Ka Hao te Rangatahi / Exploring School and Work pathways for Rangatahi Maori I youth growing up in Aotearoa Gang spaces.

Bonnie Maihi (Waikato Tanui, Ngāti Maniapoto), University of Waikato

This study explored school and work pathways for our rangatahi Maori growing up and located in Aotearoa gang spaces. Through interviews it gained an inside perspective of five rangatahi alongside adult who were these same rangatahi, for an intergenerational perspective, about navigating pathways from this space. It also encompasses viewpoints from selected members, woman and advocates of gang spaces here in Aotearoa. 

Some of the findings have concluded that Te Ao Maori can play a valuable role in providing the confidence needed for these rangatahi to grasp school and work opportunities, but it also called for reognition of the gang element of which is also a part of them. From here the work sought to identify ways in which rangatahi Maori in gang spaces can access Te Ao Maori. 

However, the final conclusion highlights two key spaces of marginalization that these rangatahi are in an essence born into, before they even contemplate mapping pathways for themselves, and then speaks to the impact of these on their ability to map these pathways in the first instance.