Structure: Large kinship groups connected through whakapapa (genealogy) to common ancestors.
Paramount chief with spiritual and political authority. Often hereditary through senior whakapapa lines.
Chiefs who led hapū and made major decisions affecting the iwi through consultation and consensus.
Decision-making: Hui (assemblies) where all adults could speak. Decisions reached through collective discussion until consensus.
Structure: Extended family groups sharing resources and territory. The primary political unit of daily life.
Leaders chosen for wisdom, skill, and ability to serve collective wellbeing. Could be male or female.
Elders whose wisdom guided decision-making. Respected for their knowledge and experience.
Responsibilities: Managing resources, resolving disputes, organising work, defending territory, maintaining relationships with other hapū.
Structure: Extended families including grandparents, parents, children, and close relatives.
All adults responsible for all children. Decisions made considering impact on next seven generations.
Customary practices that guided daily behaviour and relationships within the whānau.
Important: These systems were sophisticated, democratic, and sustainable. They successfully governed Māori society for over 600 years before colonisation.
Students will engage with this resource to apply systems thinking to real-world civic and community challenges — analysing feedback loops, leverage points, and emergent properties within social, environmental, and governance systems in Aotearoa New Zealand.
Scaffold support: Provide systems mapping templates and sentence starters for entry-level access. Offer extension tasks asking students to identify a second-order effect or design an intervention at a leverage point within their chosen system.
ELL / ESOL: Pre-teach systems thinking vocabulary (feedback loop, leverage point, emergence, interdependence) using visual diagrams. Allow students to annotate systems maps in their home language first.
Inclusion: Use visual, spatial, and collaborative formats wherever possible — systems maps are inherently accessible for diverse learners. Neurodiverse learners benefit from structured inquiry steps and chunked analysis tasks. Ensure group roles are clearly defined.
Mātauranga Māori lens: Systems thinking has deep resonance with Te Ao Māori. Whakapapa is a relational map of systems — tracing connections between people, place, and time. Kaitiakitanga frames our responsibility within systems. Mauri provides a measure of system health. These indigenous concepts enrich Western systems thinking frameworks.
Prior knowledge: Students should have completed foundational systems thinking lessons (phases 1–2) before engaging with phase 3 inquiry tasks. No specialist prior knowledge required for standalone resources.