OCEAN Road Primary School’s Years 5 and 6 classes celebrated Maori culture during an art class last week.
Among other things, the students were taught how to create a New Zealand Maori warrior mask and flowers out of flax by Te Urupu Indigenous, Maori and Pacific Island community development project co-ordinator Tina Tuira-Waldon.
“Students have drawn tattoos of the warrior face on cardboard masks,” Ms Tuira-Waldon said.
Girls in the class were sporting a marking on their chins, representative of the respect they earned for celebrating the Maori culture.
“They will see this on people’s faces and when they see the New Zealand Haka being done and will identify they have participated in something important,” Ms Tuira-Waldon said.
She said the aim of the lesson was to help students understand Maori artwork.
“I showed kids a design of the organisation’s Rainbow Serpent or Wagyl, which incorporates Aboriginal and Maori cultures coming together,” she said.