James Uri-Puati
Kia orana kōtou. Nō roto mai tōku au tupuna i te Moana nui ā Kiva nō reira 'e tamaiti Kuki Āirani, Ta'iti ē Āmoa au. Ko James Uri-Puati tōku ingoa.
I am a New Zealand born Cook Islander and made the decision 18 years ago in 2003, to return and discover more about my Cook Islands roots. While my family and I relocated for a contracted short period of time, we all decided that we would like to make Rarotonga our home and have been living here since. I am an educator of 32 years and have worked in a variety of schools and educational institutes. I have also spent time while based here in the Cooks carry out various local, regional and international consultancy contracts. This has given me a wide breadth of experience in other areas outside of education e.g. Institutional Governance, Human Rights. I am currently a teaching contractor as well as facilitating and managing international volunteering opportunities for people in the Cook Islands.
I was educated in NZ and as a school leaver had a brief foray in Public Service. After a 3 year stint with IRD NZ, my pathway was directed into Tertiary Education and so attended Wellington College of Education, Victoria University with Post Graduate studies out of Te Wananga o Raukawa - It was there my passion for Language Revitalisation within a NZ Maori context was born and so followed my interest in learning my heritage language culminating in a return to Rarotonga.
What are you research interests? What interests you about these areas?
The status of the Cook Islands language, language revitalization and supporting these areas through researched pedagogies (particularly second language acquisition) are research interests of mine.
What new work have you got coming up?
I am in the process of applying for a Masters Program to research and study the Cook Islands languages and hope to build more scholarship around this topic with the view to encouraging and supporting the limited literature available and ultimately revitalizing our endangered language.
“Henry Ford says ‘If you think you can, or you think you can’t - you’re right’. I think that often we can be confronted with thoughts about our abilities to do things - we need to remind ourselves that sometimes its as simple as ‘flipping the script. ”
Some words for the Assocoation?
I am looking forward to working with such a dynamic team of astute individuals and hope that we can provide and facilitate research opportunities that can be of benefit to the Cook Islands while becoming a normalized paradigm for Cook Islanders across the globe - Ei mua tātou!