The Kai Māori team has officially launched and piloted an online course Exploring the foundations of kai Māori. This course explores Māori understandings of kai and how settler colonialism has disrupted whānau and hapū relationships with food. It encourages critical thinking about these impacts while also identifying ways to move through and beyond the dominant colonial kai systems as we know it. The course was primarily led by Haylee Koroi and supported by guest speakers over a 12-week period. 

Exploring the foundations of kai Māori was designed for Māori working in public health or kai related fields. For our team, it was important to connect with others, to learn from one another and create spaces to reflect and reconnect with Māori, iwi, and whānau knowledge and understandings of kai and taiao from which kai emerges. It was also important to recognise how dominant Western philosophies often reduce food to mere nutrition, overlooking the deeper, more expansive understanding of kai that our tīpuna held.

Talking about the impacts of colonisation is often a heavy conversation where emotions, experiences, pain and truths come to the surface. While we explored the systems which continue to break down our ability to exercise tikanga around kai in our own lands, it was affirming to collectively consider and reimagine our futures through the wisdom of our tīpuna and our mokopuna in mind. 

The course was underpinned by the work of many Māori, Indigenous, and Black visionaries who encourage us to imagine beyond the imposed extractive systems as we know it, and to reconsider the many pathways that can lead to transformation. As Moana Jackson (2019) reminds us, “in the end decolonisation simply means having faith that we can still be brave enough to change an imposed reality.”

There are many reference points left behind within our whakapapa, whenua, and mātauranga tuku iho. Keynote speakers like Hana Burgess remind us that kai is taiao — deeply interconnected with our past, present, and future, sustaining us in every sense. Justice Hetaraka shared about Wai 262 and Ngāti Kurī resistance on their whenua and reconnecting with their practices with repo and raupō. Those who participated in the course raised awareness of certain rākau and kai that have long been absent from everyday conversations, bringing forward a rich array of whakaaro and offerings for reflection.  Nō reira me mihi rā ki a koutou, ngā pūkōrero, ngā kaihāpai, oitrā ngā ākonga i piri mai ki tēnei kaupapa, koutou i whakawhārikihia ngā mātauranga o tō whānau, o tō iwi. 

For those interested, the next iteration of the course isscheduled for 2026. If you have any questions please reach out to our Kaiārahi Kai Māori at haylee@toitangata.co.nz