Global Training Updates.

As part of our continued efforts to support Indigenous families and communities in the U.S. and abroad, this year marked the launch of our new Family Spirit Advanced Health Educator pilot training in B.C. - the first of its kind in the world!

In response to calls from both local and global communities for additional resources to support long-standing program participants, our partners from First Nations Health Authority in B.C., Canada, hosted 10 of their own staff, 10 community staff and 5 CIH staff for a full week of discussions and exercises. Thoughtful consideration was given to topics surrounding child abuse and neglect, domestic abuse, and substance misuse, with a continuous emphasis on self-care for those involved.

Karla Sorby (Global Adaptations Manager, CIH) and Denise Lacerte (Manager, Healthy Children and Youth, FNHA) are pictured at the training to the left.

Separately, our partners in Australia at Pertame Language Nest are preparing to use Family Spirit through an innovative group-based approach, and in March, we welcomed two health educators from Aotearoa (New Zealand) into our Family Spirit Core Training in Sacramento, California.

We learn and receive support from one another each time we come together for these thoughtful and inspiring trainings. We are so proud of all SPIRIT partners who choose to participate and look forward to future shared learning opportunities!

Our Elders and Global Advisory Council members on nurturing future generations.

Parents. Aunties. Uncles. Grandparents. Community members. We all play a role in shaping the future for our children as well as the generations of children who we may never get to meet.

In this video, our Global Advisory Council members and other Indigenous knowledge keepers share their hopes and dreams for Indigenous children everywhere, rooted in a truth their communities have always known: to truly own their world, a child must first be proud of where they come from. As Tracey Bunda, Professor at The University of Queensland, reminds us, "We must remember our past to be able to shape our future."

Global Advisory Council Spotlight

Meet Guy Penny, PhD, Global Advisory Council Member helping develop a Māori Housing community in Aotearoa (New Zealand).

What initially attracted you to SPIRIT?
I've been working with Cheryl (Tū Kotahi Māori Asthma Trust) and the other Wainuiomata Marae Trustees for seven or eight years around various projects. What attracted us was the idea that the initiative was focused on tamariki (children) and on play, which continues to be a large part of Māori life.

We're trying very hard in all our work, all our mahi, to do these things to make it better for the next generation. And that's why this project is so important for us, because it means that tamariki will engage in a play space where they'll be exposed to our reo, our language, kōrero, our stories, and pūrākau, our legends.

What is your current role in SPIRIT?

Within the SPIRIT program, I'm a Global Advisory Council member and I help project manage the design and construction of the wāhi tākaro (Māori playspace) at the Wainuiomata Marae.

We're building 12 homes there as well as this wāhi tākaro, along with the Tihei Rangatahi Centre, a community center for rangatahi (young people), who will help manage and maintain the wāhi tākaro. These are huge projects that involve years of planning and relationship building – with the trustees of the marae, central and local Government organisations, and NGOs.

Actually getting the permits to build on the land presented a separate challenge. As part of colonisation in Aotearoa, Māori were assigned different land designations, severely limiting land use. These kinds of inequities remain pervasive and relevant today. As part of this process, we went to the Māori Land Court to present an argument for overturning the land’s original designation, which was successful.

In addition to his role in the planning and design process, Guy helps with accessing funding and provides technical and management advice for the Marae’s facilities: a large dining hall, community spaces and the wharenui, a traditional meeting house.

What is your current research focus?

Most recently I’ve been involved in research with various universities whose projects focus on Māori well-being. Between 2020-2025, I worked with the University of Otago (Wellington) to create a Māori well-being framework for housing providers based on whakawhanaungatanga (developing and maintaining relationships - https://doi.org/10.1080/1177083X.2023.2293988). The goal was to inform housing providers and support them with a tool to develop organizational capacity for better wellbeing outcomes for Māori tenants in relation to housing governance, design, location maintenance, and tenancy management (Māori Wellbeing: A Guide for Housing Providers).

Having one foot in this academic/research world and one foot on the ground keeps me grounded. I try to get those things to flow from one to the other, applying the knowledge we get from the research into our housing and other community-centered work.

Right now, I'm involved in a research project with the University of Waikato, a large university in the central North Island. The academic economists there want to explore sustainable wellbeing by adding Māori concepts to traditional Western models of an economy, like the model of the New Zealand economy used by Treasury. These models make assumptions about how we treat nature (Te Taiao), how we deal with intergenerational wealth and how we deal with externalities - which are quite different from an indigenous Māori perspective.

This is a real opportunity to inform researchers and academics of our Māori values and their benefits for all New Zealanders. In addition, the collaboration is a reflection of New Zealand’s Te Tiriti o Waitangi (Treaty of Waitangi), an agreement for shared governance, participation and decision-making between the Indigenous people, Māori, and the Crown signed in 1840 at Waitangi.

Tell us about the importance of relationships within Māori culture.

We are relational and everything is about relationships. The way we understand it is we're working in a system that's dynamic and ever-changing. When one part of it changes and shifts, it's through the relationships that the others can adapt and change in relation to it. In Māori, your whakapapa, which loosely translates to genealogy, is what connects you to past relatives, places and taonga (treasured objects/resources) including nature, as well as to future generations, and brings with it relational and place-based obligations and rights.

In the theoretical sense, the Māori worldview is amazing and a wonderful model of sustainability but applying it in our world now is quite hard because of the challenges, rules and regulations we run into, and of course the emphasis on the capitalist economy and outcomes rather than relationships. But we have to work within that system as best we can.

One reason we've been able to attract funding at Wainuiomata Marae for various projects is because of the long-term relationships that the trustees of the marae, like Cheryl and our chairperson, Star Olsen, and many others have made in the community and across the region for many generations.

One of your projects involves an Indigenous play space. What will that play space look like?

The physical space we have is next to a hill (puke) with a forest (ngahere) on it, which gave us the opportunity to create a rongoā pathway through that forest where kids can learn about Aotearoa’s flora and fauna and traditional plant-based medicines (rongoā).

“We want to show kids where these things live, how they live, and that they're precious to us because we are all connected.”

Upon entering the waharoa (entranceway), a karakia or prayer will be said in Te Reo Māori. In addition, there will be two slides representing our local Taniwha – Guardian Spirits – that can be either positive or negative. Taniwha have personalities and they're not always happy, sometimes grumbling and shaking causing an earthquake. But they can be benevolent and supportive as well.

There's another area that is all about movement, flying and agility. Some of the play equipment looks similar to parts of a standard playground, but we're designing it in a way that it represents Māori stories and lived experiences.

There will also be areas dedicated to storytelling, growing harakeke (New Zealand flax), commonly used to weave baskets (and has many other uses), and a water play area. We want to tell the story of the wetlands and lakes within Wainuiomata, a large suburb surrounded by bush-clad hills 25km north-west of Wellington City, which were important sources for collecting kai, or food, and rongoā.

How will the housing complex you are building honor Māori traditional ways of living?
Our housing complex on Māori land beside our marae, which we call a papakāinga, was designed to foster a sense of community, a sense of belonging amongst the people living there. The papakāinga, named He Tipi Manahau: Kia Mau te Rā (to grow resilience and take hold of the sun), will be supported with wrap-around services for the residents and they will be encouraged to become involved in marae activities. Again this is about fostering positive relationships. The homes are also all single level, keeping people connected to the land and ensuring easy accessibility for households caring for older generations or those that are differently-abled.

The bedrooms are on the eastern or northern side of the house, which is not typical in New Zealand. These are the warmer parts of the house, and get the morning sun, as opposed to the southern side, which is usually the cooler-shaded side. In winter when our bedrooms are cold, and with power being so expensive, the whole whānau often retreat to the living room, sometimes creating functional overcrowding which if prolonged can have serious health implications, like rheumatic fever, as well impact mental health. We’re trying to make the whole house usable in all seasons by creating spaces and places that foster wellbeing relationships - even with small changes in ‘typical’ design.

Not using bedrooms for resting, reading, homework, listening to music or creative activities, because they are too cold, creates stress in many households, especially multigenerational or large households.

Skylights in the living room allow you to connect with the sky, clouds and sun. These little, more subtle things make a difference.

There are also spaces available for the purposes of sharing goods/ideas with the outside community – a staple of well-being for Māori society. To incorporate this, we'll be setting up market days for people to exchange items. There will be a pataka pukapuka in the play space where people can leave books as well as a pataka kai, a storage area where fruit and other food can be left and taken as needed.

What is your hope for the future of your work?

To change your organization, or whānau or an individual’s mindset to a more sustainable way of being is often a long-term project, but you can start by making small adjustments. There’s a lot of power in the concept of compound interest, or the idea that little changes in your attitude, in your goodwill and your behaviour will pile on top of each other in the long run, creating something much larger. But, importantly, this can work in a negative sense as well as positively, so having an awareness of these things can be helpful.