Te Whe ki Tukorehe Volume 1, 2020 by Nadine Anne Hura

volume one 2020

Published by Te Whē Press

Wellington 2020

ISSN: 2703-600656

Te Kāhui Ruruhau: Patricia Grace Renée Haare Williams Joe Harawira Mike Ross John Huria Witi Ihimaera Editors: Anahera Gildea Nadine Anne Hura Copy Editor: Anne-Marie Te Whiu Graphic Designer:

Edition .................... of 200

The development and publishing of this inaugural edition of Te Whē ki Tukorehe, Te Hau o te Whenua is generously supported by Creative New Zealand.

Chloē Reweti Images courtesy of: Anahera Gildea Haare Williams Courtney Delamere Nadine Anne Hura Te Kahureremoa Taumata Kiriana O'Connell

Contributors: Anahera Gildea Anne-Marie Te Whiu Anne Waapu Annette Morehu Arihia Latham Ataria Sharman Becky Manawatu Cassandra Barnett Emma Espiner Kahu Kutia Kirsty Dunn Michelle Rahurahu Miriama Gemmell Nadine Anne Hura Nicole Titihuia Hawkins Renée Ruby Mae Hinepunui Solly Sinead Overbye Te Kahureremoa Taumata

Karangatia Te hau kōriporipo Te hau kōmurimuri Te hau kōtangitangi Tau ana te korowai āhuru o Rangiātea e Pōhutukawa e Rangarangahia ngā hau e whā Ko Te Tai Tokerau Ko Te Tai Rāwhiti Ko Te Wai Pounamu Kei Te Tai Hauauru e! Rokirokitia te manawa Tākina ko te Pū Ngaehe ko te Whē Tuhia ki te hauwhenua i Tukorehe

Image courtesy of Anahera Gildea

E te puna kōrero o Ngāti Tukorehe, mōu i manaakitia, mōu i whāngaihia, mōu i manawanui mai kia puāwai ai mātou ngā kaituhi o Te Whē. Ki roto i ngā whārangi nei te whakatinanatanga o te kōrero 'e kore au e ngaro, he

Tihei mauri ora!

kākano i ruia mai i Rangiātea.' He mihi mutunga kore.

'I te timatanga te kupu I write and paint the living spirit in the spoken word' Haare Williams

ngā wāhanga kōrero contents 4 karanga Nadine Anne Hura

8 kupu whakataki preface

10 kupu arataki introduction

Anahera Gildea

13 te kāhui ruruhau Haare Williams, Joe Harawira, John Huria, Mike Ross, Patricia Grace and Renée

24 ko te pō - all night party with a grand piano Haare Williams

32 he mōteatea Anahera Gildea

50 the invitation Becky Manawatu

58 mihi ki a nanny hokohoko Nadine Hura

28 taku aho e - he pātere

30 i sit in a room...

Te Kahureremoa Taumata

38 kōhanga hou

Renée

46 (I) rui ruia, (II) kapakapa, (III) tui tuia Arihia Latham

Kirsty Dunn

53 karapipiti

54 mihi ki a J.C. Sturm Emma Espiner

Miriama Gemmell

60 a series of never ending beginnings Anne Waapu

69 karakia Kirsty Dunn

76 letter from the girl frankenstein Ruby Solly

70 enlightened Emma Espiner

80 hē: to be wrong, mistaken, incorrect Ataria Sharman

75 modern e-mihi Miriama Gemmell

84 marking the body - a reflection on receiving tā moko Ruby Solly

92 whenua hei whanau Miriama Gemmell

102 i missed the hui at Tukorehe and i cried Annette Morehu

115 tūī Ruby Solly

122 whakarongo Michelle Rahurahu

134 Rangiātea Anahera Gildea

142 te hau o te whenua whakapapa o ngā kaituhi

94 down the fish trap Cassandra Barnett

106 reap what you sow Nicole Titihuia Hawkins

116 koru Nadine Anne Hura

125 mai oro, yō taim Miriama Gemmell

98 Tukorehe Reneé

108 moumou Kahu Kutia

121 a short distance from home Anne-Marie Te Whiu

126 karanga tonu mai, hoki ai Sinead Overbye

136 ko te pū Nadine Anne Hura

144 kaituhi contributors

146 whakakapi Courtney Delamere

kupu whakataki preface

Anahera Gildea

Stories have laid the foundation of all of my learning,

institutions through a Eurocentric lens. I wanted to open the critical discourse space and

and have been the viewfinder through which I have

invite a mātauranga Māori lens to both the creation and reading of literature.

often understood the world. Māori Marsden says words are symbols of thought, and therefore without words we cannot think. Apirana Ngata alludes to the act of creativity - the emergence of a poem, waiata, or mōteatea - as an act of healing of both self and community. It is with these two ideas in mind that this project began. Te Whē – Te Hau o te Whenua began as part of my doctoral research in creative writing at Te Pūtahi Tuhi Auaha o te Ao/The IIML at Te Herenga Waka – Victoria

The path I set myself on was to employ a kaupapa Māori research methodology that entailed consulting with, and taking direction from, relevant Māori communities in order to both guide and answer my questions surrounding what constitutes Māori literature, what constitutes a mātauranga Māori lens, and how to approach the business of creative writing. From the outset of the project proper, Nadine Anne Hura and I have worked in concert every step of the way. Kāore e ārikarika ngā kupu mihi ki a ia. E hoa, kapohia ēnei kupu hei tohu aroha mōu. I have been incredibly humbled and fortunate to have co-created, and worked as kaihautū on this project with you.

University of Wellington. One of the key issues I was

Te Whē is the emergence of that work into the world. It is one of the outcomes of a

grappling with was that ‘Māori literature’ was still

marae-based wānanga that took place at Tukorehe Marae, he uri ahau o reira, at Kuku

predominantly being taught and analysed at academic

in Ōhau.

From the inception, we strived to consult widely with our literary communities and received consistent encouragement and support. E rere ā māua kupu mihi ki a Patricia Grace, Robyn Bargh, Eboni Waitere, Alice Te Punga Somerville, Arini Loader, Tayi Tibble, Emily Perkins, Damien Wilkins, and Mike Ross who sat around a table with us at the earliest stages of a

To Aunty Moerangi, Uncle Keelan, Parekarewa Ransfield, and Courtney Delamere, who shared kōrero with us and supported us - ki mua, ki muri - pupū ake ai i te whatumanawa ēnei kupu mō koutou ko te iwi o Tukorehe. To our families and friends, ka titia te ngākau ki ngā whakaaro mō koutou. Kiriana O'Connell, Alex Keeble, Cassandra Barnett, and Anne-Marie Te Whiu, there are simply not enough words to thank you for all your work behind the scenes.

fledgling idea and helped direct our thinking.

To Chloē Reweti, whose patience is now legendary, and to Sydney Shep and Miriame Barbarich for the generous time, ideas and energy you gifted us.

Me mihi ka tika ki Te Pūtahi Tuhi Auaha o te Ao/

And to the Kāhui Ruruhau, arā ko Patricia Grace rātou ko Renée, ko Haare

The International Institute of Modern Letters, who

Williams, ko Joe Harawira, ko Witi Ihimaera, ko Mike Ross, ko John Huria,

provided development funding to help us get started,

me iri ki ngā pātū o te whare kōrero ēnei kupu mihi mō koutou. Thank you for laying

and who continue to support and encourage us.

down the whakapapa for us to follow, and for sharing so unfailingly your expertise,

Nei rā te mihi ki a Debbie Broughton and Kim McBreen

time, and whakaaro for this project. We cannot express our gratitude enough.

from Te Wānanga o Raukawa who sat with us to wānanga, refine and further deepen our ideas, i tō

Ko Tainui te waka

Ko Hineāmaru te tipuna

Ko Tararua ngā pae maunga

Ko Tokerau te maunga

Kei wareware i ahau, me mihi ki a koutou, te whānau

Ko Ōhau te awa

Ko Taumarere te awa

o TOI Māori. Thank you for your continued and unwavering support. Through the crucial funding of TOI we were able to hold the wānanga which was the foundation for the work in this book.

Ko Tukorehe te iwi, te hapū, te marae

Ko Ngati Hine, Ko Ngāpuhi ngā iwi

Ko Anahera Gildea tōku ingoa

Ko Nadine Anne Hura ahau

koutou manaakitanga mai ki a māua.

To the writers who gathered at the waharoa, and who entered to participate, collaborate, and bring their deepest questions and thinking. Kua tau mai te wā kia mihia koutou.

kupu arataki introduction

Anahera Gildea

‘Place is the first of all beings.’ Archytas I am not a gardener. My relationship with soil is entirely

their experiences, and the seeds of their whakaaro that they would plant in this whenua.

to do with whenua. In the history of literature in Aotearoa,

This pukapuka is the culmination of a project begun by Nadine Anne Hura and

‘home’ has almost become a trope in its own right.

myself with a determination to bring into focus the ‘landscape’ of Māori literature,

Whether it be a distant and yearned for location, a

reo rua. It sits in a long and crucial whakapapa of those who preceded us, of the many

geographical certainty, a familiar smell, whānau, or an

Māori writers and artists who have been telling story since the first birds let sound

internet page, ko te tokanga nui a noho.

reverberate across the canopy of Te Waonui a Tāne.

To stand on the soil at the top of Kuku Beach Road and

These works are the result of the Tukorehe marae-based wānanga where Matua

let my eyes follow the line from the waharoa to the sea is

Keelan shared a story with us in the hope that this kōrero of land and place would lay

to look at the place, the home, the location both physical

a foundation, a pū, for each writer to begin conversations with. The story was told of

and spiritual, that I return to hei ahuru mōwai.

the construction of the original Rangiātea church in Ōtaki in 1851. Three great Tōtara

Within the pages of this inaugural bilingual journal,

trees were carefully cut from Pukeatua, one of the puke that surround and protect

Te Whē – Te Hau o te Whenua, are the myriad

Tukorehe, and that were then floated along the Ōhau river until they reached the sea.

expressions and complications of ‘home’ from the

It was an arduous process and was done by many hands over a long time. The logs,

Māori writers who gathered at the waharoa of Tukorehe

once they reached the sea, were escorted by runners along the coast until they reached

Marae and were called on, bringing their ancestors,

Ōtaki where they were again floated up the river till they reached the location set aside

for the church. They were then erected by hand and

The writers responded with poetry, essay, mihimihi, karakia, patere, mōteatea, and

became the three central pillars of Rangiātea.

heartswelling story. We organised the work into three ‘Tōtara’ to represent the pūrākau

Alongside this story, we invited the writers to reflect on the widely known whakataukī ‘E kore e ngaro ahau i ruia mai i Rangiātea’ as it spoke to both the intentions

that the wānanga began with. Each ‘Tōtara’ was loosely organised using further whakataukī that called up the huge variety of ‘birds’ that arrived in story - as messengers of spirit, as warnings, as atua, as tohu, as all the things.

we set for nourishing the soil of Māori literature, to

The first Tōtara calls together words under the shelter of ‘Ko te manu kai miro, nōna

the haukāinga story, and to the persistent identity

te ngahere; ko te manu kai mātauranga, nōna te ao; ko te manu kai whakaaro, nōna

questions for which ‘home’ is often an amorphous

a Rangiātea.’ It grounds us in place, and in reason for place, beginning with the

answer.

words of Haare Williams to set the literary whakapapa, and follows with pieces that

For us, the emphasis of this was deliberately on

range across languages, sisterhood, and those who planted the seeds of our identity.

process. We were interested in describing the values

The second Tōtara collects work under the whakataukī ‘Hutia te rito a te harakeke,

and principles that we were using to underpin our

kei hea te kōmako e kō?’ The importance in the work of the pā harakeke, the family,

writing practice and production. We asked ourselves

and the complexities of what it means to speak from diverse places are encapsulated

questions like what would it mean to have a writing

here. How do we live in our various contemporary worlds, making sense of ourselves

practice that had mātauranga Māori at its core?

and them?

And what would it mean to have a publishing process that also began in the same place? During the wānanga we discussed how the principles and values of manaakitanga, rangatiratanga, kotahitanga, pūkengatanga,

ūkaipōtanga,

wairuatanga,

The third Tōtara wears the korowai of ‘He ao te rangi ka uhia, he huruhuru te manu ka tau’. This section whispers toward circumstance, change, and the inevitable progression of life. Many of the pieces express grappling with grief, and loss. Others are about new beginnings and hope. All are about change.

whanaungatanga, kaitiakitanga, whakapapa, and

And within each Tōtara, winding and growing, is at least one piece of work that is

te reo Māori, be understood in relation to our work

typeset vertically, representing ‘aka’ or vines that shoot off as new growth and connect

as writers and storymakers. We riffed off the guiding

our stories from Papatūānuku to Ranginui, from the whenua to the sky.

principles as expressed by Te Wānanga o Raukawa and our conversation dipped and wove through every iteration of these that we could imagine.

Once all the pieces were together, we were indeed able to see the ‘landscape’ of Māori literature as it manifested in a specific time and a specific place and we were humbled and honoured to be part of the community that created it, that worked

behind the scenes, and that gave their energy to it. So many literature questions arose from this process, and from the writing that emerged - questions that were gnarly and difficult to answer. After much deliberation we chose three. Before we embarked on this project, we had asked pou in the Māori literary community if they would be willing to weigh in on tricky (and persistent) questions that we encountered. The book begins with the varied and imperative responses of the Kāhui Ruruhau – Patricia Grace, Renée, Haare Williams, Joe Harawira, Mike Ross, and John Huria. The absolute generosity and integrity with which these experts and leaders approached our queries cannot be overstated. Through the depth and breadth of these whakaaro we can ensure the health of the soil. It is here that the seeds of Māori literature can take root and grow. From here we are able to see the lush, bright undergrowth of the varied and inclusive landscape, and be extended creatively from

Image courtesy of Nadine Anne Hura

‘place’ all the way to ‘home’.

te kāhui ruruhau

ko te pātai tuatahi

Often in stories there is transgression of tikanga. Sometimes it’s on purpose and sometimes it’s inadvertent. How do we deal with our hapa?

Patricia Grace If writers are careless and not doing their research, or if there is a transgression, for example, against a tupuna, then no doubt something will be said about it. And it probably should. But who’s right and who’s wrong? There are always different points of view. On the other hand, a perceived mistake may not actually be a mistake at all. Writers just have to wear that sort of thing.

Renée I would never dream of pulling anyone up. I would never do it. If I want to do anything that I think I don’t know about, in terms of protocol, I will always ask. I always get advice. Once I was pulled up on Facebook by a Pākehā woman for using ‘Kia ora koutou’ as a greeting in a blog. I think she’d been to some classes and learnt about formal greetings. Well, I always think it is good manners to respond, so I got advice from a friend. She’s Ngāpuhi and works at Te Wānanga o Raukawa. She got three other people in the room, one from Kahungunu and two from Raukawa. They said well, if that’s wrong, then the Wānanga has been doing it wrong.

Haare Williams I don’t think you should be afraid to make mistakes. Māui did not back away when his father, Makea Tutara warned him against challenging death, he wasn’t scared off by the omnipresence of Hinenuitepō. He was successful in so many things until he challenged Nature. Hinenuitepō hasn’t lost a duel with man for over 4.5m years. A duel with Nature is NO, as we’re doing now and the consequences are death or a virus that isn’t selective of culture, standing, wealth or position on the societal ladder. No, he was daring. And it was that daring that plunged him into trouble hence mortality. So, step with caution. You have to expect to be knocked back, but you don’t have to stay down. Māui rose up against seniority and overwhelming odds each time. Look to Māui as a role model, as the guiding philosopher, as the centrepiece of Māori culture. He is for me the centrepiece. He was the prototype Pōtiki allowed to make mistakes and prosper by them. Tuakana, on the other hand were not allowed to make mistakes mistakes can be the lifeblood of creativity and inventive thinking, like silence where new things are created. So Māui was a threat to tuakana. Māui tikitiki-a-Taranga’s purpose was to challenge authority and restrictive conservatism. He challenged his older brothers, his parents, his grandmother and eventually his great grandmother Murirangawhenua. But he makes the fatal mistake of challenging Nature. The challenge, the daring, is there, but the warning is there also.

Don’t go too far. We cannot challenge Nature. Nature is giving. Papatūānuku is giving. But Nature can also be unforgiving. We must remember that. I read a lot of Māori writers saying that Earth is giving, but they forget to say that Papatūānuku is also unforgiving. We are seeing it now. The oceans, the forest and the land – when is the assault going to stop? Fishing up the Great Fish is the most important story of the nine Māui stories. Māui’s brothers showed lack of discipline and virtue in terms of two things: greed and waste. They fought over the land to have the best parts of the fish. In a consumer society now we have Greed and Waste. These things are completely distasteful in Māori society. So, look inside the narrative of indigenous cultures for new and lasting solutions. Māui Tikitiki-a-Taranga – the last born of Taranga.

Mike Ross We can distinguish between hē, hapa and hara. A koroua explained it to me like this: hē refers to something that is wrong. When you say ‘nōku te hē,’ the “o” category symbolises that it was out of your control. We don’t say ‘nāku te hē’ because that would imply that you did it deliberately. If it’s a hapa, well, that’s to be expected. People make mistakes. It’s unintentional. Then there’s hara, which is something that is done on purpose. Hara must be addressed because the error was deliberate. Not everyone works according to these lines, but what I like about it is the knowledge that there are degrees, or levels, of error. It frees us up to be creative and to know that we can make mistakes, so long as we learn and grow as we go forward and avoid deliberately causing harm. There is a tapu associated with knowledge, and questions as to whether people are able to handle that tapu. But depending on the context, sometimes the appropriate

response to a piece of creative work is discussion and wānanga. It can present an opportunity to engage in these issues and debate and learn, and this is very important.

Joe Harawira It’s important to be aware that if you put your story into the world, you’ll receive a response. Be prepared to hear that feedback. Sometimes, not reacting straight away

One thing to be aware of is that tikanga belongs to all

is the best thing. Listen to the kōrero, then go away and reflect on the words and

of us. So even though you may have a right to do or

the thinking behind it. Kia tau te wairua, tuatahi. People might want to challenge you.

utilise something, it may not be the right thing.

So be it. Don’t be afraid of the challenge. If you’re tūturu in your thinking, if you are

For example, if you degrade tikanga in your particular

pono to the kaupapa, then you don’t have to change your position. But if you put things

space, that will have consequences that the rest of us

out and you’re not pono to the kaupapa, if you are whakaputa mōhio, then you will

have to carry. We don’t exist in isolation, there are

be exposed. Once the writing hits the public world you are open to challenge.

connections between all of us. We belong to a wider

Anybody who puts their work out into the public domain needs to expect this. It’s like

body that we have responsibilities to. We have to be

tāmoko. I have to be strong enough to protect the integrity and sanctity of this noble

aware of that.

mark. Otherwise don’t get it. Don’t do it. Don’t write it.

Learning tikanga is good, understanding te reo is good. It’s good to pursue these things. But it doesn’t

John Huria

make you more Māori. When people understand that, they won’t have to strive and be angry. We don’t need to be competitive amongst ourselves about who is the real Māori, or to show off about how Māori you can be. We want all our people to be able to contribute and to move forwards as one. In saying that, we are part of a continuum. This is whakapapa. We have a responsibility to talk to our whānau and out of respect for these relationships, we need to listen to our tuakana and support our teina.

I think that these questions are good ones. They have a focus on writers. I’m interested in the role of the reader in the creation and/or realisation of a literary text and, if you include that, some illuminating thinking becomes apparent. Fish et al, says that the text as written (and as mediated through the editorial/publishing process) only becomes itself through the interpretive act of reading, and reading is formed by interpretive strategies (which are culturally determined), therefore you could plan for the informed reader to play a role. So, to consider the reader’s role in the subject of transgressions. Tikanga does differ around the motu, but there are, however, some similarities. For example, tension can arise for readers when their views of the way the world should be are not played out in a literary text. Also, if the hapa is intended as part of the text, then the reader must

Patricia Grace

treat it, or cleanse themselves, as is fit for the reader’s life. Editors should discuss with writers so that writers proceed advisedly and for particular effects. The wider question is what to do when there is an inadvertent hapa. First, seek advice from the rōpū tikanga where there is tension and out-of-balance material. (I don’t want to participate in too many works of conflict ‘a la Duff ’, which is a terrible cliché that Maori lit needs to always refer back to violence, or protestors having wrong done to them, I would just decline much of that.) Second, the traditional journal way is to have Errata, and Letters to the Editor, and a response from the editor. Editors can bear in mind that tension does not need to be validated, they can pre-empt any concerns by framing it in the introduction, and they can advise readers that there may be hapa, and that they should cleanse themselves as they see fit.

Ko te pātai tuarua

We are often asked to review other Māori authors. How do we do this in a way that upholds the mana of the writer, while engaging in robust critique of the content?

Having your work reviewed is a very vulnerable position to be in, as a writer. It’s an achievement to write a novel. It takes a lot of effort. I’m inclined to keep silent and not do reviews, I’m not someone who could do that. But yes, reviews are necessary. I think a reviewer needs to be open and honest. As well as critique, perhaps there are lots of things they can find that are right with the work, or positive solutions, without putting the writer down. This question reminds me of a letter I wrote to the editor of New Zealand Books (Volume 10, Number 3, Issue 44, August 2000). It was in response to a review by Sue McCauley in which I was misunderstood as saying that Pākehā shouldn’t write about Māori: “In 1978, I contributed to Michael King's Tihe Mauriora with an article entitled The Māori in Literature. It concerned the depiction of Māori in fiction by writers who were not Māori, and the examples given were from works by contemporary New Zealand writers. There were two points I was attempting to discuss. One was to do with what I saw as stereotyping and romanticising of Māori, and the consequent downgrading of people, especially of Māori women. There was also what I saw as the debasement of the Māori language because of the way Māori words were being popped into text in what I believed was an unnatural way. The second point was the observation that what I read of Māori characters didn't mesh with my experience. The characters didn't ring true to me in the way they spoke, in what they did and how they did it, how they felt or how they thought (that is, if they thought at all). I gave my views of the representation of Māori as minor characters, but not a judgement as to whether the writers should or should not be including Māori characters in their fiction. My point of concern was not about who can do what, but about the ‘heaped up effect’ of what I saw as stereotyping and negativity. I expressed the belief that it was important for the Māori view to be represented as fully as possible - for Māori writers to be

writing about ‘us in all our variousness’ to give some balance to the situation. (There is still difficulty though, because if there are too few writers who are Māori, it means that the wide range of backgrounds and the various experiences of being Māori are still not being fully represented. Further, or other, stereotyping may be the result.) I don't remember the 1983 seminar mentioned in Sue McCauley's review of Barbara Ewing's A Dangerous Vine ( June 2000 issue). I really do not like to think that I told any writer what she/he should or should not write about. I certainly haven't

else's’, to quote myself. It doesn't matter what is said, or by whom. It all comes from a viewpoint, and all becomes part of discussion for those who will read the work. If the view happens again not to mesh with mine, well, them's the breaks. For my part, I read reviews and other comment speedily, and whether good, bad or indifferent, file away and forget. This is because I don't want to be influenced by the assessments of others and feel that to do so would result in a loss of freedom to write what I want in the way I choose. After all, reviews and comment haven't been written for me. My part has already been done, and they are all part of the next phase for the work. What would be good would be to have a number of reviewers as well, and scholars who will open up text from within their own view and experience of being Māori, and who may even come up with a different framework for discussion if they find that necessary."

liked it and haven't listened when I've had the finger wagged under my nose. I'll take this opportunity to mention another matter, one that I have never come out in print about but have had to respond to on several occasions. That is the notion that Māori writers don't want to be reviewed and critiqued by reviewers and scholars who are not Māori. I don't know where this idea came from, but I'm sure it hasn't come from the writers because I've asked most of them, and anyway, why would any one writer want to cast that blanket over all of us? My response to those who ask has always been that I want my work reviewed and discussed by those who will ‘cut up in the marketplace along with everyone

Renée I used to do reviews, but I don’t anymore. I’m not entirely happy with the reviews I’ve gotten over the years. I’ve been writing plays since 1981 and novels since 1989 and I’ve written non-fiction and that sort of thing, but there seems to be only one very generic style of review in New Zealand. I’d like reviewers to talk more about style, for example. I choose a particular style for a particular story quite deliberately, but no-one ever comments on that. You can wait a long time before a reviewer will pick up on those nuances. No-one, except in critical terms, has embraced the idea of me using takatāpui characters. It took the one review from Pantograph Punch recently to remind me how rare it is for a reviewer to engage with the work on this level. The reviewer referred to the fact that I was more inclusive and had presented a norm that included both heterosexual and takatāpui, just as it included a mix of ethnicities and ages - because this is what a small town is. That really meant a lot to me. It was the

first review in all these years to engage with my work in this way and I was so overcome with gratitude when I read it. So yes, reviews are important, but we also need to caretake our young writers. The first time you publish there can be a lot of nervousness and lack of certainty so it’s important to be aware of that when reviewing.

Haare Williams Wānanga. Wānanga is when we bring together a college of like-minded ‘experts’ (Ihimaera, Grace, Apirana Taylor and kaumātua steeped in tikanga) with knowledge in the area of the critique for collective wisdom and congeniality to flow that will allow critical

Mike Ross Critique requires contextual awareness. This means being aware of the person, the whakapapa involved and the mana of the relationships. Depending on the person, the answers to those questions might be different. The important thing is to understand the context. Is this the right time, the right place, the right person, the right way? You need to have wisdom about this. In my mind, we need an understanding of tikanga. Doing what we think is appropriate at a particular time. There are ethical, procedural and interpersonal elements that determine tikanga. If people are going to critique the work of others, for example, then there needs to be some thinking around who is the right person to be doing this type of work. Someone who has a relationship with the writer rather than just relying on external titles, perhaps. Hopefully this is a more freeing model, and then you can say that you are being ethical and that you have a process in place, and you can justify that to others and to yourself.

discussions to follow. How do you define wānanga?

Joe Harawira

As a cultural space provided, in which to work and operate freely, within a collaborative warmth. The more disagreeable the truth, the sooner you must tell it. This wānanga, designed to bring together a college of experts with their separate and collective wisdom, knowledge, and experiences with a focus on finding or bringing to the fore the ‘best information available’, that will be of benefit to all its constituents now and in the future. Wānanga atu, wānanga mai,

Wānanga as a group is crucial. Not everyone has to agree but you need to make space to hear diverse voices in a safe environment. This takes time, one wānanga isn’t enough. To truly decolonise we need to engage all our senses. Especially the young ones who are struggling with these issues. That means reconnecting with the heartbeat of the land. Reconnecting to the natural world. Take your wānanga into the bush. Let the world do the talking. This is spiritual. Karakia is important. Reset is the first step to get rid of the clutter and to get ready for planting.

kōrero tahi, whakawhiti whakaaro, kōrero tahi me

We must make space and time for this wānanga because it’s important. Writers do have

te noho tahi. Listening with ‘empathy’– a desire to

a responsibility to be cognisant of how their work will be received. Alan Duff wrote his

give, receive and return – this is the principle of koha.

reality, but the way it went out into the world, his story tarred all Māori with the same

A wānanga is a place for shared knowledge whatever

brush. One story impacted a whole race of people. What the world saw of Māori was

the kaupapa.

violence - but that wasn’t my story.

I’ll give you an example. My Dad said to my sister a year before I got my tāmoko, ‘you tell him to wait until I’m

Your journal could also have a review section that assumes that everything published has mana and then discuss the broader context.

gone before he gets it done.’ I didn’t know that until after I saw the documentary where my sister was interviewed. I really struggled to understand why my father would say that. I wondered if it was something to do with the Ratana church. Finally, I realised - I came to the conclusion - that he didn’t want people looking at me as if I was a gang member. Because that’s what people’s perceptions of tāmoko were. Violence and gangs. He was afraid people would see me and judge me that way. He died in 2007 and I got my tāmoko in 2008, but I didn’t know until after I saw the documentary that he’d said that. I had the ending of the documentary re-shot, and I went up to see Dad and to say sorry to him, and to explain to him what it was really about.

Ko te pātai tuatoru

Who are the chosen storytellers? Or do we choose ourselves?

Patricia Grace That’s difficult, because I know I’ve chosen myself to tell some stories. For example, with Baby No Eyes, I never met with the family whose story I had been told. I only ever met with the lawyer who had helped the family. I did try to contact the family, but it was happening to other babies as well, so it wasn’t really a specific story. On the other hand, for some stories, such as iwi stories, you have to be asked first. I know for me, if it wasn’t my iwi I wouldn’t write it, even if I was asked. I would just leave it.

John Huria What is mana to you? Where does mana reside in relation to a text?

Renée Yes. Yes, I reckon we can. You either are or you aren’t.

Is it solely creator-focused, or is the act of writing and then reading an act of creation, with both writer and reader having mana?

Haare Williams

Again, there are things to note in response to these questions; editing does not occur in a public space - it’s important to take a training approach when working alongside writers.

You are. Pick up the pencil, sharpen it and use it as a weapon by telling the truth. You have the right and mana to access the taonga of your ancestors, but the way to get there is not straightforward. It is strewn with potholes as Māui encountered with Mahuika. You’re not given access to knowledge lightly. Mahuika tested Māui right to the nth

degree, and in the end, she threw the fire of the last toenail at him and he changed into a bird to escape, but eventually took control of fire to benefit humans. Māui is the Māori benefactor in so many things, he allows you access to the wisdom of Atua Kaitiaki. We’re also given a lesson when not to challenge Hinenuitepō to a duel. It’s your right to challenge. It’s the right of the pōtiki to challenge authority and the mismanagement of ultra conservatives in society. There’s a lot of leaders who stand up and say ‘I’m a leader.’ Look to Te Waharoa, look to Te Kooti and look to Te Puea. Real leadership comes from within. The exemplars for your own whānau and tribal narratives are already before you. Look to them and to the voices of your whare tipuna and your whenua tūturu. Try noho puku, karakia (between 4 and 6am), silence and mediation. Consult Nature and your ancestors. Let the purity of the truth be your companion as you write, and be

around the fire, but that’s all gone. That’s long gone. There was some sort of function there though, for sure. I find that today, we don’t tell enough stories in the formal part of our gatherings, in our whaikōrero. In pō whakangahau there are stories but they’re not the traditional ones. I’ve purposely tried to do much more to prepare stories for when I go home. I think as you get older, you’re able to select from a puna to bring out those stories that are appropriate for particular times. I’ve just decided that I will do that for our whānau. Tell the stories that talk about our land and our ancestors and our history, to help us stay connected. I’m never really quite prepared enough, but I just tell stories anyway, the bits that I remember. The function and practice of storytelling still exists in whānau but we are less confident about claiming the space as ‘Māori storytellers’ because we’re confused about our identity, disconnected relationally with our whakapapa, history, whenua and marae kawa, etc. It all knocks our confidence as Māori, but we’re still telling stories. Stories are a tool of communication and connection. It’s universal. Some people really have a knack for it. They have awesome skills, and people just gather round and listen. The three of us here are storytellers. I think I must be self-appointed, because I find I just tell stories!

‘obsessed’ with what and who you’re writing about and for. My gran Waioeka Brown of Te Karaka told her grandkids, ‘Kaua e waiho kia noho memeha noa ōu moemoeā.’ (Do

Joe Harawira

not let poor expectations get in the way of your dreams.)

In traditional society, the original storytellers were the ones who held the knowledge.

Don’t let your expectations hamper real growth. Enjoy.

In the old days, the koroua and kuia would watch the child every day from 0 to 20 years to identify their skills. Our elders would observe your behaviours and determine

Mike Ross I’m not sure how that worked i ngā wā o mua. Joe Harawira would be the one to ask. I was talking to relatives back home and was told that we had a custom of storytelling

your purpose within the community. They might say, ‘this one’s got a good mind, he’ll enter the wānanga to study whakapapa and become a kaikōrero pūrakau.’ We’ve lost this today. It’s lost. We’re in a different age now. A different era. We’ve all gone to the four winds and people have become disconnected. Probably the bastion of storytelling today is the marae - the pū of the kōrero. The pū is the seed of stories, our people and

our taonga. This is where the pū of pūrakau originates from - home. That’s why I’ve gone back to my people and Ngāti Awa. I was away for 30 plus years, teaching in Waikato and working in conservation all over New Zealand. I returned in 2009, so that I could reconnect with the heartbeat of the land, with the heartbeat of the kōrero, with my mountains and my rivers and te ao tūroa. Words have a wairua that appeal to the emotion, to the kare-a-roto. This is a tohu of someone who is able to write and verbalise through the spirit of the word. It’s an important role. We all have stories within us. We are all storytellers. Some stories need to be told to free you. To be able to talk through it, to discuss, and to strengthen your inner self. There are some stories you may not want to share. That’s ok. It’s your choice, when you are ready. We may not all tell our stories the same way. I could tell a story just using my voice and expression. You may use different words. But if we want our culture to survive it’s crucial that we return to our tūrangawaewae, to our mountains, to our rivers. Hokia ki ō maunga kia purea ai koe e ngā hau a Tāwhirimātea. Return to your home to be cleansed by the winds of Tāwhirimātea.

John Huria The story is a collaboration between teller and listener, writer and reader, mediated by interpretive strategies which are culturally formed (as well as formed by psychological processes (condensation and displacement) and blips and squirts of neurochemistry,

and responses to whānau and social relationships). We can’t do much about the psychological, neurochemical, nurturing dimensions of readers. However, we can consider the interpretive strategies which we make available to the readership. Interpretive communities create the text. How can you empower these communities by showing how you would use a particular critical tool? I would suggest that all this moves beyond the ‘Writers and Readers Week’ presentation of work and moves towards the self-aware growth of an interpretive community using interpretive strategies which are yet to be revisited, or which are made new. So, wānanga time?

Ko te manu kai miro, nōna te ngahere Ko te manu kai mātauranga, nōna te ao Ko te manu kai whakaaro, nōna a Rangiātea

ko Papa Sean te kaitito o te rerenga whakamutunga

ko te pō all night party with a grand piano Haare Williams “Art breathes life and mana inside our meeting houses, a restatement

but a new determination framed around tikanga and kaupapa Māori

of who we are, that continuous trace, whakapapa, a link to our past,

was. The stars and a pod of whales across the horizons of Moananui a

present and future. It becomes a taonga when a thing is given an

Kiwa prepared a sleeping giant for a new dawn.

identity.” (Dr Wiremu Parker, patron speaking on Tukaki Marae in

“If you love people then you must love culture, if you love culture

Te Kaha, 4 June 1973).

then you must love words, words are about people and without

It’s late afternoon, a clear blue sky, and a chill whips around an

people you do not have a conversation, words come to us in a

eclectic band in buses, vans and cars carrying about two hundred men,

very delightful way and we use words, borrow words and we are

women and children as they spill out onto the seaside splendour of a

crafted by words.” (Hone Tuwhare)

marae in Te Kaha on The East Coast. A pod of whales near Whakaari

“Let us acknowledge and honour our own history, our heroes

represents, for the locals here, ‘a good omen for a good start for the

in our own country, in our own setting and in our time.”

future of this hui,’ was the way Wiremu Tawhai, chair for the three day

(Witi Ihimaera)

hui, described the inaugural conference of The NZ Māori Artists and Writers Association 1973.

“I would like us to take the arts in all its diversely rich forms to our own people around the nation like driving an omnibus full of the

We didn’t quite know it then, but this was one of those watershed

arts to our people.” (Patricia Grace)

moments that propelled a new resurgence, an inertia that was to have

“Ah, tell me oh poet what do you do to the rejected chips that fall

a lasting evolution (or revolution) in the arts. Idealism was not new,

tōtara tuatahi I

from your chisel onto the floor, are they wasted?” (Hone Tuwhare

(3) Iwi in local districts and students (through schools such as

to John Taiapa)

Te Whanau a Apanui Area School be invited and sponsored

in the arts by NZMAWA.

“Whiua reretia ki te motu, whiua ki te iwi whiua ki te ao kia kore ai te reo e memeha noa.” (Ngoingoi Pewhairangi) “Welcome to our marae of Te Whānau a Apanui, to Tukaki in Te Kaha, nau mai haere ki nga tohunga o te motu.” (Para’s dad welcomes manuhiri before the Great House, Tukaki) “I now declare your inaugural conference of 1973 open.” (Brownie Reweti, MP) It’s Thursday 4 June 1973. The concept is the brainchild

(4) To present the best of Māori contemporary Arts using

the marae as a forum to showcase the depth, debate,

and expansiveness of Māori Art in its various forms

alongside the avante garde of international art.

(5) To allow the arts in its many forms to flourish and be seen on marae and to actively champion Rangatahi be they in the performing, sound or in the visual arts.

of Hone Tuwhare, Witi Ihimaera, Para Matchitt, Georgina

(6) To promote and actively advance Māori cultural and

Kirby, Patricia Grace, Selwyn Muru and others who were

economic capital within the arts.

cajoled or ‘shamed’ into accepting the challenge by Tuwhare. The venue was set by Matchitt and Whiting with blessings

(7) To clearly announce the place of Māori Art traditions in a

from Te Whānau a Apanui.

country that does not know that Māori art does exist

alongside the best in international forums.

The kaupapa was deftly woven, like the patterned takapau on the floor of the house, into reality over the long weekend. The concept was inspirational and immediately accepted and carried with enthusiasm that allowed it to breathe a breath of fresh air that was to drift, like a silent summer breeze, across the nation: (1)

Take the arts to our own people in rural and urban New Zealand

Attending as well, were Kaumatua Dr Wiremu Parker (patron), Charles Maitai, Sonny Waru, Moni Taumaunu, Hone Taiapa, Rangimarie Hetet and daughter Diggeress Te Rangihuatahi Te Kanawa, Emily Schuster, Brownie Reweti, Maaka Metekingi, Harata Solomon, Ngoingoi Pewhairangi - all joined together in the spirit of celebrating Māori and Māori in the arts.

(2) Make annual visits to different marae that involved

Icons present included Ralph Hotere, Arnold Wilson, Rei Hamon, Ivan Wirepa, Syd and Hannah Jackson, Tuti Tukaokao, Buck Nin,

Rowley Habib, Elizabeth Murchison, John Miller, Merita Mita.

Tangata Whenua, local artists and rangatahi.

In short we are the best. We need to tell ourselves that often. We have

Whānau, mums, dads and kids came in from as far away as Ōpōtiki

a culture with unique achievements in sport, music, art, hospitality,

and Ruatoria to pack in like the proverbial ‘tight seven’. A small space

peacekeeping. ‘We are the best,’ Harry Dansey added, ‘and we can

was set aside for performances and for the grand piano for local

reach out beyond - to the international markets in Europe, USA

hero and internationally acclaimed virtuoso and concert pianist,

and China.’

Ivan Wirepa, heard in many of the grand concert chambers around the world. The mood was expectant and the preparations were

The initial group met together in Pember Reeve Street in Auckland,

intense. One after the other, artists in their chosen fields gave

presided over by Tuwhare with Selwyn Muru, Taura Eruera and

of their best: Tuwhare reciting Rain and Tree, Ihimaera from

Haare Williams. That meeting arranged to take equipment to

Pounamu Pounamu, Harry Dansey with Ruku Te Kapa, a dance

Te Kaha that included a grand piano from the Auckland Town Hall.

ensemble, Selwyn Muru playing jazz on the piano, a guitar recital of

Living legends: Ralph Hotere, Kāterina Mataira and Ngoingoi

local talent, Diggeress Te Kanawa and Te Aue Davis on the power of

Pewhairangi, Te Aue Davis, Fred Graham... soon followed by

raranga, Patricia Grace reading an excerpt from It Used to be Green

Pakariki Harrison, Sandy Adsett, Jim Moriarty and Keri Hulme.

Once... and so whakangahau continued leading up to the grand event. Ivan Wirepa stepped up to the piano accompanied by cellist

Humility and mana are essential ingredients of Māori culture and art.

Antony Steele of Auckland. The tīpuna sparkled in the radiance

I find that there are women weavers up and down the country, the

of their smiling pāua eyes as the distinguished maestro played a

weavers and holders of mātauranga, yet they don’t consider themselves

selection from Liszt, Beethoven and Chopin. The applause was long,

artists. Their grace is a fulfilling prophecy of a Māori wealth, a cultural

drawing tears of joy from elders. We came closer to knowing the

wealth unmatched anywhere, and the envy of other nations. The first

word ‘virtuosity’. Whānau and the people of his marae had never

meeting brought with it the spark and the germination of a dream

heard anything like this. Neither had we. Nor had the tupuna in the

that became a movement: The New Zealand Māori Artists and Writers

carved poupou looking on benignly saying: “Ah, this we give to our

Association. A small group at first, with a vision and a mission for

kids and to a new world.” That was a moment in history, a moment

collaboration.

we wanted to freeze, a moment never to be forgotten.

Imagine if you can, a packed whare tipuna in the rural heartland

Art breathes life and mana inside our meeting houses.

of Te Whānau a Apanui, Tukaki filled to the heke with over two hundred for the highlight of the hui, The All Night Concert. Imagine too, twelve strong strapping men and the effort it took to strip down a grand piano and get it through the big meeting house front door.

tōtara tuatahi I

Haare Williams

taku aho e he pātere

Te Kahureremoa Taumata

E Hine Eeeeei!

Kia ita!

Kaokao hau mai ki Te Whare Pora, e karanga nei,

Ko Te Aka Whaitiri whakaoho mauri

Toro atu tō ringa

Ka rongo!

Puritia tō aho He aho whakapapa

Whaimata ki te mura o te ahi

He iho roa

Tērā te hinuwera

Hoki atu ki te aho tapu ō Te Iwaiwa

E korōpūpū ana

Whiriwhiria he takapau mō te ira tāngata e

I te waha o Te Ahi Mahuika Hei kīnaki mo te ngako o te kōrero e.

Hikimata ki te rangi Tēra ka paoro

E Hine e

Tēra ka marū

Toro atu tō ringa

Ka rongo!

Puritia tō aho

tōtara tuatahi I

E whiri E whatu

I tito a 'Taku aho e' hei waiata tautoko mo te kāhui ringatoi ā Mata Aho. He pātere hei whakamarama, whakamana, hei whakatau.

Whirihonoa he kaitaka kura huna

Ka rere te waiata ki te mihi ki ngā Atua kua whakaoho mauri

Tēnei te tuku iho

i roto i wā rātou mahi toi,

Tēnei te rewa ake Tēnei te toi ora Whakairihia ki te mata o te whare HEI!

Anō hoki, he hononga tō ia whiti ki te puāwaitanga o te mahi toi, mai te kākano o te whakaaro ki te whakairingaora o te mahi ki te pātū o te whare.

i sit in a room... Renée

I think of Bub Bridger, poet and short story writer. We did some readings and workshops along with Mihipeka Edwards, Patricia Grace and others, at Tapu Te Ranga Marae, Island Bay, to raise money for Bruce Stewart’s project. Bub and I discovered our mothers had both been of the generation who pushed their kids towards the Pākehā life and education because they saw that as the future and wanted us to have a better life. Bub had become a writer after she wrote a story at a Michael King workshop and showed it to him and the group and he said, ‘Keep writing.’ So she did. Stories and poems.

I sit in a room surrounded by writers. We are here at Tukorehe Marae on a writing hui. Patricia Grace and I are in this room as benign presences. It is very quiet. Everyone is writing or thinking...I feel that rich sense of thoughts mingling and meshing in brains and hearts that only happens at times like this. I think of Arapera Blank (née Kaa) the first poet in Aotearoa to use Te Reo Māori as well as English. I met her only once, would have been in the 1980s, and I remember I was very much in awe of her. I probably only said, ‘Kia ora’, before lapsing back into silence. Her sister Keri, I know a little better and the time some friends and I

I think of Jacquie Sturm who used to go to Ngāti Pōneke and be Jacquie Sturm and sing and laugh and learn action songs along with the rest and then she’d go back to her home in Wellington where she was simply Mrs Baxter and where everyone thought Jim had written her stories and poems anyway.

stayed with her in Rangitukia, she gave me a painting of a poem she’d written on the then Census question, What percentage Māori are you? It’s an angry scathing poem. I smile as I remember her calling in one Saturday morning. She was to speak at Te Papa that evening and wanted to quote the poem and had forgotten a line. We both

I mean she’s Māori. She can’t have written them.

laughed. I showed her where it was hanging on the wall and she took out her notebook and copied it. Keri also wrote and with a

Clare O’Leary made the most beautiful and perceptive documentary

group of friends and whānau, published her book Taka Ki Ro Wai.

about Jacquie, set at her home in Paekakariki.

tōtara tuatahi I

I look around this room, how full of light it feels, everyone present in this moment while their thoughts roam as far and as wide as that river where from this point, local people rolled the logs down to Ōtaki to rebuild Rangiātea. There’s something being built in this room. There are words being written that won’t all survive the rapids or the storms but there are also words that will roll all the way down the river and make stories, poems, books. I sit there and I know those wāhine toa who began the process of rolling their rich and beautiful words along the rivers of prejudice and power, are pleased. I can see them smiling. I smile back.

Te Kahureremoa Taumata

he mōteatea Anahera Gildea

E te kāwatawata e ahu mai ai i te puna mahara.

mōu tai ata, mōku tai ahiahi,

He wā roa te noho hinapōuri nei au,

whāia ngā wai o Haunuiananaia,

i konei i te karu waitai o te ika

mai i Ōhau i tua atu i Hōkio,

kapo wairua noa.

i te heke o ngā tuna ki te tai papaki rua.

E tama, nāu i puta mai i te wā ka tōtara wāhi rua te whānau.

E uia mai “nā wai tēnei tamaiti e haere ana?”

I karanga mai a Te Rau, te Mātārae,

Me tohu koe ki te whare o Whatihua rāua ko

nō te heke Whirinui

Ruaputahanga

te heke Kariritahi

e iri ai ki ngā pātū

te heke Mairaro.

ēnei kupu aroha mōu. Kāti au i konei me tō puehu

Nāu te waka hāhā i huri,

i te ihu o tēnei waka e.

e te tau o taku ate. Hoki ki te ūkaipō. Tū mai Tukorehe, tū tonu Tararua, e tū Poroporo, e tū Pukeātua i tū ai ngā tōtara haemata, o Rangiātea e. Hoki ki runga rā, tākiri te kōmaru,

tōtara tuatahi I

I mōhiotia whānuitia e ngā iwi o te motu te taonga nei, arā ko ngā

E ai ki a McRae 1, e whāia ana he momo hoahoa e ngā kaitito

waiata Māori. Kāore he pātaka i tua atu i ngā mōteatea hei puna

mōteatea. I tīmatatia te nuinga o ngā waiata tangi mā tētahi

mātauranga Māori. Kī ana ngā waiata o Ngāi Māori-o-Mua i ngā tohu

rerenga e hāngai ana ki te huarere, te āhuatanga o te taiao

o te ao Māori, i te tātai whakapapa, ā, kia kawea ai ngā kōrero me

rānei, hei kupu whakarite mō te wairua. Ā, mihi ai te kaitito

ngā tikanga a ngā iwi Māori. I te ao tawhito me te ao o nāianei, he

ki te tūpāpaku, kātahi ka huri te kōrero ki te haerenga ki te pō.

waka rangatira ngā mōteatea ki te whakaatu i ngā whakaaro Māori.

Hei whakakapi, ka puta te pōuritanga, te mamae o ngā mahuetanga.

E ai ki ngā kairangahau, he āhua rerekē ngā momo waiata, hei whakaara i ngā kare-ā-roto. Ko te kaupapa o tēnei mōteatea

Kei roto i ngā oriori, e pīkau haere ana te tamaiti mōna te waiata kia toro atu ki ngā tangata rongonui nō tōna iwi, ki ngā wāhi

te matenga o tāku tamaiti, nō reira, i titoa he waiata tangi e

hira nō tōna iwi. I whakamōhiotia anōtia e ngā kaitito oriori te tātai

whakapuaki ai te pōuritanga, ā, kua whakauruurua ētahi āhuatanga

whakapapa me ngā pūrākau e whakapiri ana ki te iwi. Ā, he mahi

o ngā waiata oriori. I ngā wā o mua, i titoa te nuinga o tēnei momo

anō i roto i te oriori – he tohutohu ki te tamaiti kia whakaea ētahi

mōteatea i te whānautanga mai o te tamaiti o ngā whānau ariki.

mahi, ētahi kōrero rānei i whakakino ai i tōna ake whānau.

Engari, i tēnei ao hurihuri, kei te pānoni pea anō te hiahia ki te ū ki tēnei ritenga. Nā te kino o te tāmitanga, kua pokea te tokomaha e ngā pōraruraru me ngā aituā. Kua ngaro katoa i ētahi ō rātou hononga ki ō rātou haukāinga, ki ō rātou tīpuna, ki ō rātou iwi.

He tohu noa kei tēnei mōteatea i whakaea ai taku tama i te whānau raru mō mātou. Nā te kaha o te hiahia ki te hoki ki te ūkaipō, ka whakatikahia te whānau.

Kua whakamahia ngā here o te oriori hei tuitui ki tāku tama ngā

Ko ngā momo haerenga te huahuatau matua o tēnei titonga. E rima

kōrero o tōna iwi, o ngā wāhi hira, o te whenua tīpuna. I te wā o

ngā haerenga e pōkaitia ana i tēnei kōrero auaha. Ko te haerenga

tōna matenga, kāore anō au kia hoatu.

tuatahi e whakamau ana ngā mahara ki ngā heke e toru ki te

I te tau rua mano mā rua, kua hinga tāku tama tuatahi. Ko Orlan tōna

tonga nā ngā uri o Hoturoa, arā ko Ngāti Raukawa rāua ko

ingoa. I te ngahurutanga i mua, ka nui te raru i waenga i a mātou

Ngāti Toarangatira. Ko Te Rauparaha te kaihautū o ngā hekenga

ko tōku whaea. Kua mahue taku haukāinga i ahau. He roa te wā e

ki te takiwā o Tukorehe, te iwi o māua ko tāku tama. I mōhiotia

noho wehe noa ana ahau i tōku iwi. Heoi anō, i te wā o te matenga o

whānuitia ēnei kōrero,ā, i tōku ake tamarikitanga, ka noho

Orlan, i kaniawhea te ngākau mō taku wehenga. Ka nui te kōingo ki

ahau i te taha o ōku kuia, whakarongo ai. I rangona ngā

te hoki ki te kāinga, nō reira, i kawea tāku tama e au ki te takoto i

pakiwaitara e hāngai ana ki ngā tangata rongonui pērā i a

te taha o ōna tūpuna. Koia te take i hoki ahau ki tō māua iwi.

Te Rauparaha rātou kō tōna tuahine ko Waitohi, ko tōna

Nā tōna matenga i tau ai ngā ngaru karekare o te whānau.

irāmutu ko Te Rangitopeora.

Ko te haerenga tuarua e kōrerotia ana e pā ana ki te pūrākau o

E te kāwatawata e ahu mai ai i te puna mahara.

Haunuiananaia. I whāi ia i tōna wahine, ko Wairaka, i heke iho mai i

He wā roa te noho hinapōuri nei au,

tō rāua kāinga ki te Whanganui-a-Tara, e tapatapa haere ana i ētahi

i konei i te karu waitai o te ika

o ngā wai i whakawhitia ai. Hei tā ōku kaumātua, i whakaingoatia

kapo wairua noa

ngā awa whai tikanga katoa i tō mātou rohe e ia. Nā te ngau o tōna

E tama, nāu i puta mai

maikuku e pātata ana ki Tukorehe, i whakaingoatia te takiwā o tōku

i te wā ka tōtara wāhi rua te whānau.

haukāinga, arā ko ‘Kuku’.

I karanga mai a Te Rau, te Mātārae,

Ko te haerenga tuatoru e kōrerotia ana nōku e hāngai ana ki

nō te heke Whirinui

Rangiātea. E ai ki te kōrero, kua tae mai ōku tīpuna i kawe ai te

te heke Kariritahi

onetapu mai i Rai’atea rānō ki Aotearoa. Nāwai rā, i tanumia taua

te heke Mairaro.

onetapu i raro i te whatu mauri o te Hāhi o Rangiātea ki Ōtaki.

Nāu te waka hāhā i huri,

I tāku taitamarikitanga, i pōhēhē ahau he rite tonu ngā Rangiātea

e te tau o taku ate.

katoa. Ka whakapono ahau i puta ai ngā iwi katoa mai i te Hāhi

Hoki ki te ūkaipō.

o Rangiātea. I tērā wā, he mea tino nui ki ahau te whakataukī

Tū mai Tukorehe, tū tonu Tararua,

‘E kore au e ngaro; he kākano i ruia mai i Rangiātea’. Ko te mea nui

e tū Poroporo, e tū Pukeātua

anō hoki ināianei. E ai ki te kōrero, ka mate ana tētahi tamaiti,

i tū ai ngā tōtara haemata, o Rangiātea e.

ka mate anō ngā kākano o Rangiātea.

Hoki ki runga rā, tākiri te kōmaru,

mōu tai ata, mōku tai ahiahi,

whāia ngā wai o Haunuiananaia,

mai i Ōhau i tua atu i Hōkio,

i te heke o ngā tuna

ki te tai papaki rua.

E uia mai “nā wai tēnei tamaiti e haere ana?”

Me tohu koe ki te whare o Whatihua rāua ko Ruaputahanga

e iri ai ki ngā pātū

ēnei kupu aroha mōu.

Anei anō te apakura mō taku tama, ā, ētahi kōrero tuku iho kia

Kāti au i konei me tō puehu

arahina ia.

i te ihu o tēnei waka e.

Kātahi ka huri tēnei mōteatea ki te ara e takahia ana e te wairua o tāku tama ki te rēinga. He tohutohu kei roto mōna kia kimi ngā wāhi i whakaingoatia e Haunuiananaia mai i Te Whanganui-ā-Tara, mā Kuku ki te pito o Te Ika-a-Māui. Ko te haerenga whakamutunga ko tōku ake haerenga i puakina ai tēnei waiata nō roto i ahau. I whakamahia ngā kupu o ētahi atu waiata hei hopu te iho o reira. Ki au nei, me here rā ka tika tēnei titonga ki ngā kaitito o mua i ngaro ai i ngā tamariki.

tōtara tuatahi I

Ko te ‘kāwatawata’ he momo hau kōingo, hau mārire

ingoa ‘Te Rau’ hei whakakapi mō ‘Te Rau o Te Aroha’, arā

anō hoki. E ai ki a McRae , pēnei ka kitea ngā momo hau hei

te ingoa o te ūrupā o Tukorehe i takoto ai i tāku tama.

kupu whakarite, ka haramai ngā maumaharatanga o tētahi

taupuhi. 3.

rerenga. Hei tohu o tētahi tangata hirahira, hei momo

Nā te whakamahia o te kīanga ‘te karu waitai o te ika’ i

whēnua rānei. Ko te tikang a o te ingoa Orlan te ‘whenua

tohu te kōrero o Haunuiananaia. I a ia i piki ake ki te tihi

rongonui puta noa i Te Ao’. He mea tuhia ki tōku rae.

o ngā Remutaka, ngā Rimutaka rānei, i tirotiro ia ki ngā harapaki e rua. Kei tētahi taha i kitea tētahi roto wai māori,

8-10.

ake ai te manawataki o te oro, ā, kia manatu ai te uauatanga

ētahi koinei te kanohi waimāori o te ika a Māui. Kei tōna

ngā haerenga katoa i whakatutukia ai.

taha kē atu, i tirotirohia te wai o te moana, te waitai, arā ko Te Whanganui-a-Tara. Kei reira e noho ana tēnei kaitito i

11.

runga i te ngākau pōuri, whakarongo ai ki te tīkapa o te tai.

tangata tahanga. 12.

tokorua i mate ai. Ki au nei, ko te āhuatanga o ngā kupu ‘kapo wairua noa’ e whakaaturia atu ai te matenui o ngā kiriwera nāna pea ngā kēhua i aru. 6.

E ai ki a McRae5, kei ētahi atu waiata e whakamahiatia nuitia ana te waka mahue rukaruka hei huahuatau mō te

I tīkina atu tēnei rārangi kōrero nō tētahi o Ngāti Porou, nā Timoti te Kaui3. Nāna tēnei waiata mō ōna mokopuna

Anei ngā heke nui e toru4. Ko te pūrua tētahi āhuatanga kitea ai i roto i ētahi mōteatea. I tāruatia ēnei kupu kia kaha

rarapa ai. I whakaingoatia taua taha ko Wairarapa, ā, ki

E rua ngā take i whakauru ai te kupu ‘Mātārae’ ki tēnei

E mihi ana tēnei rerenga ki tāku tamaiti. I rangona whānuitia tēnei kīanga hei maimai aroha.

13.

I kōwhiria te kupu ‘ūkaipō’ nā te mea i haria mai ngā aronga-rua. Ko tētahi te haukāinga, ko tētahi atu te

E mōhiotia whānuitia ana te whakataukī i tikina ai tēnei

whaea. Ko tōku tino hiahia te hokinga a tāku tama ki

kīanga.

tōna ūkaipō, ki tōna whaea tūturu. Ka mutu, tērā pea e

He tangata tino rongonui a Te Rauparaha nāna i takitakina

nohopuku ana tōku hiahia kē atu ki te hoki ake anō ki

atu ai ngā iwi e rua kia rapu whenua hou hei kāinga. He uaua

te haukāinga.

te huarahi ki te tonga, engari kei ngā mōteatea o ngā heke

14 – 16. E waiatatia nuitia ana tētahi waiata e te iwi Tukorehe.

i mau ai i ngā whakaaro hirahira ki tōku iwi. Koinei te take

Ka tiki atu ahau i ēnei rerenga nā taua waiata. E tautuhitia

nōku i uru ai ia ki tēnei titonga. Kei a rātou mā e noho ana

ana ngā maunga whakaruru o Tukorehe i roto i

te mātauranga o ngā tīpuna. Waihoki, i whakamahia te

tēnei waiata.

Kei tēnei horopaki, ko ngā tōtara haemata ngā rākau i tope

24 - 26. He uri māua ko Orlan nō Whatihua rāua ko Ruaputahanga.

ai mai i a Pukeātua hei pou kia tū ai te Hāhi o Rangiātea.

Kāore e kore, e mōhiotia whānuitia ana te kōrero e pā ana

Nā ēnei kupu i mōhiotia ai he titonga tēnei i muri mai i te

ki tō rāua whare hāneanea, whare rongonui, whare nui.

taenga mai o Karaitianatanga.

Nā te rahinga o tēnei whare ka kitea. E whakairia ake ngā whakaahua i ōna tīpuna ki ngā pakiwaitara o tēnei whare.

I ahau e tamariki ana i tāruatia ngā pakiwaitara e hāngai ana ki a Rangiātea e tōku whaea. Mēnā ka ora tonu tāku

27.

tama, ka tāruatia anōtia ēnei kōrero. 17.

te waiata o Te Rangitopeora8. Hei te roanga atu, kua mōhio ahau i tēnei rārangi kōrero. Koinei te puakina a tētahi i te

He tohutohu te rerenga ‘hoki ki runga rā’ e whakapiri ana

mutunga o tētahi heke roa9. I te wā o te matenga o Orlan, ka

ki a Rangiātea anō, ā, ki a Matariki. He tohutohu tēnei ki te

tae mai māua ki te mutunga o tētahi heke roa.

whakarewa o tōna ake waka, kātahi ka whakaahu atu ki te kōmaru o te Waka o Rangi. 18.

28.

ki te ako i tōku hapa, hei manatu i tutū ai te puehu10, hei whakahoki kei kore ai e wareware nōku te mahi, kia rite tonu

kupu ki te kōhatu o tāku tama.

ki te haerenga nā ngā tīpuna ki Aotearoa, e kawea ana te puehu tapu i te ihu o tēnei waka tangata Māori, waka tikanga

19 - 21. Ka whakauru anō a Haunuiananaia ki konei hei arataki.

Māori, waka reo Māori. Koia te hau roki moana.

I tapaina ētahi o ngā awa me ngā tino pā tuna. E rua ngā tikanga ki tēnei rerenga. He kōrero kei roto e hāngai ana ki te pakarutanga o ngā awa i runga ki te moana, ā, he kōrero e pā ana ki te wāhi e rere ana ngā wairua, peke ai. 23.

I āta kōwhiria te kupu ‘puehu’ hei tohu o te whakataukī ‘E kore te patiki e hoki ti tōna puehu’ hei whakatūpato anō

E whakamahia nuitia ana ngā kupu o te tai o te moana hei kupu whakarite mō te pōuritanga6. E whaowhao ana ēnei

22.

‘Kāti au i konei’ - koinei te rerenga i puta atu ai nō tētahi o

He rārangi kōrero tēnei nā Tokorau nō Ngāti Raukawa me Ngāti Whakatere. He ‘Tangi mō Rangiamohia’ te ingoa7. I titoa tēnei waiata tangi i te matenga o tāna tamaiti anō hoki. E aronui ana te tikanga o tēnei rerenga ki te mahuetanga o te kānohi ki tō māua iwi. Mēnā tē āhukahukangia ia e ōna tīpuna, kīia atu ana te whakapapa.

tōtara tuatahi I

McRae, J., 2011. Ngā Mōteatea: An Introduction He Kupu Arataki. Translated by H. Jacob. Auckland: Auckland University Press, p 53; McRae, J., 2017. Māori Oral Tradition: He Kōrero nō te Ao Tawhito. Auckland: Auckland University Press, pp 159-195

McRae, 2017: 168

Ngata, A., 2005. Ngā Mōteatea: He Maramara Rere nō ngā Waka Maha Part Two. Translated by P.T.H. Jones. Auckland: Auckland University Press, p 47

Royal, T.A.C. (ed.), 1994. Kati au i konei: A Collection of Songs from Ngati Toarangatira and Ngati Raukawa. Wellington: Huia Publishers, pp 19-20

McRae, 2017:167

McRae, 2017:167; Orbell, M., 2009. Waiata: Maori Songs in History : An Anthology. Auckland : Raupo, p 15

Ngata, 2005:33

Ngata, A. (ed.), 2004. Ngā Mōteatea: He Maramara Rere nō ngā Waka Maha Part One. Translated by P.T.H. Jones. Auckland: Auckland University Press, p 311

Royal, 1994:13

Mead, S.M. and N. Grove, 2003. Ngā Pēpeha a ngā Tīpuna: The Sayings of the Ancestors. Wellington: Victoria University Press, p 36

kōhanga hou Kirsty Dunn “Yes this bird and that bird today are my favourite poets” Review, Robert Sullivan On Armagh Street in the slowly stirring centre of Ōtautahi, a

The message is slowly fading, due in part to its exposure to the

group of misfit manu have made themselves at home. Away from

elements. But it is also slowly being worn away by all those elbows

their usual breeding grounds near the braided rivers of Waitaha

leaning, hands resting, feet shuffling across the ledge in order to get

and those further south, a steadfast crew of tarāpuka have

a better view of the birds.

built their nests upon the remnants of the twenty-two-storeyed

PricewaterhouseCoopers building demolished years ago in the

I’ve been thinking about manu and writing about manu a lot lately.

wake of the earthquakes. From the footpath, just across the road

Tōroa and tīrairaka, kūkupa and kōmako, pūkeko, kāroro, tūī,

from the flash new Crowne Plaza Hotel, you can see the small,

hōkioi, huia; when I type these names I hear them in my head –

black-billed manu bathing in the building’s flooded former

their names, not their voices I mean – though of course sometimes

basement or surveying their surroundings from the top of the

the names and calls of manu are closely related; sometimes

high fence enclosing the site; you can hear them kōrero too, near

they sound the same1. I’ve been thinking about these kinds of

the kōhanga they have fashioned beside twisted clusters of rusted

relationships a lot lately too: the connections between words for

iron eerily reminiscent of the roots of fallen trees. And across a

things and the places they come from, and the knowledges and

smooth piece of timber lining a makeshift, grilled window, a notice

worldviews embedded within them, as I learn te reo Māori and as

scrawled in permanent marker reads:

I read the work of Māori writers, tracing my way through layers of

TARĀPUKA – BLACK-BILLED GULL – ONLY FOUND IN NEW ZEALAND

language and narrative. This journey takes place within a landscape

MOST ENDANGERED IN THE WORLD

abundant with manu, where the appearances, behaviours, and

tōtara tuatahi I

calls of different species (amongst a myriad of other things) aid in

Māori literature. We talk, and sing, and write about them, around

our representations and understandings of who we are and help us

them, with them.

to remember our relationships with, and obligations to, each other. In other words, references to and portrayals of manu and comparisons made between birds and their human relatives demonstrate the beauty and dynamism and complexity of whakapapa.

Though of course, manu have their own stories too. v During one of my visits to the site in Armagh Street, I watch as

Of particular interest to me in my mahi at the moment, are the

two fluffy chicks learn to navigate their busy environment: ruffled

connections between manu, orators, writers, and narratives within

bundles of brown and grey feathers balancing on top of delicate

this vast and varied landscape. Not only do speakers sometimes

stick-like legs under the observation of the adults nearby. I watch

invoke manu during their kōrero (“ka tangi te tītī, ka tangi te

as other manu fly in too: red-billed gulls glide into and over the site,

kākā, ka tangi hoki ko au”), and not only are there numerous

their calls cutting into the sound of traffic, and swallows swoop in

whakataukī which contain comparisons between orators and

occasionally, diving under the chipped concrete foundations before

various bird species (“he rite ki te kōpara e kō nei i te ata”) but

darting off again. Passers-by take out their phones, lift them high

there are also strong connections between manu and the written word too. Many of the early Māori language newspapers were

above the fence, take their photos, and carry on their way.

named after manu, given their ability to fly far and wide across the

Some people are calling the place an ‘urban bird colony’ but

motu with their messages: Te Hokioi o Niu Tireni E Rere Atu Na

those kupu don’t feel right to me. I’m still trying to settle on an

(later shortened to Te Hokioi e rere Atu Na) ( January-May 1863);

alternative, or decide whether or not this is even necessary: there

Te Pipiwharauroa – He Kupu Whakamarama (1899-1913);

is talk of the landowner making the site somewhat ‘less attractive’

Te Korimako (1882-1888) and Te Matuhi (1903-1906). It is

to the birds so that they don’t return next summer. I can’t help but

significant too, that quills were sometimes utilised in early written

feel a little pōuri at the prospect. If this is true, and this does

works in Aotearoa.

happen, where will they find a home?

Manu are whanaunga, are subjects, are inspirational and diverse and

creative, are invoked to illustrate and celebrate our relationships

I have manu with me when I get to Tukorehe; some of them stir in

with each other, and the world around us. They can represent

my puku as we prepare for the karanga, and they rise again a little

the skill of a speaker, the potency of a story, the dispersal of a

later (as they always do) when it’s my turn to speak. Later in the

narrative, and our vibrant and ever-expanding whakapapa of

wharekai, I see that there are birds in the room with us too as we

to have our māreikura, Whaea Patricia and Whaea Renée, with us

kōrero: pounamu manu, feathers adorning hair, wings in our names.

too, generously sharing their experiences; showing us new ways of

Amongst the many things we talk about, the subject of tropes

thinking about what narratives are and what they can do, providing

comes up, and birds are present here too: all those manu metaphors,

us with materials with which we can build new nests to hold and

similes, stories, relationships. I ask myself where my manu-centric

nurture our own.

mahi fits into all of this; I scribble down notes to myself, write down ways to review the work done thus far with some new

I think about the tarāpuka – doing what they need to, with what

whakaaro – new ways of reading – in mind.

they have, where they can.

In this space, a quiet haven despite the intrusions of the loud

and busy highway nearby 4 we can say words like ‘gate-keeping’,

On my office noticeboard, next to an artwork called The Huia

‘colonialism’, ‘racism’ and ‘tokenism’, and discuss our experiences

Returns by Kelly Joseph, and below a collage of portraits of

and frustrations as well as our aspirations; we talk about

inspirational wāhine from Te Tai Tokerau, is Robert Sullivan’s

possibilities and we make plans to realise them. Words like

poem Review. For me, the poem playfully and powerfully

‘authenticity’ and ‘permission’ fly around the room too, sometimes

represents the complex and beautiful relationship between manu

alongside and sometimes colliding with others like ‘identity’ and

and storytellers that I have become mildly obsessed with these

‘stereotype’ and ‘tradition’. We are encouraged to explore the

last few months. Review, whilst being a reference to a critique

implications of these words in our own ways, to exchange whakaaro,

or evaluation of an author’s work, is also a call to look again: to

to let free the questions we cage inside ourselves in other spaces.

turn back in order to consider an alternative perspective, or to

We talk about bringing our own ways of reading to each other’s

attempt to re-read or “re-view” something in a different way.

work and about situating our own and each other’s mahi within

This alternative lens suggested in the poem is one that is based

an expansive literary whakapapa: there are no lonely swallows

upon whakapapa that has relationships and an acknowledgement

here.5 And we talk about sovereignty in writing, editing, publishing,

of one’s place within those relationships or lineage at its core:

reviewing, funding: we talk about tino rangatiratanga. Review

We do all of this with previous hui and kōrero in mind, drawing upon the many gatherings and discussions had by Māori artists around Aotearoa and the fruits of their collaborative mahi; these are our navigational tools, our prompts, our foundations. We are fortunate

tōtara tuatahi I

When I was a lot younger I was reviewed by someone who said that I should stop paying homage to other writers –

you know what? I listened to that reviewer so for a long time

I wouldn’t pay my respects – I’d pretend I was writing in a

vacuum, that there was no history of reading inside me, that

is an acknowledgement of this literary whakapapa; for whilst this can be read as a nod to the relationships and comparisons between orators and birds such as those mentioned earlier, as well as other writers who employ similar imagery7,this also seems to be an homage

everything was original breath unaffected by the airs and

graces of my elders.

But here I am more than a decade later remembering . . .

It was only a stray thought. The reviewer meant well.

But sorry I’ve just seen a seagull tracking the up-draughts –

to be a double homage here, where the ‘favourite’ bird-poets

carried up and down and sideways with a tilted glide

within this poem references both the bird-poet of Bird of Prayer

breathtakingly

to specific writers too.8 These words bring to mind Hone Tuwhare’s Bird of Prayer which, in its play upon the words ‘prey’ and ‘prayer’, describes a hawk, “languidly typing / a hunting poem / with its wings”9. There appears

whilst also acknowledging Hone Tuwhare as poet and manu kōrero. The subjectivity of birds and the notion that they too behave in

musical. Here comes another – wind enough he doesn’t need

to flap about just soar, accelerate, soar so that for a moment

he thinks he’s a piece of paper he’s so wrapped up in the wind.

within Robert Sullivan’s poem “thinks he’s a piece of paper, he’s so

Yes this bird and that bird today are my favourite poets.6

wrapped up in the wind”, whilst the gliding action of the other is

creative and diverse ways is also represented in a way which parallels the ‘typing’ hawk within Bird of Prayer; for one of the seagulls

“breathtakingly musical”. I love that the seagulls interrupt and take over this poem; the birds seem to fly into the work, suggesting that their presence is natural and ordinary; it is as though they have been lingering nearby at the edge of the text and are now just coming into view. In light of the poem’s treatment of authorship and the recognition of one’s literary ‘elders’, the arrival of the seagulls for me represents the ‘naturalness’

It seems possible too, that J.C. Sturm might be another writer acknowledged within this literary whakapapa. The poem To a particular critic from her collection Dedications (2006) also pertains to the subject of reviewing and literary criticism in a similar vein to Review; the poem begins:

of ‘paying homage’ to one’s tuākana or tūpuna, of engaging in an

I don’t like poems about birds

ongoing kōrero with those who have ‘flown’ before; for these writers

You stated

are always there – influencing, challenging, and inspiring. The poem’s

Handing me back my latest

final line: “Yes this bird and that bird today are my favourite poets”,

Or rocks and sea

Or hills and trees.

the important connections and comparisons between birds and

I don’t really go

storytellers in Te Ao Māori. For me, this represents and celebrates

For all that nature stuff [...]

a continuing dialogue between writers that places literary tūpuna and storytelling tuākana, in front of (and not behind) their

A conversation between critic and author regarding thematic

contemporary counterparts.

preferences follows, wherein the critic claims that “Nothing less than

tragedy / Moves the world / Everyone loves to read / About someone else’s pain”. The poem then concludes with the following lines:

I don’t really go

For poems like this

About critics like you

I’d much rather write

About hills and sea

Or even some sad and gutless

Old bird like me

Any day10

Again, no lonely swallows.

v I keep going back to Armagh Street not only because of the birds themselves but because of the poetic potential and the strangeness of it all: these kōhanga on concrete, manu raising their young while the city looms around them, photographic fodder for the masses. The site is a contentious place (aren’t they all?) – a source of ire for some who deem the semi-demolished structure a blight on the Christchurch landscape, a representation of things simply not moving fast enough in this post-quake time and place we inhabit. There are those too, who want the site to be left as it is for the birds

Both J.C. Sturm and Robert Sullivan engage in the process of

to simply go about their business as they choose to, though not all

‘answering back’ to the suggestions made by reviewers or critics in

are in agreement. Others believe that the decision rests with the

each of these works, and manu feature as part of these responses.

landowner; their land, their choice, they say, as they deride those

‘Poems about birds’ and nature in general are disliked by the critic

who dare suggest otherwise. I wonder if these people realise that

within J.C. Sturm’s poem, only to be favoured by the ‘old bird’

the ongoing destruction of the birds’ habitat has been a catalyst for

writer at the poem’s conclusion. Likewise in Robert Sullivan’s work,

the birds’ relocation. I wonder too, if it would make any difference

paying homage to other writers is discouraged, only for the

if they did.

conclusion of the poem to contain a poetic acknowledgement of those ‘elders’ – an acknowledgement that is enriched by the

I have not spent much time near the braided rivers of Waitaha where

invocation of manu. Both works represent birds as favoured sources

the adult tarāpuka I now observe may well have been born. I am

of poetic inspiration, whilst also re-presenting and reinvigorating

surprised to learn that the majority of them are found further south,

tōtara tuatahi I

in Murihiku – the place where my mum was born and raised, and

Author Talia Marshall, for example, explains that: “Our reo sounds like birds or the sea; originally just a spoken language where the timbre of the words conveys as much as the literal meaning. [...] You can hear it in the name of the kōkako, the two Os mimicking the haunting blue call of the bird” in “This Is the Way He Walked Into the Darkest, Pinkest Part of the Whale and Cried Don’t Tell the Others: The Poetry of New Zealand’s Birds” Poetry Magazine 1 February, 2018. https://www. poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/articles/145496/this-is-theway-he-walked-into-the-darkest-pinkest-part-of-the-whale-and-crieddont-tell-the-others

See Jenifer Curnow, Ngapare K. Hopa and Jane McRae Rere Atu, Taku Manu! : Discovering History, Language, and Politics in the MaoriLanguage Newspapers (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2002).

For example, see Alison Jones and Kuni Jenkins’ discussion regarding the quill handwriting of Hongi Hika in He Kōrero – Māori-Pākehā Conversations on Paper (Wellington: Huia, 2011), 66.

Emma Espiner discusses the implications of allowing the construction of the highway so close to the marae in “When the Rules are Different For Māori” Newsroom, March 6, 2019 https://www.newsroom. co.nz/2019/03/06/470905/when-the-rules-are-different-for-mori

In Maurice Shadbolt’s essay “Under Māori Skin”, included the 1976 edition of Koru: The New Zealand Maori Artists and Writers Annual Magazine, and which celebrates the publication of Witi Ihimaera’s collection Pounamu Pounamu, he describes Hone Tuwhare as having been a “lonely swallow” before another Māori writer in English (Matua Witi) had joined him. It is not my intention to undermine the celebratory kōrero he shares here. Rather, I found this metaphor an interesting prompt for thinking about our literary whakapapa in Aotearoa and the ways in which notions of firstness carry with them certain parameters that can prevent the inclusion, acknowledgement, and celebration of other Māori writers, composers, artists, and storytellers.

where I too lived, for some time. I knew nothing about them. I am still trying to learn. I am not from there. I am not from this place either but from the tail of Māui’s ika, where the kuaka return to each year and where kererū are known as kūkupa. Our tūpuna flew north (or south, depending on how you look at it) on the back of a bird. My son picks small white feathers from the gravel in the carpark and watches as the wind makes them dance away from him. His name is Kāhu. I think about the whenua underneath the building’s foundations and those that she nurtured and what might have been revealed to us had the skin of Papatūānuku split right there on Armagh Street as it has elsewhere in Waitaha and beyond. The histories of this whenua are like the tangles of iron beside the nests, like the roots of trees; complex, bound together, some more visible than others. I take a picture of one tarāpuka, sitting on top of the corrugated fence beside the building’s remnants looking in my direction with a lone concrete pillar in the background; thick strands of twisted, rusted iron jut out at sporadic intervals and awkward angles like they’re trying to escape. A gull sits on top of the pillar too, looking out in the direction of the park across the road. I wonder where they’ll build their nests next summer.

“Review” is from Robert Sullivan’s collection Shout Ha! To The Sky (Salt Publishers, London, 2010), 22

See, for example, Vernice Wineera Pere’s poem “Song from Kapiti” from the anthology Into the World of Light eds. Witi Ihimaera and D.S. Long (Auckland: Heinemann, 1982), 179 which describes the difficult endeavour of finding one’s place in an inhospitable “mainland society” as a “lone sea-bird” “learning to sing the sad-sweet songs of a people’s soul” and Patricia Grace’s poignant representation of storytelling kaumātua in “Old Ones Become Birds” from her collection The Sky People and Other Stories (Auckland: Penguin Books, 1994), 109-114.

Though the written word is but one of many forms of narrative within this whakapapa. For more on the relationships between narrative forms and the definition of “Māori literature” and literary whakapapa see, for example, Alice Te Punga Somerville’s “Te Ao Hou: Te Pataka” in A History of New Zealand Literature, ed. Mark Williams (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 182–194; Hirini Melbourne’s “Whare Whakairo: Māori ‘Literary’ Traditions” in Dirty Silence: Aspects of Language and Literature in New Zealand eds. Graham McGregor and Mark Williams (Auckland: Oxford University Press, 1991) 129-141; and Tina Makereti’s “Māori Writing: Speaking with Two Mouths” in the Journal of New Zealand Studies (Online) o. 26 (2018), 57-65.

From Hone Tuwhare’s Short Back and Sideways (Auckland: Godwit Press, 1992), 10.

J.C. Sturm “To a particular critic” in Dedications (Wellington: Steele Roberts, 1996), 55-56.

tōtara tuatahi I

Image courtesy of Kiriana O'Connell

(I) rui ruia Arihia Latham

Should I feel discomfort here // Te Rauparaha battled my tūpuna

If you know how, the river can wash it away // Dusk // Women gather at the

for a decade// It is very hard when the tangata whenua are smiling

awa // To cleanse the poisoned kernels of colonisation, of the patriarchy //

and singing // When the kai is glazed carrots and cream lamingtons

I miss the swim waiting for my baby // Mokemoke māna //

// Am I a lazy descendant, where is my fight // My nervous system

He kākano, he kākano // These last precious moments with my thoughts

ticks over //

going to seed // Wanting, waiting, eddying // The night curled like fruit to her

I recline on the mattresses beneath another Arihia, surely that's a

seed// I hold my baby as the whare begins to shake// Ru rui ruia //

sign//

The young ones out front with blankets said lightning came first //Whaitiri

A sparrow flies inside the wharekai and my heart flaps // A sign //

conducting Rūaumoko // She flings her arms // The windows rattle //

Does it matter that it's the wrong bird // It was the colonisers

Seriously did we need another sign //

that brought the muskets // Perhaps the thing to lay to rest is this

I pick figs at Tukorehe // Their flesh spongy beneath my fingers // We pull

genealogical trauma, to notice the elepha...sparrow in the room //

them open and they are full of pollen //

After all it's not a pīwaiwaka bringing a tohu of the past or the future

More flower than fruit, stillborn // Is it a sign of my impatience // Genealogical

// Is time linear and do birds care // My cousin Ruby is a songbird, we

friction // These fruits have no scent //

are sparrow and pīwaiwaka //

The smell of the karaka wafts //Tempting our female senses//

Why can't I sing like her // She flings her arms and the sparrow finds

Forever the putiputi and the poison fruit//

the window // I am carried by the current of wānanga // I wonder how the awa can keep cleansing us // How does it keep on flowing to sea // I am eddying // The karaka berries make the air sweet and fragrant // The poison is in the seed // Our poison was in the seed //

tōtara tuatahi I

(II) kapakapa I see the poisonous teeth of ongaonga Packing belongings in bags

And I want to clutch them

Silently, tāna ongaonga

Swelling my fingers to a throb To drown my feeling of failure To know how to be Am I angry or resigned Am I a peacemaker Or a warrior Clearly a fucking libran laughs the group When I leave the marae

If I try to speak to him The sting would swell my lips closed I ask him to take our daughter Because my son is in trouble He says is trouble So I take my poisoned love The fragrant kernel sits on my tongue

I feel woven into something intricate Like only wāhine can And on return I can feel he is extracting himself Cutting ties, severing the muka

Pecked at by pīwaiwaka and sparrow Who could die by fruit or pane of glass Bringing messages of the past, of the future Where is the window, where is the river

(III) tui tuia The ambulance didn't come

Off the hospital bed

My foot kisses the accelerator

Limbs like vines

This is too close to frantic

Searching for a better host

Wings vibrating at the window

Everyone says time

I will not let this be the tohu

Is the most deceptive thing

My mind feels anaesthetised

I know deception and it's poisoned fruit

A coping mechanism

But my son looking like a man

Fight or flight

Smelling of sweat and cigarettes

Fucking flight

Instead of baby's milk and honey

Wing me away

Or child's dirt and spit

But I am drawn back, tethered

This metamorphosis is blinding

To the rhythm of ED

Distressing, I flap

The metronome of

I still feel a novice

Electrolytes

I fling myself at the window

Reviving

Holding tight

My son's sunken cheeks

Unlatched, set free

The hum of insulin

Letting him go

Alkalising his blood

Watching his eyes flicker

The space between his brow and hairline

Lightning on the hills

Is the same as when he was

His heart zigzagging on the screen

A tiny baby and my hand could cup his skull, birdlike

Steadying my own

Now this body spills

Coaxing it down from my mouth

tĹ?tara tuatahi I

To the bony cage it belongs

Not confused or lost

I want to lock him up, keep him safe

Fight and flight

His wings are beating in here

Sparrow and pÄŤwaiwaka

I want to set him free

Warrior and peacemaker

Watch this debut into the world

And together, my children

Rere atu rere mai

Rui ruia, kapakapa

Perhaps we could settle on a tether,

Tui, tuia

A muka string on my wrist

Tug at the muka

Above, a bird

From before and beyond us

My tohu

The fine plaits in my fingers hum

Darting freely

Bind, release,

My middle child is flying

Release.

Literally, en route to the airport She glides into the hospital Whispering to her brother Things he will not remember Her mind is sure Ready to fight for us all Her stance is poised, calming She has always Steadied her siblings with Unwavering navigation Did she get this way From being after and before The past and the future Did I even have a hand in it Or was she thrown From RangiÄ tea Image courtesy of Arihia Latham

the invitation Becky Manawatu

Soon after my novel was published I was invited to be part of the

shared it on her Facebook page and said something about me

Nelson Arts Festival.

being her beautiful baby sister who she was so proud of.

I sat beside Renée to listen to Elizabeth Knox speak. I remember her

I've always been lifted up by my sisters. From when I was a little

saying that there was scientific evidence that women with sisters

girl they were telling me, ‘You are Māori.’ And no one ever bullied

live longer.

me at school because everyone knew I was theirs. I was theirs.

Although this was my first time at something like this: a real event

It sometimes chills me to think who I might be without them.

with other writers and I had every reason to be happy, I remember

I imagine a person who would hardly resemble me.

feeling a deep sense of longing after Knox said this.

I want back what I miss everyday: the kai nights we used to have, the

Sitting with mentor and newfound friend Renée, I wondered if there

extraordinary sense of safety they gave me, the crack ups, the big

was like a reverse science, like if you had sisters but you never got to

nights out, the fun nights in. Without them, I realise, I am quite lost.

see them, or something inside you ached for them all the time, would

It's a strange thing for me to realise now, because many years passed

you die sooner?

where I was like, yup this is all good, they do them, I do me, it's all good. They chose their lives, I choose mine, alll goooooddd.

I imagined that the physical separation from my sisters was reducing my life expectancy by the minute, life was just being sucked from me,

FFS I am a grown arse adult. It Is All Good.

for lack of access to them.

But no, trauma has occurred, and keeps occurring.

I wrote an essay soon after, and it was given the title The novelist

After I saw Anahera Gildea speak at The Chocolate Factory, I did go

whose sister married into the Mongrel Mob and my mob sister

back to my hotel heavy, but for much more than the shame it made

tōtara tuatahi I

me feel at what mistakes I might have made in my mahi, but for what her beauty woke in me. And in Wellington I also met Tina Makereti and I met Nadine Hura

But being invited to be with a group of mana wāhine Māori, who inspire, teach and awhi each other in the OG type of way my sisters would tautoko hard, strengthened me.

and I got to sit and have a drink with Tayi Tibble, and my vibe probably got needy, almost desperate like it does, but I can't control

The invitation to Te Whē continues in my heart, like it is a cold

that so I just take on that additional shame, and occasionally deal

It lives on like an invitation, a karanga to continue looking, despite

with it by writing.

what I might see, a karanga saying: it's all good sis, we got you.

So that's what I did. Home from Wellington I wrote another essay, hoping to say something, hoping some writers might read it and see that despite any mistakes I have made, despite any times in my life when I have been able to ‘just be white’ cause I can, there might be room for me. If I show that I want to work harder and do better and learn and I can see, or at least I am looking, and if I prove awareness that I ain’t all that and a bag of chips, might you trust me to come into that space? The essay about how I felt to hear Anahera Gildea, in particular, was published and subsequently she and Nadine reached out and invited me to be part of Te Whē. I couldn't go to the Te Whē workshop. At short notice, it would have simply cost me too much money to get there. And I was disappointed, because I want to be part of some of the many conversations which will help me take the action needed to decolonise. But also, I was relieved, because I just don't have a clue where to start and what ugliness within me, I will have to look at.

strong awa. It didn't stop flowing once I lost opportunity to be there.

Image courtesy of Anahera Gildea

tĹ?tara tuatahi I

Miriama Gemmell

/ the last bends / the last stretch / nau mai e moko

in neat lines / hairpin corner / blackberry bushes where kahu found the kitten / last bends

/ hillside of pines / hillside of stubble / lemon tree house / goats nibbling at white flowers

sun on your cheek / right shoulder / right arm / so close now / paddock with the mushrooms

grasses / stifling / turn up the air / white noise soundtrack / vinyl too hot for an armrest /

paddock / taste the dust / wooden thump a thump bridge / snaking waterway of taller

cornflower blue / fancy farmhouse lording / its neighbour disintegrates quietly into the

somewhere by te aute / pass the old dump site / quiet chimney in the field / concrete bridge

you imagine dad got the scar on his cheek chopping wood / even though that happened

car stretch / smell of dust in the car / put up the windows / pass the macracarpa row where

turn left up the slope / past the school / tar seal runs out / get to the up-and-down rally

karapipiti

mihi ki a J.C. Sturm Emma Espiner

At Te Whē ki Tukorehe we talked about permission to write

I fell in love with my husband, and with poetry, because of you

the stories of others, specifically tūpuna who aren’t your own.

and Jacquie.

The only time I’ve come close to doing that was for the Auckland

He waiata mō Te Kare, taken out of context, is a beautiful,

Writers Festival in 2019. I was asked to select a letter from a new

haunting declaration of love and fidelity.

collection of James K Baxter’s writing and respond to it with a piece of writing. I chose one in which he describes his wife, unfavourably,

“Up here at the wharepuni, the star at the kitchen window

to another woman.

mentions your name to me...

“...Taku ngākau ki a koe.”

Response to James K Baxter’s letter about his wife I love the word Indigenous so much it makes my eyes water.

Ten years ago, in 2009, I walked the streets of Wellington for weeks in a daze, hearing his voice and your words.

I whisper it to myself with a capital I, even though the part of me that was born of colonisers is a grammar pedant who insists that

I even named the fucking cat after you.

the inappropriate use of capital letters is a sin.

In 2019, context is where it’s at Jim, and I’m thinking about

Your wife was an indigenous woman who wanted to become a

narcissists. My friend tells me the severity of this affliction can

doctor. A bold plan, for a Māori woman, in 1946. Despite earning

be signalled by the use of lowercase or capital N. I suspect your N

good grades, she was denied entry to the only medical school in

would stand, erect on a McCahon landscape. I AM.

the country.

I looked up the signs and symptoms of a narcissistic personality

I think about Jacquie a lot.

disorder. Like Jacquie, I plan to become a doctor.

tōtara tuatahi I

I read that narcissists have an unwillingness to recognise the needs

“Think of all the women you know who will not allow themselves

and feelings of others. That, despite harbouring secret feelings

to be seen without makeup. I often wonder how they feel about

of insecurity, shame, vulnerability, they lash out with rage and

themselves at night when they are climbing into bed with

contempt and try to belittle and manipulate others.

intimate partners. Are they overwhelmed with secret shame

There’s no advice about seeking treatment because a hallmark of this disorder is refusing to believe that anything is wrong with you. Then I found a letter from a friend of yours about a medical student who had “gone off the rails on booze and pills and went absolutely nuts” and tried to stab you, Jim. Funny old world isn’t it. Your mum was at fault, too. Of course. You said you did not feel loved by your mother as a child. So it’s her fault, your relentless pursuit of sex at any cost. You felt entitled to a body that was not yours. You felt entitled to a whakapapa that was not yours. You took and took and it wasn’t even that you were amazing with it.

that someone sees them as they really are? Or do they sleep with rage that who they really are can be celebrated or cared for only in secret.” This is for Jacquie, I believe she slept with rage. We’re in the grip of ‘cancel culture’. Michael Jackson is out. R Kelly is over. James K Baxter, clearly a dick. There’s been angst among the thinking types about what to do with these problematic heroes. Do we take a leaf out of Pharaoh Thutmose III’s book and chisel their likenesses and achievements out of history, like the Egyptian monarch did for his mother Hatshepsut? I think we leave them where they are. I think we tell the truth about them, and then see if their work survives that sunlight. I think

You were boring. You were a sex addict before it was cool and a

we use that sunlight to examine the ways in which other talents

tedious conversationalist, an asshole to your friends. Nobody even

were buried - notably those who were not male or white enough to

tried to hide the fact that you talked for the sole purpose of hearing

generate recognition in their own time.

your voice ricochet off someone else’s presence. You said she was ugly and you said it to other women so that they would sleep with you. And bell hooks said:

After the reading, a woman came up to me and said that she had been a friend of Jacquie’s. She’d sat through the previous readings (favourable towards JK) and was worried that nobody would remember Jacquie.

Jacquie’s moko Jack sent me a message on Twitter and my puku

readings with Lou Johnson, who at that time worked at the

settled. It wasn’t permission, in a Pākehā sense, but a mihi; it’s all good.

Hastings Herald Tribune and incidentally, reviewed plays I was in. Jim would do his own pieces in that droning, loud voice he adopted when reading poetry and then when other poets were reading their works he would eat an apple, crack crack crack, while the other poet laboured on. I was only an audience member but I wanted to hit him. Jacquie’s mother, Mrs Sturm, thought the sun shone out of Jim’s arse. She always came to the readings, once with a very sore leg, which had to be propped up on another chair. She must have been very uncomfortable but she was happy - she smiled at Jim adoringly all through his readings, then lay back with eyes closed when the other poets read. When I write this now I feel a bit ashamed for being so rude about an older woman, but at the time it just seemed such bloody bad manners. Sorry - I have a thing (I blame my mother) about manners.

After Te Whē, the wānanga continued on the internet. Renée, in her

I saw Baxter another time at the first PEN conference I attended

submission for this journal, mentions Jacquie Sturm. I sent her my

with some other HB women writers. We were allowed in, but had

piece and this is her reply:

no speaking rights. Only one woman did. Isabel someone, and she only did an intro. It was in Wellington at the then (I think)

“Jim’s words are typical. Shameful. Not that he ever felt any.

new science lecture hall. Jim arrived with a crate of Coca Cola

He thought he was God’s gift.

so it must have been after he stopped drinking booze. You

I have no time for Baxter at all. He was a drunk, a sex addict and

know he was an alcoholic? He’d converted to Catholicism by

he battered on young women who were awed by his reputation

then too. PEN members, all men, jeered at him about the Coke

as a writer, especially at Jerusalem. He was a selfish prick to be

and his religious conversion. Not a sensitive lot. Dennis Glover

on stage with. He used to come up to Hastings and do poetry

fell down the stairs – he was drunk. I think he did this a lot.

tōtara tuatahi I

I was goggle-eyed. Watching these well-educated middle class up-themselves writers, whose work I’d read, behave like fuckwitted adolescents. An educational experience for this working-class kid. There’s something about not going to high school, starting work at 12, that set me apart. I was a bit like Alice in Wonderland in those days, an observer not a participant, and the only place I felt really at home, apart from home, was theatre.” I asked if it would be ok to use Renée’s words, nā te mea, he taonga ēnei kupu ki ahau. He taonga tēnei wahine ki ahau. “Yes, it was personal correspondence, but it’s all true and exactly how I felt. Hope all is well with you. Use whatever you like, Emma. Renée”

mihi ki a nanny hokohoko Nadine Anne Hura

E kui, we’re not lost, you and me. I heard you came here via the hokohoko shop. That’s pretty cool. I came here via state highway one, from the direction of the head of the fish - although my people are from the tail, way up north. It’s complicated. I love hokohoko shops. Matua Keelan told us that one of the Aunties saw you nestled between the shelves of linen and homewares, behind a George Foreman Grill and a rusted-out iron with a frayed cord. I’m making things up; you’ll learn that about me. I’m a writer, a spinner of yarns - or at least that’s what I want to be. If I’m allowed. It’s complicated. Don’t leave me behind, you said to Aunty. She was already out the door, two paces along the footpath and late for wherever she needed to be. Your voice pulled her back, silent but sure. I can imagine the scene when she got home and carried you inside, under her arm, your iridescent eyes on black velvet looking around, checking everything out. And Uncle saying ‘Oi, what have you brought home this time?’ and Aunty replying, ‘not what, but who!’ Image courtesy of Anahera Gildea

tōtara tuatahi I

I’m the same - always coming home with treasures in the boot of my car - most recently a corner bookcase for which I have no spare corner. My boys all laughed but my daughter smiled and patted my hand and said, ‘It’s not your fault, mum, you see potential where others see only junk.’ E kui, I don’t blame you for staying here at Tukorehe, I really don’t. Aunty Moe cooks up a mean feed, not gonna lie. Were those baby carrots cooked in honey and brown sugar? Mmm-mm, kātahi te reka! I

It’s complicated. In some ways I envy you up there. You look settled. You look like you belong even if you don’t quite. No one knows how you got separated from your story but there are people here who would fight for you, and claim you, and weave you into theirs, and this too is whakapapa.

could stay and you and me could hang together for a while. Oh sure,

I am not sure if my photo will ever hang in a wharenui like this but

there’s that heavy road outside and the rumble of the world going

in our last workshop on Home and Healing, Aunty Pat said that

back and forth, back and forth, quaking whenua bringing crazy

our whakapapa doesn’t always have to be known, and not knowing

dreams at night. Who decided to lay a strip of black bitumen

everything doesn’t mean we don’t know anything.

through the heart of this papakāinga, anyway? These issues are historical. These issues are current.

E kui, what I know is this; you were not abandoned. Not forgotten or left behind.

It’s complicated, e kui.

At Tukorehe we are not lost, you and me.

There’s talk of space and who it belongs to. Do we have the right to

E kore koe e ngaro, he kākano i ruia mai i Rangiātea.

write? Do we need permission? Is there room on the walls for all of us? It’s a question of identity and it hurts to ask. You know this better than anyone. You have listened to the kōrero. Your ears have heard it all.

tōtara tuatahi I 59

my sisters and I

difference

in the biggest ways

—to the smallest objects—

connection

we find

we run,

We explore all sorts

to us.

as much as they belong

we belong to those vowels

seeing

from concrete statues we sound out rolling vowels

bloodline

knowing

not knowing names but

we trace edges and curves

but not why

running fair fingers over brown carvings

explore

we run

Sun drenched whenua, tipi haere

Ko te pū, te more

Anne Waapu

a series of never-ending beginnings

once more.

-ken

bro

moment

tau

Our tapu

haaaa…

“Tin of cocoa, car door!”

It’s coming...

We wait.

We sit.

Jobs done.

Seats taken, breath caught.

rhythmically we pull the waka manuhiri in.

Tātou tātou ē

Pakihiwi ki te pakihiwi

– traded so we all reflect their mana.

adorned with achievement pins

Borrowed school jumpers

lines.

into

herded

are here

to ensure these school resources

school resources used

My usually truant classmates are here

invoked.

dial-a-pōwhiri

at exposed knees

dusty linoleum scratching

on cold hall floors

Silk boxers

te weu, te aka

tōtara tuatahi I 61

Remember the success of perseverance, Remember the value of time

Dad's epitaph says

Remember the influence of example

bigger, deeper lessons are pooling:

trumping ‘common’ sense

Tīpuna safety

clearly I see

Wairua connections normalised

“Exactly here, is where I am meant to be.”

here, exactly

Puku knowing

shoved aside by

“This isn’t safe!”

My trained brain cries

loving

shielding

cleansing

my pores

storms

the rain

to headstones

clinging

in the urupā

3am

wailing ensues

Tīpuna calling

Sleepless nights of visions

te rea, te wao-nui

side by side

Ka whawhai tonu.

Speeches on stage some to our colonisers, exposing the truth Most to ourselves, realising the Truth of our own Power

with Our people.

Kaputī-tītaora kōrero

of their existence

Prisons, in protest, Ministers’ offices.

Wānanga weaving them all in

kōhanga reo marae rūnanga wharekai

4-wheel driving to hapū land colonial building meeting rooms libraries, museums Koru Club infiltration back seat taxi gossip exchange knowing glances and grins

Kitchen table vision

lapping tide.

with each

learnings

we travel the motu

hoa mahi

Tipi haere anō

te kune, te whē

tōtara tuatahi I 63

holding space

another series

we spark

and given so much and given so much and now, together we can give more. (And just like that)

given so much

so precious

so loved

We Are

remind ourselves

we replenish the energies

together

ka tū kaha tātou

nā te mana o te moana

of beginnings

re-empowered by constant re-connection

Whanaunga

Descendants

the Ancestors

We Are

bearings aligned

wayfinding wānanga

lessons bubble

reflecting on past

generations healing

ka tangi

We wail, we call

for exactly this.

in trusted circles

we expose wounds

we cleanse

We farewell

needed.

every cycle

the Gathering

We collect together

te kore, te pō

. . . . . . .

Ko tēnei te tīmatanga o te ao Ko tēnei te tīmatanga o te ao

And along your way, you will never be alone, You can always come to us, or call. Just remember… all your beginnings and endings happen here.”

Everything you will do, you will decide.

Everything you will be, you will decide.

. .

“See this moko, this is everything you are. This is who you are. All your beginnings and endings happen here.

glistening in the morning rays.

ngā maunga rongo

ngā puke tapu

Big kuia arm o u t s t r e t c h e d while small eyes boggle at e x p a n s i v e rolling hills

ki ngā tāngata Māori nā Rangi rāua ko Papa

. . . . .

tĹ?tara tuarua I

Hutia te rito a te harakeke kei hea te kĹ?mako e kĹ??

Image courtesy of Kiriana O'Connell

tĹ?tara tuarua I

karakia Kirsty Dunn

E ōku tūpuna, Ka waiata tonu mai koutou i ngā kupu mō ēnei mea ki a au:

te hou o te awa tere

te rongo o te kōkōhau

te ahua o te rau harakeke

te tāwara o te wai tai

te tae o te rangi hīnana

kia pānui ai au i Te Ao? E whakarongo ana au ki a koutou. E whakamātau ana au ki te waiata anō hoki.

Ka Ako, ako, ako Āmine

enlightened Emma Espiner

I went to Te Whē ki Tukorehe with a book of essays by Christopher Hitchens in my bag. I have always had a thing for the whitest of white men. In my teens and twenties I crawled over the cute but stupid ones, the dangerously narcissistic, the weak and worshipful. I wanted to get inside their skin, possess them and turn it inside out, fascinated by the differences between us. I told my friends it was reverse colonisation. In my secret heart I worry that it’s the opposite. That I crave the approval of white men to validate my existence. So I grew to love Hitchens. To me, his was the apotheosis of the white man’s brain. He had intellect, a cutting wit and was an authority on everything. I read his polemic God is Not Great after a challenging encounter with a Jehovah’s Witness and I felt liberated by his scorn for organised religion. He’d probably be useless in the zombie apocalypse but the dinner party conversations would be epic. Since Hitchens died I’ve missed him in the global discourse. I wanted to know what he’d say about Trump, how he’d navigate the cultural changes that the internet thrust upon us by bringing us into proximity with the views of the ‘Karens’ of the world. What would he make of Brexit? #MeToo? Covid? An American writer, George Packer, won the Hitchens Prize in 2019. This is an award which is conferred annually upon a writer who “... reflects a commitment to free expression and inquiry, a range and depth of intellect, and a willingness to pursue the truth without regard to personal or professional consequence.” I read Packer’s acceptance speech. He talked about how the world of letters has lost some of its spirit since Hitchens’ death. He identifies the enemies of writing as belonging, fear, and despair. The latter two made sense. But the first? A desire to belong, in his view, has robbed us of the ability to be brave and truthful in our writing. What does that mean, coming

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from someone who belongs to the dominant culture? True bravery is defined in this context as being able to say whatever one chooses with impunity. ‘Free-speech’ advocates in Aotearoa have used this philosophical position to defend eugenicists, neo-Nazis and home-grown domestic racists. It’s a slippery slope, they told us. Who will they come for next? They’ve been coming for us since forever though, and why is it always the racists these men leap to defend first? I think of the culture which nurtured this view by violently suppressing the thoughts, cultures and existence of others and think - fucking hell, of course we need a crew. As Audre Lorde said, for us, “survival is not an academic skill.” v I bought a book about race science. It was meant to be revelatory, and fodder for this essay about culturally different ways of knowing. I looked forward to an evisceration of racism in science. I had some reservations. A few months earlier I was out walking, listening to an interview with the author and there was a mic drop moment when she was asked about whether there was such a thing as an anti-racist scientific tradition. She said, “Anti-racist science is just science. Mainstream science is anti-racist.” I slammed to a halt, iPhone tumbling out of my hand, pulling the headphones and Angela Saini’s justification of her statement with it. It was 5.30am and there was nobody to see me gesticulate at the moon. The fuck? How can that be true? I bought the book anyway. Mainly because I am a) bad with money and b) incapable of walking past an independent bookstore without buying something. After writing my name and the date in the top right hand corner of the first page I read the dedication: “For my parents, the only ancestors I need to know.” I felt like I’d walked onto a hostile marae ātea. Imagine dismissing your tūpuna like that? I realised as I read the book that the author felt that the concept of ancestry had been subverted by western science. It had been irreversibly tainted for her, a woman of Indian-Punjab descent who lived in Britain. She is identified as British on her Wikipedia page. Once I understood her position, I could approach her book with an appreciation of context. Because nothing is truly objective, and it does matter who you are and where you come from.

The good guys of Hitch and Packer’s truth-seeking, objectivity-worshipping Enlightenment put Indigenous people into human zoos in Europe. They categorised us, measured our skulls and the width of our nostrils and assigned character traits, but none of the good ones. Aggressive, submissive, stupid. A local fave, Elsdon Best, brought this kaupapa to Aotearoa; “The communal habits and lack of privacy so marked in Māori life would have considerable effect in retarding advancement, inasmuch as they would impede the development of personality, and prevent introspective thought to a serious extent.” The ‘Enlightenment’ aligned with the period of mass colonisation of Indigenous peoples. It must have been a coincidence that, at the time when colonists wanted to take our lands and resources, they developed a tradition of scientific inquiry which rendered us inferior. They invented an idea of the truth and used it to tell us nothing but self-serving lies. It’s audacious but then you see someone like Trump and you think - this is where it comes from. The whakapapa to this is sitting at the top of the food chain, never having to adhere to the rules and if the rules come for you, you simply make a new rule. My love, medical science, has been horribly complicit. This is why I struggled so deeply with Angela Saini’s assertion that pure science is, by definition, anti-racist. Because we have seen how scientific discovery required the contribution of the unwilling. The corpses of slaves were used by anatomists to learn about the human body. Instead of a peaceful freedom in death, the organs, tissues, limbs and bones of deceased slaves were dissected and categorised. The irony of using a so-called inferior race to advance medical science for the benefit of the white man, because you know that the benefits of these discoveries were not evenly distributed - not then, and not now. Much more recently, in the early 1900s, an African American woman, Henrietta Lacks, died from cervical cancer at 31 years of age, after her cells had been extracted from her cervix and used without her permission in medical research. This improved the lives of millions. She and her family got nothing. Then there was the Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male which looked at the natural history of syphilis. That sounds benign until you translate it into real words - scientists took destitute African American men with syphilis and then watched them sicken and die, after inducing their participation with meals, medical care, and burial insurance. When a cure was found, they didn’t offer it to the participants of the ‘study.’ This was only shut down in 1972. It’s hard to imagine my colleagues and mentors diligently cataloguing the demise of hundreds of men, impervious to their

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suffering. But everything has a whakapapa. Lindsey Fitzharris, author of The Butchering Art, talks about how medical students were once trained to remove all empathy for their patients as individuals, so that they may achieve a position of objective purity. Modern medical schools are still wrestling with this heritage, trying to figure out the best way to select students who are not psychopaths because, as it turns out, empathetic doctors make for better patient outcomes. I recently read Patricia Grace’s Baby No-eyes. This is the story of a Māori baby whose eyes were stolen after she died at birth but really it’s the story of everything that was stolen from us, including the confidence in our Indigenous knowledge traditions. When I read it I was living away from my family, who I abandoned for six weeks so I could work alongside one of the only wahine Māori surgeons in the world. I was flatting with a family friend. His house was tucked underneath some council flats, across the road from the sluggish Hatea river and my room shook every time a truck drove past. I read about the eyeless baby girl from underneath my duvet with a hot water bottle and a torch. I looked at my hands that had held a scalpel and cut flesh that day and wondered if I was tapu. Aunty Pat saw Indigenous data sovereignty as an urgent political issue before we even had a word for it. When I think of all the turgid ‘thought leadership’ articles I read during my ill-advised and short-lived career in business, written by white men calling themselves ‘futurists’ I cackle on the inside. They can’t imagine shit compared to our Aunty. v I know what George Packer is getting at, and I agree that the excesses of virtue signalling in public discourse have had a chilling effect on intellectual inquiry and social cohesion. I’ve seen people take on the mantle of woke superiority to stifle criticism and mask their lack of authenticity and originality. I’ve watched allies with appropriate ‘pronoun-tanga’ and ‘ngā mihi’ on their email signatures cleave loudly to radicalism now that it’s safe and no longer radical while failing to act courageously to effect meaningful change. I can see the harm in dogmatic censorship of views even when the dogmatism in question comes from a perspective that aligns with my values. But I disagree with Packer about the solution. It makes no sense to me that the solution to the predicament we find ourselves in relies on doing the same things that got us here. He’s limited by an intellectual tradition that has confined his imagination for what is possible. Enlightenment thinking is unable to help us now on its own. Moana Jackson says we owe it to our mokopuna to dream big and dream differently and that’s the philosophical tradition that I’m proud to belong to. Moana demonstrates how we can belong to the future by making explicit that the actions we take, or the injustices that we allow now, will literally shape the lives of our grandchildren. So of course we - collectively - have to be capable of imagining a different world and a different way. How can this vision be an enemy of writing?

We’re well placed as Māori to imagine a new world with more than one acceptable knowledge paradigm because we have all had to navigate Te Ao Pākehā and come to terms with duality. No matter how close or far you are to your whakapapa, this is a reality we confront sooner or later. ‘Objectivity’ in things like medical science hasn’t paid dividends for us because the subjective racism in the enactment of science kept us in the dark. We know that there isn’t one way, but our differences have been pathologised and denigrated. The best of us don’t feel bad about employing the tools of the Pākehā for our own ends while simultaneously dreaming differently, collectively, in our Indigenous souls. Kahu Kutia told me at Te Whē ki Tukorehe that she’s tūturu to the tikanga at home, but she’ll cut a bitch in Te Ao Pākehā if she has to. I still love Hitch and his wisdom is filed in my kete alongside Aunty Pat, equally valued taonga. In Superior, Angela Saini talks about non-Indigenous scholars in Australia “The more experts like him have tried to decipher ancient art, wherever it is in the world, the more they’ve found themselves only scratching at the surface of systems of thought so deep that Western philosophical traditions can’t contain them.” I like that. We can’t be contained.

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modern e-mihi Miriama Gemmell Ko wishes we lived closer ki te home te (waka) Ko wishes we lived closer ki te each other te (maunga) Ko wishes we could be more Māori te (awa) Ko wishes we could kāti te arguing te (iwi) Ko wishes we could just manaaki te (marae) Ko battlefield memorials te (whare) Ko paint for placards te (tīpuna) Ko canting decanting city e Tu (au) Tena koutou Tena koutou Tena koutou katoa, cheers Me huri ki te reo Pākehā

Me mihi rā ka tika ki a Apirana Taylor, he kaitaki rotarota nō Ngāti Porou, Te Whānau-ā-Apanui, Ngāti Ruanui.

letter from the girl frankenstein Ruby Solly

Dear Reader, I want you to picture all of this not with your mind’s eye but deep in the amygdala, deep in the mind’s cave of fear. For this is where the offspring dwell in waiting. My hair hangs thick enough to hoist a sail on a double hull, did you know about those? These eyes like soup plates white rings with black liquid suspended cosmic at the centre. Do we need to talk about the breasts?

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Pushing pounamu towards you, beckoning you to take it to rip it from my neck and curse yourself so you can blame me for every misstep you take. I am lighter than a paper bag, I am darker than a June sky. Does that give you a hemisphere to live in? Will you travel there and love me on iron sands? Press my hip bones that fossilise through time brush away the red ochre and see calcium depleted holes caves for the kēhuas. Hear them wail when I crack the sound barrier in black skirts sweeping the ground. I’m not walking I’m floating on ancestors and plastic air. Can you see it? Can you see the pūkana blooming in the whites of my eyes? Can you fucking see it? Have you riddled me back to a question you already know the answer to? My cheeks are flushed, a plump china doll. Drop me and I’ll smash across the globe. Do I need to say that I’ll claim it? Dig it up from the epidermis of the earth,

white like bone protruding. See my thin lips; fault lines of displeasure cracking opinions full of s, g, y and b. All lions and tigers and bears, oh my. Oh my almond eyes cast down, one thousand eye lashes fluttering can you hear them? I could say it sounded like a migration of birds but I’d be wrong. They are a thousand wishes being made to know a home they aren’t recognised in. We should talk about the freckles. I have nine scattered on my face, shall I stand up at Matariki and call them the Pleiades? I dare you, I fucking dare you to reclaim the stars. Your footsteps are flags planting. Do I need to say what colours? Do I need to say what I’m wearing? No, I simply need to say; “Thanks it was my grandmother’s she was 74 when she died. We’re so so lucky we got to know her so well.”

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Te Kahureremoa Taumata

hē: to be wrong, mistaken, incorrect Ataria Sharman

I love Hayao Miyazaki movies. I admit to watching Spirited Away - a three hour anime movie - every day in the second week of one school holiday. A ten-year-old, soaking in the spirituality of Japanese culture and bathhouses that cleanse the spirits of the natural world around us. Miyazaki movies have strong characters, like Princess Mononoke and her loyalty to the wolf clan that raised her and Ashitaka, the boy whose tribe and customs are changed by the actions of others. What I think I love about Miyazaki, is his unrelenting exploration of evil. An investigation of hē: to be wrong, mistaken, incorrect. Contamination, a disease. In many western movies and Hollywood, evil is evil (often dark and ugly), and good is good (usually white, male and good looking). There is a wall between evil and good, they are polar opposites, a polarity that can never be switched. Evil is always evil. Good is always good. It reminds me of Trump’s wall, a divisive construct to keep in what he considers to be ‘good’ and keep out what he believes to be ‘bad’. Miyazaki takes this childish point of view much further. Yes, some characters take the wrong action, but sometimes the reason they do this is for good, like Lady Eboshi in Princess Mononoke. Lady Eboshi and her people mine for wealth and ravage the forests as they harm and kill the animals and spirits. Her actions are harmful to others, so I can’t really consider them to be good.

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However, the wealth she hoards is used to protect Irontown, a town that provides safety and purpose for women who have been freed from prostitution and sufferers of leprosy. Is Lady Eboshi evil? Or is Lady Eboshi someone who is trying to do good, with an essence of wrong-action created by the harm she is inflicting on others. Other times in Miyazaki movies the characters have no choice, like the sick people that Lady Eboshi shelters, who repay her by crafting the guns she then uses to destroy the animals of the forest. My ancestors on my dad’s side are Ngāpuhi and Tapuika (Te Arawa). They were affected by colonisation, and our whānau have a history of dysfunction that includes alcoholism, drug abuse as well as physical and sexual abuse. My mother’s parents emigrated from England to Aotearoa in the 1950s. There is little to no alcoholism, drug abuse, physical and sexual abuse on that side of the family. I am coloniser and colonised, and yet I don’t choose to identify with either of those labels. I consider instead, to be me, a wāhine of Pākeha and Māori whakapapa. I believe that colonisation is hē. A path of mistaken wrong-action. Just like the women sheltered by Lady Eboshi, my grandparents left Mother England to escape oppression from the class system, a hierarchical and patriarchal invention. My grandfather, a plumber, would never have been treated with the respect he was, or encountered the abundance he found, when he chose to immigrate to Aotearoa. My sister’s husband, a man of Irish descent, has a male ancestor who fought against the British in their colonisation of Ireland. Then in the resulting famine, he escaped here, wherein need of employment, he joined the British army and fought against Māori. Hundreds of years before the Treaty, the peasants of England had their rights to the collective commons (areas of land used by the collective and similar in many ways to the communal ownership of land by iwi, hapū and whānau) removed by the Lords. The women of Europe endured witch burnings that spread across the nation, a holocaust that burnt the fear of being a female with power, perhaps into their very DNA. Deep misogyny left European women convinced of their own inferiority, much like the inferiority hoisted on Māori in the propaganda of colonisation taught in the Native Schools. I surmise that when my grandparents and other immigrants of European descent landed here, they did so to escape this particular kind of oppression, that of a class system set up to benefit those at the top of the pyramid. Perhaps some of the early settlers’ intentions were good when they sailed across the ocean. But hē began, when those same settlers who came

here to escape oppression, then reenacted that same type of abuse on those who had already lived here. It’s like what we call the poverty cycle, a colonisation cycle that has been recycled and recycled. It’s a disease. The same cycle that sees us ravaging Papatūānuku. Like Lady Eboshi and her insatiable quest for more and more iron, we are unable to stop, unable to witness the madness, to see our own insanity. My sister’s husband, whose great-great-grandfather escaped the persecution of his people in Ireland, to then be a part of the oppression of Māori: is he evil? Or is there an essence of wrong-doing in all of us, that even with good intentions can come forth, as the actions we choose to take harm others? My grandfather, who came here to escape a class-system that undermined his value, but then benefited from a system that systematically oppressed the original inhabitants of this country, is he evil? Scanning my grandmother’s musty bookshelf I spotted a stash of books about Māori history. Surprised that my English grandparents were interested in such things, I opened one up, to discover a trove of newspaper clips my grandfather had cutout and hoarded diligently. My eyes scanned the page as racist articles about Māori people, Māori politicians and the Treaty of Waitangi glared back at me. Colonisation started with the decimation of human beings, of families, of women, of religions and ethnicities, sub-tribes and tribes, of ways of being. Cultures and languages disregarded like scraps on a plate. As though they were nothing, although they are everything. It ends with the decimation of Papatūānuku and the creatures who live on her shores. It threatens the lives of even the human beings who take action to destroy her. There’s no good ending in the real-life story about colonisation. Just like in Hayao Miyazaki movies, there’s no Avataresque finale, where the white saviour switches to the side of the indigenous peoples and drives the coloniser from the world forever. The path of hē, it surely does exist. It is when I whakaiti someone and attempt to take away their mana. When I make them ‘not enough’ or ‘not Māori enough’. When individual selfishness and ego is more important than the collective. It is when my fight for ‘freedom of speech’ takes away the collective right of others to have ‘freedom from hate speech’, and when ‘pro-democracy’ masquerades as an attack on political representation for Māori. It is when what is best for corporations, and not what is best for Papatūānuku prevails.

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It is to be wrong and mistaken in my beliefs due to a narrow mind and lack of empathy. In my opinion, hÄ&#x201C; is when what is best for you, is not what is best for others, and yet, you still choose to take that action. Lady Eboshi, and her gun-swinging men, are eventually overcome by Princess Mononoke and Ashitaka, but not until after she irreversibly shoots off the head of the forest spirit. I like to think that those of us who are aware of hÄ&#x201C; but choose to take actions that are good are like Princess Mononoke and Ashitaka. Inclusive of rangatiratanga, manaakitanga, kaitiakitanga and kotahitanga, we are walking the path that is tika: to be correct, true, upright.

marking the body - a ref lection on receiving tā moko Ruby Solly

I don’t realise the needle has been going into me over and over, until my tupuna Hotu Māmoe is already etched into my skin. Friends play tumutumu and kōauau, I see the rangi in front of me making the mountains that are pulling through my skin. v

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Jewish people are not allowed to mark their body in any way. Your body is the vessel for your wairua, and so it must remain without cracks where it can slip out. This is just one small drop in an ocean of why the atrocities of the holocaust ran so deep, they marked their wrists with numbers. Sometimes I hear the sound of the gun in other sounds, the static of the TV at the end of the video, the water heating on the stove that asks me to shove my hand in it. But I don’t, because of that sound. v My cousin rubs my shoulder, the air in the room is not too thick or too thin. Warmth trickles in, springing from the undergrowth, whakapapa strengthening by osmosis. All the people who can’t make it, they are here. They are in every needle strike, one hundred cuts per second. They are weaving, in and out. Tuia ki roto, tuia ki waho. Tuia te Mauka, tuia kā tūpuna. v It’s difficult to choose which ancestors to honour when they come from all the folds of the world. I used to think that we were like quilts, with each ancestor a patch, and the threads that held them together acts of love. Pointing back at the red stitches to see your grandparents dancing in an old hall. Seeing your mother stitched next in line. Her and your father going to see ‘Jaws Two’ at the movies. As a child, Mum remembered her father taking her across town to see my Dad’s family home. It was chaos and on the letterbox was printed ‘Solly’s Circus’. My Grandad thought it was hilarious. My mother didn’t laugh, and years later she joined that circus and had me. v

She is cutting poutama, each generation a new x. The older generations feel painless, a child brushing their fingers against me, taking my hands and showing me the places they call home. But the last few sting; someone laughing at someone you love. Kaua e katakata, e te tupuna koroua. He uru tēnei, ko au he uri. Nō reira, kaua e katakata, e tupuna koroua. Kia tau. Kia tau. v Now when I think of whakapapa, I see a river with each tupuna as a splash of water poured in. Once in, you can’t remove them. They all mingle together. There are some parts where you can swim, and see the bottom even though it may be metres and metres below you. But other parts are dark, with hidden currents and whole trees petrified underwater, suffocated forests. There are taniwha there, and sometimes they are mad and hungry. v Someone is talking to me, but I can’t hear them. The sound is underwater, those times as a child where I would hide under there to scream. Then rise up silent, like nothing had happened. Except this time it did. This time, they are still there when I come up for air. v

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We’ve got this tendency to view Te Ao Māori through tourism postcards. This deep and rich culture where everything is perfect and always has been, and it takes a lot of chutzpah, a lot of mana, to be able to separate things out and see that we aren’t perfect and just like everyone else our ancestors have done things that we wouldn’t do in Te Ao hou. I know this because of the kōrero about my tupuna wahine. The kōrero of her being sold to a whaler for barrels. When I was fourteen, I used to get up at six thirty to do music practice before school; at the same age, my tupuna was birthing her first baby. I wondered if her husband allowed her to do it the way our ancestors had done, holding and pressing poutama wāhine and poutama tāne. They name their baby Tieke, so one would hope he did. v The gun has a language of its own, the press and hold. The waiting. A long time ago, I dreamed of a saddleback in the bush. Then more come, then more and more. Until the sound is deafening. Until there are more birds than bush. The sound of the gun, the sound of a mass of wings; rite tonu. One and the same. The birds give us the whakapapa of language, in the sound, they are all here, forming words inside the buzzing. v When something in the back of my head pushed through to tell me I needed poutama tattooed on my hands, I didn’t know about poutama wāhine and the birthing posts. I didn’t know about how it represented female whakapapa. All I knew was that I wanted my ancestors marked out on my hands so I could never deny them. All I knew is that I wanted to be able to hold them up together to make the face of Aoraki, and to superimpose him over whatever landscape I found myself in. Especially when they were not comfortable places to be. I didn’t know that there was a female side to Aoraki

either, the south-east. Knowledge often seems to happen like this in Te Ao Māori, it picks a place in space and time then spirals in and out of itself, moving around to see itself from all possible angles. Blood moves through water until we can no longer tell that the water was once red. v There’s a lot of time for thinking here. This is a space where the world turns a little slower. Pūrerehua whirs outside and it stops completely. Kōauau plays inside and the world flattens itself out to its old ways. I am named after a wind god, but my parents thought it meant daughter who is significant. It’s funny how things work out. In my breath somehow I can be both. v The word wairua has changed definition for me more times than I can count over the years. I remember a point where it was a hushed word, like tohunga, kēhua, or divorce. But society seemed to start peeling back a band-aid that covered our concepts. Now strange from being kept from the light, pale and almost foreign, but ancient and ready to fight. Initially, the old ones said it meant spirit. The figures in cave paintings back home with the blank space in the middle where their wairua lives. I was told it could travel at night which is why I would dream of home even though I’d never been there in this body because my other bodies had been there for over a thousand years. I learnt of Waitaha and how my ancestors survived with rough feet and calm minds. Years later, a tohunga, Hinewirangi, told me that it was more than spirit, it was our duality; our male and female energy intertwined within us and everything we do. Poutama wāhine and poutama tāne together in a form that was more felt than seen. v Aoraki rises on the back of my hands, I leave myself alone

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in a room full of people. I am on a gravel road one of you on either side, boots cracking the ground beneath. You hold one hand each and in the middle I am golden and swinging. Golden and swinging in the air between you both. v A few years ago, something clicked in my mind that had been asleep for a long time. I remember waking up and seeing the world almost vibrating like each particle was dancing in a never-ending chain. Then the dreams started. I dreamt words I didn't know, I dreamt of people I had never met, of people aged before their time. Of landscapes, I knew but weren't quite right. It terrified me. I thought I'd finally succumbed to the family inheritance, and the dark mauri of mental illness was filling that space in my centre. It was a difficult time for everyone around me, there was a point where I tried not to sleep as to starve them off. There was a point where I went into the ocean and tried to swim out into the horizon until it ate me up. But somehow, we carried on. v There is a good kind of hurt in this that gives markings to the scars that no one sees. In this room the air is light and moves in slow circles reaching out. I am a stone dropped in a puna that I thought was unrippled before me. But now I see the currents moving underneath, the still waters running deep, tendrils kicking underneath like children taken in the night.

v A character started reoccurring. An old tāua, with long grey hair and a soft face. “Te Pou”, the model I built my masters research around and which set us both at ease, came from her. Then she showed me herself as a young woman with long dark hair in a white dress, sick with influenza. She showed me rivers flooding and water rising from the road next to my home. So I asked the old ones and found that our street was built on the waterways of some of my ancestors, their tupuna awa still trapped beneath the concrete. So I wrote a lament for her in my book, and again we rested. Then she came back again, this time even older than our first meeting. She opens an old red book and points to the design. “This will be your kauae,” she says. “Two twins back to back, with the pūtōrino where they curve”. When I woke I was a mess, and I was for days until I had drawn what I had seen. When I left the house I felt naked. I still do. It’s a discomfort that I’m living with, for the moment. v My pounamu hangs at my chest. It is a ruru named after my tupuna Koukou. She swings gently side to side as each x is cut. This is for her as much as it is for me. Her x is the one that starts to hurt. But in a way that says something, a pain that cuts the world into before and after. The ruru seems to look up at me, her x starts to bleed. The gun rests. “Other side now?”. v When I woke up knowing it was time to get poutama on my hands, I had slept without dreams. But I was certain. I went into the bathroom and splashed my face. I noticed a patch of white hair coming through, foam on top of a dark

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ocean, just next to my left ear. I heard Nana’s voice in my head, “it’s time for you to get a move on”. When I have one of these dreams, I’m able to play them back with film-like quality and watch for details again and again. The week before the appointment, I am lying in a cold bath, eyes closed and thinking. Still, I play through the dream of the kauae. This time I am focusing more on the tāua than the design. I watch her face, her hair, her smile, her hands. Her hands. It’s so subtle I barely noticed, faded with age, or maybe only just appearing. But her hands are etched with poutama. Ko au tōku tupuna ko tōku tupuna ko au. I am her, and she is me. v The pain from each side starts to weave together. I am a tukutuku panel. I thought my whānau had never woven one, but it turns out we did. I am all the people who have woven me. I am the process and the product. I am the ancestors and the descendants. Here we all are, coming into the room, rising up into being. Tihei mauri ora. v A tohunga, Wiremu Niania, told me a few years ago that it has been scientifically proven that water has memory. Each time I dream I dip into that river of memory, each time I think and do. When I choose to fight or to retreat. Because we do not just come from our ancestors, we are them. I have been here for over one thousand years; I have crossed oceans for this. I have survived massacres and famines. I have been singing to my children since the birth of time. When I hear that gun, I know part of me will wince. But I know part of me will cry tears of relief at not being naked. Part of me will cry because I’ve been here all along.

whenua hei whānau Miriama Gemmell

i e patua ana mai e te kōmuri hau whenua hei whānau ii puāwai tama cucumber hooked on the test series hine vera captivated by lotions whetū tapu spellbound with the white and pink faces māhuri whaiāipo shield harried by the road works kete cutlery haunted by the biome māhina in letters beset by her great trauma kākano awatea mahana obsessed with telling a good story kapua cumulonimbus preoccupied with the security of worthless assets koro hoarder all about kohikohi kai

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iii whiti whiti raincheck good for nothing kaipuku

we manifest intuition and grit unproductive ways smile indulgently at each other

tĹ?tara tuarua I 93

holographic nailpolish from estuarine mud to emerald

green aqueous cascading like pounamu like

these numberless shades of blue-

mum come! >>

sky time

ocean time

open time

of sensation till ears smell & the nose hears, fishing with my son: acquiesce

through the envelope

their fishbreath monster arcs

moana kids, squealing splashing spraying

the tangy spectrum of the catch & the KÄ whia-

across surfaces mirrored yet multidimensional, refracting

like honeycombed northern bubbleblooms like lightyears

all it wants cheap hits every second on the second not >>

at the concrete blunt my mind flicks a second hand to the phone friends likes

1031

Cassandra Barnett

down the fish trap

& my own warped flow:

& the zigzag ticks the realest bite

or alive &

my boy & his cuzzies are

to this economy

unperturbed? >>

flowing on

to this wai

or might not, nor

that might be theirs

(not yet)

no interruption

& wai flows on it flows &

with bloodcrew over wordcrew

to be here

I did skip things

dead

& he’s tossing back

unconsumable

beyond capital

for crabs black

in his patched Nepal hat

round rivulets

between a son’s break-ins

I’ll snag? >>

the graunch the drag

he’s digging

his show of liveflow

brain cleaves to its cogs

1149

tōtara tuarua I 95

except the heat

catch n carry

eyes slit open

tick

tick ticking

upbeach now

a dragondance, a crabmonster, an

argh!

remembers & myrtle rust can’t interrupt this & those waves for all their micro-

like: my Tainui tūpuna did this too, right here, & that pōhutukawa

all my references, every whakapapa blink & splay

for

all our breaks are still the days & nights that bind us

looking askance at me – for them I am the breaks, for me they are the breaks, and yet

also ticked & zagged & fished & snagged & fought the breaks, like my cousins there now,

of my mindleaps back before all heke, when whānaunga of word & whānaunga of blood

cosmetic readjustments flicker in time recognising me & mine, lick salt upon the ahistorical haul

interregnum, crystal guts digesting

clocking clouds, a taniwha

empiring boys ssshh

sleeps me

closes my eyes & almost

a trap like that >>

more sensemaking become sharp letter fold it in

hungry mind’s

break that sensing

grind down search a word slip out burrow in small black slit

1211

but the crabmind

doesn’t

crabs mind

you trapping them? no! we’re making them we’re making he calls making a family >>

we’ve brought seven crabs together your son in this sandy hole oh! wide awake are

1301

at Tukorehe RenĂŠe

When the cry went out people gathered blessings were said trees felled dragged to the water sweat tears blessings then rain thunder lightning moving, pushing, heaving arc of a rainbow one more roll, one more just one more e hoa sunshine spills on wet bodies still they move roll push heave

tĹ?tara tuarua I

until this day this day rain falls on new faces blesses them blesses the logs RangiÄ tea is whole again. She stands tall

tĹ?tara tuatoru I

He ao te rangi ka uhia, He huruhuru te manu ka tau.

i missed the hui at Tukorehe and i cried I missed the hui at Tukorehe marae and I cried. Not right away, no, I had other crying to do. Crying for my aunty, who I never really knew, but whose daughters I love like my own sisters. My aunty, whose addictions - to alcohol, to drugs, and to men - caused her to give over the care of her daughters when they were just small children, eventually making their way to live with us. My aunty, whose daughters found their way back to her as soon as they were able to. And those daughters, my three cousins, who I chose to awhi as they farewelled their mum one last time. When I was asked to be a part of the birthing of the new literary journal Te Whē I cried tears of joy. And as I read the list of women who were invited, and saw my name alongside theirs, my tears flowed. What an honour! But two days before I was to drive the seven hours and fifteen minutes from Auckland to Ōtaki to take part in what I knew would be a life changing experience, I got another invitation. Not an overt invitation, but an invitation nonetheless. My cousin sent me a message to let me know that their mum had been given just days to live, and I knew right away I had to go. I called my two older sisters and together we decided that the three of us would travel down to Christchurch to be with the three of them. Growing up with two lots of three sisters in the same house wasn’t always easy. I was eight years old when my cousins came to live with us, and between the six of us there was only six years difference in age. There were already five of us kids in the house; my two older sisters, my two little brothers, and me, so with my cousins that made us eight. At that

tōtara tuatoru I

101

Annette Morehu

stage my parents had been on the benefit for a few years, and I admit that a lot of the time I felt resentful that we had to share what little it felt like we had. Often we would fight. Okay, often it felt like there was a civil war going on in our house. I remember the eldest of my cousins once saying to my eldest sister that our mum was a bitch, and my sister retorted that at least our mum was there. There was a huge row that came after that slanging match, and there were many rows before and after that. But now, as adults, we’ve fought all our battles, and we’re all just grateful to have each other; three bonus sisters, always there, through the good and the hard times. So I went and sat in the hospital with my sisters and my cousins as my aunty slowly passed on. Then I sat in the marae with them all and I cried. I cried for my aunty, I cried for my cousins, and I cried for my mum as she mourned the loss of her eldest sister whose children she’d raised, and with whom she eventually went to

live when she left us all to ‘find herself ’ ten years after my cousins came to live with us. Yep. All those years of us being the one with a mum, but in the end, our mum left us too. I think of the whakatauki ‘E kore au e ngaro, he kākano ahau i ruia mai i Rangiātea/I can never be lost for I am a seed of Rangiātea’ and I remember all of the times I doubted this very much. I felt lost for most of my life. My mother, though she was there for a lot of my childhood, was never really there, and it is through my mother that I have the privilege of being Māori. But my mother was disconnected from Te Reo Māori and Te Ao Māori; both of her parents came away from their papākainga, and subsequently their culture, which I believe caused trauma to all twelve of their children. Intergenerational trauma that was passed down to their children, and which I am dedicated to healing so that it isn’t passed down to my children.

I held my cousins’ hearts while they mourned for their mother, then I got in my car with my sisters and we left. And the next day, as I stood at my own kitchen sink washing the dishes after feeding my children, I allowed the selfish feelings to wash over me, and I cried for myself; for I had missed the birthing of Te Whē, a place where I felt that I, and my words, could find a home. A poem I wrote while sitting next to my aunty as she laid in Rehua marae:

HOME Many times I have wondered; if I am the seed of my mother, and if she is lost, then am I lost too? And are we all lost? But as I sat next to my aunty inside Rehua marae, where she would spend her last nights with her whānau, I was surrounded by the wāhine toa in my life - my sisters and cousins - and I realised that we aren’t lost. We’ve just taken a different route.

my mum doesn’t like to be alone I have learned that I do but not at night back when I used to smoke weed all the time it was easier to hold myself in the dark

I just pray to Goddess for a signpost

whisper that I love her

please reveal the path to your doorstep

tell her softly that

and I will follow you

everything is going to be okay

home sometimes when I/she was drunk I would cry to God to make me/her better

other times I just danced with my arse out swinging and singing like

I’m glad you asked ‘cos I have no fucking idea

I didn’t know the difference between a party and a funeral

I just pray to Goddess for a signpost please reveal the path to your doorstep and I will follow you

and sometimes I wrote songs about the devil . . . I sat with my aunty while she died lay my hand on hers so she knew I was there but my skin was inflamed just like hers and she slowly slipped away . . yoga only does so much meditation feels like madness when will the spiritual awakening come? . . tomorrow my dad arrives but who will take care of him?

home

my patience is a sliver irritability a storm and everyday I long to go home where is home?

tōtara tuatoru I

103

Te Kahureremoa Taumata

tōtara tuatoru I 105

won’t forget your roots

her hate an ahi kā

held tight to the bitter bit

lost half of herself

“brownest white girl you’ll ever meet”

Blonde Boss Bully

forget your roots

I just resigned from

left already if I hadn’t been at the kura

give me a kihi says, son would have

He Whaea Moko Kauae & her MMMan

Scattered in the crowd

don’t forget your family

in silence

I belt out the kupu I know

with the world

wants to share this moment

My tāne goes live on FB

he kākano tonu ahau

a quiet haka

takahi Jim Beam bog

kia mau ki tō ūkaipō

Hutt Rec echoes

#HuiFOMO

Nicole Titihuia Hawkins

reap what you sow

Don’t forget to grow your roots.

I ruia mai i Rangiātea

He kākano ahau

E kore au e ngāro

tāweko ana te taura tangata

stir kōkōwai and waimoana, etch

char bone-dry driftwood ends

collect clay from the awa

arrive barefoot in time to

me pūmahara

prepare the soil

wāhine wānanga

for planting

a good phase

Whiro is not

Did you forget?

Motu ana te taura karawa

yet to grow?

to roots I am

kia mau

How can I

He kākano tonu ahau

i hari mai i a koe

kia mau ki tō ūkaipō i tangata ai koe

they call out

Te Waewae Kāpiti

to Te Mana o Kupe ki Aotearoa

mihi from the thick air

Hitch a ride mā runga Ruru

from Tukorehe, over deafening birdsong

following the karanga clear

Te Awakairangi, out to sea

along the green lip of

Float myself away

don’t/forget

my customer service voice

doesn’t pick up

we all have a kai sometime

An almost ex suggests

moumou Kahu Kutia

Five boys stagger in to the wharekai just before 8am. I spot Jason barefoot with red marks

grey trolley. Tables are wiped and the hot fish is

on his ankles. That’s what happens when you fall asleep in gumboots. Tomai is there too.

replaced with two bowls of wet apples and a plastic

His hair is wet and pushed flat against his forehead. The nanny with the hard

plate of shortbread. The good biscuits have already

mouth walks through the centre aisle, heading in their direction. Her name is Huia.

been claimed. Nanny Huia orders a jug of lemon

Funny because I think she looks more like a pīwakawaka. Her eyes are dark but sparkly and

water to be put on each table. Someone put too much

they’ll follow you around the room. Making sure you’ve had a kai. Making sure you clean

lemon in and now they taste like bitter white peel.

up after yourself too. She’s got one of those whaea facelifts; her hair tied back in a bun so tight that half of her face comes with it.

I watch little floaties of lemon pith fly around the jug while Tomai and Jason eat.

She gags slightly when she walks past Tomai.

After a hasty but thorough clean, the diners are forcibly

“Errgh take off your koti boy. You smell like an alcoholic firefighter. I don’t need that in my wharekai right now. Off!”

removed from the wharekai. I head into the kāuta and begin to butter mile high stacks of white dollar-bread and wrap them in glad wrap.

Tomai obliges, probably because the smell of deep fried tarakihi is becoming more and more difficult to ignore. The room is heavy with the warm and buttery scent. If you sleep

I can hear my pāpā in my head. “Don’t go to someone’s

in, you lose your chance and have to wait till lunch.

house without taking a kai. Same if you’re hosting. Even if all you have is hot water and salt, pai ana.

Tomai and Jason have only just put their plates down next to mine when Nanny Huia

Offer what you can”. Kai is the most basic of all tikanga.

begins to pull each bain-marie off the table one at a time and wheel it away on her little

Pāpā said it could fix anything.

tōtara tuatoru I

107

I sneak out the back door and join a line of observers on the deck of the wharekai. Behind the car park is a small hill that falls out on to a grey beach. I spot a crowd of seagulls taking turns to dive towards the gathering waves and come back up again. Across the marae ātea I can see more people fall out of cars, and out of the hall where we all sleep. Jason appears from behind a car brushing his teeth. He rinses his mouth, checks his appearance in a car window, and gives his shirt a sniff. I watch him walk off, clearly satisfied. There are some manuhiri treading grass in the car park. The first ope of the day. The uncles behind me are pointing to them, figuring out who is who. “Oh those are Henare’s mokos no doubt,” says one of uncles. “Look at that chin! Look just like their koro.”

weathered skin stretched tight across the top. He has a nose that falls into the curve of his lip. I notice two of the ladies seated behind him have it too. He does not turn to look at the mahau where Piri lies. He’s shuffling back and forth. He goes through the motions of opening his kōrero, sifting for wisdom to bring forward to the gathered audience. When he finally stops, his back is straight. “Moumou.” He pauses. His eyes move with the twist of his neck.

This gossiping continues loudly and throughout the pōhiri. I notice a familiar snap behind my belly button. We sit and listen to women slice through the warm air with karanga that sting. I follow their call in my mind, let them take me to the edge of my own grief and home again. That’s the power of a karanga, they lead the way for us all to break and be healed again.

It feels just like when I first heard the news, just like when I walked up the path to his house, just like that first karanga when we brought Piri on to the marae.

By mid-afternoon the harsh white sunlight has faded into a softer yellow glow and sweat is dripping down my neck. In front of the wharenui several important looking older men shuffle to sit on the front pews. All in dress pants, dress shirt and with heavy looking taonga hanging from their neck. One of them has a tassled cowboy hat. The man at the front of the bench limps forward from his chair. “Taiahahā! Taiahahā!” He announces his arrival with a pronounced cough to clear his throat. Even from this side of the marae I can see his eyes are a clouded grey. His head is bald, with well

I look around and see most people are expressionless. Bored even. He prowls the grass like a chicken looking for the perfect piece of dirt to peck, all the while sharing more thoughts. He says it again, ‘moumou’. Waste. My stomach turns again, over and over. I’m trying not to listen when this man asks Piri why he would betray his parents, why he would betray his friends.

Why he didn’t ask for help. Why he didn’t phone a friend. The sun begins to fall behind a mountain to the West and the man finishes with one final question.

it is. Around the focal point of fire I am so aware of how lonely we are here on this far away edge of Aotearoa. How the hills might swallow us up at their leisure and

“Why did you do it, Piri?”

no one would know. I pass the bottle on. We sit and enjoy an unholy communion.

As if we had not all asked this question before. I look at Hanatia and raise my chin in the direction of I’m left feeling cold as the two women behind him stand to sing a dry mōteatea. Their two voices fade in and out and echo across the packed marae. I watch him mumble the words along with them and wonder why he chose to interrogate a person who can no longer speak for himself. In the early evening there’s a beautiful kai to be had. Tonight the fish is in curry form. Chunks of tarakihi float in a creamy orange sauce. Looks like a whole tin of curry powder went in. My mouth waters a little when I see the droplets of bright oil that float on top. I heap two spoons of fluffy white rice to go with it. I end up next to Hanatia who is deep in conversation with one of the aunties.

those lonely hills. One by one Jason, Hanatia, and I all get up and slip into the dark. Tomai follows us out. We pace in silence. “That bald koro who spoke today. What was he saying?” Jason says it out loud but doesn’t really direct it at any particular person. His eyes are facing straight ahead, searching for a path in the sand. I manoeuvre

The aunties are kind, so we wait for the conversation to naturally come to an end before we excuse ourselves. I clear our plates and notice Tomai and Jason have already disappeared out in to the dark.

around a piece of driftwood and keep walking. Hanatia is quiet for a bit. She punches holes in the sand with a stick that she found. Again and again she slices through the sand. A few times she narrowly

The grass is slippery now and when I reach the sand dunes my face is hit with ocean spray. I make out some figures gathered around the bonfire that was built earlier today. I think there are a few people standing at the water’s edge. Tomai is pissing into the little pond that trickles into the sea.

misses her own toe. “They called it a waste,” Hanatia says, “What he did.” She begins to violently stamp a patchwork of dots across the sand.

A whisky bottle does the nightly round. Everyone takes a sip. Some of the boys whisper ‘Piri’ and raise the bottle. Some take it quietly. Someone says ‘Love you bro’ but I am not sure who

tōtara tuatoru I

109

“Moumou?” asks Jason.

“Yeah. He basically just kept saying that. What a waste it was. Like he even knew who

“He can get up and say whatever he wants.” I say.

Piri was! Some bullshit about how could he do that to his friends, how could he do that to

“Where’s my place to speak though? Where’s our place?

his parents... Fucken hell. I could’ve smacked him.”

We know him best but don’t get to share that. How come some stranger with a knobbly tokotoko gets to

“It’s not right, aye.” I jump when Tomai speaks and turn to look at him. He’s an old friend of Piri’s. Tomai has been so quiet the whole tangi I haven’t really been able to tell how he feels. He might’ve been the last person to see him. I guess that would really mess with a person. Tomai speaks up again. “It’s not right what he said. Where does he even get off growling a dead guy? A dead guy he doesn’t even know. Like Piri’s gonna get up out of his coffin all - Oh, sorry Matua. Sorry for not thinking of you. It ain’t gonna bring him back. That shit's traumatising as fuck.” I think of the unmarked patch of grass near my urupā. It’s on the edge of the cliff with a big Rimu tree for shelter. There’s no names there, not even a wooden cross. Totally inconspicuous. The kaumātua tell you off with tight lips when you go near. Kaua e haere ki korā. Hoki mai. The words whip from their mouths before they can help themselves. I think of those people our family histories have forgotten. Names left out when whakapapa is laid down in our wharenui, under the eaves. They don’t exist anymore. I wonder why we call this a young person’s disease. “Makes me so pukuriri,” says Hanatia.

have an opinion and we don’t?” Stars blink in and out of sight and whīro moon follows in our track. After what seems like an hour of sliding in to damp sand, we reach the cliff that concludes this particular stretch of beach. We don’t stop here but turn around and begin to trudge all the way back. Tangaroa purrs in his sleep. When the waves fall and hit the ocean floor it sounds like a breath taken in the dead of the night. One that rattles up the throat and whistles through a gap in your teeth. A breath taken in the middle of a bad dream, when you look down and realise that your pants have just disappeared, and you have no idea how. We climb up to the mahau at three in the morning. Jason’s already there. Sleeping on the right side. He’s been crying for the last few hours. Kept everyone in the wharenui up. We sit at Piri’s feet. Me, Hanatia, and Tomai. Some of the others too. We tell stories.

In the darkness I can’t see much but her shoulders are limp now. The stick drags at

How we had the air knocked from our bodies whenever

her side. I think of the familiar snapping in my gut, and all the things I wish I could

Piri came at us for a hug. How we’d always find him

have said.

climbing a tree, or a gate, or a hill.

I think about all the ways we show our love to those we care about and wonder if we showed

“Not bad here, eh.” She winks.

enough. Piri was kind, was funny, was curious and now I wonder how much he held back. Did he stay for us? Did he go for himself? I’m not angry if he did, I’m angry at the world for not being a place that invites him to stay.

I nod. She’s right. Not a bad place to be buried for the rest of eternity. Faded blue sky and endless paddocks disrupted only by an occasional horse. Those rolling

We get comfy. Leaning against the casket, leaning against each other. For an hour we listen to the ocean get louder and louder into the dawn, disrupted only by the occasional snore from inside the whare. Eventually the birds begin to sing and the light fades from black to dark blue. I head down to the beach to wash my face. When the sun finally breaks the horizon, I look up and see a lone seagull fly overhead. It traces the edge of that coastline that bends over itself again and again. It reaches the edge of the sea and disappears. During the nehu I don’t even stay to watch them finish piling the dirt. I leave when Whakaaria Mai is done. I said goodbyes when they closed the lid this morning. Everything after that is just a settling of affairs, I reckon. There’s a pohutukawa tree that reaches over the lagoon beside the marae. The leaves drop into the water and float out into the sea. There’s a little bench there. Facing the sea. I head towards it hoping for a few minutes of peace. When I come around the trunk, I find the hard-mouthed nanny. From the wharekai. I try to sneak backwards.

hills that made me feel so lonely the night before. The marae behind me with glowing orange flowers growing amongst the fence posts. “Piri’s a lucky motherfucker”. Nanny Huia smacks her teeth. “He came back too early.” “It’s not his fault.” I shrug. Probably a little more carelessly than I should. “It is. He chose this.” I look at her and suddenly I see the kaumātua with the hook nose and bald head. It’s the same words. He chose this. She’s waiting for me to respond.

“Anei bub, there’s room.” I can’t leave now so I move forward and sit beside her on the bench. We sit for a moment. The pohutukawa leaves rustle above me. There are fresh buds nestled in the branches. Must be due to flower in the next few weeks. For now, it’s all dark glossy green.

“You don’t think so? You don’t think this is his fault?” she asks. I pause. Think of the last few months. How he told us

Nanny watches me with her sparkly eyes. I can’t remember her name. Whaea Ani? No, Huia!

tōtara tuatoru I

111

months ago that he wanted this. I turn towards her.

“You guys keep saying that. Blaming him for it. Where’s the aroha in that? He’s been trying to live for 21 years. He tried for us.”

did enough. You blame yourself, aye? He gets to be at peace now. What do you get?”

“And then he left yous,” Nanny Huia snaps. “Left his whānau. Why’d he do that? World is

“I don’t know...relief. It’s done now. He’s made his

hard sometimes. I know it. You know it. He may be good now but we the ones here having

lot.” I’m facing the sea again, trying to figure out the

to live with it.”

easiest way to leave.

“You don’t even know.” I can’t look at her. Her dark eyes remind me of the burnt driftwood on

Nanny Huia is quiet for a moment. “It was selfish.”

the beach and now they’re beginning to burn bright. “It’s not! Growled and berated after he dies. How do you Her wobbly lips push out. “What do you know?” It’s quiet for a few minutes. I can hear people behind us making their way back to the marae along the stony driveway. “It’s not selfish.” I say. “What he did. It’s not. People keep saying that like they know him, know what his brain’s been like for months, who knows, maybe for years.” “Are you angry?”

reckon that makes the ones still alive feel? The other ones carrying that same heaviness. Ashamed for the feelings they can’t get rid of. Afraid to talk to anybody.” My fingers find a leaf fallen from the tree above. I rip it into small pieces, not looking at Nanny Huia. Thinking how best to prove my point. “He tried his whole fucking life to be alive. It is our fault though. Everyone shows up here. Puts in the

“Of course.”

mandatory three days. Imagine if we’d all put in this

“Your mates?”

loved him. Spent three days with him. Imagine if we

much effort before he died. Turned up. Told him we all did that. Why don’t we tell people we love them

“Yeah.” She’s still staring at me. Then she says, “Why does he get to do this to you and your mates? Leave you messed up for the rest of your life. Always wondering. Always asking if you

when they’re alive?” “You don’t know that that would change things,” she shrugs.

“Well, it might help. Beats this anyway - growling him when he’s already gone.” Nanny Huia’s hand grips the dark round pounamu hanging from her neck. “I told my girl I loved her every day.” Eventually she continues. “I still love her. But I’m angry too. It’s been 15 years now and I thought it would fade, but it hasn’t gone away. Her name still brings tears to my eyes every time. Still every night I lie in bed and think over and over everything I didn’t do. She took half of me with her when she did it. I’ll never be okay. Never.” I want to leave, want to vomit, want to cry but now I can’t do any of it. I feel the shredded leaves fall to the ground. We sit under the pohutukawa tree. Nanny Huia and I. The ocean is there, lapping faithfully at the sand beneath the bank. Pulling out and coming in. I wonder if maybe it’s the only certainty we can have in this world. Nanny Huia puts her hand on my knee. We sit there for a bit, watching the line of people slowly make their way back to the marae. Over the ocean I can hear the screech of a gate, the beep of a reversing car. The old ladies are folding tissue packets back into handbags and pockets. Nanny Huia’s mokos have already kicked off their shoes and returned to a game of tag on a grassy verge.

tōtara tuatoru I

113

tūī Ruby Solly

Break my english

where I am still wet

kick my consonants

from slithering out of the subterranean

all the way to Rarohenga

tell me if that’s where we Waitaha come from

break my name into its origins

or if the elders were running my head again

cut into this island

let me earn this

spit the s from my mouth send it back to the sea somewhere where it is needed to sound names of places whose stones I don’t keep in my pockets manipulate my mouth until it is soft and pliable young tūtū pithy and poisonous but so malleable grant me patience please atua

lay my body across every stream female tūī get lead poisoning from drinking roof run off during mating season they cannot make eggs and poison themselves at the same time I am barren so let me poison myself I can drink it all there is no more lead left in the pipe

there is a concrete layer on top of this island

the rivers are so clear

and on that layer I am a guest

that we can’t even see them

form my words for me

I am nothing but a mountain

like babies in utero

that was once a woman

I am hungry for two

who prayed and got everything

worlds that are always fighting

but her language

tell me the words for all the places

back

koru Nadine Anne Hura

I love our tikanga. I love the way there is space for us to come and go, to leave and return.

tree-lined driveway of Hato Pāora College - exactly

So much is familiar about this journey. So much is strange. We are not the same people,

the same as we left it two and a half years ago, when our

he and I. My hands move in rhythms they know: stitching his name into his trousers,

boy decided he'd had enough and didn't want to go back.

locating laundry bags to prevent lost socks, pulling the red suitcase out from under the bed. A different bed, a different house. On this day four years ago, I hadn't slept at all. When the first light of day nudged at the edge of dreams, I was already awake, alert, readying myself.

We gather at the waharoa and wait for the karanga. We swell and then move as one. Under the white marquee on the marae ātea it is quiet enough to hear the rapid thrum of a hundred heartbeats.

Today I awoke with the alarm. Calm and easy with it. He's leaving, my puku said. He'll go away and he'll come back. That's how this story goes. What is life but a series of lessons in holding on fiercely and letting go gently?

Kia kaha te wiriwiri. Kia kaha te tangi. This time, I'm prepared for the long speeches.

Four years ago, he was 13 and his dad was in the driver's seat. Today he is 17 and licensed. He sits behind the wheel with his hands at 10 and 2, just like his dad. He casts a similar shadow, tall and slim with an angular jaw. Whistles just like him too - ‘only better,’ he says with a wink and a grin. Sometimes I do a double take and need to look away. He is not his father. I know this, but I think it takes a while for men to see it for themselves; to really reckon with that knowledge and all the complicated knots it ties them in. Walking in your father's shadow is not the same as being like him.

I anticipate the rise and fall of the words as they command our attention before rippling through with laughter. I've brought my knitting - a lace shawl in one bag and a tāniko hat in another. This is not insignificant. Four years ago, I could barely tell a knit from a purl. Now I'm doing colour work without looking at my needles. It's amazing how far we can travel in such a brief amount of time. The blanket my boy

It's hot again. The same cloudless Manawatū sky stretches ahead of us. The same flat-

packed this morning is the first thing I ever knitted to

packed plains slip beneath the wheels: Ōhau, Shannon, Ōpiki, Feilding. Then, finally, the

completion.

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During his first year at Hato Pāora, it grew a thin layer of fluff and the holes stretched

for Year 9s to sneak out of their dorm and climb the

and sagged and the colour began to drain away. I suppose that’s what happened to him, in

stairs in the dark to the glass-domed tower at the top of

a way. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

the house and carve their names into the walls. It was

He was never ashamed of his blanket. Not the first time he unpacked it inside the clamouring Year 9 dorm; not ever. A mother can sacrifice a lot for simple acknowledgements like that. Some of the most important things we say to the people we love are wordless. In the early days I heard a lot of his stories first-hand. He used to tell me everything - at least, I let myself believe he did. I would listen and then write it all down later, convinced that his escapades could one day become the subject of a Taika film, all I'd need to do is write a transcript and change the names. In time, I learned that all ‘Old Boys’ tell different versions of these same stories. It's part of a shared language that binds them together.

only a matter of time, the school said, before someone got hurt. The day Īhaka was signed over to the demolishers, I drove up with a photographer planning to write a s tory for the school yearbook. There was a service outside the front steps and a small group of people showed up. We were given face masks and invited to walk through as the whare was blessed and let go. Making our way around the rooms single file,

Sometimes I’d drive the two hours to Feilding from Porirua to bring him home on

fingers to peeling paint, I saw with my own eyes

weekend leave, just to have a few hours alone with him. Those long, straight roads had a

what the school had been saying. It was too late to

way of coaxing the stories out of him. It's always been this way with us. He spills, I listen.

speak of intervention. Apart from the feral cats that

It makes us sound close and tight, and we are, but like all mother and son relationships

peered at us from beneath cracked floorboards, there

you can look at the picture from many angles. We once saw a family therapist together

was no life to speak of. Scattered hymnals lay on

and the counsellor remarked on our openness with each other. He said we clearly loved each

window sills, boxes of student files cascaded from

other a lot. His words cut through me because no matter how much my boy and I yelled

cabinets with broken hinges. It was as if everybody

and argued, what the counsellor said was true. Is it always possible to tell when fighting for

had left suddenly in the middle of the night. In one

someone you love warps into a fight against everything you don't want to lose? When he

dorm, there was a pile of mismatched rugby boots.

was a baby, I struggled to let him out of my sight. Perhaps that's why he needs to

Sinister drip stains in the peach-coloured bathroom

leave, and has always needed to leave. It's not just his father's shadow he walks in.

told us to stay away. You could see Īhaka’s former beauty in the chandeliers and stained-glass windows,

During his second year, in 2017, the original homestead of Hato Pāora was demolished.

but not all of what hung around was good. He leaned

Emotions surged and there was brief campaign by the Old Boys to save the building called

dreamlike into the past, stirring memories and voices

Īhaka. The school insisted it was too late. The walls were rotting and the roof was crumbling.

in the dust as we proceeded. Inside the glass dome

The building was dangerous, the Board of Trustees said. It was a well-known rite of passage

high above the building, I searched the crowded,

valiant walls, and found my son's name etched lightly into the paint. I ran my fingertips

I knew he was lost, but I didn't know how to reach

across it and told no-one.

him. One night, after midnight, we crossed paths

I remember very clearly the day my boy said he didn't want to go back. It was the winter of

arms without a word and stayed there, hugging

his second year, when the ground in Feilding freezes over and the dark sky tucks in close

me in the dark for seconds stretching into minutes.

and cuts the days short. It was his birthday and he was coming home on leave. I could

When he pulled away, he looked down at me and

feel something different about him the moment he got in the car. I didn't want to hear what

said with a clarity that took my breath away, 'Why is it

I knew he was going to say, but I'd be lying if I didn't admit that a part of me leapt with

that I'm taller than you now, but whenever I hug you,

joy when he said he wanted to come home and live with me. With me. Was it wrong?

I still feel like a little boy?'

in the hallway. He spontaneously stepped into my

Was it selfish? Do I regret it? Should I have packed him off back to school on Sunday and left him there against his will? God knows it's been done by plenty of parents before me.

There were many times I asked if he wanted to go back

In the end I didn't have it in me. I would have had to push him away and I hadn't even

He couldn't. It was too late. Too much time had passed.

learned how to let him go properly yet. When we talk about it now, I say that he was too strong-willed for me and he does not dispute it, but perhaps there is room to admit that I was afraid. Afraid of everything I couldn't control. Things at home were unravelling so swiftly and so unpredictably that it was almost a reflex to reach out and pull my children close. How could I expect my son to turn around and lope back to the cold dorm when all he knew was changing? I kept saying that everything was fine and that things were

to Hato Pāora, but always the answer was the same.

When the Year 12 prize giving came around in November, I encouraged him to go and tautoko his mates moving into their final year. I couldn't get time off work, so we organised for him to go with another whānau. Before he left, I asked if he was feeling ok.

going to be ok, but my eyes said something else.

He looked at me and frowned. 'Why wouldn't I be?'

Returning to Hato Pāora to collect his things and empty his locker sucked in that way

but when he came back, he was quiet. Maybe it was

that divorce sucks. None of the boys asked questions. They didn't need to. Boys come and

then he started to change his mind.

He patted me on my shoulder and left out the door,

go from kura all the time. Outside the gym, in a pool of yellow light, the boys sent him off with a haka that I filmed from a distance on my phone - a video which, to this day, my

A few weeks after the prizegiving, my boy wrote a

boy has never wanted to watch.

cryptic Facebook post that worried me, and everyone

The years that followed were not easy. For months he stayed inside his room with

a tangi to farewell a boy of the same age the previous

the curtains drawn and the bed unmade. He slept through the days and gamed through

month. For two days, I watched as teenage boys

the night. His new, local school began leaving messages about his falling attendance.

entered the wharenui, backlit with sunshine, to crouch

who read it. My mind was still fresh with memories of

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117

beside the darkened coffin. I was struck by the awkwardness of their folded legs in that small

returning. We leave the people and places we know, but

space, and their acute awareness that the bro couldn’t get up and greet them, shoulder to

like the koru, all our journeys are essentially inwards,

shoulder, in the briefest, most beautiful expression of masculine aroha. Like the campaign

so we are never really lost.

to save Īhaka, those left behind haul blame and responsibility onto their shoulders. The doubt is crushing. If only. If only the right person at the right time had been there to say, 'I love you, bro, if you left this world, I'd be broken. Whatever you need, just say the word.' By the time my boy next checked his phone, it was full of messages from the boys. He rang me straight away. His voice was distant but clear. ‘I’m sorry, Mum,’ he said. I think that's the moment I knew he would go back. The morning of the pōwhiri, I sat in the passenger seat getting used to the feeling of not being in control. Practising a looser grip. If I'd been driving, I don't think I would have seen Taane sitting in the Ōtaki bus shelter as we cruised through town, but my boy had slept next to him for so many nights in the dorm, he would have recognised him anywhere. He pulled the car over and jumped out and they greeted each other in the middle of the street with clasped hands and smiles, shoulder to shoulder. I got out and watched them from a distance. I thought of all the stories and all the laughs I'd heard over the years. Taane wasn't in his number ones, he wasn't going back. I had so many questions, but I knew not to ask. Boys come and go from kura all the time. The first time my boy crossed the marae ātea at Hato Pāora, he had walked alone. This time I stood beside him; or, more accurately, he strode ahead of me and I dropped into his shadow. Last time I didn't cry, this time I let the tears fall without shame. I watched him take his place among the boys, unfurling away from me, head up and shoulders back, singing the words to songs he'd never forgotten. My mother leaned over and said, 'Gosh, he looks so at home there, doesn't he?' and I nodded, because I know how this story goes. It's not unknown. The old western adage that we can never go back isn't true. We are endlessly

Image courtesy of Kiriana O'Connell

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a short distance from home Anne-Marie Te Whiu

1. dunes flank beach to road where spinifex grass grows

2. if you go further and further keep going beyond

and pig face plants flower collapsed chimney a museum piece without reverie my dog tries to sniff out this remnant

further more

i whistle her back close paws crash castles built by young hands

forget compass find stars

across the road a factory called Vesuvius it has the best view in town of big blue i once saw a wild seal surfing these waters tankers and shipping containers line the horizon

push your waka again you will meet another land

a high sea slow motion traffic jam ash from distant fires wash up i followed love here now our flame gone with the tide

where my bones belong

whakarongo Michelle Rahurahu

Whakarongo; You’re supposed to be writing something good. You need to be right here, right now, living

Whakarongo; Someone else has already written your story so you’ll

your wildest dreams but you’re not; you’re splintering. A matua loaned you a patu once

have to find another one. You need to stop staring at

but before you even touched it the harakeke lashed to the handle snapped and you just

the off glimmers in the room and falling into them.

stared at it on the ground for a moment, pondering how its components had rearranged

Though maybe you shouldn’t. You couldn’t finish

after it cracked, like an egg. You lay on a hospital bed once, waiting for the pills to take

your story because you had to take a drop of blood

effect and when the nurse came to get you, you called her ‘Aunty’. She stroked your back

from every person you love only to have a committee

with her fingers and a strand of hair got caught on her nail. That’s not the only thing

of strangers prod you into believing that some drops

they took that day. They asked if you wanted to keep the remains but you didn’t know the

were too clean or too dirty. Your koro heard a piece

tikanga so every time a staff member asked, your yes got weaker until it was a no. You got

of your story on RNZ where you called him a drunk

to touch the patu after it was broken, and the matua knew the tikanga. You crouched next

and laughed; you heard that from your uncle.

to all six pieces of ōnewa, patting them, until the pieces were taken away to rest on the right whenua. You were given a bigger mere made of pounamu. He just handed it to you, with no manual or instruction. You begged him to bundle it in cloth. Later the matua said he couldn’t believe you took it away without question, he was expecting you to fail. It was tied thrice, then you walked down the street with it cradled so tight you lost feeling in one arm.

They had a big long conversation about everything but when you saw koro at the marae, he called you Shelly Bum and that was it. You fantasise about writing without several voices; real, imagined, maybe you’re using ngā tohu as an excuse to be sick. You told yourself you’d write one trauma narrative and spend the

Your collar was soaking wet by the time you made it to your destination.

tōtara tuatoru I

rest of your career paying for it with science fiction.

121

Every time you dream of your cousin she’s wearing a simple moko kauae, two spikes

and lifestyle magazines around you to keep your

like teeth, thorns you call them because you don’t know the proper kupu. You hate her

body alive and your mind busy. Your boyfriend

for being bigger than yourself. You love her for giving you a goddaughter that presses

bought you a sewing machine and coloured pencils and

her thumbs together to sign ‘Aunty’ when she hears your voice. You love her because

a frangipani and a house. Your boyfriend tries to

together you make a set of fangs. You wish you could open up all the possibilities that

understand but you haven’t told him the rubber band

would come from the decision to record sacred things in exchange for money. Then you

analogy. He doesn’t know that you find a path and

could have stopped mid-run through your Nan’s garden and ask the Roses if they’d mind

bolt as fast as you can down it to find a dead-end

being in your book. You saw on Facebook that one of your whanaunga still has a cutting

and you have to come shooting back to the present.

from that garden and it was like, hahaha, you idiot. You can’t kill something by pulling

You’re so fucking practical, even in your head, it

it at the root. You sold the manuscript. You changed the people and changed the names.

makes you want to vom. Your boyfriend got a hongi

You pressed words in their mouths like dentures. The nurse ferried you into the

and a “too much” from every uncle you have and you

surgery room and all you saw of the doctor was their thigh-high white gumboots. You imagined them pulling bloody scarfs out of you into a bucket, then tossing the chum into the sea. You laughed out loud, and your Aunty patted your hand. You once had a story now you have a net. Whakarongo mai; You could write a poem but you don’t like poetry. You’re anxious that one person won’t get it. And you want everyone to think your aloofness is a carefully selected quirk. Your inner monologue is mostly screaming. You write pages and pages of those screams in different configurations like, AHHHHHHHH or ah

Ahhhhhh

ahhhHHHHHHHHHHHH aAaHhH? like, is this something? Is this something? You tongue the two gaps on either side of your mouth and pray the rest of your teeth don’t rot. Your boyfriend keeps trying to talk to you but you can’t hear over the roar. Your boyfriend is building a nest of food

got a, “You know E Hoki Mai? Sing the first line then.” If you had taken the remains what would you have done with it? Frozen it in the flat fridge then let it thaw on your twelve hour bus home, like mince? You had dreams about it for months and every time it went differently. Sometimes your flatmates find the canister in the fridge and write a passive aggressive message about it in the flat chat. Sometimes you make it home and your sisters make a patupaiarehe ring around tossed soil.

Sometimes the canister bursts open in the bus isles, and everyone screams. Once you made

every member of your whānau has the same gaps in

it home and your mama said, “why didn’t you bring the tissue home?” In every version

their jaws as you. You’d rather focus on the things

your eyes are swollen. When they took your teeth, you could hear the bone snapping.

you’ve lost than the things you’ve gained. You have a

The dental assistant had to look away half-way through to breathe deeply in the corner of the

few more places to visit before you can finally sleep.

room which felt kinda dramatic. You didn’t realise pulling teeth was so laborious, the dentist

You’re not good at listening but you’re working

had to carefully roll it out, it’s like they’re unfastening a tight screw. The assistant talked to

on it.

the dentist about how deep it was and it didn’t feel like it had anything to do with you. You googled 8 week foetus so you could be ghoulish and edgy with your friends but you ended up digging a hole for a raspberry on the wrong coast by yourself. You officially quit smoking at eighteen but for that year you made many exceptions. Whakarongo mai; You should write something light but you can’t lol. Every slight has soft hooks like ivy branches. Na is saying we all want to go home, she’s saying let us bring you home. Ruby is wiping her face. You believe that conversation is made up of slats stacked on top of each other. You believe that’s especially true of wāhine Māori because it’s through the hallway whispers that you’ve found kāinga to rest on. You rest at Tukorehe often. Toni told you once when she speaks te reo Māori everything flattens out, she can see everything clearly. You wish you could make everything flat with words. It used to irritate you when your aunties gave you answers to questions you didn’t ask. But now you do it to every kid that walks your way, you feel it visiting you like a headache. Oi, you need to hear this. Your aunties have that same urgency, their words stabbing holes in the fabric of time, creating alternative currents for you to slip through later. You never know when you’re going to see someone again. You should take up swimming. You told everyone you can’t remember your whakapapa, ignoring the enormous paintings of your tūpuna hanging in the lounge, kauae black with ink, pupils like whirlpools. But you remembered that

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mai oro, yō taim read with Māori vowel sounds

Miriama Gemmell

ai teik yō leinguig fo main

teik mai canexins torn tu Te Ao marama

mai poutokomanawa wel – strip

carve into the lectern

yō wūds fo main

ai teik yō wūds slice fo main ai teik yō oro pierce fo main

ai chūz wat ai want

ai si ai mast teik hack

scratch into the pew

ai frau awei thāthaz

yūz im haoeva ai chūz

upload and ruiruia

ai teik yō letes fo main

ai teik yō oro

burn into the show lawn

ai teik yō tang fo main

tattoo into the flesh

ai ignō yō rulz

yū cam hia end teik mai voic

nail to the library door

mai wūds mai ahurea

>>>>>> nao iu get auve it

tĹ?tara tuatoru I 125

Sinead Overbye

karanga tonu mai, hoki ai

tĹ?tara tuatoru I

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Rangiātea Anahera Gildea

I can never be lost except I have been. I have

that when people said they were seeds

in tunnels and holes so deep that I have felt blind, I have

scattered from Rangiātea

taken the form of a mole rat. And stayed in libraries who’s shelves have been so tall and full of words that I have

it meant everyone came from Ōtaki - all tangata Māori

become fat with other people’s kōrero. Fat, mind you, not mōmona – not lush. I have

sprung from the sword of Te Rauparaha

been told by thousands and millions of tiny black ants on dusty pages

laid upon the onetapu that was carried here.

how to lift this foot up, place this foot down, shake this hand, nod this head. I have

When my boy died and I came home, I was lost too

been formed in a way that has made me lost. And yet, I have also

even though by then I knew about the heavens and the places of origin,

been found

I still thought of Rangiātea as having

by the rafters of this house that scoop down

been built by Tukorehe - of it having

to face me forward. The waters at our edges have

the hands of those I descend from help to stand it up,

made pathways and highways and roadways to follow, not

help to shape it. Of having

needing this leg or that to do as it’s told. When I was small

those same hands stand me up, shape me, so that when the libraries fall down

I thought that the church in Ōtaki was the only

and the books fall down

Rangiātea. I didn’t know

I can listen to Te Whē,

about distant places or heavens. I thought

the creaking of the trees.

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133

Image courtesy of Anahera Gildea

ko te pū A reply in story to Matua Haare Williams

Nadine Anne Hura

'In the genealogy of creation, Te Whē (sound) was always associated with Wānanga. Wānanga when standing alone means to discuss, debate, impart knowledge. When associated with te whē, it means wisdom.'

mihimihi that sounded ever so faintly wistful: ‘It’s really great to see you and Anahera getting into the drivers’ seats with Te Whē. It reminds me of the two

Māori Marsden, The Woven Universe.

annuals that me and Haare Williams brought out for

I see it now - what our wānanga was lacking. How could we have overlooked such a basic

The Māori Writers and Artists Society in the 1970s:

element of the noho marae? We had all the ingredients for a successful hui: talented

poetry, fiction and photography.

writers, workshops with gritty questions, poutokomanawa i Te Ao tuhituhi in attendance, tamariki twirling poi on the marae ātea and incredible food - wait, I don’t want you to skim read this bit, I mean outstanding kai. We grazed and gorged all day long on dishes

Keep going forward! Plan well! Edit well! Nā, Witi.’

Aunty Moe sent from the kīhini to the wharekai like a bistro on Boulcott. And there was a

Annuals? Annuals, as in, ‘journals’? I looked up from

trip to te awa Ōhau, and stories from the haukāinga, we even got a good shake from

my computer and gazed out the window. It’s not like

Ruaūmoko in the wharenui after midnight - an auspicious tohu if ever there was one.

I thought what we were doing was revolutionary.

But something was missing. How could we have neglected it?

We’d never positioned this kaupapa as the first of

Matua Haare Williams was the one to point it out, although he didn’t do so knowingly. He simply sent me his recollections of the first hui for the New Zealand Māori Artists and Writers Association which took place in 1973 at Te Kaha on the East Coast. By now this hui was taking on an epic shape in my imagination. Witi first mentioned it in an email

its kind. But in the competitive and often hostile world of literary submissions, the idea of creating a journal that springs entirely from writers present at a wānanga had seemed different.

after I invited him to our inaugural wānanga for Te Whē, a new bilingual journal of

The whole literary journal scene is like an operation

Māori literature. He sent his apologies along with good wishes, and closed off with a

in deep-sea trawling. The normal submission

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135

process is a net in which a single editor - often Pākehā - decides who is selected and

The concept of a wānanga-based journal wasn’t the

who is thrown back. This editor (or editors) gets to define matters of quality and

starting point. The starting point for me was when I

taste, without ever being required to openly declare their social, political, or cultural biases.

received an invitation from Anahera Gildea to join a

This power can influence and determine, often by stealth, how we as Māori writers think

hui she’d organised at Victoria University’s Institute

about ourselves. Ultimately, it influences the shape and pitch of our contributions too.

of Modern Letters in November 2018. Anahera’s

As trends change – and as taste for ‘diversity’ heightens – we as writers (if we want to be

idea, as she explained it to me in those early days,

published and taken seriously) find ourselves writing to serve those appetites. This is only a

was to create a digital marae ātea: A bilingual

small part of the picture. Probing deeper raises even more complex questions. Who owns

journal that would allow Māori writers the space

the trawler and controls the resources to power it? Who chooses the skipper and decides

and forum to present, consider and wānanga the

where to cast the net, at what time and for how long? And what influence do all these factors

whole landscape of Māori literature. ‘This is for us to

combined have on the final catch?

define,’ she would often say in between sips of coffee

Even if the net is cast in different waters and the selection is influenced by different values, Indigenous publishers sometimes end up operating the same way as mainstream publishers. On the subject of research, Ani Mikaere has said that we should guard against producing a kaupapa Māori research elite simply to prove that we can ‘do research’ every bit as well as Pākehā. This applies to literary journals as well. The risk is that we simply replicate exclusionary mainstream practices instead of challenging the whole model of publishing itself. With Te Whē, we didn’t deliberately set out to create a journal that was different to Pākehā journals. We set out to create a journal that would embody tikanga, mātauranga, whakaaro and reo Māori in all aspects of its creation, from content curation to design and publishing. For me the motivation was deeply personal as well as political. I didn’t grow up in Te Ao

and expletives, ‘not Pākehā institutions.’ She would fan her arms out wide and say things like ‘Let’s nourish the soil of Māori literature!’ and I would nod my head vigorously even though I was still getting my head around the idea that this stuff was political, not just personal. The first hui was attended by Patricia Grace, Robyn Bargh, Eboni Waitere, Damien Wilkins, Emily Perkins, Mike Ross, Arini Loader, Alice Te Punga Somerville and Tayi Tibble. We made several pages of notes at that first hui, but what I remember taking away is the feeling that the idea might not work – that it might

Māori. The ideas and notions I absorbed about what it means to be Māori weren’t just

be too hard and too costly and too time-consuming.

negative, they were sometimes threatening, often shameful. I wanted to be involved with

It’s not that people were discouraging, it’s that the

Te Whē because I was curious - no, I was hungry – to see what my writing might do, say and

cumulative experience in the room suggested we

become if I could just liberate my mind from colonial thinking long enough to allow myself

would need to be prepared to do a lot of work – and

to write free.

that the outcomes might be uncertain.

A few months later, we met Debbie Broughton and Kim Breen from Te Wānanga o Raukawa at a meeting for Te Hā at the National Library. As kaimahi of Te Tākupu, Te Wānanga o

– funding criteria we didn’t want to bend to meet,

Raukawa’s in-house publisher, Debbie and Kim had been discussing the idea of creating an

time running out – that we felt the magic really come

online, bilingual Māori literature journal that seemed to share many parallels with ours.

into play. Maybe tīpuna guidance is a better description.

We immediately made a connection. During the months that followed we racked up a few

I remember leaving voicemails for Anahera in the wee

hundred kilometres on the odometer and many hours of discussion. In between these hui

hours of the morning flushed with excitement about

at Raukawa, Anahera and I regularly met and talked with our peers and colleagues in the

a reo assignment in which I’d studied the lifecycle

grassroots writing community. Together we posed questions and thought constructively

of a plant. It had only occurred to me in the moment

and creatively about possible answers. We talked about what we needed as writers and

of my presentation to the class, that the process of

what we felt was missing in the mainstream world of literature. Among these mates were

seed germination resembles the development of a

Matariki Williams, Cassandra Barnett, Arihia Latham, Sophie Rangimarie Jolley, Alex Keeble,

story – from the first inkling of an idea into the light

Nicole Titihuia and Ataria Sharman. I am writing their names down because I have learnt

of publication. In the voicemail equivalent of finishing

from people like Haare and Renée and Witi and Patricia that some writing serves creativity

your sentences for you, Anahera came back shouting

and some writing serves posterity. Remembering is important. Remembering is whakapapa.

‘Exactly! That’s the pū of pūrākau!’

Some time in the second half of 2019 our road trips up to Ōtaki came to a natural and amicable

It’s strange to know something for a long time – i.e.

conclusion. It was a constructive and mutually beneficial period that highlighted the value in taking time to genuinely connect and build relationships. One of the most significant things we did as a kāhui during this period was prepare a bunch of paperwork for a funding application that we never submitted. Deciding not to follow the $ wasn’t a difficult decision. Suffice to say that whenever dollar signs are attached to a kaupapa the purpose and intent can be diverted away from your own values and towards someone else’s (think: who owns the boat and controls the resources?). But at no point did we feel that our time had been wasted. In fact, the process was critical in helping us define and articulate two things: What we were doing and Why.

relationships that almost but didn’t quite perfectly align,

that pūrakau means ‘origin story’ – but to never really fully understand it without wānanga. Joe Harawira explained pūrakau at the Te Hā National Hui in 2019 as a return to the essence of nature; Māori authenticity. Very soon we were asking ourselves how this knowledge could be applied in a practical sense to our journal. In many ways I was just catching up with where Anahera had always been. We saw that although the moment a plant first emerges into the light is spectacular, it’s

The thing about kaupapa Māori that I’m not sure anyone can really measure is how much

by no means the most significant part of the process.

magic is involved. Working with Anahera this past year, it has felt like a lot. Strategy and

In Te Ao Pākehā, the emphasis on publication as a

planning were important, but it seems to me that it was only after we felt the doors closing

marker of success tends to ignore all the important

tōtara tuatoru I

137

stages and phases that precede it. These phases occur almost entirely underground,

“In the genealogy of creation, te whē (sound) was always

in the darkness – te pō. How well supported are writers during this period? Which

associated with wānanga. Wānanga when standing

stories receive the best nutrients? Which are published prematurely, before they are

alone means discuss, debate, impart knowledge. When

deeply rooted? How many stories, for lack of sustenance and support, never make it

associated with te whē, it means wisdom.”

ki Te Ao Mārama?

We decided to hold our first wānanga for the pilot

Around this time I went on a mana wāhine yoga retreat led by Jessica Hutchings at her

edition of Te Whē on the 25th and 26th of January

organic farm in Kaitoke. Over lunch on the second day I got talking to a fellow writer friend,

2020. Invitations went out a few days before Christmas.

Shirley Simmonds, about gardening. Hearing my curiosity to see and understand all the

Tukorehe, Anahera’s papakainga in Ōhau, would host

things that happen within the soil, te pō, she rustled around in her handbag and pulled out a

us. Like the weu spreading out and down, things began

single, ever-so-slightly shrivelled, bean. I don’t know why she had this bean in her handbag

to happen quickly. Within moments of sending the

or how long it had been floating around in te kore (Shirley suspected months or even years)

invitations, more than half replied confirming their

but I took it home and planted it inside a clear plastic container and perched it on my kitchen

attendance. Unlike the effort and sweat of the early

windowsill. A few days passed, and then a week, and then two. I watered it daily and watched. Nothing happened. I could see the bean pressed up against the plastic but all it appeared to be doing was sweating. Then one day, in between packing school lunches and listening to voicemails, I noticed a tiny fissure on the surface of the bean - a single crooked crack. The next day the crack was big enough to see te more, the first shoot, pushing and straining against the soil. Things sped up after that. Three or four tentacles spread out like tiny fibres heading off

days, doors seemed to open easily. Garry Nicholas, Tamahou Temara and Pehia King of Toi Māori lent their support financially and practically. Writers came from all over the country – self-funded, car-pooled, each of us converging on Tukorehe at different stages of our writing journeys.

in search of sustenance. Te weu. That’s the first significant thing I noticed - before the bean

On the morning of the wānanga I left home early to

went up, its roots went down and out, getting a good, solid grip in the heart of Papatūānuku.

pick up Patricia. I’d emptied my car of rubbish and

Māori Marsden describes te whē as the clothing of the word. It is the reverberation of sound

vacuumed the seats and sprayed several pumps of odour neutraliser into the air. It wasn’t insignificant to

created when the wind moves through the leaves. In the context of publication, te whē could

us that Patricia had been present at our first meeting

be seen as the moment the world receives and engages with a story. But so much of the

in November 2018 and would be with us for our first

creative work happens away from light, in the darkness of te pō. All writers are familiar with

wānanga in January 2020. I tried to be chill about it.

the sweat and the strain and often solitary search for sustenance. Marsden says that this is

It might have been my first noho marae for Māori

why te whē is indispensable from wānanga.

writers but I knew it wasn’t hers. As we pulled out of

Patricia’s home in Hongoeka I mentioned the Koru annuals that Witi had told me about in his

whānau and mums and dads and kids from all

email. I asked her if she remembered them and she said ‘Oh yes,’ with that same, wistful tone.

around the motu crammed into the wharenui.

‘I’ve got them at home somewhere.’

‘Art breathes life and mana inside our meeting houses,’

It is fairly common knowledge that in Te Ao Māori the past is in front of us. Sometimes people say we walk backwards into the future. I didn’t grow up with this awareness but I’ve

he wrote. ‘It was a moment in history, a moment we wanted to freeze, a moment never to be forgotten.’

experienced it plenty of times, and I experienced it as I turned the car around and drove back

We may never be able to recreate the experience of a

to Hongoeka to locate those Koru annuals.

grand piano, but next time we wānanga I promise you

I waited on the doorstep as Patricia disappeared inside and came out a few moments later with several copies of Koru. I flipped through the pages and was greeted with a stream of names both familiar and new. Here in my hands was a living example of what we wanted to create with Te Whē - and it had been in front of us all along, or more precisely, it had been sitting on Patricia’s bookshelf. Patricia was at the hui in Te Kaha in 1973 and she was at the one that followed in Wairoa in 1975. When we picked Renée up in Ōtaki she told us she’d been at the Wairoa hui as well. As we journeyed on towards Tukorehe I listened to Patricia and Renée reminisce about the many talented writers and poets and artists of their time, rātou

Matua, there will be an All Night Concert. There are other ways our wānanga was different to that hui in Te Kaha, too. Te Whē ki Tukorehe 2020 was primarily forwriters, and although there were artists and musicians among us, the Māori Artists and Writers Association didn’t make the kinds of distinctions between the art forms that have become typical today. It’s good to be reminded of this. Despite the passage of nearly five decades, Koru is a

kua wehe atu ki te pō – haere, haere, haere atu rā. When I emailed the editor of Koru, Haare Williams, partly to mihi to him for creating these journals, partly to see if he would be interested in meeting Anahera and I, he replied with a story.

beautiful example of everything Te Whē aspires to be. It is a marae ātea in print. It captures the stories of a specific time and place. There are voices from all around the motu, showcasing the depth and

‘Imagine, if you can, a packed whare tipuna in the rural heartland of Te Whānau a Apanui,

expansiveness of Māori expression. There is artwork

Tukaki filled to the heke with over two hundred for the highlight of the Hui: The All Night

interspersed with poetry (even the ‘new’ climate

Concert. Imagine too, twelve strong, strapping men and the effort it took to strip down a

poetry genre!) and short stories mingling among

grand piano and get it through the big meeting house front door.’

photographs and interviews. Most significantly, there is whakapapa. We can see the connections

And there it was. The thing our hui was missing: An All Night Concert with a grand

between writers then and writers now. Some issues

piano. It was the highlight of the weekend, Haare wrote of that hui in 1973, with

and challenges have changed, some have not.

tōtara tuatoru I

139

These entrepreneurs of bilingualism and biculturalism carved the way for the rest of us and no matter how lonely we might feel as we push towards the light, Koru reminds us that we are not the first to do so and by no means will we be the last. Haare’s hokinga mahara included a list of key people who wove the kaupapa from conception to life. Principal among them were Hone Tuwhare, Witi Ihimaera, Para Matchitt, Georgina Kirby, Patrica Grace and Selwyn Muru. Reading the list of aims brought back all the notes we’d collected over the past year: a desire to return the arts to our own, to travel around the country visiting different marae, to collect stories, to celebrate our own diverse cultural richness. ‘A new determination framed around tikanga. A small group at first, with a vision and a mission for collaboration.’ This purpose, so long ago articulated, almost perfectly expressed our what and our why. It is nearing the end of February, not quite a month since the wānanga and nearly five months since I planted the bean inside a plastic container on my kitchen windowsill. It now curves over my head inside the glass house. It burst into bright red flowers a few weeks ago and is now heavy with long, curly beans. Meanwhile, the first cohort of writers are at home working on their contributions to Te Whē and peer reviewing each other’s work. Every day when I go outside to water the bean I feel surprised by it. It’s not the first plant I’ve ever grown from a seed, but it’s the first I’ve ever watched beneath the soil. There is something magical about knowing that the bean floated around inside Shirley’s handbag for so long just waiting for the right conditions to come along. I remember how she rummaged to find it, and how unlikely it looked in my hand all discoloured and thin. A single bean. I remember doubting it would grow. Now it produces beans so sweet they don’t even make it upstairs to the kitchen. I stand there, crunching and staring at the leaves, just thinking about potential.

Authors present at the wānanga ki Tukorehe (alphabetical order) Anahera Gildea, Arihia Latham, Kahu Kutia, Kirsty Dunn, Michelle Rahurahu Scott, Miriama Gemmell, Nadine Anne Hura, Patricia Grace, Renée, Ruby Solly, Sinead Overbye, Tayi Tibble, Te Kahureremoa Taumata.

141

Ngāpuhi Ngāti Hine Te Rarawa

Te Aupōuri

Ngāti Toa Rangatira

Ngāti Rakaipaaka

Ngāti Pāhauwera

Rangitāne

Ngāti Kahungunu ki Heretaunga

Ngāti Kahungunu ki Wairarapa

Ngāti Hāmua

Te Āti Awa

Te Aitanga-aMāhaki Ngāti Kahungungu ki Wairoa Ngāti Rongomaiwāhine

Tūhoe

Tūwharetoa

TUKOREHE

Te Āti Haunui-aPāpārangi

Ngāti Huri

Raukawa

Ngāi Te Rangi

Ngāti Porou

Te Whānau-ā-Apanui

whakapapa o ngā kaituhi

te hau o te whenua

Kāi Tahu Kāti Mamoe Waitaha

Kāi Tahu Kāti Huirapa

Kāi Tahu Kāti Māmoe

143

Ko Arihia Latham ahau

Ko Kāti Huirapa te hapū

Ko Kāi Tahu te iwi

Ko Waihao te awa, te marae

Ko Aoraki te mauka

Ko Uruao te waka

Ko Annette Morehu ahau

Ko Te Aupouri te Iwi

Ko Ruanui te tangata

Ko Mamari te waka

Ko Parengarenga te moana

Ko Potahi te marae

Ko Waimirirangi te whare

Ko Tutūmaio te wahi tapu

Ko Awapuka te awa

Ko Tawhitirahi te maunga

Ko Anne Waapu ahau

Ko Te Atihaunui-a-Pāpārangi ngā iwi

Ko Ngāti Kahungunu,

Ko Rongomaiwahine, ko Ngāti Hinemanu,

Ko Omahu te marae

Ko Takitimu te waka

Ko Ngaruroro Moko Tuararo ki Rangatira te awa

Ko Puketapu me te tuarā o te whai ngā maunga

Ko Anne-Marie Te Whiu ahau

Ko Te Waikoi te hapū

Ko Te Rarawa te iwi

Ko Waihou-Nui-a-Rua te marae

Ko Hokianga te moana

Ko Waihou te awa

Ko Te Reinga te maunga

Ko Anahera Gildea tōku ingoa

Ko Ngāti Tukorehe te iwi, te hapū, te marae

Ko Ōhau te awa

Ko Tararua ngā pae maunga

Ko Tainui te waka

Ko Nicole Titihuia Hawkins ahau

Ko Ngāti Kahungunu ki te Wairoa te iwi

Ko Rangiahua te marae

Ko Waiau te awa

Ko Titirangi te maunga

Ko Ngāti Pāhauwera te iwi

Ko Waipapa-a-iwi te Marae

Ko Mohaka te awa

Ko Tāwhirirangi te maunga

Ko Takitimu te waka

Ko Hineāmaru te tipuna Ko Tokerau te maunga Ko Taumarere te awa Ko Ngati Hine, Ko Ngāpuhi ngā iwi Ko Nadine Anne Hura ahau

Ko Miriama Gemmell ahau

ko Ngāti Rakaipaaka ngā iwi

Ko Ngāti Pāhauwera,

Ko Waipapa a iwi te marae

Ko Mohaka te awa

Ko Tāwhirirangi te maunga

Ko Takitimu te waka

Ko Ngāti Hāmua te hapū matua Ko Michelle Rahurahu ahau

Ko Rangitāne te iwi

Ko Te Ore Ore te marae

Ko Kurahaupō te waka

Ko Ruamahanga te awa

Ko Rangitūmau te maunga

Ko Rahurahu te hapū

Ko Raukawa te iwi

Ko Waimahana te marae

Ko Waikato te awa

Ko Kakaramea te maunga

kaituhi contributors

Ko Whakarara, ko Rangiuru ngā maunga

Ko Ngāti Porou te iwi Ko Hinerupe te marae, te hapū Ko Maungahaumi te maunga Ko Waipaoa te awa

Ko Mangaorua te awa iti Ko Raukawa te iwi Ko Ngāti Huri te hapū Ko Cassandra Barnett ahau

Ko Te Whānau a Kai te hapū Ko Sinead Overbye ahau

Ko Ōhau te awa Ko Tainui te waka

Ko Ngaruroro, Ko Whakapapa ngā awa Ko Takitimu, Ko Te Arawa ngā waka Ko Ngati Hinemanu, Ko Ngai Te Upokoiri, Ko Ngati Manunui ngā hapū

Ko Waiapu te awa Ko Horouta te waka Ko Ngāti Porou te iwi Ko Emma Espiner ahau

Ko Te Kahureremoa Tiopira Taumata toku ingoa

Ko Mataatua te waka

Ko Kirsty Dunn ahau

Ko Te Uri o Tai te hapū

Ko Te Aupōuri, ko Te Rarawa ngā iwi

Ko Taiao te marae

Ko Awaroa te awa

Ko Whakakoro te maunga

Ko Kahu Kutia ahau

Ko Tūhoe te iwi

Ko Ngāi Te Riu te hapū

Ko Tataahoata, ko Piripari ngā marae

Ko Ōhinemataroa, ko Tauranga ngā awa

Ko Ngāti Kahungunu, Ko Ngāti Tūwharetoa ngā iwi

Ko Maungapōhatu te maunga

Ko Omahu, Ko Kakahi ngā marae

Ko Kahuranaki, ko Tongariro ngā maunga

Ko Hikurangi te maunga

Ko Tukorehe te tangata me te iwi hoki

Ko Te Aitanga-a-Māhaki te iwi

Ko Tararua te maunga

Ko Rongopai te marae

Ko Waiapu te awa

Ko Hikurangi te maunga

Ko Horouta te waka

Ko Renée taku ingoa

Ko Kahungunu te iwi

Ko Takitimu te waka

Ko Wairoa e awa

Ko Whakapunake te maunga

Ko Ruby Mae Hinepunui Solly ahau

Ko Kāti Huirapa te hapū

Ko Kāi Tahu, ko Kāti Mamoe, ko Waitaha kā iwi

Ko Waihao te marae

Ko Waihao te awa

Ko Aoraki te mauka

Ko Uruao te waka

Ko Waikato te awa

Ko Becky Manawatu ahau

Ko Murihiku te Marae

Ko Kāi Tahu, Kāti Mamoe a Waitaha kā Iwi

Ko Waihopai me Kōreti kā awa

Ko Te Moana Ara a Kiwa te moana

Ko Hananui te Mauka

Ko Takitimu me Uruao kā waka

Ko Ataria Sharman tōku ingoa

Ko Ngāpuhi, ko Tapuika ngā iwi

Ko Ngāti Kura, ko Ngati Marukukere ngā hapū

Ko Te Tapui, ko Te Paamu ngā marae

Ko Mātaatua, ko Te Arawa ngā waka

Ko Kaituna te awa

Ko Matauri te moana

Ngāparetaihinu, our beautiful kuia rests now, like those who wananga within her bossom .... but just a few moments ago she heaved with aspirations and inspirations. Descendants of many tīpuna breathed and birthed new ideas and they found courage amongst themselves in the safety of her walls, to speak their voice, to speak their truth, to speak their futures. Another day will dawn, the sun will rise behind her like it has done for many yesterdays and will for many more tomorrows. But until then ... new dreams will be manifested in the heart of our wharenui. Pō mārie our kuia. Rest now. Courtney Delamere

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Image courtesy of Courtney Delamere

TE HAU O TE WHENUA

Te Whe ki Tukorehe Volume 1, 2020

Articles inside

i sit in a room...