Dedicated to doing God’s work

There’s a depth to Anihera Carroll.

And a calmness and spirituality that comes from an inherent belief that what she’s doing is not only the right thing to do, but it’s God’s work.

In every way, she seems to be the right person in the right job, at the right time.

Anihera (Rongowhakaata, Ngāi Taamanuhiri, Te Aitanga a Māhaki, Ngāti Kahungunu me Ngāti Maniapoto, Te Ati Awa and Ngāti Toa Rangatira) is an Envoy of Te Ope Whakaora and Pou Arahi (Māori cultural advisor) at Booth College of Mission in Upper Hutt. She also sits on the 11-member Rūnanga and was previously divisional director for Midland Māori Ministry.

She has been a part of Te Ope Whakaora since early 2016, when she attended the Midland Division Māori Ministry Hui and National Māori Ministry hui hosted by our Flaxmere Corps.

“At both these events God showed me clearly that I could be part of this movement and not have to drop my korowai Māori at the door to be a Christian,” she says.

She certainly hasn’t done that, and Anihera has instead spread her korowai throughout Te Ope Whakaora to embrace those wanting to learn more about Te Tiriti o Waitangi and the role it plays in our past, present, and future.

Teaching others about Te Tiriti is something she’s been doing for around 20 years, long before joining Te Ope Whakaora.

“I’ve always been interested in people, so I did some study. HR was my favourite subject, human resource management, but my speciality was staff learning and development,” she says.

“I didn’t realise that sort of mahi was going to be useful here in my appointment.”

That teaching background, coupled with her spiritual beliefs and knowledge, and combined with an inherent grasp of the mātauranga Māori, the tikanga, the kawa and the complex history of Māori in Aotearoa, makes Anihera just about the ideal person to present this important kōrero in a safe space and in a safe way.

After initially running three-hour Treaty Training sessions – co-designed with her colleague Caroline Jewkes – the Te Tiriti workshops are now held over three days and Anihera says ensuring participants are safe throughout the programme is the main priority.

“We know how sensitive this subject is with people and how emotional it is, so we have to establish the safety of everyone right from day one,” she says.

“We work hard on that because we want people to be able to express how they’re feeling and be able to do that safely.”

They also carefully evaluate the content of each course they deliver to ensure it’s meeting the objectives of the programme.

“The evaluations that we’ve had have all been incredibly encouraging,” she says.

“We’ve got officers who have come through and said this should be mandatory training for everyone who comes into the Army. I love the thought of it, but I also don’t want to have people coming just because they have to, that’s quite different.”

She’s not doing it for those who aren’t open to listening and learning.  

“We’re doing it because Pāpā wants people to know the truth,” she says.

“That’s the underpinning motivation. I remember being in prayer one night and asking for some direction and Pāpā told me: I want you to bring the truth because all of the history books don’t have any of this. So the Salvation Army has become the vehicle to enable that, and it is a privilege and a pleasure when I see people have these light bulb moments.”

What she teaches during the courses is often a truth that people are unaware of – sometimes wilfully so – and can be quite confrontational

The course covers a comprehensive range of political, social, spiritual and cultural history of Aotearoa, starting way before Hobson arrived with his draft Treaty.

“We look at te taenga mai o Māori ki Aotearoa nei, the general kōrero about when we arrived and how long we’ve been here. We had mara gardens, orchards and we were self-sufficient. And we look at our society and how we were trading internally and were starting to grow our inter-Pacific and global relationships.

“Then we look at what was happening spiritually for us. We talk about in 1776, one of our East Coast poropiti, prophet, Te Toiroa. We’ve got documentation of his prophecy at that time about Pākehā coming to this nation. And the words are ‘te ingoa o tō rātou Atua, ko Tama-i-rorokutia, he Atua pai, otirā, ka ngaro āno te tāngata’.  So: They’ll be bringing their God and he’s a good God. His name is Tama-i-rorokutia, the son who was slain. And then it goes on to say he’s a good God. This is his name but we will still be oppressed. And so this prophecy has absolutely come true for us.”

“So we’ve got evidence through prophecies like that, that the presence of God in this nation was already there. God was hovering. You can’t talk about Te Tiriti without talking about the faith in that.

“And then we look at 1814 with the arrival of Samuel J Marsden, who brought the written word of God. And so then we saw the establishment of the church as we knew it.”

Her kōrero also covers the controversial Doctrine of Discovery – a legal and religious concept that was used to justify Christian colonial conquest – and how that influenced and informed early settlers to Aotearoa.

All this is before she gets to “the tuakana to Te Tiriti” He Whakaputanga in 1835 and Te Tiriti o Waitangi five years later.

“We look at the timeline of colonisation. Te Tiriti was signed in 45 locations across eight months and there were 542 signatures of rangatira who signed the 9 sheets of Te Tiriti. We look at that context and then we look at what happened after that.”

“We want to give a broad view, not just looking at the document and timelines and impacts. We’re looking at the global context, the Aotearoa context, the document, key players, key dates and then the impacts that have happened to our people.”

While most Te Tiriti workshops have been held at BCM, the most recent was in Ōtautahi and with plans in place to run more workshops around the motu, Anihera says they adjust the kōrero to ensure it reflects the location and is relevant.

“We had to recontextualise it to suit the whenua there in Ōtautahi,” she says.

“When we talk about Te Tiriti up here and the impacts, we’re talking about the raupatu. We’re talking about Rangiriri, Rangiāowhia, Ōrākau, Gate Pa, and over on the East Coast, Ngatapa, Waireinga, Ahikaa, and Tuhoe, you know all of the perils of our people and the tragedies that have occurred. Then people get it, and people can connect to the story.

“We talk about Parihaka as well and when we went down South, we also talked about Parihaka because the ploughman prisoners, they went to Wellington, then to Lyttleton before they got to Dunedin. We want people to know that there’s history.”

Along with her innate knowledge of that history, it’s her personal connection to the kaupapa which really shines through.

“Because some of my tūpuna signed that document and when they signed it, they didn’t just sign it for them, they signed it for us because we think about the generations to come,” she says.

It’s those tūpuna who have filled her kete with the mātauranga, whakapapa, tikanga and kawa she is proud to share, with two of her koroua being members of parliament, holding the Eastern and Western Māori seats for a number of years while other tūpuna signed Te Tiriti o Waitangi and sheets of Te Tiriti which travelled to Te Tairawhiti.

“So when I was designing the course, I went back and remembered all of the teachings of our tūpuna and then put that on paper. So it is a legacy, but also personal interest.

With a full calendar of workshops scheduled for 2025, Anihera says she looks forward to sharing the kaupapa among more Te Ope Whakaora whānau and continuing building her own knowledge.

“I’m still learning, there’s so much more but it’s a privilege for me to be in this role and to be able to share but share from a position of grace.”