Te Kaunihera Manapou Paramedic Council (Te Kaunihera) is a responsible authority under the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Act 2003 (HPCA Act) and independent from the Crown.
Te Kaunihera acknowledges te Tiriti o Waitangi as the foundation of the relationship between tangata whenua and tangata Tiriti in Aotearoa New Zealand.
Tangata whenua is a generic term for people comprising those with mana whenua responsibilities (people who are tied culturally to an area by whakapapa and whose ancestors who lived and died there) together with taura here (people who are resident in an area but belong to waka and tribes from other parts of Aotearoa New Zealand).
Tangata Tiriti is a generic term to describe people whose rights to live in Aotearoa New Zealand derive from te Tiriti o Waitangi and the arrangements that the Crown has established under a common rule of law and the equity provisions of Article 3 of te Tiriti.