"To honour the treaty, we must first settle colonisation” these are the words of Moana Jackson, and we’ll keep living by them. To say our event, Te Tiriti-Based Futures + Anti-Racism 2022, was a “success” seems to be the wrong word. Treaties aren’t settled, they are successful when they are lived. So, we are proud. We had over 40-thousand registrations, that means that over 40-thousand times someone decided they wanted to learn more about Te Tiriti, they wanted to practice anti-racism, we are really proud of that. When we are talking about Te Tiriti, we are talking about trauma, but we are also talking about hope.  

We are grateful to our partners and to our volunteers, our 10-day online wānanga held many treasures, taonga tuku iho, wisdom that should influence our behaviour and demand that we question how we come to know what we know. The health inequity Māori face in Aotearoa is unrelenting, Covid-19 has been no different. Māori death rates are higher than Pākehā, these deaths are the result of racism. There is hope in arming people with tools to be anti-racist. That is what we did at our event. Tiriti-based work has to be unrelenting, Ka whawhai tonu mātou mō te āke, āke, āke! We’ve started planning for 2024, we have a draft schedule and the line-up is already hard to get onto. If you have skills you want to volunteer, let us know, we haven’t put our tools down. I want to give Matua Moana the final word, in the foreword to Te Tiriti o Waitangi-based practice in health promotion a free comprehensive resource written by Grant Berghan, A/Prof Heather Came and others, he stated “while progress is being made in understanding the Tiriti relationship, there is still some way to go."

- Eridani Baker