Neuroscience educator Deb Rewiri says it has never been so important to get on board with traditional Māori parenting practices. Help is at hand to take whanau back to when a village raised the children. Deb tells Kathryn about a whanau support initiative called Tākai which embraces mātauranga Māori and indigenous parenting approaches.

It has never been so important to get on board with traditional Māori parenting practices, neuroscience educator Deb Rewiri says.

Rewiri tells Kathryn Ryan about a whānau support initiative called Tākai which embraces mātauranga Māori and indigenous parenting approaches.

Tākai is a concept of wrapping around, she says, informed by her research into historical Māori parenting practices

"I'd like to read you something that Samuel Marsden wrote down in his journal in 1814.

'I saw no quarelling while I was there, they are kind to their women and children I never observed either with a mark of violence upon them, nor did I ever see a child struck.'

"So, suddenly, that opened up a doorway of interest or intrigue for me about, actually, we've always heard the deficit side of Māori, what actually were the positive things that helped us to grow and develop."

Traditional understanding of parenting in an iwi, hapū and whānau context is optimal for the brain, she says.

"What I began to see was prior to industrialisation, actually, this is pretty much how we lived, we lived in village settings.

"So taking that information forward into a modern day context, weaving in that neuroscience information, about the first 1000 days, and to make sense of it, what I had to do was actually begin to start contextualising it, within that space of parenting in a broader way within the whānau.

"Knowing that wāhine Māori actually had a key stake within this whole process of uplifting the whānau."

Much European documentation of first contact with Māori records a gentle and loving approach to child rearing, she says.

"People like Edward Shortland observing how parents never seemed to chastise their children. And if they were to do so then an uncle could step in and say, literally, this is not okay. And they'd hold them accountable.

"So this village concept was operating, before we had assimilation and colonisation of our practices and our beliefs."

Her aim now is to bring that kaupapa into a modern context.

"What are the things that we need to build capacity? And how do we do that with these Māori models of practice, around mātauranga Māori, that is premised off tikanga, why Whakataukī were important…

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details