are you doing it because it’s trendy or because you care?

Whiro (new moon)’s back in the weekend and usually we’d start our new topic, but I’m gonna make the most of Urutengangana (eldest of te ira atua, the gods, atua of light, dualities) while I can — not to mean he won’t feature in upcoming posts, but had a topic I wanted to write about and it’s all about the entering into and out of phases.

The uprising is gaining momentum, gaining traction, it’s building more and more every day. I love it. There were 70-140+ phases of Te Kore and Te Pō (creation phases) and they include chaos, confusion, disruption, darkness, disorder, frustration and destruction before the transition into Te Ao Mārama, the world of light, enlightenment, insight and physical manifestation.

Like I mentioned in last week’s post,

I believe we’re yet to realise our ancestors wildest dreams, but we’re doing what is necessary to make them a reality for generations to come.

The learning and unlearning, the holding ourselves and others accountable, the recognising our redundant/outdated beliefs and taking it on the chin to admit if we’ve been ignorant and taking appropriate action to do better.

I’ve checked myself and been checked a few times, I’ve typed questions into google or asked them of my mates. I’ve had to reflect on biases and prejudices I have and really unpack them — which, like the phases mentioned above, haven’t always revealed awesome, empowering behaviours or thought patterns I’m proud of. But only in tracing those beliefs and behaviours back to their source have I been able to recognise who, what and where they come from and dissolve them, to make way for new insights.

It still begs the question,

what’s the intent?

If you’ve been reflecting and making changes, adding black squares or posts to your feed, making an effort to be informed about privileges, historical grievances and traumas — why?

Are you doing/not doing it because you’ve been caught out as ignorant or maybe want to appear a certain way? because it’s something you routinely do? because it’s trending? I’m not asking you to prove anything, no judgement. never, you know how we do it here. Whatever your answers, they’re yours and they’re valid. they may be in need of some re-evaluating, but that’s for you to reflect on, all part of the journey.

Time for a walk, it’s been a while.. imagine this, you’ve just bought a new whip. It’s sweet, has everything you want in a car, you like it. Later that day, you find out it’s stolen. What would you do?

Swap the car out for land and what’s your answer then? Has it changed? Maybe walk that one off for a bit.. and maybe while you’re walking, consider this:

Must we wait for someone to tell us or call us out for bad behaviour or if/when we’ve done something wrong?

Or can we exercise our rangatiratanga and be self-determining to put our hands up and be like hey, I messed up” or, this system’s actually harming our communities and only serves few and we’ve been putting band-aids on the arm to try and treat a broken femur — i.e. this is wrong, we must do better.” What do you think?

Is this the best we have? I’m gonna go off track and rant real quick, because I’ve been seeing and hearing about how we’re ‘not as bad as America?’ Bruh, they’re the worst! that ain’t hard to do *face palm, rolls eyes.* And that still doesn’t mean what’s happened and continues to happen here in Aotearoa isn’t bad. We’ve got a lot of mamae and trauma that has been ignored for generations and has not been addressed or healed.

Time for another walk.. when you go to work, what do you do outside of your prescribed tasks? If you’re Māori, you’re more often than not also expected to be the cultural advisor, kaupapa counsel, know how to speak Māori, know anything Māori related, have your Matatini bracket ready on standby, be patient while you educate others and relish the opportunity to share your culture and history etc. for free, on top of whatever your job is.

If we really valued Māori, is this how we’d show it? Or is this the minimum?

How would we aspirational solve our problems? Rather than try prevent things from getting worse and be problem focused about it… How do we treat the metaphorical femur and stop wasting time making sure the arm is ok.. it’s fine! that’s not where the issue is.

As we travel along this journey, we must show compassion, to ourselves and to others. It’s hard and discouraging at times. But as we go along, we must continually ask ourselves, what’s the intent? Why are we doing it? Just like with personal goals or collective ones,

if we know our why and we reinforce it often, it’ll pull us through any obstacles we encounter.

If it’s genuine and you believe it’s good, you must be resilient and keep pursuing it. You’ll probably receive criticism or resistance in some way, especially if you’re new to the cause.. but the mission will test you and bring out of you what’s required to serve yourself, your people and your kaupapa in ways you could only dream of.

If it’s not, if your ‘why’ isn’t fortified and reinforced often, your motivation will fade and eventually, it’ll be back to ‘business as usual.’ But hey, that’s part of our whakapapa too, it’s up to us to decide what we do with the opportunities we have.

We must do better. Are you up to it?

Tēnā tātou,

Hana.