TŪRANGAWAEWAE

n: Literally tūranga (standing place), waewae (feet) (from Māori) ATHENA DENNIS

Burning bracken wafts over the coastline and swirls out to sea. The restless spirits of my tupuna return to Hawaiki.

Sometimes the beach feels like the dreams of a long line of ancestors met a quiet death here. Sometimes the beach feels like hope and freedom. This beach belongs to anyone who sees it and claims it. Whether in a 4WD, a bicycle, or an old fashioned galleon.

This is where a skipper’s boy named Young Nick announced that the Endeavour had come across land to Captain Cook in 1769. The rest is history. The inlet was named Young Nick’s Head.

A lot of blood was spilled here. The mingling of blood for the first time of peoples from the Pacific region and the British Isles. Their iron-clad crimson fluids joined when people lay on their backs in between scratchy linens – by force and by choice.

This restless union that was irreversibly forged in the spilling of rivers of blood, on the mountains, valleys and quiet rivers of Aotearoa. It cascaded down into the soil and awoke a terrible anger from the earth mother that still trembles in our hearts today. But it’s not good or polite to talk about blood.

It’s often said that when the pakeha first arrived in Aotearoa, they quivered in fear when they heard the first haka on the beach done by my tipuna.

The pebbles on the beach are as smooth and sea-worn as a pounamu inlaid with swirling clouds, or as a young woman’s face.

And yet, paradoxically, the stones on the beach are ancient. Just like me. I could be very young. I could be very old. Sometimes it’s so hard to tell.

There is a tapestry of my history curling along in the wind, in a place my ancestors called Tūranganui-a-Kiwa. There are weatherboard houses there that stubbornly affix to the ground, even as they are buffeted by cold easterlies and tropical northern winds. Anything can stay rooted to the ground when it’s patched over with a

loving hug, smiles, some kai and a warm place to sleep.

Below the shoreline, the tail of a taniwha emerges like a sharp knife of fire. Its eyes glitter like fierce murderous diamonds, its mouth contorts into a dangerous smirk. If only I could hang onto its tail and speedily be delivered across the oceans to the other place. The place where home lies. Scotland. Australia. New Zealand. Poland. Japan. Who can tell where?

He reo tō te manu, he reo tō te rakau, he reo tō te ika Āe rā, he reo to tō te Pakeha, he reo to te Hainamana otiia He reo anō hoki tō te Māori

A bird has a language, a tree has a language, a fish has a language. Yes Pakeha have their languages, the Chinese have their languages And the Māori have their own language.

Which language and culture I belong to was a point of pain and confusion for me as a child. I straddle two worlds with the colour of my skin, my wild hair, my eyes and my warrior-like, athletic body.

And yet, and yet – as an adult, I realised that these points of difference are not actually shadows, they are filled with a kaleidoscope of colours. Somehow the shared legacy of spilled blood, pain and disempowerment of my people can be transformed.

With age and wisdom, I realise that I am not just one person on a single arc of a lifetime. No, I am another knot tied within a long flax rope that transcends time. A delicate but strong rope that holds my people together. The stories I weave into the flax are my own reframing of the world. Yes, there is a world of chaos and terror swirling on the winds outside. Yet I can shutter the windows inside of me to the white noise and listen to the faint whisper of an unfurling koru within my heart. I hear a message and I bring it to you all now: ‘Just hang on. All will be fine.’