Looking back to move forward: One hīkoi to Waitangi

As Waitangi Day dawns, Stuff Pou Tiaki reporter Maxine Jacobs reflects on her journey to Waitangi, what it means to her, and where her reconnection kaupapa will take her next.

I’m embarrassed to say I didn’t know Waitangi Day was February 6, 1840, until a few years ago.

Call it negligence on my part or a lack of emphasis put on Te Tiriti o Waitangi from general New Zealand but, to me, it was a day that rolled around that I had to work – even though it was a public holiday.

I grew up in the 2000s in a small town called Kaiapoi. #327 was our local phone area code. I knew that a few kilometres down the road was my pā – whatever that meant – and that I had Māori blood.

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* He ōhākī: Tā Titewhai Harawira mō te tohu kahurangi, Te Tiriti, me tāna noho hei ‘tipua kino’

“About a hand,” is what I used to say to my friends when they asked me what my percentage was.

That hand has skin so white, it’s pink. I have blue eyes and reddish-blonde hair – traits from my mother’s Scottish side.

Back then, I felt ashamed to think that I could claim that I had whakapapa – but not today.

Right now I’m standing on the Treaty Grounds, my hei tiki pounamu hanging from my neck. I carry in my mind my tīpuna, particularly my pōua Henry.

It’s my first time visiting Waitangi, and it’s been a long journey getting here.

The beginning

The first time I remember going to my marae, there was a fair. I bought some dogtags that said “high maintenance” on them next to a red lipstick. I must have been about 9 years old.

The next was for my pōua’s tangi, about three years later. I’d never had a family member die before, so what proceeded was what I thought all families did.

My pōua’s body lay at his home in Tuahiwi for a few days. We sat around him, talked about his life, and I listened to my father and his cousins catch up. It was like a family reunion.

I was in the kitchen with the women making all the for food for everyone who was coming to pay their respects.

We held his service at St Stephen’s Anglican Church about 100 metres from our marae, Maahunui ll. My cousin was laughing because a spider was crawling over her brother.

We walked pōua to our urupā, burying him in the grave my brother had helped to dig the day before.

I didn’t understand it then, but his tangi was the first real moment I had any insight to what our whānau – and many others across te ao Māori – does for our loved ones when they pass.

It was the beginning of my connection to a culture I’d known nothing of, but would one day feel the call to embrace.

Whakamā

You know when you’re young and not knowing something isn’t such a big deal? It’s easy to forgive kids for their ignorance.

As I entered my 20s, I didn’t have forgiveness for myself and the lessons I’d not yet learned. If anything, I blamed my circumstance for my lack of reo Māori, connection to my whakapapa, and the little knowledge I had of my culture.

My perspective was off. Woe is me and all that. In reality, all the chances I’d needed to learn were right there, I’d been the thing that was stopping me.

That’s what Atakohu Middleton, a senior lecturer of communications at Auckland University of Technology, told me when I poured my heart out to her during my post-graduate course.

“Get over yourself,” she’d said.

Um… excuse me? I thought. I don’t have a teacher, I don’t know where to start.

But she was right. At some point, you have to realise you need to decide you’re going to learn and seek out people and opportunities that will help you regain this side of yourself.

Complaining about what you don’t have just keeps you where you are.

The support

Her words didn’t immediately sink in. I carried on with my life, thinking about the different ways I could access te ao Māori without really going out of my way and moving back home.

It was work that became somewhat of an apprenticeship in Māori culture, language, and tikanga.

First, it was Donna-Lee Biddle, Rikihana Smallman, Lisa Nicolson and Judith Taane, staff from the Waikato Times, who made me feel like being Māori wasn’t about following a set of rules, but accepting yourself and learning who you are.

At the Manawatū Standard it was Nuwyne Te Awe Awe Mohi, daughter of a Rangitāne kaumātua, who made me feel safe to ask anything.

And then Carmen Parahi, who gave me a chance to join Stuff’s first te ao Māori team, Pou Tiaki.

I thought it would be wasted on me. Surely there was someone else more deserving, or at least someone with a better understanding.

But they didn’t help me because there was something special about me, they helped me because we, as Māori, need to uplift each other and regain what we have lost, so there’s one less disconnected person.

I’ve made mistakes. I’ve misinterpreted someone’s kōrero, been afraid to ask simple questions, not realised the mana of the person I’m talking to, and applied my Western perspective to Māori concepts – a Eurocentric view that had no place there.

Every time, these people have helped me grow, learn, and continue on the kaupapa of reconnecting.

Waitangi

When my boss asked me how I felt about going to Waitangi this year for Stuff, I didn’t know how to articulate myself.

It feels like everything in my life has been heading towards this moment. Towards the place that set in motion the journey to the Aotearoa New Zealand I know today.

I think about the mamae (pain) of the broken promises of Te Tiriti o Waitangi and the shifts that have happened in society over the past 50 years.

I think about the shifts that have happened in my life in the past two years, how different I have become, the growing confidence I have in who I am, and the whakamā that once was.

Today, as I look out over Waitangi, my hei tiki hanging from my neck, I think of my journey to reconnection – how far I’ve come, and how far I still have to go.

Ko Maungatere te maunga

Ko Rakahuri te awa

Ko Takitimu te waka

Ko Tahu Pōtiki tōku tipuna

Ko Ngāi Tahu tōku iwi

Ko Ngāi Tūāhuriri tōku hapū

Ko Maxine tōku ingoa