Titiro
A phase of observing & being, looking for tohu, of learning practices for communing with our tīpuna & ancestors.
November, 2024
Ireland & Scotland
Rachel and her family had the privilege of face-to-face check-ins about our kaupapa Pākehā with lands and people in Ireland and Scotland. In Ireland, this included long chats with Gaelic elder Lar Dooley, ritual with Loughcrew cairns and the Uragh stone circle and intergenerational wanderings with the northern Mourne mountains. In Scotland, it included spending a week with the Centre for Creative-Relational Inquiry at Edinburgh University to give a public seminar musing on our irruptive, ‘post-activist’ research process, host a workshop on and through the potential of darkness and ritual for ‘decolonising methodologies’ and meet 1:1 with PhD students also committed to post-human, participatory practices. All provided an incredible opportunity to think/feel/imagine the transnational solidarities of this mahi. Big love to Lar, Kat, Nasar and Fiona for the beautiful hosting xx
September 6th - 8th, 2024
Wānanga Pākehā
Te Rōpū Pākehā came together to noho wānanga in Raumati South, on the lands of Te Ati Awa ki Whakarongotai, Ngāti Raukawa ki te Tonga, Ngāti Toa Rangatira and Ngāti Haumia. Our time/space/energies were oriented around the expert practice of Kaia Hawkins, a kaupapa Māori practitioner who guided us through a day and eve of reckoning and dancing with our settler ancestors alongside rattles & ngahere, music & charcoal, Mahuika & Hinepūtehue, peacocks & piwakawaka. In the presence of te marama, whales and a bemused taniwha, we moved (literally) with intense grief and rage and, ultimately, love – some of us for (some of) our ancestors, all of us for each other. The weekend ‘ended’ with a fire ritual to experiment with transmuting our destructive colonial forces into collectivity and imagination. We have left thinking/feeling more deeply about embodied practices for decolonisation, including that radical possibility that honouring te Tiriti may indeed be about honouring our ancestors too… Big phat mihi to Sarah for hosting us, Ambrose for joining us, Inanga for rattling us and Kaia for all of the above <3
July 5th - 7th, 2024
Wānanga Relational
In the light of Matariki, Te Rōpū Māori and Te Rōpū Pākehā came together for the first time during a 3-day wānanga held at Manukau’s highly respected community centre, Turuki Healthcare. Through the kōrerō of kuia Whaea Te Reina Ferris and Whaea Lynda Toki, a late-night drag performance from the stunning Tiwhas and early morning rākau for body and spirit, as well as the beautiful presence of fam and friends and kai, we immersed ourselves in musings on womb, womxn and wai, we laughed, danced and cried and, above all, we began to gently share and weave our stories and our mahi. We left with a sense of a shimmering future, and of continuing to move with slowness and care, trust and love. Huge mihi to the powerful manaakitanga of Tia Reihana and Piripi Morunga for making and holding this important space for us, and to Turuki for having us <3
March - May, 2024
Darkness & Te Pō
Māori and Pākehā co-researchers co-created a multimedia consideration of the emerging relationship between our mahi and te pō and darkness. Entitled, Karanga mai te pō: Calling on darkness as protection amidst (En)light(ened) pollution, this performative piece will appear as part of a transnational academic collection on ‘Freedom Struggles within the Academy’. You can see the various makings and practices that we offered as part of the piece, here.
As we state at the end of the piece,
“We may not be able to see where ‘we’ are going, we may not want to be seen where ‘we’ are going, yet in this darkness we can hear our breathing, we can sense our grandmothers and we can keep going.”
April 4th-6th, 2024
Wānanga Māori
Into the hands and hongi of our sister Tia and brother Pirirpi, we travelled to our new whare for our wānanga in Karekare (Te Kawerau ā Maki). We felt like we had found a place amongst the clouds, what a view! Since our first wānanga in April, we have kept in close contact, reflecting, sharing and connecting. We learnt from our first wānanga that rongoā needed to be an essential part of how we journeyed together. Tia created an expansive, grounding and rich wānanga for us all. We had the pleasure of being in the presence of three exceptional healers, Tracey Te Paa (Kairongoā), Piripi Morunga (Kairomiromi), Rose Tapsell (Contact Care). We learnt more about ourselves and our mauri, wairua, tinana needs in relationship with the whenua, rākau, te tai ao, Papatūānuku. We listened deeply to each other's needs and left feeling lighter, loved, and full of aroha.
February 24th-26th, 2024
Wānanga Pākehā
Pākehā co-researchers gathered at a tree-house in Kuratau, in the rohe of Ngāti Tuwharetoa on the southeast edge of Taupō-Nui-A-Tia (the Great Dark Cloak of Tia), named after the sheer dark cliffs that surround a mammoth volcanic lake. With the energy of Te Rākaunui and the trickster presence of four of our tamariki and eight of our passed-not-past grandmothers, we held space for the wounds and dreams of mana whenua, kinship with and between local more-than-humans and our own ancestral taonga and group kawa, while also diving into the spiralling process of PAR, what we mean by ‘including’ our ancestors as co-researchers and how we might (learn to) do this. All was threaded with beautiful cracks; much was awkward and (still) hard to articulate. We left with commitments to sensing (not ‘including’) our ancestors; to hearing from and connecting folx who are already doing ancestral practice toward Pākehā realisation of Matike Mai; to resourcing existing grassroots mahi; to having faith in the darkness of our failing, fractal process. Big mihi to Vanya and Tehseen for invaluable contributions to both our kids and the kōrero, and to the McCreanor whānau for having us in your warm whare <3
December 2nd-4th, 2023
Wānanga Pākehā
In a friend’s whare on the edge of a cliff in Waiatarua (the songs of the two oceans), a rohe where Te Kawerau-Ā-Maki are mana whenua, seven Pākehā co-researchers (and sweet 2yo Indie!) met to noho wānanga for the first time. Our hope was first and foremost to begin to weave ourselves into a collective. Guided by maramataka, we spent the Saturday and Sunday (at)tending to our breath and bodies, sharing the people and places with whom we whakapapa, our journeys so far with decoloniality and our existing ancestral practices around a hearth-cum-shrine and wrapped in bush & rain & music & kai. On the Monday we were joined by matua Tim McCreanor, to open kōrerō on our ‘next steps’, with a commitment to moving in ways that are awkward (mihi to the glorious Bayo Akomolafe) and that are tethered, always, to Te Tiriti justice.
November 17th-19th, 2023
Wānanga Māori
The taniwha stirs in all of us. As whaea Merata Mita said “No matter what destructive processes we have gone through, eventually the taniwha stirs in all of us, and we can only be who we are.” We wānanga in Te Tairawhiti where both Teah and Naomi live. We settle into our tiny home on the shores of Tatapouri just outside of the city. Coming together as we are, five wāhine Māori all māmā, whare tangata, whaea, aunties, sisters…..tired, overwhelmed, breathless, rich and deep and dark as the night. We squint at each other in awe that we made it this far, and to be together is more, more to love, hold and to taniwha! For one its the first time on the East Coast, one is healing from surgeries, one has submitted their PhD, two have newborns, five are creative forces, one has planned, and five are excited! Poems, books, drawings, kai, hugs, laughs and tears are shared. We are in wānanga.