Developing regional economies

Cementing her cultural identity has been something Amokura Panoho has been able to tick off her list ahead of her move back to the big smoke.

The Maori business advocate says re-connecting with her whakapapa was a real drawcard when she moved back to Waitara in 2006.

The icing on the cake came last month when she took to the stage at the Taranaki Tu Mai Festival in Urenui with Te Atiawa to perform kapahaka.

“It was a real thrill.  I’ve got the bug now,” she says.

By the end of the year, Panoho will be living back in Auckland, a move prompted by her husband’s ill-health.

But the last decade of her life  back in Waitara has proven not only to be culturally enriching but professionally stimulating as well.

“It was good for me to be able to test my skills to see how good they were,” she says.

Born and bred in New Plymouth, Panoho left Taranaki in her teens but she always had the dream to come back.

She described her return as a “breath of fresh air” where she was able to spend quality time on her marae, tea towel in hand and chewing the fat with her whanau.

“The first few years were like a honeymoon phase.  It was wonderful,” she says.

The main reason for the delay in coming home revolved around the educational needs of her five children. All of them have attended and graduated from the total immersion Te Kura Kaupapa Maori o Hoani Waititi Marae in West Auckland.

Panoho says she wanted to make sure her children were given the gift of  Maori language, something she and her own husband did not get themselves.

“We missed out on it so we didn’t want our kids to miss out on it too.”

Not long after her return almost ten years ago, she kick-started her business by knocking on Venture Taranaki’s doors in the hope she might be able to contribute something to the economic development agency.

And a decade later, she thinks she has been able to do just that with her efforts helping put Maori aspirations on to Taranaki’s economic landscape.

It began in 2008 when she worked alongside Tui Ora to develop and launch the region’s first report on the Maori economy and ever since Panoho has been a champion for indigenous business interests.

Panoho, who affiliates to several iwi groupings including Ngaruahine, Ngati Mutunga, Taranaki and Te Atiawa, says the biggest difference between Maori and non-Maori entrepreneurs was their level of confidence.

“The difference between them and someone else is energy and confidence in their ability to get their product to market because there can be so many barriers in the way,” she says.

Under the auspices of Te Puni Kokiri, Panoho has helped mentor new businesses too, including the successful launch of Waitara man John Tipene’s Te Kohatu hangi cooker invention.

Panoho’s own career began in the union movement.  With many of her own whanau working on the wharves, in forestry or in the meatworks, it seemed liked a natural fit.

She joined the New Zealand Public Service Association in 1982 and went on to become its first Maori woman organiser.

She has served as chair of the New Zealand Maori Tourism board and is the creative director of iStudios Multimedia Company,  where she has helped produce music videos for Waitara reggae group Soulovus and published the quarterly Whenua publication for Parininihi ki Waitotara.

These opportunities are just some examples of the “the bedrock of creative talent”  she says she has been able to work with during her time in Taranaki.

It was her work with the Department of Social Welfare in the late 1980s where she was first introduced to the concept of community development, an idea she has been able to implement in the various roles she taken on.

“I saw the way in which communities could come up with the solutions.”

She says she has been proud of how she has helped put Maori economic development on the region’s agenda and developed a sense of what success for indigenous business practices could look like.  Opportunities in Taranaki are also attracting other talented Maori home, she says.

“I’m really proud to see the renaissance that is going on back here.”

Over the years, she has also dipped her own toes into the political well. In 2014, she was one of several Maori Party candidates to put their names forward to replace then retiring MP Dame Tariana Turia, but eventually lost out to Chris McKenzie.

Along with her role as national secretary for the Maori Party, she also sits on the Kawe Tutaki panel, an advisory group set up to inform the government about the needs of Parihaka. Panoho has been chair of the Parihaka Papakainga Trust since 2009.

While she would not like to see the sacred settlement turn into “another Whakarewarewa”  – a tourist village in Rotorua which showcases Maori culture –  it is a  place which sets Taranaki apart from any other place around the country and world, given its history and tradition.

“We’ve got a plethora of rich stories to tell,” she says.

Panoho says Maori tourism in general presented an opportunity to open more economic doors throughout Taranaki too.

“It’s a blank canvas, a blank page that still needs to be developed and tapped into,” she says.