Kōrero With a Creative: Irihipeti Waretini
Ko Ruapehu te maunga
Ko Whangaehu, ko Mangawhero, ko Wanganui ngā awa
Ko Paerangi te tupuna
Ko Rangituhia, ko Rangiteauria, ko Uenukumanawāwiri ngā tūpuna
Ko Ngāti Rangi te iwi
Ko Irihipeti Waretini tōku ingoa
E rere kau mai te awa nui nei
Mai i te kāhui maunga ki Tangaroa
Ko au te awa
Ko te awa ko au
Where are you from?
I was born in Blenheim. We lived in Picton but the nearest hospital was in Blenheim. I was supposed to be named after my Mum's mum Mary (as Mere) but instead I was named after one of my Dad's kūia who was staying at the time when my Mum went into labour. I am the pōtiki of 12 siblings. Six from my Mum, five of which are my Dads too, and seven from his previous marriage. Our whānau spans multiple generations, so that comes with all sorts of experiences that not many people my age would understand. As the youngest I've seen it all. My eldest living brother is 70 on New Year’s and I'm 36 so there's lifetimes of experiences within one whānau.
I was raised old school but I’ve got those Gen Y tendencies, so I'm pretty fortunate. My dad was a Māori teacher at Queen Charlotte High School. Mum was an English teacher before she was a full-time mother. When I was four, my mum separated from my dad and we moved to Ōtautahi. We lived with different whānau and were always moving which was stressful for Mum, but an adventure for my brother and I. We lived with different siblings and their children, our nieces and nephews, who were the same age as us, some older. We're all still pretty close now.
I moved to Tāmaki Makaurau when I was 16. I just had the bug to find something bigger and brighter and browner. It was meant to be the stepping stone to my overseas travels but then I started moving throughout the motu. Down to Queenstown for the ski seasons and then up to Paihia for a summer, and back to Tāmaki before I moved ki Te Whenua O Moemoeā.
How did you get from there, to where you are now?
I am currently based on the unceded lands of the Wurundjeri and Boon Wurrung people of the Kulin Nation, known as Naarm and colonised as Melbourne. Naarm was meant to be a stepping stone to the rest of Te Ao but necessary growth meant other plans. I remember rocking up at the airport with a bag of shoes, some dirty washing and $200 – and then they checked my bags at customs! I was so embarrassed, I cried. What a welcome!
My first day here we went straight to Footscray. Anyone who knows Footscray knows how diverse and busy it is. In 2006, it was nowhere near as gentrified as it is now and I bloody loved it. The kai, the colour, the hustle and bustle, I loved the anonymity of it. No one cared what I was doing. I found these dope little Vietnamese shops that sold cheap suits and fancy shoes - stilettos. I frequented these stores every payday. That was me. Living that city life, legit felt like I’d made it. I worked in various industries including real estate and property services. You know, that sort of made it. Made it on the outside. I crack up now, because I was lost. The only place I had made it was in heaps of debt with the bank, with fancy clothes, a fancy car and expensive teeth.
I had been lost for many years prior to my arriving here and I was sad and disconnected from my body. I lived in my head and the "idea" of what a woman should be and I built that idea into reality. Heka! The energy I allowed into my world back then was not okay, because that energy influenced me further and further away from my wairua and my consciousness of being Māori. In so many ways, I thought it was the only way to be because being Māori was too painful, it was too shameful. My whānau and the many generations it spans have experienced and live to this day, with some of the most painful effects of colonisation. Ka mua, ka muri - Āe! But I'd been running in desperation, trying to not feel their mamae or mine.
My turning point was my pēpī. She dropped me back into my body and into my wairua real quick and with her came our ancestors, loud as. It's been a shock to the system, I've had to let go of everything I thought I knew about myself. As a new māmā, that's easier said than done. There’s a numbing effect that happens when you don’t know who you are. So often I wanted to return to the idea of what a woman should be, to return to the numbness. Only now in addition, the idea of what a māmā should be. You know the one who effortlessly is and does everything. But that never lasted too long. It’s actually more tiring than it is relief. Plus, my pēpī kept checking me, "Kāo māmā. Cute, but that's not the way, that’s not who you are." So, for the last 7 years I have released, I have let go, I have grieved, I have sat in my darkness, sat in my ugly, sat in my guilt and I've wept, I've wailed and I learnt to breathe through all of it. That's how I got to the here and now ... Mauri.
What is living in Australia like?
It is so different here in Naarm and all of so-called Australia. My first 21 years, I was tangata whenua and now I live as manuhiri. So, my everyday life reflects how I move and live and work on this whenua. But it took me many years to understand that. My naivety, my whiteness and perhaps even my ego expected [western] society to keep me safe. It didn’t and it won't.
I feel protected back home. Our tikanga protects us and guides us. Now I am a settler on stolen lands, living amongst a society actively working towards the erasure of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island peoples and their culture. Who do not acknowledge the rightful and traditional custodians, who do not honour and respect the spirit of this land and who do not koha. Their lores are what protect and guide us as manuhiri. Yet so many folk here don't want to realise the obligations we have to restore the balance.
Healing myself and my relationship to being Māori helps me understand my duty of care as manuhiri and live accordingly. That mahi is 24/7. Thankfully and rightfully so. This means I’m having to become more adaptive, fluid to my environment, listening and adhering to the tohu and the kaitiaki and doing deep body work to reconnect me to my tūpuna wisdom. In doing so, what I have been granted with is a loving and respectful community. United in love, in our oppression and/or diaspora, who turn up in our brownness and blackness, our queerness and our indigeneity. And it’s beautiful, it’s powerful and super nourishing. My pēpī was born here, this is her home, so I’ll be here a long while yet. At least until the ancestors tell me to get home.
What do you miss most about Aotearoa?
The whenua. Living and moving in tikanga and mātauranga Māori all day everyday. The more I'm away though, I'm learning to bring home to me, into my home and my every day. Our people are leading so many paths of resistance towards sovereignty and making systemic change too. That is why I would come home tomorrow. To strengthen our collective pou.
How do you describe your art?
I describe my artistic mahi as a curator, alchemist and director. Bring the people together, to create balance and healing in all its forms through connection, visual art, through sound and storytelling and I direct that energy, lovingly, out to the community. I do that with whatever mediums and peoples I can bring together harmoniously. To reflect and heal our whānau and provide a platform for all First Nations people to represent themselves, to transmit their knowledge, embodied from their ancestors to pass to the next generation.
What do you think your purpose is on this planet?
To raise indigenous babies.
Tell me about your Atua Cards.
My cards have a life of their own. They are oracle cards and an opportunity for people to connect with themselves, to see a reflection of themselves in the images. I didn't have a positive understanding of our culture growing up, so I created what would have been really beneficial for me as a rangatahi. They are meant to inspire and reflect the beauty and aroha I have of ao Māori and how our creation stories and mātauranga guides me and my life path.
What was the inspiration for the Atua Cards?
Last year, I got sick for weeks and was stuck in bed. A weird flu was going around and I just had my mum and daughter around me and I drew and I slept and took self portraits, trying to keep up my practise. I researched a lot about my Pākehā whakapapa during this time too, going all the way back 10–12 generations. As I was finding out about my ancestors, it made me really mamae that only the men's stories were carried over those generations. It also brought to light the conflict within my own bloodlines that prevented me from knowing and loving myself.
I grieved for all of my kuia. Both sides. The silent voices who silently birthed generations and as such, through my release, my health started to improve. Fast forward a few months, I started to edit the self portrait that would become the māramatanga card. I thought about the religious upbringing that had dominated my understanding of ao Māori; a colonised understanding. I thought about the many Mary statues and images we had around our house growing up and wondered why Mary’s birthing story was the only birthing story I knew.
Yet my kuia are me, and if scripture were true and I were in the image of God, then their stories should be spoken with as much reverence and sacredness too. So why weren’t they being spoken? When I finalised the image with a moko kauae, it would be the genesis of breaking that silence and lifting the veil from my own eyes, my own heart and claiming all of me. It only recently dawned on me that I was supposed to be named Mere. I’m glad I received my other nans middle name, Irihipeti, instead and have both kuia imprinted in my identity.
How did you create them?
My first two cards were Māramatanga and Tangaroa. These two cards are really special to me because they are of my brother Eneti and I. Without him I would not have been born in this world, and without me (and my marrow donor) he would probably not be alive today. We reflect each other's masculine/feminine energy and neither of us dwell long in either reflection. So, I wanted the images to reflect that. The rest were channelled from wairua, my dreams and ancestors. There's a whakapapa to each card and how they came about, the thoughts and experiences I was having that led to each and every card. Some cards have whole songs that were born from them. Some have inspired many of my creative practises and inspired so many of my workshops for Awa Wahine too.
I guess that's why it's taken me so long to complete them because as they were being developed, so was I. Though I completed the set a few months ago, I needed to experience their lessons and understand why they had been given to me. Some haven't and won't make the final cut because they were purely for my own journey and some are yet to be born (that may come out as an ‘additions’ pack). Only atua and tūpuna know what's becoming. I just wait to be told what to do and when. I can't wait to birth them though, woah, that's a well-developed pēpī I have going on here.
In technical terms, they are a mixed medium. Photography, digital illustration, hand drawings all merged together and then lots of tutu-ing on photoshop.
How can wāhine use the Atua Cards?
My Atua Cards are oracle cards, meaning a tool of self-reflection. I made them because I was called to. My heart tugged at me relentlessly and I had to keep pulling myself out of the artist's self-deprecating spiral and my own ego, often, to complete them. I am not a tarot reader and know very little about it, but I’ve called practitioners into my life who guided and mentored me to ensure I honoured the craft. They needed to be accessible to people on every point of their spiritual journey, not just for practitioners. Whilst I happily dwell in the realms of wairua now, there was a long time that I didn't. These cards are for eight-year-old me, 15-year-old me, 21-year-old me, and me now.
What’s been interesting about sharing the cards with my diverse community is that they are igniting the indigenous knowledge within others and reconnecting them with their own intuitive knowing and sense of self. And not just in a metaphorical sense, but in a literal way. Just yesterday, I was doing a reading with my Filipino sister who pulled the Waka card. It has a picture of Piha beach in the background. I said to her, “I don’t know if you know the place but it’s a popular destination and came to me in my dreams before I had even visited it. So, I’ve used it for a couple of my cards.” She responded with, “Funny, I took my mum for a holiday to Piha when she was sick and she believed that the area healed her.”
That’s why I call them atua cards. I am just a channel for their creation. In honouring who I am and my celestial origins and whakapapa I am honouring the celestial origins of those who are on their journey of self-discovery.. How cool is that? I speak te reo, they respond in tagalog or turkish or wedau or tok pisin and we both grow on our individual paths. That’s not human design, that’s atua for sure! And ancestors. All conspiring together to see their descendants fulfil their potential.
Is there anything wāhine can do to make sure they use them safely?
I remind everyone, we are our own healers, our own leaders, our own teachers. So, it's really important that when you pull a card and read the text that you also check within, with the healer, leader and teacher within you. Whether it aligns with your whakapapa and your own iwi mātauranga.The text was the hardest part because I’m still an ākonga.. I've tried to keep them to general knowledge and as decolonised a version I could find, or what others have told me. I've added what they mean to me, how they've added to my life and helped to reflect the healer, leader and teacher in me. Honouring yourself and those you share them with, with love and respect and manaaki.
Where can wāhine get a copy of the Atua Cards?
Check out www.irihipeti.com. I have my prints for sale there too.
What do you love most about your toi?
What do you love most about your toi? Community! Artists are the visionaries of the future, and indigenous artists, sovereign indigenous artists, the future has never had more possibility for healing, inclusivity and safety for all.
Where can wāhine find you?
My website www.irihipeti.com. Email me, and let's kōrero kanohi ki te kanohi even if it's digital! I can be very introverted at times but when I resonate with someone's whakaaro I will immediately introduce myself, introduce my tūpuna to theirs and then break bread. Ataria knows this well, as it's exactly how I became a part of Awa Wahine. If something of my mahi or my korero resonates with you, let me know, and let's exchange and tautoko each other’s toi. Or stalk me on Insta @irihipeti_waretini. If we're meant to connect, I'll find you.
