Ko Ngāti Awa te toki te tangatanga i te rā, te ngohengohe i te wai!
Nā Lanae cable - June 2021
The last 18 months, we have got to spend lots of time gathering, learning and connecting to our Ngāti Awa whenua. The colours of our whenua are so familiar, we see the golds, beiges and green and know we are home.
When working so intimately with the whenua, you can’t ignore the aftermath of raupatu. The crown confiscated 99,198ha of whenua from our iwi. I often ask myself how am I only starting to feel strong in my Ngāti Awatanga recently after living amongst my people my whole life, I then remember the colonial hiding my tīpuna endured.
Our hapū Ngāti Hokopū once lived around Ōhope, occupying Tauwhare pā overlooking Ōhiwa moana, a place that was once abundant with kai and full with colour but now Ōhope is known as the “well-to-do, Pākehā bubble” with very few Māori, let alone Ngāti Hokopū living there. Those reminders surface often with our mahi.
Despite the land theft, we have been able to build a relationship with our significant sites, identifying the colours that belong there and calling those places by their tīpuna names: Kapūterangi, Te Horo, Te Kōpu o te Ururoa, Ihukātia, Uretara. We have also been lucky enough to spend some time with our whanaunga Adrian Jaram in Ngāti Awa Research and Archives who has shared with us our whakapapa to these places and helped us find Ngāti Awa kōrero about kōkōwai and paru. We are so grateful for all the mātauranga shared with us, our aunties have told us stories about gathering paru for their kuia, we got to sit with tohorā tohunga Rāmari Stewart and share our hopes to be able to use hinu from a tohorā one day, we learnt that our tīpuna Te Ngārara decorated himself with kōkōwai and how kōiwi and kākahu were once smeared and stained with whenua. I witnessed a tohi ceremony, where my iramutu Te Kuratāpirirangi was adorned with Ngāti Pūkeko kōkōwai across his forehead. Use of earth pigments is a lineage to whenua, to our tīpuna and atua and we hope its use, is continued within Ngāti Awa.
During our first Kauae Raro research project, we were approached twice by our whanaunga about the use of earth pigments in upcoming branding projects associated with Te Rūnanga o Ngāti Awa. Commercial use of earth pigment colour was new to us. We had to navigate how and what this looked like and ensure the mana and mauri of the colours wouldn’t be lost through commercial use. The two kaupapa are very different, one is a tourism rebrand the other is Korehāhā Whakahau, the first iwi led predator eradication project. My hope is that the way the earth pigments are used in these projects, helps our uri to recognise the colours of Ngāti Awa.
Sarah and I were able to attend and facilitate a Kauae Raro wānanga at a rangatahi summit “Kōhao Rau, Rangatahi Rau”. Our mahi has always been about making this cultural practice accessible to our people, so we felt really great when we got to live out our moemoeā by sharing our mahi with Ngāti Awa people on Ngāti Awa whenua. There were 30 rangatahi fully engaged and excited about dirt. Bright eyes and hands covered in earth colours, our whanaunga gathered uku, made paint and dyed bandanas. A lot of the rangatahi were ahi teretere or ahi matao, some of them shared how they had never felt so connected to te taiao before and how healing the wānanga was for them. Their experience reminded me of this whakatauki that we use all the time “tukuna mai he kapunga oneone ki ahau hei tangi maku. A handful of whenua can provide nourishment, connection, identity and whakapapa.
Images kindly provided by Toroa Creative and Te Rūnanga o Ngāti Awa