Before tramping into the Warawara bush for the first time, Hugh and I made it a priority to meet with Charlie Dunn. Charlie is a Māori landowner, former heavyweight boxing champion, pub owner, and beekeeper who, now 72 years old, lives with his wife Jan Edmunds on the southwestern edge of Warawara in their home overlooking Mitimiti Beach in Mitimiti, a coastal township north of the Hokianga harbour (fig. 14). Charlie and Jan are frequently visited by their children and 23 grandchildren. He grew up near Panguru just outside the Warawara ngahere, on a farm at the Rangi point junction.

“We used to milk cows, well my dad. Everybody back in the day used to milk cows, everybody down here all milked cows. 50-60 cows was our biggest herd that was going back in those days. That’s what we used to do as kids, milking cows. We just couldn’t wait to grow up and get out of here,” Charlie told.

When Hugh and I met Charlie Dunn, he was at the tail end of hip surgery recovery. Apart from his outright admission the only indication of an operation was that he used a wooden cane to move around his home in Mitimiti. Even still, I’d have chalked that bit up to the wear and tear of living 72 years of life. He did mention it though, and when he did he said that the various painkillers that his doctor prescribed curbed his appetite so dramatically that his pre-operation 136kg physique dropped to around 100kg over his 9-month recovery. At which point, he explained, a friend of his made him a foul-tasting mixture and instructed him to drink it to wean himself off the pills. That was around a month before we met, and on the day I set eyes on Charlie Dunn, he was eating again, off the pills, and weighing in around 105kg.

The friend who brewed the mixture is a woman named Gina who lives in Whangārei. Charlie described Gina as a “healer” and said that she heals by talking to the tūpuna to get help and by praying to God for good measure. Acceptance and belief in healers is not a catch-all in any culture, even with Māori. For example, Charlie was skeptical of the “stuff” while growing up. His grandfather knew about native plants and how to use them for medicine and healing in that sort of way, but when it came to faith healing, Charlie inherited disbelief.

He had known Gina since their twenties. He played on the same rugby team as her husband and remembered that all three of them could hold their own when it came to partying. Charlie was well into adulthood the first time he requested Gina’s professional help, and only because one of his sons was relentlessly sleep-walking. His mom nudged him until he agreed to bring the boy to see Gina in Whangārei. On the drive, they popped three flat tires even though back then, he said, “We had a good car, bloody good tires. We got down there and the first thing she said to me was ‘ah you didn’t want to come and see me eh?’” To Charlie’s astonishment, on top of calling out the flats, Gina also mentioned opinions he had of her back when he first learned that she was a healer. Needless to say, Charlie had kept those opinions to himself.

It was even later when Charlie recognized the true strength of Gina’s abilities. A few years ago, a mutual friend of theirs suffered from a nervous breakdown and was being held at Whangārei hospital. Charlie hadn’t seen the friend in some time, but decided to pay her a visit. When he arrived at the hospital, his greeting was met with no response.

It was as if she didn’t even know him. Serendipitously, Gina had also chosen that day to stop by and once Gina spent time with her, “it was as if she was drugged and came out of it,” Charlie exclaimed. “She [Gina] went in the room for 20 minutes and [the friend] came out and said ‘Hello Jan and Charlie, how are you?’ Normal, like there was nothing wrong with her. You started to think, well there might be something in this!” he said jovially.

Hearing Charlie’s tone shift from skeptical to bemused, I understood better the constant battle for legitimacy that holders of indigenous knowledge face. One that surfaces even within their own community after generations of assimilation have crept through their country. It’s difficult to prove the success of healers, measure the results of reciprocal native species relations, or justify the intangible effects of karakia against scientific measures of health. This is especially true when it is the Western perception of data driven proof that modern society craves. This mentality is born from the Western paradigm and has insidiously spread throughout much of the world thanks to centuries of colonization. There remain communities of people who are able to hold up their own measures of knowledge and worldview against that paradigm, but those communities are outnumbered and may shrink if current and future generations don’t hold tightly to nourishing that way of life, if not expanding its presence in their lives.

“She’s amazing, you just have to have the experience with her to know what she’s like...” Charlie concluded, as I returned from my reverie. “I don’t even have to go to her. I'll just ring her up and she’ll tell you exactly what you’ve been up to, it’s scary,” he said, then glanced at me and Hugh. “I can ring her up and ask her about you guys and she’ll tell me exactly where you come from and who you are, she’s crazy. I can be on the phone and she’ll go ‘who is that person sitting with you?’ and I haven’t even told her. She’s magic.”