No, but actually…. where the heck is Hawaiki?! 🗺️
Kia ora e te whānau,
Nau mai, hoki mai ki Te Arawhata.
I tēnei rā/today we’re having a bit of a tutu with our sections to ensure our newsletter is the best part of your Rātū/Tuesday… or at least placing top three.
We’d love to hear your whakaaro/thoughts, so please reply to this email to tell us if you’re loving or hating the changes!
Read on to check out Tamahori’s latest kiriata/film and explore the kaupapa that’s had us looking for Hawaiki all wiki (we think we found it).
- Māehe/March is a biggy for the Māori film world with the release of both ‘The Convert’ by Lee Tamahori, which hit cinemas March 14 and ‘The Mountain’, which we’ll be lining up for on March 28.
- Kapa haka is a hot topic as Regionals continue to sweep across Aotearoa, wānanga/debate over the emotional Freyburg School haka continues, and calls come for a global Indigenous event after similarities between te reo Māori and Sesotho are highlighted on Tik Tok.
- Audiences suffers another loss as the mighty Pantograph Punch goes on hiatus to work some things out. In happier news, Te Ao with Moana returns to our screens.
- Polyfest celebrations are cranking! Canterbury just wrapped and Tāmaki Makaurau is kicking off āpōpō/tomorrow. We’ll see ya there!
So here’s the truth, when Grace suggested Polyfest for our news section, I answered, ‘Eh? That’s not Māori’.
She stared at me kindly, waiting for my roro/brain to catch up.
While I obviously know Māori are Polynesian, I’ve become so used to the term ‘Māori & Pasifika’ they’ve become quite separate identities in my mind (which is quite confusing seeing I’m Cook Island Māori too!).
I clicked and wanted to know more. Nō reira, this week’s kaupapa o te wiki isssss…. the connection between Māori & Pasifika.
We found absolutely fascinating films, podcasts, art, and events to help us understand and experience this special hononga/connection. Here are our top 4 picks:
by Scotty Morrison to see where Māori came from in the Pacific and even further back to Asia and Africa. A fun & easy watch that makes you feel hella smart too.
by Tongan artist, Lucid Luca. It’s a tino ātaahua piece that beautifully demonstrates tautoko between Tongan and Māori cultures.
by Lani Wendt Young (Samoan, Māori, Palagi) for her at times hilarious, at times heart-breaking take on life as a Pacific woman.
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to witness the brilliance of Māori and Pacific Island humour and how it’s been used by both cultures to confront a shared history of racism.
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Māori and Pasifika are connected through our whakapapa and fact that we all came from Hawaiki, nē?
But seriously, where the heck is that place?!
After days of rangahou/research searching for whakautu/answers in the world of Māori arts, media, and events, we’re presenting our top 3 theories for judgement here, and, finally, a conclusion for us all.
“So that was a little demonstration I suppose of the location of Hawaiki, the location being nowhere in particular. Hawaiki is what we make it to be. Hawaiki is a form of a metaphorical storyteller to tell us about our origins. So does it represent the literal, most recent place we’ve travelled to in our migrations across the Pacific? Or does it refer to the one before that? Or the one before that all the way back to the original route of our early, early ancestor? Who knows? So try not to get too caught up on where exactly in the world Hawaiki is. It’s significance is more about being a point of origin for our people and the other Pacific peoples, all throughout the Pacific.”
-quote by Turanga Morgan-Edmonds, band member of Alien Weaponry
Our whakaaro: Look, at one level this sounds really cool and we can buy into it. At another, it feels like a biiiiit of a cop out.
“When we asked Koro if he knew where Hawaiki was, he would always point upwards. "We're from the stars," he would say. "How else could we know without cartography tools that the North Island looked like a fish? The only way you could know is via an aerial view... from the stars." There are clues everywhere that we are from the stars. The instructions from Kupe are "whakatau ki a Atutahi mā Rēhua." Everyone assumes he was mapping the ocean pathway using the stars as a guide, but have we considered the possibility that when Kupe said, "go via Atutahi and Rēhua," he meant it - "whakatau" or visit Atutahi via Rēhua - and was giving us the true location of Hawaiki... among the stars? It's obvious when you think about it.”
-quote from T.A Whero in the description of episode 22, ‘Mata(ku)riki’ on the Paki Kēhua podcast.
Our whakaaro: Well now we’re shook. It kind of all makes more sense. At this point, we have a front runner.
“At the beginning of my journey, Sir Toby Curtis pointed to Rangiātea as our surviving Hawaiki. It's known here as Ra’iatea… …But if you put all the evidence together and all of the kōrero that we’ve collected, it’s hard not to at least start to entertain the thought that the Hawaiki that we talk about in all our tribal narratives, in our oratory, could be here, would be here. This is a good place for us to pinpoint where Hawaiki is in my point of view, in my opinion anyway. Because when you come here, you’ll feel it too. Its in your DNA. Its in your geneology as Māori and I think if you take the time to come here, you’ll feel it too, and it’ll be um.. as emotional and spiritual an awakening for you as it has been for me. Here… in Hawaiki.”
-quote from Scotty Morrison in episode 3 of the Origin Series
Our whakaaro: He’s spoken to scientists and cultural leaders around the world and he’s the face of Te Karere. It’s hard to argue with Scotty Morrison. We may have an overtake on our hands…
Ok. So. Final call…
it’s gotta be Rangiātea then… Right? Right?!
But… how DID we know the shape of Aotearoa… and sometimes it does feel like…
Ah god damn it, we don’t know.
