Kaitiakitanga

By Taipari Taua (Muriwhenua, Ngāpuhi)

Although I can’t say I had a perfect upbringing, two things are true. I can’t change the past and I am certainly grateful for the way my mother raised me. There’s a saying in te ao Māori: ko au te whenua, ko te whenua ko au. I am the land and the land is me. My relationship with my land moves and grows with me. Like everything on Papatūānuku, my life experiences have been shaped by my environment. My name, my whakapapa, my pepeha, my very being is interlinked with my whenua – and I thank both my mother and mother nature for the kaitiaki I am today.

My parents met while studying at the Te Ataarangi reo Māori program, fresh in their journey of reclamation. The class they attended at Awataha marae in Tāmaki Makaurau was called Taipari.

On the 13th of August 2005, I was born at home and named Taipari, 4.5 hours away from my actual home, my tūrangawaewae. My name means high tide, or full tide, which always keeps me connected to my moana, and speaking of moana, my own hapū is Te Whānau Moana, and my maunga is Te Pū o te Wheke, which means the mound of the octopus. My whakapapa is nature, and nature is my whakapapa. The taiao, the environment, is an inherent part of all of te ao Māori. We descend from the earth – indeed, Hineahuone was the first human created from uku. Every region’s unique style of haka is inspired by the environment around them. In Te Tai Tokerau, wide crab arms stretch out, stances low in the haka. Feet shuffle in the sand for pipi, while Poi sway and swing like leaves breezed about by Tāwhirimātea. You can take the Māori out of her whenua, but you can’t take the whenua out of the Māori.

A few months after I was born, my whānau visited my tūrangawaewae, where my whenua, my placenta, was buried in my whenua in Waiari, under a tī kouka tree. Ko au te whenua, ko te whenua ko au. My very being is connected to the land and the environment. My land and sea sustains me, and so it is my duty as tangata whenua to sustain and protect the land and sea.

I am immensely privileged to have attended Kōhanga Reo – full immersion Māori preschool – as well as my first language being my indigenous one. Kōhanga means nest, and reo means language, likening the mokopuna of this movement to baby chicks in a nest, nurtured by our reo and culture. I also had the privilege of attending Kura Kaupapa Māori – full immersion Māori school – for all of my primary, intermediate, and secondary education. Te Aho Matua, the driving philosophy of kura kaupapa, emphasises (among other things) the importance of the teachings of Māori cosmology to students. We were taught to respect Papatūānuku, the earth mother, and all her children. We learnt their whakapapa and their relationships with one another. Outside of kura, my mum also ensured that me and my brother know who we are, where we come from, and told us all the stories she knew about the land that we come from. We went home as often as we could. I was told what it means to be a kaitiaki of your whenua, and at the very beginning of Year 9, I finally got to live it fully when we moved up home to the Far, Far North – the Nōti Nōta. There, I was once again incredibly privileged to learn about my whenua, on my whenua, by my own whānau at kura and at home, in my own reo, in my own mita. Ko au te reo, ko te reo ko au.

The first week of every term at kura was spent at one of the marae in the Muriwhenua region, often the furthest north you can possibly go in the summer terms. There we learnt about the local hapū, ancient stories, key figures and landmarks, as well as natural features of that place.

Mum also regularly took us to our marae, our moana, our awa, and our maunga. She and a few other aunties and uncles eventually set up a mahinga kai (communal garden) across the road from our marae. Led by the maramataka, it grew from a heap of saplings to big mounds full of veggies, tall banana trees, metres and metres of kūmara and kamokamo. I can’t say I enjoyed being forced to pull weeds, wheel dirt and compost around, constantly refill heavy watering cans to feed the produce, and the tons of other work my mum had me doing for hours upon hours. I also, however, cannot say that I totally regret it, as I am able to say that I know how to plant, nurture, and harvest kai from my own whenua. I also understand that it was a part of my role in feeding the ahikā, in keeping the home fires burning. Ko au te ahikā, ko te ahikā ko au.

Kaitiakitanga, being a protector, is serious mahi because there are real things my whenua need protection from. A day-to-day issue back home is people being stupid at the beach. This could be people doing burnouts in the sand and ruining the sandbed and endangering the creatures within, people littering, people parking their cars on sand dunes that are tapu and have endangered plant life. My mum always set an example, showing me how to assert our rangatiratanga in protecting our land. I used to feel very anxious whenever mum would pull the car over to give someone a growling, never embarrassed though. Looking back on these times I always feel proud remembering my mum standing up to someone, or even groups of people, explaining to them what the tikanga of our whenua is and our priorities in protecting the taiao. 

When a local landowner tried to plough his way through sacred sand dunes where the bones of our ancestors lay at rest, she parked her little Toyota Platz in front of his digger to stop him. He was adamant on ploughing through though, and the situation escalated to a successful full on hapū occupation of the area that lasted over a month, which she and my aunties led. 

Since I was in her kōpū, she’s sung waiata to me, she’d kōrero to me, she’s taken me to protests – in fact, one of the photos around this piece is of me in 2008 at an occupation up home in Rangiputa! She’s the most badass staunch person I know, she is the example of expressing our mana motuhake, and I’m proud to have learnt everything I know about kaitiakitanga from her. Ko koe te whenua, ko te whenua ko koe.

It’s hard being so far away from home, living on the head of the fish instead of the tail. My relationship with my whenua now that I am away from home has completely changed. I miss being enveloped by ngahere, I miss swimming in my moana. I miss out on marae hui and I miss out on my cousin’s birthdays. While Te Whanganui-ā-Tara is my home and I love living here, it is not my ūkaipō, my tūrangawaewae, my kāinga. My mum always makes me promise to come home when I finish my degree, and I do. In the meantime I remind myself that I am a tangata whenua. I arrived in this world with my whenua, and to the whenua I will return.