TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — A group of young New Zealand Maori have been providing strong competition for their competitors at the 2023 Taiwan National Indigenous Games, and are making a mark by taking on a range of internships in Taipei while training for the Games' events.

Taiwan News spoke to members of the team in Taipei on Saturday (March 25) about Taiwan, their experience participating in the Indigenous Games, and their internships, which were provided by New Zealand group Tupu Toa and U.K. firm Pagoda Projects. Tupu Toa works to increase Maori and Pacific representation in business leadership positions, and is led by Tina Wilson, who is also the Trade Commissioner for the New Zealand Commerce and Industry Office in Taipei.

PhD student at New Zealand's Waikato University Edmond Carrucan is one of the two team members interning at the New Zealand office under the mentorship of Commissioner Wilson. He told Taiwan News that he can bring Maori knowledge and concepts into his work while in Taiwan, which will be helpful for him when he returns to New Zealand.

“Our work focuses on helping New Zealand businesses be competitive internationally in the import export markets,” Currucan said. “Going back home, it’s going to be a nice opener, to be able to say ‘I actually previously helped your business’,” he said.

Wilson said the team has a wide range of internship positions in tech, business, user experience, and other applications, and that they are learning about an important region for New Zealand’s economy and business. She said that what New Zealand produces, and how it produces it, makes the country’s output highly sought after in Taiwan.

“New Zealand is seven times larger than Taiwan with five times less population, and we produce 40 times more than we can consume as a nation, so we’re a good partner in that regard,” Wilson said. She also said that New Zealand can export its environmental values through exports to Taiwan.

“In New Zealand we talk about Kaitiakitanga (a Maori concept referring to environmental guardianship) being external and about the environment, how we care for the land, the rivers, the air,” she said. “Here in Taiwan it’s actually what you can consume, the fact that our food is grown and produced with good quality air, water, and soils, means that the food they consume is higher quality for them, and that’s important.”

New Zealand and Taiwan’s free trade agreement was the first in the world to include an Indigenous to Indigenous chapter. Wilson said this has helped nurture cultural and educational exchanges between the two sides to date, but added the relationship between New Zealand Maori and Taiwan’s Indigenous people goes back far further than that.

“Aside from New Zealand and Taiwan as known economies now, Maori and Indigenous Taiwanese have the same DNA, so we have an ancestral connection that is 5,000 years plus old,” she said. “These relationships have been here a lot longer than any other enforcing agencies around the edges.”

Currucan said there is good value in the exchanges between his team and Indigenous Taiwanese, but viewed through his eyes, the Austronesian connection (based on archaeological and linguistic evidence) has some methodological shortcomings. “For me, as a person who is Maori, instead of all those Western metrics and that Western knowledge, I would be most interested in the Matauranga Maori (Maori knowledge systems) to support an Indigenous knowledge claim.”

He said that during his time in Taiwan, he could see a shared respect for elders between Maori and Indigenous Taiwanese, and that this could be a basis for cooperation based on mutual understanding.

The remaining events for the Indigenous Games will be held in sporting venues throughout Taipei until March 27, and the schedule can be seen here (Chinese language version). The Maori team is set to participate in dance and archery events on March 26 and 27.