Former Gisborne police officer Tui Keenan first shared her personal journey of learning to hunt and gather kai on Māori TV show, Hunting with Tui.
Now she's sharing her skills with local whānau and rangatahi - teaching them how to forage, hunt and fish in the local bush and mountains, which she says is a life changing experience for many of them.
Photo: Tui Keenan
Keenan says being a police officer wasn’t helping her to be effective with families or work quite closely with them.
“It wasn’t until the opportunity to film Hunting with Tui three years ago that I actually could see probably life for the very first time. I say that I received my identity that day, it's like a new set of glasses where I can view our whānau and view Māori especially, in a different way – the truthful way.”
Growing up in a Pākehā world in Christchurch “and believing the lie that it’s better to be living in the Pākehā world than the Māori world”, she joined the Navy and then the police.
“So, very much a boy’s club,” she says.
“But because I had been believing the lie that Māori are inferior, suddenly women became inferior because I was in the boy’s club, male dominated employment.”
Photo: Tui Keenan
She was seeing herself through society’s eyes, she says.
Hunting is also very much male dominated she says. But she had the opportunity to hunt on her mountain for the first time.
“It was like those lies had been exposed and I could see life differently. I’ve just been on this high to hunt like a woman, be a woman, be a Māori and be proud of it.”
The mahi is all about empowering whānau she says.
Photo: Tui Keenan
She says she’s learnt through the process of hunting and gathering that Māori have been created to do it and it's a natural form of therapy and food.
“We as hunters, we know that every time we go for a hunt or a fish, that’s our therapy for the week. We come back a better mum or a better person because we’ve had that time in the outdoors.”
Keenan is employed by a school to work with whānau, taking them out fishing and into the bush.
She says it’s not just a one-off programme spending a week in the bush, currently the mums are getting up at 6am to get bush fit.
“Let’s go out then come back and do life together,” she says.
When whānau and their home life are healthy kids will come to school ready to learn and be more successful in life, she says.
Photo: Tui Keenan
“These families I’m working with, they’re used to the system, they’re used to the alcohol drug and counselling, Oranga Tamariki, the police knocking on their door. They’re used to that. Sometimes it works but most of the time, to be honest, it doesn’t because our whānau don’t trust the system but they trust creation, they trust this opportunity to go into the bush and be connected with who they are.”
Most of the whānau Keenan works with are urbanised, she says. “They haven’t been to their mountain, they haven’t been in the bush so connecting them to who they are and who they’re created to be, a natural healing takes place.”
It’s a beautiful experience to be a part of, she says.
