On a Friday afternoon in Avondale, the school hall wasn’t big enough.
“We need a bigger hall,” Principal Paul Pirihi told the crowd.
Whānau spilled out every doorway of Te Kura o Pātiki | Rosebank School as over 80 tamariki from the Samoan and Niuean bilingual units waited on stage. “This is the most whānau we’ve had for an assembly all year,” Pirihi said.
They were there to see a performance to round out Samoan language week, one of the items was Tulou Tagaloa, made famous by Disney’s Moana. Children small vaka above their heads, built by their own hands during the final Wayfinding Leadership workshops.
The vaka was the symbol. Developed by Chellie Spiller and Hoturoa Barclay-Kerr and grounded in Pacific indigenous knowledge, Wayfinding Leadership uses the structure of the vaka as a framework for identity – the hulls as values, the crossbeams as connection, the tautai as the leader who notices. Tamariki had spent weeks with those ideas. On stage, they proudly held, and shared, what they’d learned.
Toipua Schuster, Tupulaga mo a Taeao Team Leader at Te Kura o Pātiki, put it simply:
“The Wayfinding Leadership approach helps them open their eyes about their ancestors. It helps them explore who they are as a tautai in their family, their school, and in their community.”
For tamariki in bilingual units, that sense of who they are doesn’t stay in the classroom. It shapes whether they feel they belong at school at all — and belonging is what determines whether a child shows up, stays engaged, and thrives there. Schools are one of the places where that foundation gets built early and held for life.
“Since our last workshop, the teachers told us the tamariki had wanted to learn the final verses of Tulou Tagaloa. They weren’t done,” says Christian Curtis, Systems Innovator at Healthy Families Waitākere. “They completed the pese (song) on their own terms.”
After the performance, tamariki stayed on stage. Āiga (family) came forward. The group – in traditional clothing, bright and proud – stayed seated, beaming.
Healthy Families Waitākere’s role in this kaupapa has always been about what happens after: understanding how this knowledge lands, and creating pathways for Pacific wayfinding experts to bring it directly to young people.
“The conditions for lifelong health and wellbeing are shaped in the places we spend our time,” says Curtis. “The pilot showed it works. We’re now developing a case for change, so the school and future partners have a solid foundation to spring from.”
