About Us
PaeRangi is the horizon – the line where earth meets the sky and where the fire of the sun rises at the water’s edge. PaeRangi is where all elements join and create a virtual, visual pathway to our future.
The roots of Māori entrepreneurship and innovation can be traced through time to when Māori explored the Pacific, testing the boundaries of known reality, to look for fertile land and waters to nurture future generations.
For over 700 years Māori have cultivated and utilised the natural resources of the Moana (oceans), Ngahere (Forest), and Whenua (land) to sustain whānau and trade.
As settlers came from Europe, Māori prospered, recognizing, and seizing new business opportunities. They owned flour mills, fisheries and cultivated and traded wheat, potatoes, maize, flax, and timber; products they identified as essential to the new settlers. In this golden age of the Māori economy, Māori dominated the trade landscape with their ships exporting across the Tasman.
After the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi, Māori still had mana over their lands and resources and were the key producers and suppliers of agricultural produce to the towns; trading goods throughout New Zealand and internationally.
Māori were described as “landlords, farmers, graziers, seamen, ship owners and labourers”.
Throughout the late 1800s new legislation enabled the crown to systematically strip Māori of their land, resources, freedoms, language, and identity. Māori were economically and socially disadvantaged.
As their prosperity declined, Māori moved to the towns and cities in search of employment and opportunity. The diaspora of rural Māori to urban environments exacerbated the loss of; economic privilege, whenua, identity, language and tikanga. Urban Māori became an exploitable and exploited resource. Since the 1980’s a groundswell of Māori driven support for urban Māori disenfranchised from their turangawaewae, rights and identity, has supported Māori living in towns and cities.
PaeRangi provides space and opportunity to celebrate the reclamation of our identity through Māori Business innovation and ingenuity. As Māori we see all enterprise as social enterprise. People, our whakapapa, and the protection and sustainability of our land and resources are at the heart of all business.
PaeRangi will explore and celebrate how social enterprises contribute to our indigenous social, economic, environmental, and cultural goals.
