these lands made them who they were

If you’ve been to the islands before, the thought has probably crossed your mind, ‘why did we leave?’ Ha I love this place but it’s easy to see Aotearoa is different to our homelands in the pacific; it’s cooler and harsher in most terrains, forcing our tupuna to innovate their technologies and engineer their survival in their new home. Not only did their destination require they adapt and become resourceful in ways they never had to before, but so did the journey of getting here and everything else they endured — all of those experiences made our tupuna (ancestors) who they were,

“the most physically perfect race on the planet”

— as depicted by Isaac Gilsemans (Abel Tasman’s cartographer)

You don’t get that way by accident. You don’t all of a sudden be the best, or be perfect in any way just like that.

Unless it’s a habit. Unless it was part of everything you did. Unless there were protocols, customs and rituals, traditions.. unless you had a lifestyle that kept you on point, protected you and ensured not only survival but prosperity, innovation and advancement for you and your collective.

Aotearoa and the haerenga (journey) to get here challenged our tupuna to grow in ways they never could have had they stayed in Hawaiki. The journey, the experiences and the environment changed them.

Always connected, but different in our expression of whakapapa.

Just as our experiences, the environments we’re exposed to, just as our journey shape us into who we are at any moment.

That depiction above about Māori being physically perfect was made in 1642, with similar comments backing this up made by some of Cook’s crew in 1769. Is this how you would describe Māori now? What are the major events to have occurred since then?

I’m sure you can figure that one out. As a result, we’ve been trying to survive for the last two hundred years. Not just trying to keep our culture, art forms, customs, language, land etc. alive but literally life or death situations, trying to survive. And when you’re in survival mode, it’s fight, flight or freeze. You focus on what’s in front of you and you do what you can right now.

The last thing you’re considering is to dream, imagine or reimagine your current situation and spend time trying to realise your potential or dream up a new reality for you, your whānau or your people… there are pockets of incredibly resilient, talented, amazing Māori and Moana People doing great things and there are shifts happening to reclaim our knowledge, remember our greatness (not the fabricated stories about who we are or what our potential is that are only 200ish years old..) and reconnect to who we are.

The momentum continues to build, can you feel it? Are you feeding off it and feeding something back into it?

In previous posts (ha probably all of them) I mentioned how the creation process happens in every second, every moment, and over time as well. te kore - te pō - te ao mārama. To tie this into our kōrero here, would it be fair to say that on some scale we’ve been in survival mode, in the darkness for two hundred years? But knowing that darkness always yields to the light, te pō inevitably phases into te ao mārama and referring back to the post from two weeks ago, “the light comes eventually, you don’t need your eyes to see it.”

These lands and the journey to get here made our tupuna who they were. It changed Ngāti Ohomairangi to Te Arawa before they even set foot on these shores! Just as their journey over the last two hundred years to us today has shaped us into who we are.

The darkness hasn’t just been about surviving, because only in te pō do we build the capacity to thrive on the other side, in te ao mārama, the world of light. the momentum is building, the reclamation is growing, the reconnection is happenkng... can you feel it? Are you feeding off it and feeding something back into it?

Tēnā tātou,

Hana.