May 26 2025. Taonga report.
Six days ago, Wednesday afternoon, at school, we learnt all about Taonga.
[What is a Taonga? you might ask] well in Maori culture, a taonga or taoka is a object/natural resource that is highly prized and important to the Maori people.
And what I learnt about taonga is that the Maori people connect with them and gives a sense of self-determination and awareness of who they’re at the core but anyways, the reason why we are learning about this is because my teacher, Zoe, wanted us to make….basically a taonga ourselves using this cool app called Tinkercad in which is a free web app for 3D designs but obviously we can’t make an actual taonga using simple objects that Tinkercad has, we need to import one onto Tinkercad and we need patterns for it too so to do this we go on another whole app called Vaka or Taonga Workshop, there’s also a another version of taonga called Measina, which I think is for other pasifika Islanders, and its called Measina Workshop but right now we’re focusing on my taonga. So in Taonga Workshop, there are many different taongas and patterns that you can choose for you, they have different patterns, different styles and different meanings. I picked Mere which represents the weapon that the Maori people used. It gives the wearer strength and courage. It signifies high status and authority and the pattern I picked for it was Pātiki in which represents favourable, times, generosity and abundant hospitality. I downloaded them both and imported them into Tinkercad. Now for at least like half an hour, I was gone for my Immunsation so I didn’t get to make it until now, I came back and quickly made it with help and it was pretty easy to make. So I picked the colors, blue & green because they are one of my favourite colors, after red of course. And then, it was getting printed for four hours…but after a couple days until now. My taonga is long done and my teacher gave me it, and what I’m going to do with it? I’m going to give my taonga to my mother because she is hardworking and provides for the family!
Thank you for taking the time to read my unnecessarily long blog! – Zepplin 
[Question: If you were making a taonga, what object and pattern would you use and why?]