The fire: The Inspiration:
Doctor Phyllis Callaghan and the late Craig Callaghan were Maori educationalists who spent years at the chalk face. Experiencing so many students with poor literacy and low self esteem, they wanted to make a difference, not just for Māori, but Pacifica students and Indigenous populations throughout the world. After embarking on a 10 year research project into finding out why and how students had experienced minimal success and low motivation while at school, the two extended their knowledge base into media, publishing, Māori art, graphics, business and Indigenous research.
https://www.wananga.ac.nz/experience/our-students/
Dr. Phyl & Craig successfully identified an opportunity to develop cultural literacy that could become universal. Their first nationally published book-based and web-based literacy tool, was created in 2015. The 16 Year Old Māori Boy: Achieving through literacy has already proven to be a significant business in NZ and is currently being extended to meet the needs of Indigenous people in other countries, like Australia and America.
Creating Katuku Island to give Indigenous people cultural power within the technological space
Bringing the Katuku project to life: Join the Waka (canoe).
The Katuku team includes an array of young Māori artists, musicians, an amazing graphics art specialist, GJ JAMES, Animikii; a Canadian Indigenous Software Technology company and we are also fortunate to have the mentorship of NZ Innovator of the year and Tech Guru, Ian Taylor of ARL Animations. The team bring a wealth of expertise together and look forward to extending their knowledge of Indigenous cultural motivational codes, technology, graphics and teaching experience into the online educational gaming learning platform.
Like the 16 Year Old Māori boy based literacy tool, Katuku Island is developing literacy through a universal Indigenous lens, which allows for populations to master key elements of gaming, literacy and technology, whilst celebrating their own cultural codes. With your help, Katuku Island can become a global reality, which follows a original story line of epic proportions. Taken from the Katuku script:
"The world has ended. You must escape post-apocalyptic America. Make your way to the only uncontaminated Island in the world, Katuku. Build your own tribe and escape the crumbling city. Design Māori weapons, armoury and your own tribal Tattoo. Survive the turbulent ocean, the attack of other tribes, battle sea monsters and watch from above as swarms of angry WETA (Prehistoric bird, insect like creatures) bombard your waka (canoe). Game to Survive. Make it to KATUKU."With the re-skinning of the Katuku game concepts and introduction of alternate cultural elements of significance to the target market, Katuku creates a world first and can be re-skinned for populations through-out the world. As research shows, Indigenous people have been colonised by western cultures throughout the world and often suffer from education systems that do not support their ideal learning methodologies. Māori have set an example for other Indigenous people in terms of recovering from colonisation pressures, and with your support, we have the technologies to create a world first, that can not only celebrate difference, but make a huge social and cultural impact
