Maori success shines out
Rachel Clayton takes a look at four Kiwis nominated for the Matariki te tupua-nuku award.
Four business leaders are being celebrated for helping Maori culture become more prominent in New Zealand business.
The Matatriki awards are back for a second year to honour Maori achievement in eight categories.
Hohepa Tuahine and Kristen Ross, Grant Stracker, and Mavis Mullins are the finalists for the te tupu-a-nuku award for business and innovation.
The winner will be announced on Friday July 21 at the Auckland War Memorial Museum, an event which will be broadcast on Maori television.
Kristin Ross and Hohepa Tuahine
Kristin Ross and Hohepa Tuahine’s Maori speaking doll range, Pipi Ma, launched in November last year and sold out within 36 hours.
The dolls have been shipped all over the world, including to Asia, the United States and Qatar.
‘‘We feel a little bit dumbfounded because we’ve only just launched Pipi Ma, so to come up under business and innovation as a finalist is pretty exciting,’’ Ross said.
The couple want the toys to help move te reo out of the classroom and marae and into everyday life.
‘‘The only place you see and hear Maori is in your home or school. So we thought if we really want this to become a natural and normal language, then a toy could normalise it,’’ Ross said.
The four dolls each say their own set of phrases when the hand is squeezed, and they all sing their own song. This year, the couple will launch a second line of dolls called the Mihi range and a Pipi Ma web series.
‘‘The Mihi range is just pintsized Pipi Ma dolls. They teach basic greetings and farewells in the Maori language.Those are targeted at people with little or no grasp on the language, and also the tourism market.
‘‘We thought it was a way to bring the Maori language to the world.’’
Grant Straker
Grant Straker is the co-founder of Straker Translations, a global translation marketplace matching translators to appropriate jobs.
‘‘Across our team we can speak about 47 languages,’’ he said.
But his main drive is to motivate and make it easier for Maori to choose technology as a valuable and rewarding career path.
‘‘Historically, Maori have done a lot of manual jobs and a lot of those are going to be replaced with technology. So it’s really important Maori are represented in this category,’’ he said.
Straker felt humbled by the nomination and was proud to represent business in the finals.
‘‘I had no idea I was up for it to be honest.’’
Motivating Maori to be involved in technology was about changing perceptions, he said.
‘‘In the 80s and 90s perceptions around Maori in businesses wasn’t great, and I think now iwi and Maori entrepreneurs who are building global innovative businesses are really strong.’’
Mavis Mullins
Mavis Mullins is up for the award for her work with the Poutama charitable trust, which provides business development services to Maori.
The Dannevirke businesswoman became the second Maori woman to be inducted into the Business Hall of Fame, helped establish the 2degrees mobile network, leads a successful family shearing firm and has held several key directorships, including at Landcorp and Massey University.
Mullins was proud of the Poutama trust’s work to help develop small to medium Maori businesses across New Zealand.
We thought it was a way to bring the Maori language to the world. Pipi Ma co-founder Kristen Ross.