ABSTRACT
The use of traditional storytelling, arts and legends and of humour, proverbs and metaphoric language can support children from some communities to navigate between familiar and less familiar contexts. Mode is the name for a culturally and socially fashioned resource for representation and communication. This chapter elaborates on Gunther Kress's comment: “I want to say that meanings, in the broad sense, can be realised in any mode, but that when they are, they are realised in mode-specific articulations”. A kaitiaki (trustee) in the Maori world is required to make meaning using a range of modes that can include listening, observing, formal speech-making, leading meetings, upholding spiritual and ceremonial rituals and creating taonga (artefacts) with natural resources through weaving and other forms of art. This multi-modal approach is carried out in various contexts across the traditional and modern worlds, spiritual and physical realms and in known and unknown spaces.
