccinations and working in our

healthcare centres.

My job was mainly to provide advice and to work with our clinical staff to make sure that the healthcare that we were providing our iwi was culturally safe and worked for our whānau.

And I was also working with our kaumātua and our whanaunga around the pā to vaccinate them all against Covid.

Yeah so, who inspired me to pursue science?

A couple of people and my mama was one of them.

So she has been working in the healthcare field for a very long time and I actually grew up in our pā with our medical centres running around as a little child talking to the doctors and the nurses.

And I used to always be really fascinated by the mahi that they did.

The second person or people, I should say, that inspired me to pursue science was actually my whanau.

We have a lot of sick whānau around where I live in my pā and they really needed... I really wanted to help them in a way so that they could grow old.

And I thought science and pursuing that field would be the best way to do it.

Yeah so, the most rewarding thing I think for me with mahi and to be a Māori in the science field is bringing,.... two things, it's bringing te ao Māori and mātauranga Māori into the science field is a big one for me.

I work around a lot of people who want that for our people and I think that's and I think that's really rewarding.

The second thing is there's so many different opportunities in science.

I'm only 23 and the career opportunities I've had in the science space have been massive.

There are so many different career paths you can go down and there's so many different opportunities and it's a really close-knit group and it's a really supportive environment to be in.

So those would be the two most rewarding things about science, I think.

It would be great for more Māori students to pursue science.

I think it's a field that is really rewarding and it's a field that gives you the opportunity to give back to Māori and to help pursue and to help overcome challenges that Maori often have in the science space.

Whether that be through the medical field or through microbiology, that's quite a common field.

There's so many challenges that Māori have in that space and I think it's really important that

we have more Māori in those spaces to contribute and to bring a Māori voice to the table.

So, and as well as I said science is an extremely rewarding career.

It's something that being Māori I absolutely love science.

I love the opportunities and for me, being in my current space, I still really feel connected and I feel that I can be Māori while working in science.

Oh my favourite Māui story... I grew up listening to all of these pūrākau when I was younger.

To be honest my favorite Maui story is probably when Māui and his brothers pulled up the North Island.

And I think the reason that that's my favourite Māui story is becuse I actually grew up doing a lot of waka ama and I loved going out on the waka.

I loved going out on the waka.

I loved going out into the water.

I feel very at home in our moana and so that story resonates with me, because the boys were out in a waka and they were fishing and that's what I love to do.

So that is that's my favourite story