Living Connection

Tikanga Māori

“Māori tend to believe that we are part of that ecosystem.

We are part of the water, water is part of us,

We are part of the land, the mountains, etc. We refer to them as our ancestors.

The trees are still seen as our ‘tuākana’, our elders ahead of us.

We often refer to our mountains as our ‘tū te ao, tū te po.’ Mountains stand day and night, they are there all the time and they are our markers for where we are ‘tangata whenua’ (people of the land).”

–Kevin Prime, Ngāti Hine kaumātua

There is a genealogical connection between mankind, the Earth and water. From the time of creation, as I learned, to the end of the 2019 Western calendar year, as I witnessed, Māori have built on this genealogical relationship to the natural world by feeding their living connection to the ngahere or forest. In early days, it was easy for people who lived with and by the bush to uphold their connection. The ngahere was the source of food, water and sport, a space for life and death. Today, as communities move further away from the already shrinking forested land, away from the language spoken during the time of seasonal living, and away from the mundane linkages tying one to the forest, maintaining their connection has proven arduous. Following tikanga Māori (Māori protocol regarding customs and traditions, the Māori way of doing things or general behavioral guidelines for daily interactions in Māori culture) is one way that these communities maintain the connection day-to-day. That, and by getting themselves into the bush.

Tangata whenua

Māori believe that their living connection to the Earth is not constant. It must be nourished. In the prologue, I mentioned that in order to understand the cultural context of kauri in Northland, one must confer with tangata whenua. Tangata whenua are people of the land while mana whenua is the customary territorial or tribal authority over land held by an iwi or hapū. Not all with mana whenua are able to claim tangata whenua but all tangata whenua may claim mana whenua.

In order to be tangata whenua, one must complete three phases to reconnect with the land. In this cycle, they start from Earth, move into the wider world, and go back into the Earth again. First, when they are born, their pito (umbilical cord and placenta) is cut and buried in the land, symbolically severing their connection to mother and connecting them to mother Earth, where they will derive all of their future nourishment. Second, they must actually plant and eat the food that comes from the land, becoming one with the land they are born from. Finally, when they die, they are put back into the Earth at the urupā (burial ground), completing the cycle.

Wairuatanga

Wairuatanga (spirituality) plays a crucial role in the Māori world view and perspective on daily life. Through Wairuatanga, all things hold a physical as well as spiritual body, including the Earth, birds, plants, land and sea animals, and humans. There is a link between the physical (or material) and spiritual body and the overall wellbeing or wholeness of life. The wairua or spiritual essence lives through stories and in reinventing the way information is shared between children and their tupuna (ancestor/grandparent) at the marae. While people may not always be conscious of it, Wairuatanga permeates all aspects of daily existence and is usually expressed within a mātauranga Māori framework.

The concept of wairua permeates this project as well, for most of the people that offer their knowledge are Māori and/or share the Māori worldview. As Hugh and I learned through our discussions, wairua is woven into their life experience, informing their work and daily practices.

John Klaricich, CNZM (New Zealand Order of Merit), is a well-respected kaumātua from Omāpere in the Hokianga region. I first met him and his wife Lila at the wharf in Omāpere, down the road from their home. Shortly after introductions we relocated to a local hotel, where the staff greeted John warmly. As we settled into the high backed, leather upholstered chairs in the bar area, John ordered a white wine, Lila and I red. It was late December, 2019, at the tail end of my time in Northland, and the words we exchanged influenced my decision to imbue this project with words.

At 88 years old, John has seen his fair share of the 32 odd generations that forged a relationship with the land on which we sat. When he spoke to me, reciting a memo of his thoughts carefully transcribed by Lil, his ideas became poems, bundled together with a lyrical hum. During the construction of this text, we had an exchange in which he spoke wisely about the relationship between Wairuatanga and Christianity and the ways it manifests in life. John offered a statement about the Rev. Maori Marsden to illustrate his views on Wairuatanga. In his correspondence was the following quote from Adrienne Puckey’s Living Legacy: A History of the Anglican Diocese of Auckland.

“The Revd. Maori Marsden (1924-93) of Te Patukoraha, Ngai Takoto, Ngati Korokoro and Ngati Wharara) was a tohunga, scholar, writer, healer, minister and philosopher, and the last graduate of the whare wānanga o Ngāpuhi, the traditional tribal centre of higher and esoteric learning. He was initiated into the wànanga, before joining the Māori Battalion in 1940, on the understanding that once he graduated he would go to St. John’s Theological College and enter the ministry, to bring the knowledge of the wànanga under the mana atua of Christ. He was uniquely placed to explain how Chrisitanity and pre-Christian divinity connected, for instance, the concept of sacrament, about which he wrote:

“Māori possessed a sacramental system which included sacraments parallel to those of the Christian Church. This probably explains why Christianity was so readily accepted by Māori and further explains his strong allegiance to the sacramental churches. Because of the parallel between systems, we can make comparisons between them to help us understand the principles underlying both. According to the Augustinian definitions of Western Christendom, a sacrament is “ an outward visible sign setting forth and pledging an inward spiritual grace”. To the Māori, a sacrament is simply “the means by which mana ... is transmitted to humans.” The means used could be a specific element (water) from the created order or another person by tactile transmission. The personal agent instrumental in this act must himself have been previously endued with the spirit of the gods since he can only impart what he himself already is.”

– Adrienne Puckey, excerpt from “Living Legacy: A History of the Anglican Diocese of Auckland.”¹⁸ Adrienne Puckey, “Mana Motuhake o Te Whakapono: Religious Self-Determination, Māori and the Diocese, 1928-92.”

According to John, “Māori regarded (and still do) those sacred Legends probably in the same way as the Ancient Israelites regarded the Law. Knowledge of the sacred Legends was strictly limited to special people. Rev. Maori Marsden was one of these people, the last.” Māori beliefs find their grounding in legends, what John coined Myths as Law. In fact, he said, “They retained these uncompromised. It has and still does not cause any confusion in Māori thinking and social practices. For example, the fundamental disciplines of Greetings people utilize, quite appropriately recognition of both disciplines of Christian and Māori Spirituality in the expression used.”

His words helped me understand that while there was no cohesive religion that encompassed the Hokianga as the Catholic, Wesleyan or Anglican presence resonated with different communities, the social practices associated with each made their mark. Years of missionary presence amounted to a widespread adoption of Christian theologies, sure, but the Māori spirituality has remained strong alongside those adopted beliefs. While the intent of early missionaries may have been more an erasure of native custom rather than a co-mingling of faiths, the groundswell of Māori who have adopted Christianity and later Hinduism among other religions demonstrates their trust in the capacity of one’s soul to expand for faith. There is space for multiple truths and belief systems, multiple pursuits of spirituality that enrich rather than negate one another.

Language & Education

Since the bulk of traditional knowledge is passed through experience with tūpuna at the marae and in the forest, most Māori recognize that the European texts that flood the world are only instructions on how to engage with nature and that in order to fully understand that relationship one must test those teachings through action – by stepping into the world and living today equipped with the knowledge of the past.

Kevin Prime is a kaumātua whom I first met at his farm in Mōtatau, a locality in Northland just south of Kawakawa off State Highway One (fig. 9). Maromaku sits to the east of Mōtatau and the Taikirau Steam flows from the east through the town and then runs northwest to join the Waiharakeke Stream. The principal hapū in Mōtatau is Ngāti Te Tarawa of the iwi of Ngāti Hine.

A retired beef farmer and forester, Kevin Prime grew up in Mōtatau and has spent a lifetime living and working across the country with both Māori and Pākehā to improve life in Aotearoa for future generations. Thirty years ago, he was the Environmental Coordinator for Te Rūnanga o Ngāti Hine. Since, he has sat on national boards, ministerial advisory committees, regional and local committees and advisory boards. Primarily, he works as the Environmental Commissioner for the Environmental Court of New Zealand. Kevin, now 75 years old and a well-respected figure in Ngāti Hine, was sure to mention that while he resides in Mōtatau, his maternal whakapapa (geneaology) traces back to Waipoua.

Despite some tufts of short silver hair atop his mostly bare head, Kevin looks much younger than his septuagenarian status. Ahead of any professional accomplishments, Kevin identifies with his role as kaitiaki of the land and its resources for future generations. Though, he works on the Environment Court and Māori Land Court, helps out with the Waitangi Tribunal, chairs numerous committees and, at this stage in his life, also gets pulled onto “a lot of panels.” He usually wears bureaucratic attire, but since I only ever saw him in Mōtatau on his days off, I knew him in loungewear. The first time we met he had forgotten about our meeting all together. He was still in his robe when my collaborator, Hugh, and I arrived at his home on Saturday, October 26th, 2019. Kevin promptly changed into a pair of athletic pants and a purple collared shirt for our chat. My next visit caught him in the afternoon, just after he finished up a walk, and he wore a graying, seafoam green T-shirt. I wore the same black T-shirt both times and I would have worn the same pants too, had I not worn a hole into them.

Together, Kevin and his wife Margaret have 13 children and 30 grandchildren, with three more on the way last time we spoke. His farm sits on just over 1,000 hectares of land under the banner of Prime Holdings, and is teeming with energy so palpable that Hugh and I noticed a marked change in the air beyond the property line. The land itself has beheld generations of life. It changed hands from Kevin’s tūpuna to the government through a land acquisition generations prior and was incrementally returned to the Prime family over five decades. Kevin would elaborate on that in due time, but when Hugh and I first sat across from him, he spoke of something else. He asked if we saw anything when we looked at a tree.

When the white man came to New Zealand, Kevin said, “the first tribes they colonized were the northern ones of Ngāpuhi/Ngāti Hine,” which are the local iwi in Mōtatau to which he belongs (fig. 10). In those early days, misunderstandings resulting from the insufficient exchange of cultural knowledge were common. One such example is the reaction of British missionaries who, upon viewing the carved images of figures lining the walls of local marae, ordered Māori to get rid of their carvings. To the missionaries, the carved images evoked the trappings of deity worship, a practice contrary to their Christian beliefs. Rather than representing divine beings, however, the carvings actually depicted Māori whakapapa (genealogy). The carved images were not of gods but records of history. Through whakapapa, they told the tales of Māori ancestors.

To this day, most marae in New Zealand include carvings and full walls that depict the whakapapa and korero (stories, conversation or discussion) of local iwi. The carvings and wall imagery tell not only of human history but of Wairua and the spiritual side of history, which Māori consider just as relevant. It is Kevin’s opinion that the majority of humans believe in a higher power regardless of the religion they follow. “You might refer to the universe, you might believe in a god or something, a being more powerful than yourself. All of us must have some belief of where we come from or what we’ve done...” he mused, on the general presence of faith. Then again, he added, “In these days, I suppose there is space and recognition of Christian religions, Islam, Buddhism and all the other beliefs and acknowledgment that all of them have a god and it’s a similar god. We’ve experienced a lot on our place here and I think we are quite unique here in what we do.”

Our discussion of whakapapa made me consider my own. As I said, I do not live in Northland nor do I live in the Southern Hemisphere. I live half-way around the globe in New York State in a town called Syosset on the North Shore of a spit of glacial till called Long Island, in a suburban neighborhood around 3km from the coast. I recall that an aunt of mine on my father’s side once traced our genealogy to Lithuania and various parts of Europe. Our faith is Judaism on my paternal side. My maternal lineage is less clear-cut. My mom was adopted in a 1962-era closed-door proceeding. As a child, my mom knew only that she was adopted through a Catholic organization. Later, when she got pregnant with my older sister, she and my dad sought out the “non-identifying information” from the family courts in Michigan State. From the few documents they were permitted to view, I understand this:

In 1949, a young Catholic couple of Polish descent got married in Cleveland, Ohio. Their names were Mary-Lou Lazaar and Andrew Martin and they wanted to have children. Unfortunately, Mary-Lou had suffered from a brain tumor which ruled out her having children in the natural order. They waited for eight years to adopt a three-month-old boy, whom they named Gregory. Then, they waited another five years to adopt a second child, this time a two-week-old girl whom they would name Andrea. In 1962, a 17 year-old woman birthed a baby girl in Royal Oak, a suburb of Detroit, Michigan. She and her 22 year-old boyfriend had been together for three years. The woman, whose parents advised college over motherhood, was Scotch-Irish, and the man, whose father had a bronchial condition, was Blackfoot Native American on the same side. They too were Catholic, as were most people in Michigan because of the missionaries that moved across America during an era of colonization and westward expansion. When the baby girl was nearly 14 days-old she was plucked from Royal Oak by a Catholic adoption agency and placed into the arms of the young couple from Cleveland. She was raised in Marietta, a suburb of Atlanta, Georgia, under the religion and ideologies of her adopted family, with no connection to her birth parents nor their Scotch-Irish and Blackfoot roots. When she eventually married a Jewish man, she converted to Judaism so that her three daughters might maintain a connection to a faith shared over generations.

Te Reo

Māori language, Te Reo (Māori and te reo are used interchangeably to reference the spoken and written Māori language), is incredibly important for the longevity of Māori history. This is increasingly evident as many of today’s traditional knowledge holders are elders who primarily speak and understand Te Reo over English. Ever since the first Europeans settled in Aotearoa around 165 years ago, Te Reo has been suppressed by the government-run education system and societal pressures driven by assimilationist ideologies. Not surprisingly, Māori in the post-colonial world have a complicated relationship with their language.

Each generation of Māori balances English and Te Reo and, as it tends to happen with shifting cultural and social landscapes, that balance looks different from one generation to the next. Language suppression traces back to the first Pākehā settlers and notably begins with the government’s removal of Te Reo from public schools. In the first educational institutions run by colonists, teachers were invariably white and the kaupapa (curriculum) was taught exclusively in English and constructed around a white euro-centric British history rather than one tailored or reflective of the history of New Zealand and its indigenous population. Unless Māori students of the time heard their language at home or at their marae, they all but lost exposure. Naturally, the numbers of young people speaking Te Reo began to decline.

Kevin Prime’s generation, schooled during the mid-20th century, experienced unique pressures regarding language and education. His father was brought up in Mōtatau, but, like many young Māori, left home long enough to marry and have children. In 1945, when Kevin was just a baby, his father returned to Mōtatau at the behest of his grandmother. Once settled, Kevin’s father established a rule in their household that the children were to speak English, despite the fact that neither he nor his wife was able to comply. Kevin’s mother taught herself what she could of English by reading the bible. She would sit with the Māori bible and English bible open to the same page and learn word by word. While his dad couldn’t speak English well, he tried to use what he had to speak to his children, often saying a version of a statement that passed well enough. For example, give me that thing came out as gimme dat ting. Meanwhile, Kevin and his siblings were enlisted to read and write things for their parents. That, paired with them practicing English with each other and listening to it at school, helped them assimilate well to the white culture that wasn’t their own.

As for his siblings and his relationship with Te Reo, he said, “Well, we didn’t learn Māori but Māori was spoken at home all around us. Everyone that came, our visitors, all were Māori and spoke Māori. The people who spoke to mom and dad, they only spoke Māori all the time. So the only English that was spoken was us to ourselves and us to mom and dad. Whereas, they were still talking Māori to other people all the time and so we heard the Māori language all the time. The radio then was in English and the only thing on in Māori was the Māori news and that was on at a quarter-past-six once for 15 minutes after the Pākehā news every day.”

By the time the Prime children entered school, they were one of only four families in the area with decent knowledge of English. They matriculated through the all-English curriculum with an advantage that most of their classmates from Māori-speaking households lacked. Mōtatau District High School, the local grade school, didn’t offer courses past 6th form, so when Kevin reached that age he transferred to Bay of Islands College. By then, Te Reo had started to be reintroduced in Northland curriculums, though Bay of Islands College was still developing their 6th form curriculum and didn’t offer it yet, so Kevin learned Te Reo by correspondence. “I could write essays in Māori but when you had to translate into English that’s where we struggled. Even in grammar, even though I knew Māori, I didn’t know what a noun was and an adjective, verb, personal pronouns, I didn’t know what those words meant. I do now but I mean at that time none of us knew and we didn’t have mentors to ask...” said Kevin. “I guess there weren’t a lot of options when we were going to school and yet we had it good. It would’ve been worse for my older siblings and our parents at their time. They would have found it a lot harder as well because the language would have been totally Māori and in the school there were no Māori teachers. I think I was in 5th form before we had a teacher who was Māori and he was related, we were related in some ways, and we could understand him and he knew the culture.”

Today, Kevin is fluent in both Te Reo and English but still struggles to articulate exactly what he means while speaking English. He often asks questions in court and it’s not until he hears the answer that he realizes he framed the question wrong or even asked the wrong question to begin with. In court, he explained, it’s common for the white man to have a Māori witness. Oftentimes, the court writes the evidence out in English and the witness can’t read it. Recalling one such time, Kevin said, “I remember asking a question in English and [the Māori witness] kept saying to me, ‘I beg your pardon,’ even though I repeated the question. So I asked the judge if I could ask him in Māori and he responded straight away in Māori. If you think in Māori it’s a lot more difficult to relate, because... I’m not sure if you heard the same as I was trying to say just now. I can understand everything, write, and I can read very well. I read very fast and I needed to as well for the work that I do. But I still think in Māori. When I was chairing meetings I always had to think ahead to what the English word was because I think in Māori and I had to think ahead about how to explain something in English,” he concluded, affirming his ongoing struggle to maintain bi-lingual mastery.

Determining whether or not to keep Te Reo in the household is something Māori parents have dealt with for thirty-odd generations in post-colonial New Zealand. When Kevin and Margaret started their family, they argued a fair bit about if they would speak Te Reo at home. “I didn’t want to,” said Kevin, firmly. “I didn’t want them to be like me or most of my colleagues in my generation. I wanted them to speak English well and do well in school and I think that they have.”

Driven by a desire to keep his kids from experiencing his struggle with English, Kevin never taught them anything to do with Te Reo. As generational change goes, however, Kevin’s wish was not fulfilled by all of his children, many of whom were privileged enough to mature in a country where assimilation to whiteness was less attractive than it had been in generations prior. “The irony is that five of our 13 children have chosen to bring their children up with the Māori language,” Kevin shared, before providing us a brief run-down. “Pete, the one that looks after the farm, Rimu the one who’s down in Otaki, Ruth in Auckland, and Waina teaches maths in Māori at a kaupapa Māori school. All of them taught themselves Māori after finishing school.”

While the older half of Kevin’s children still attended English-only schooling, the younger chunk of Primes attended Mōtatau District High after it transitioned to a bi-lingual school and offered courses in both Māori and English. The new option which came about more fully in the 1980, known as Māori-medium education, paired with shifting public sentiment surrounding the reinvigoration of Māori language, encouraged five of the 13 to learn Te Reo themselves. A few of them speak to their own children in Māori and intend for their grandchildren to be brought up with Te Reo, acting on the need to maintain and nourish a living connection to their land and culture through language.

I met Hori Parata on December 5th, 2019, at his home in Onerahi (fig. 11). Hori, now 76, is a tohunga (expert) on tohorā (whales) and a kaumātua of the Ngātiwai iwi of eastern Northland (fig. 12). He is also a hard man to reach. When I finally set up a meeting, I hoped our conversation would revolve around the connection between kauri and tohorā. Hori would cover that and expand our conversation to include a crucial discussion of the generational battle between traditional indigenous knowledge and the Western paradigm. But first, he offered an alternative perspective on Māori language that reflects a more critical view of expanding English dominance. One that Kevin’s children have put, at least in part, into practice with their own kin.

As to the loss of Te Reo, Hori said, “Western values and principles constrain Papatūānuku even beyond our ability because they dumbed us down and disconnected us. A whole generation of Māori has to begin a whole journey of reconnecting themselves with Māori life. Because a significant part of your culture is language. If you can’t speak your own language or understand it even, you can’t wear that title of kaumātua or tohunga... Those things aren’t like a Pākehā degree,” he cautioned, “Mana is quite different. Mana is easily given and it’s easily taken too.”

Mana encompasses all the elements that build a supernatural force in a person, place or object. It is used to represent prestige, authority, control, power, influence, status, spiritual power, charisma. Mana goes hand in hand with tapu (to be sacred, prohibited, restricted, protected), one affecting the other. Generally, the more esteemed the event, person or object, the more it is surrounded by tapu and mana.