Ngāti Pūkeko — He Kapunga Oneone

Te toto o te tangata he kai,
te oranga o te tangata he whenua, he oneone

While food provides the blood in our veins, our wellbeing is drawn from the land and soils.

Connecting with our Ngāti Pukeko whakapapa has been much like the whenua itself - rich, layered and complicated.

nā Sarah Hudson
June 2021

Iron is in our whakapapa, it is present in the soil, clay, and rock of our tīpuna kuia, Papatūānuku. It is extracted by plants and is essential to our bodies to produce red blood cells. The rich colour of the Ngāti Pūkeko whenua denotes fertility, signals that this whenua once supported Ngāti Pūkeko whanaunga for generations, and potentially still could.

We drive through farmland, lifestyle blocks, and commercial pine trees to whenua that Pākeha have occupied for generations. They are permaculturists who tend to the land with care and generously contribute through community gardens and workshops. We’re invited onto the whenua to be shown a seam of iron-rich, full-bodied orange kōkōwai. In all of our time reconnecting with the whenua, we haven’t come across any colour this deeply orange in our rohe. It’s special.

With the help Adrian Jaram at the archives of Te Rūnanga o Ngāti Awa, Lanae and I were able to trace whakapapa back to that specific piece of land. My tīpuna Parepikake and Lanae’s tīpuna Hiromena once lived close to where the orange clay still is today. It’s empowering to know the names of whanaunga, building our knowledge of our own whakapapa has brought us closer to the taiao. They lived so close to that orange uku, what if they too, had placed their hands in that seam of clay?

With our hands on the earth, touching the bright orange clay is a reunion. The reunion is happy because we feel closer to our Ngāti Pūkeko whakapapa than ever before. The reunion is sad because it’s a reminder that we have been severed from the places and the knowledge of our tīpuna.

We visit the kokowai like a family member, over the last year we’ve got to know the whenua conceptually, practically, and intimately through incorporating Ngāti Pūkeko kōkōwai in our art practices, our ceremonies, our rituals, our lives. Like a visit to a loved one, we’re sad when we have to leave.

Driving down that road as a child, my father would point out the pine blocks and say that we belong to that whenua as Ngāti Pūkeko. As Māori, I find it hard to relate to pine trees. One time we stopped on the side of the road, walked through pine needles to a small urupa. The humble wire fencing had been no match for whatever livestock was wandering through, my dad wrestled with an iron standard in an attempt to fortify the sacred site once again. We were there to visit my father’s sister, who had died as a baby, Sarah, my namesake. I’ve always begrudged my common, English name; but I now see it as an arrangement, setting me up for a reunion.

Ngāti Awa

Ngāti Awa