About Us
Our People
Te Kapunga
Ko Te Kapunga Mokonuiarangi Dewes ahau. He uri ahau nō Ngāti Porou, nō Ngāti Rangitihi, nō Te Arawa whānui hoki.
My career has exclusively been working in a multitude of businesses and organisations culminating in the last 15 years spent in senior management roles including the Chief Executive level. Whilst my skills and experiences are across a multitude of industries where we have achieved some incredible outcomes, my eclectic career path has led to the creation of Whenua Oho. I am privileged and excited to now be able to bring all those learnings, skills, education, and experiences to bear exclusively for the benefit of our people, empowering landowners, and creating benefits from our land for our environment and for generations to come.
With a small team, my role extends across the breadth of the business, through landowner engagement, into investor and management enrolment, and into government agency relations. My primary focus is complex and multidimensional Māori landowner issues requiring expert advice, advocacy, and guidance. The secondary focus is creating an aligned and expert support structure of investors and professional management that will assist Māori landowners in the pathway to success, whatever that looks like to the landowner.
I am proud to be part of a new journey, with Māori and the Environment at the forefront of our thinking. Unlike other organisations, we are guided by our vision statement, not policies, we behave consistent with our values and beliefs not rules, and supporting Māori Landowners in their pursuits is central to our reason for being, not a necessity in order to generate profit. This is tikanga Māori, and I am excited to be living the dream.
Kanapu
My name is Kanapu Korohina Rangitauira. I am a descendant of Ngāti Porou, Te Arawa and Te Whakatōhea.
My background is in education with 15 years experience as a secondary school teacher with roles as principal and in senior management. Although I am new to the forestry industry, I have many skills and experiences that enable a successful transition to my role with Whenua Oho. I have excellent communication and engagement skills; and when combined with my high level of fluency in Maori, I am very comfortable in contexts where Māori values and principles guide behaviour.
My role in Whenua Oho is to connect and engage with Māori landowners, to listen, to communicate and to empower. Part of this role is to understand the issues specific to each landowner group, our aspirations for our land and our people. My role is to challenge the decision-making framework, and assist the creation of strategies and actions in harmony with the aspirations of our landowners.
Our vision statement and values guide everything Whenua Oho does. For this reason, I am very excited to be a part of this unique and very significant organisation which seeks to assist Māori landowners to achieve our aspirations. I am proud to be a part of an independent service that operates entirely with the interests of Māori landowners and the well-being of the environment at its core.
