The Art of Taiaha by Liam Ratana is a reflective non-fiction text that weaves personal experience with cultural history to explore the significance of taiaha training as a pathway to identity, discipline, and belonging for tāne Māori. Through first-hand narrative and rich descriptive detail, Ratana shares his journey attending a wānanga on Mokoia Island, where men and boys from across Aotearoa gather to learn the protocols, movements, and responsibilities of mau rākau. The text situates taiaha practice within whakapapa, tikanga, and the legacy of kaumātua Mita Mohi, whose vision transformed taiaha into a vessel for healing, purpose, and positive change. Powerful, immersive, and deeply personal, the text supports students to understand culture and leadership through lived experience and voice.

The text is ideal for integrated learning across literacy, social sciences, and health, supporting inquiry into identity, cultural revitalisation, leadership, and wellbeing in Aotearoa New Zealand.

This pack contains a range of response activities complete with activity explainer videos for exploring thinking skills and developing emotional understandings and compassionate inquiry including:

• Blooms Higher Order Thinking activities
• Book Club guide for deepening text discussion
• A range of activities to explore emotional understanding, compassionate inquiry, empathy development, vocabulary and developing skills for self and co-regulation.

Curriculum Phase: Phase 3
Year Level: Year 8

English (NZC Levels 4–5): reading for meaning and critical thinking, analysing author perspective and voice, understanding personal recount and reflective non-fiction, synthesising information, exploring descriptive language, identifying themes of leadership and purpose

Social Sciences – Aotearoa New Zealand Histories: Māori cultural practice, identity and belonging, continuity and change, community leadership, whakapapa, tikanga, and collective responsibility

Health and Physical Education: wellbeing, resilience, discipline, relationships, emotional regulation, respect for self and others

Text type: Non-fiction, personal recount, reflective narrative, cultural narrative

Key words include: Aotearoa New Zealand histories, culture, identity, kaitiaki, Lake Rotorua, mana, Mokoia Island, mau rākau, Ngāti Rangiwewehi, taiaha, taniwha, Te Arawa, tūpuna, wānanga, leadership, resilience, community, tikanga, whakapapa