28 February 2024

Last Friday, more than 300 educators and students gathered at The Pā at the University of Waikato for our first of the Step up to the world | Tū maia ki te ao roadshows. The roadshows which will take place across New Zealand this year bring highlights from last years global citizenship education forum in Auckland out to places all across the country.

Throughout the morning, founding members of the Polynesian Panther Legacy Trust delivered two sessions that focused on the activism of Auckland’s 1970s Polynesian Panthers and their ‘three-point’ philosophy: peaceful resistance, Pacific empowerment and educating Aotearoa New Zealand about persistent systemic racism. Melani Anae, Alec Toleafoa and Tigilau Ness covered themes that tapped into the three big ideas that underpin the CAPEs framework on global citizenship education: Identity; Connections; and Responsibility.

The Panthers’ sessions covered a range of eye-opening themes including the importance of knowing your whakapapa; the often untold histories of the Mau Movement, blackbirding (kidnapping of Pacific Islands peoples into slavery), and the dawn raids; as well as stigma by association (Niue called Savage Islands); and how and why the Panthers were started.

Rose Hipkins, Pauline Waiti, Stephen Ross, and Merimeri Anania facilitated a workshop on understanding global issues from a social justice perspective. Participants were invited to explore how knowledge systems shape our worldviews, and thus our actions and efficacy, in ways that are often invisible to us because they are ‘just natural’.  

Drawing on themes from the Polynesian Panthers’ story, this workshop provoked us to think about how gaining an understanding of knowledge systems can impact on students’ ability to take action as local and global citizens. Participants were challenged to think about ways of knowing and different knowledge systems. 

Free mini-roadshows of Step up to the world | Tū maia ki te ao will take place across the country in the next few months tapping into the knowledge, skills, and action of responsible global citizenship. Keep an eye on our website, LinkedIn , and newsletter for more information.