ALL THESE HANDS AND FEET

AUGUST 2024 by TIA REIHANA

Waewae wai wondering up to my thoughts like a backwash finding rhythm within the shorelines of Papa and Hine, rough and repetitive... comforting in its conflict.

These feet are here too.

Waewae wai wandering past pain to the river mouth to see where your fresh can meet salt, Parewhenuamea to your Hine and held by our māmā.

These feet are there too

A mouth of waharoa spitting across the fragilities of frequent apologetic nuances otherwise silent without. A mouth trembling away like a wiri, somewhat similar to shaking leaves.

Mothers and daughters, sisters and yet not. We are unstuck against the expectations of strange landscapes unrealistically painted over us as a Pania portrait.

These hands are there, too.

Digging in deep, with the child on our hip, grocery in a pocket, and vege in the garden. Growing only because it runs on minimal mauri. Just wai and ra .... and often very little wā...

The time in our ringaringa... our hands that sow seeds of potentiality via these fingers of fire. The children of our labour in birthing and making spaces for others as ourselves

WE are here too.

Often, we can look for an understanding of relationships within the environment in which we co-inhabit. Within Aotearoa, these relationships between people and place swirl in meeting places. They are frequently unsettled with a historical discourse that continues to be navigated by incoming generations whose inheritance shuffles through privilege and opportunities, both inclusive and exclusive. To navigate the binaries of the ‘bi-cultural’ seems a reductive approach, brushing over the complexities that the person so often wants to be attentive to. Here, the ‘chunks’ of a bi-cultural Aotearoa can be mis trued for an ‘us and them’ mentality advancing a cultural klumping of the self on the frontline of the everyday lived experience. Māori Marsden writes that “Until we relearn the lesson that [we are] an integral part of the natural order and that [we have] obligations not only to society but also to [our] environment so long will [we] abuse the earth” (2003, p. 69). Marsden encourages a look outside the immediate translations, beyond the human and for the rich complexities that can derail oversimplified constructions easily absorbed under the armpits of a dominant discourse.

This agency for a ‘human-centred’ life pedagogy often leaves little for the in-between necessities of our pluralities. The vast umbrella of ‘decolonisation’ that expands into the culturally illiterate landscapes of globalisation can result in some being left to ‘dodge balls’ that keep you distracted in your surroundings and exhausted in maintaining safety. My realities of dodging balls as an Indigenous person are everywhere when I shop, wait in line for a coffee, rent a house, walk my dog, go for a promotion, enter my son’s school, talk with work colleagues, deliver my teaching content, go to the hairdresser, eat at a restaurant... it’s everywhere... and it is laboursome.  Thus, when we come into these meeting places that swirl and wish for more generosity outside the proofreading that already exists – the trust in which to speak, move, and fall into your own ‘vulnerabilities or fragilities of human experience’ become swept into the placelessness that can exist within cultural literacies. So, we know what we know, but when does the knowing become an excuse for the absence of our actions?  Where the reason or urgency to hold a space overpowers the value of listening and listening and then just listening some more.

And, if we have listened, how might this inform the spaces we co-inhabit and then thus determine the labour distribution? From dishwasher to karanga and back again, roles and responsibilities decided over generations and yet often expected for consumption in but a moments interaction. Decolonisation for consumption resistant to meaningful action and loosely woven as a te reo email greeting and farewell... These words dance next to guilt-zoned territories that can dispossess moments of authenticity. Leaving it rummaged like a fatigued and fragile happening easily lost in the loudness of the privileged DJ whose music drowns the room, even in silence.  Afterwards, such assaults of the contemporary community riddled in historical amnesia can weave a bureaucratic collage of what we think we may need to be socially cohesive and politically astute. These brittle banners of success delivered as spiritual and personal awakenings breed contempt and ongoing distrust.

It’s so messy with good intention. It’s so flawed with the human experience – and it is ongoing. It is in our feet, and it is in our hands. It is felt when we breath in each other’s mauri, it is seen in silence, in the arrangements of space, and the rhythms of our expectations that present tohu throughout. It is evidenced in the teachings of our tīpuna, as we collect the reminiscence of their ways to navigate the now. It is in our intertribal alliances remembered in battle and lived today in partnerships, and in the chromosome’s of tikanga activations which provide a way to create connectiveness.

Outside of these connections, I often feel tikanga can be an abstract notion loosely held within structure, statements, policy, and frameworks. Said and delivered in scattered confidence with occasional apologetic comments, and loose translations that continue to rely on and sometimes burden the manaakitanga of our whakapapa and territorial teachings.  The taonga passed down by the ancestors is embraced momentarily and only as needed. For a moments reconciliation? Like a passing car, that doesn’t stop yet slows down enough to be able to describe the scenery. And as the car leaves, perhaps to return tomorrow, others cannot travel. Instead, they remain on the brink of social abandonment reflected still in the ongoing disparities, injustices and the social/political and historical racism of this Country. It’s like a forever haka gurgling away in the puku of our body and whenua. Soren and Johnson (2017) write that “Place calls us to quire definite protocols for balance and understanding. Place calls us to the struggles of coexistence in this pluriverse, a world of many worlds” (pg.1). Yet my whenua, my kurawaka itself the creator of worlds, life and more screams in my karanga and mispronounced te reo about place… The one I searched for, the one I have in Waiomio and the one I want for my son.

All these places, all these hands and all these feet…