“The geographic spread of membership should not be seen as threatening the power and economic base of a territory based home group” states Carter, “but as a globally
connected membership. In other words, the taura here groups contain a diverse variety of
skills and knowledge that could be beneficial to the development of the wider iwi collective” (2006:42; my emphasis). Kahungunu experiences globally and translocally can re-imagine and re-configure Kahungunu belonging to include connected forms of spatiality.
i. Entertaining the Role of Global Routes
Most of my interviewees lived overseas for a period of time in places such as Australia and Greece, Argentina and Korea. For the most part, their time in these places served to form them in ways that possibly would not have happened had they not left home, wherever that might have been in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Many interviewees described stepping outside of the comfort zone of home and of their local culture, and listed the benefits gained from living overseas: broadened understandings of the world, social relationships of solidarity made across place and cultural differences, and a deeper appreciation for back-home. Their experiences overseas formed them one way or the other, and for some, the places they lived internationally became types of home in their life journey. As an example, AT summoned perspectives on her life in Australia:
“I grew up a lot in Australia. I guess for me at that time I felt that Australia was more my home than New Zealand because it was in Australia where I cut my first tooth…where I learnt to be an adult. It wasn’t here in New Zealand…so I’ve got more of an affinity…in my growing up…to Australia, not to New Zealand…It was in Australia where I first moulded myself to the person I am now.”
AT’s time living in Sydney demonstrates that there are intimate connections to extra- tribal places (established through experiences there) that have not much to do with ancestral place, but that nonetheless can be seen as extensions of it or as inter-woven with one’s roots. AT continued:
“[A]ll the other areas…cities…countries that I’ve lived in, they were a part of my journey. They were a part of…guiding me to who I wanted to be, what I wanted to do, where I will be going. So they were like tools for me to try and pick up all the knowledge as I travelled around and to where I am now. But in saying that Hastings is my home-home only because that’s where my pito [is].”
AT
AT described her place routes as being essential parts of her growth, and indeed are parts which do not contradict, but complement her place roots. She explained how places external of Kahungunu territory could add to the story of the Kahungunu tribe through the inter-linking paths walked by its members, making the global not only in the local, but the local very much in the global, too. For AT, her routes benefit her well-being and add to the contributions she can make to Kahungunu, whenever she is ready to return.
AT’s experiences demonstrate that home is not to be conceived of solely in terms of a physical place, but as an inseparable force that is gifted through whakapapa. She stated:
“I always felt that I wasn’t alone when I was travelling. I knew that my tūpuna were with me the whole time, guiding me.”
AT Home ‘moves’ with AT, guiding and protecting her in her life. Because AT expressed that in her journeying she never felt parted from home, it is not only located in Te Hauke, but is embodied in the spirit of her ancestors who ‘walk’ with her. Thus, home is carried within and ‘travels’ without.
ii. “No Hau e Wha”: The Home that Travels
For interviewees who have a relationship with their tribal-home, travelling to and from there is habitual and normal. Because Wellington is relatively close to Hastings, Te Hiwi frequently travels from one home to the other. He stated:
“[B]eing away from Hastings, it’s actually quite normal because when I was growing up we always travelled between Wellington and back-home so I’m
actually quite familiar just travelling back and forth…I know that three-and-a- half-hour drive like the back of my hand.”
Te Hiwi
For Te Hiwi, both places are linked to and through him and so their relation to each other is better approached by their connectivity and similarity, rather than by their separateness and pure distinction.
Jorgette spoke of (enjoying) the freedom of belonging to many different places and the privilege entailed in claiming them as home:
“Home is where my car is. {Laughs} …In moving to Takapou I moved to my father’s tūrangawaewae, so that will be home. But I’m probably not a person that just has one home or will ever have one home in their lifetime…I also feel at home up at the coast. And, also here in Wellington I feel at home…I feel very privileged in that sense. I’ve got roots. If I want to pull the whakapapa card, I know it well enough, and what’s more than that, I’ve got living relatives who know it and it’s legitimate and it’s all the rest of it…I feel tied to it but not in an obligatory sense.”
Jorgette
Jorgette does not experience home as a static place or a singular notion, but as connected places that she moves to and from. While she feels secure in the place roots of her father, she also identified it as but one example of a home in her life. Jorgette’s idea of home is not restricted by her roots; neither is it exempt of the routes she experiences.
Not only did my interviewees identify many different places as (kinds of) home, some preferred not to identify home as located in particular places, per se, but described home as being (in) the space itself that they traverse. For instance, Challen used a metaphor of the wind to describe her sense of home, and of it symbolising her way of belonging to a range of places and people in them that have shaped her life and have become part of her. She expressed:
“I feel like the wind sometimes. Actually a couple of years ago, I decided rather than wheeling off all my whakapapa, I’d actually just say, ‘No hau e wha’. I felt like I came from the wind… [F]or me that is solid to feel like the wind and to feel the flow of all those different things that flow through me … Maybe that’s what
attracts me to this place [Wellington]: that I can stand in one place and still feel blown around.”
Challen
Saying that she comes from the wind is a way that Challen acknowledges all the environmental, experiential and ancestral forces that form her. Since the wind encompasses where she has been, where she is and where she will be, it can be applied as a metaphor for the harmony of spatial roots and routes. Challen, like the wind, feels not bound to any place or area in particular but is influenced, nonetheless, by the context of environments in her course. And so, all the places that she has been to, in some way, forge a trail in her life and make their mark on her.
iii. Reconciling Home Roots with Home Routes
In this chapter we learnt that home may be common and familiar, but it is also highly personal and filled with idiosyncrasies. Through some Kahungunu diasporic experiences in Wellington, connections to Māori (types of) home are approached and analysed, in
specific and relational ways, those which include but that are not limited to the social,
cultural, spiritual, historic, civic, emotional and residential ways. In accommodating and synthesising all the different approaches to and kinds of home, perhaps returning to the idea of whakapapa would be helpful.