Returning Home
Ruby outside of her marae
E hoki koe ki ō maunga kia purea koe e ngā hau a Tāwhirimātea...
Nō hea koe? As Māori, we can hear this more than our own name. For some, it’s an invitation to share, a way to weave together your world with the world of the person who asked you. But for others, it can open wounds, the wound of knowing they’re Māori, that they have a gap in their whakapapa. A gap that extends from Hineahuone to themselves. For others, it’s the sadness of knowing there are homes they can never go back to, whether this is their own fault, or mamae they’ve inherited. Mamae that is so far back it may never be traced or understood.
As a child, Te Wai Pounamu felt like Disneyland to me. A beautiful, unattainable goal. My parents always joked that if I was really good we’d go in the school holidays. I guess I was never good enough. I didn’t go back until I was 20. In some ways, I blamed my parents for this. I grew up in Taupō and Rotorua under the korowai aroha of Tūwharetoa and Te Arawa. I was always proud to be Māori, and within that, Kai Tahu. I was raised Māori; we worked the land, had a big family homestead where we’d all meet and have parties, I took te reo at school, swam in the river. All the stereotypical parts were there. But underneath were deep roots, that I couldn’t see for the trees above them.
In some ways, I blamed my parents for never taking me back to Te Wai Pounamu. I always assumed our reasons for staying North were financial, but as I grew up and tried to find my way back into the Iwi, to figure out where our home was, I realised that it was bigger than that. Taking your children across the country to a place that you don’t know exists, to a hidden door that might be gone, is difficult not just for you, but for all the generations either side and held within you. My parents kept themselves, and more importantly, me, safe.
Ruby’s moana
When I went to Te Wai Pounamu at 20, it was for a rakatahi kaupapa. I saw some people I knew and started to connect the dots on a few things. But finding out who you are, it takes time. In te ao Pākehā we’re used to asking the right person the right question and getting the right answer. But in te ao Māori we often need to take a thought, into the past and look at it from all angles before we get what we need. I asked so many people about where I was from that I lost count. Every time, the answer was different. Every time, it hurt. I started drafting a whakapapa chart that made accounts for all the different versions. I spent long nights reading manuscripts and talking with Kai Tahu whānau. But I also spent time playing puoro, writing into myself, and taking notes from dreams.
To be Māori is to embrace all of your whakapapa and ways of knowing. This journey required all of what I had, even when I didn’t know what that was. This journey was like a koru for me. I circled around and around myself, moving closer and closer to the centre, but only able to see that I was spiralling. Eventually, I figured out some close connections and met a first cousin of my grandmother, whose daughter I’d known for years as a friend. They were proud uri of Waihao. When we sat and went through all our whakapapa, I was proud to know that I was too. I registered with our marae, and soon enough was invited to a whānaukataka weekend. I said yes, I was going home.
On the plane I was apprehensive, going by myself into the unknown. I’d done this before trying to work out where I was from, and every time I’d come home broken. After each experience, I’d work hard on the parts of te ao Māori that I knew well, that I was good at. I’d play taonga puoro, I’d work on some toi kupu, I’d read some more texts about Kai Tahu whakapapa and try to fill in gaps. To me, this was almost like the Japanese practise of kintsugi, a process of mending broken pottery with lacquer mixed with precious metals. All the cracks in me were repaired with gold, but they were still cracks. After a few years of this, parts of me were becoming more gold than self.
It took me even longer to realise that the same could be said for several generations of my whānau. Intergenerational trauma is a strange thing with a million strands. For some, it’s a denial of whakapapa, for others, it’s working so hard that you work yourself into the ground. For me, I’d been in a burrow of my own making for a long time. I struggled to see the light, let alone how it touched the maunga of home in a way that painted them to gold.
I landed at the airport, and a few of us were picked up in the marae van. Everyone seemed to already know each other. Our surroundings get more and more remote until we arrive at the gate. “Well, Ruby, welcome home!” a newfound uncle says. Inside I meet the marae cat (“Every marae’s got one, you know!”) and an uncle makes me a cream cheese and crystallized ginger sandwich (“it’s my specialty!). There isn’t any gatekeeping. In fact, the gate was open already when we arrived. I sit in the kitchen (“kettles always on”), and then someone offers to show me the wharenui; the Waihao Centennial Memorial Hall.
Harakeke outside Waihao Marae
Inside is a bare wood room, covered in photos. There’s a strange kind of repetition to all of this. This is the third marae I’ve been to, trying to figure out where I’m from. At each one, I scanned the walls meticulously for a familiar face, a familiar name; anything that could be a line to hold onto. But at every one, I’ve just drifted out to sea. I repeat the same process at Waihao, ready to feel myself being pulled underwater. “Aren’t you a Loper? Yeah, this is your wall”. I feel something different than I’ve felt before, it feels like my wairua is sailing above the waves that have so often crushed me. I see my whanau wall, there are echoes of the main wall in my Nana’s house. A few similar pictures. I see my great-great grandparents, some great uncles and aunts. All of these families with strong women with long dark hair tamed into top knots and braids. Women with stern mouths and an eerie amount of focus in the eyes. I see my reflection in the glass matching theirs. “You’re right”. I say. “This is mine”.
Soon more people arrive. I’m shy, so I go sit with the kids drawing. After a few minutes they make requests, “can you draw me a horse?” and of course, I do. I’m good at doing what I’m told, and as a result, I hear all about this place from the kids who were lucky enough to grow up here. They have no memory of meeting this place because it’s where they’ve always been.
“Did you know when I was born, I came here straight after the hospital? That’s what turangawaewae means” a wise ten-year-old tells me.
I smile at her and feel a strange mix of abundance and loss sitting. When everyone arrives, we sit in the marae for whakawhānaunkataka. The Upoko tells us that we need no karaka to be welcomed here; “Because this is your home. Where’ve you been? You should have called. But we’re glad to have you back, and you know, the door is always open”. It takes time to heal wounds. The longer they’ve persisted, the longer the time. But making a start can happen in an instant. At this moment, I feel it, the beginning; generations of hands planting seeds in this land.
Inside Ruby’s marae
Some taonga; whale bone, and pounamu shaped like our mauka, Aoraki
The rest of the weekend, of course, has its ups and downs. But I didn’t feel my whole self go with them. This is a level of control I didn’t have before I came here, an anchor that keeps me from spiralling too far out to sea. E tau ana tōku wairua i te whenua ki konei. My soul is settled from this place. In hard moments, I take out my case and play taonga puoro. I sit out the front by a carving of our tīpuna, Rākaihautū, who carved the rivers and valleys of our land with his kō. He is a point in our history where gods begin to move to tipua, then down into us as humans. I sit there and play kōauau with my eyes closed. When I open them, I’m surrounded by kids.
“What’s this one called?”; “How do I play this one?”; “What’s this one used for?” We sit around playing the instruments of our ancestors on their whenua. Just like that I’ve been brought back to the world again.
My whole life, it's felt like I’ve been building on sandbanks. Constructing temporary homes in places that weren’t mine, only to have waves come and wash them out. But still, I’d keep building. I’d build bigger and better structures, thinking that surely this time they’d be protected. Surely this time, they’d stay. But again and again, the fragile foundations would ebb away. But now it feels like everything I build is on slabs of pounamu. And of course, occasionally things fall. But now the ground is still there beneath me. I’m not always waiting for the waves to come and when they do, the pounamu beneath me is ready.
