Congratulations to Arataki, who have been selected as one of 10 businesses to partipate in the Kōkiri Business Accelerator which is dedicated to speeding up the development of early stage Māori businesses.

Hāngi is not merely hanging on - it's ready for a major reboot

Rewi Spraggon never met his grandfather. But his grandfather is with him every time he cooks a traditional hāngi feast.

"I'm cooking with my grandfather's stones. His hāngi rocks. He died in the early 60s and he passed them to my father. When you are passing the stones on to someone, you are also passing on the techniques and knowledge of that person."

That knowledge is why he can call himself "the hāngi master". It's why he was in charge of massive public hāngi collaborations at Wellington on a Plate earlier this year and at the recent Taste of Auckland, and why he's an expert cooking show host on Maori TV.

Māori tourism seeks a bigger slice of the tourism pie

More than half the 3.8 million international visitors expected here this year will take part in Māori cultural experiences, many of them a world away from passively watching demonstrations of haka and poi.

Sea kayak guide Katarina Te Maiharoa is one of the new faces of Māori tourism.

Having guided tourists in Milford Sound, Fiordland and the Abel Tasman National Park, followed by a stint as an outdoor instructor at a private school, she recently launched a business incorporating her Waitaha heritage. 

She begins her trips on Christchurch's Ōtākaro Avon River with a karakia 

Authentic Māori tourism a potential game changer here

Tourism is New Zealand’s largest export in terms of foreign exchange earnings and employs 7.5 percent of the country’s workforce. This highlights a very real opportunity for Maori tourism operators, and for our community to build on and grow our offering to the international market.

Tairawhiti has a unique proposition to bring to the tourism market — we are the first place in the world to see the dawning of the new day and, with a large Maori population, we are poised well to pick up this opportunity and run with it. The high-end visitor to New Zealand will pay a premium for a uniquely grounding experience that intertwines Maori ethos, culture and guiding principles.

Deloitte’s Top 10 Māori organisations: let’s celebrate their success

20 years ago Ngāi Tahu settled their historical grievances with the Crown for $170 million. Over the past 20 years, they have developed an asset base of $1.67 billion through investment in property, primary industries, tourism, and the international sharemarkets; turning a settlement that returned only a fraction of a percent of the wealth that was confiscated from the iwi in the 19th century into the largest Māori organisation in the country.

This was the finding of the recently released Deloitte Top 200 list of the Top 10 Māori organisations in 2017. Established in 1990 to rank New Zealand’s largest businesses, the Deloitte Top 200 Awards include a category recognising Māori organisations that have contributed to a Māori economy valued at approximately $50 billion.