Vice-Chancellor’s Matariki address
We remember. We celebrate. We plan.
Because education is a process, development, a journey, many of us at AUT, indigenous or otherwise, turn to metaphors of travel, of voyaging and navigation. They are fitting, apt. They are particularly fitting in this moment, as we acknowledge the waters we have traversed this past year.
For the AUT vessel is well in the water: the vaka, va’a, waka is underway. We are navigating our course, and together we are voyaging well.
In an address to AUT staff as part of the university’s Matariki celebrations, Vice-Chancellor Professor Damon Salesa outlined the course AUT is navigating and waters it has traversed the past year.
From placing the first of the university’s big stars in the sky with Te Aronui, AUT’s response to Te Tiriti, to the recent launch of its new strategy, Te Kete, Professor Salesa said Matariki was the time to celebrate the collective impact AUT has had both within the university itself and across Tāmaki Makaurau, Aotearoa and beyond.