One Godwit rises and calls

One of the moments never to be forgotten in elevent years of broadcasting was to observe the lift-off  from The Parengarenga Harbour of the big hearted kuaka. One moment of magic.

Like the waka that brought the ancestors here, the kuaka is one of a number of migratory birds that make an annual crossing of the Pacific to our shores but the two most revered by Maori are kuaka (godwit limosa lapponica) and pipiwharauroa (shining cuckoo chrysococcyx lucidus).

The godwit -  because at about this time each year they transform their body parts to take on a long haul across the Pacific. Right now they’re getting themselves ready for a flight of 18,000 kms non-stop. They are a protected species but still highly sought after by our Nga Puhi kin as a cuisine on any Nga Puhi table.  The late Rua Cooper, Tainui rangatira told me, “When our people came to Aotearoa, the flight of the kuaka showed them the way here.”

The New Zealand Herald, (29 March 2009) reported on the first leg of the long flight from Parengarenga Harbour to Alaska making a short stop-over to refuel in China before continuing their flight of another 3,000 kms.  The birds return to their breeding nests in Alaska, Siberia and Eastern Asia and leave our shores around late March 

 “The godwits,” Dr N. Bartley of Victoria University is reported as saying, “When they cut out from New Zealand, they were clinically obese, but lose about half their body weight before the migration.”

 Upon arriving in the tidal flats of the Yellow Sea off China and South Korea they would land with drooping wings, have a big drink and then stay around for a few days to refuel. 

 “It’s the equivalent of riding The Tour de France”, Dr Bartley said, “But keeping it up for nine days non-stop. The godwit would then head for Alaska where they are expected in mid-May.”

“In September they return, flying in a straight line across the Pacific Ocean to the New Zealand coast from Parengarenga Harbour in the Far North to Invercargill in the south.” Dr Bartley said that the surveillance project had been funded by the United States, interested in the birds’ movements because they were potential carriers of the dreaded H5N1 bird-flu virus to Alaska.

Annual population counts at major sites in New Zealand showed a decline in numbers.  The increasing reclamation of tidal mudflats in New Zealand and other coastal and geographical changes caused by dams were also affecting their habitats.  

American and New Zealand scientists working together have recently unlocked the secret of the godwit’s extraordinary migrations, “… the birds go on a binge, a feeding frenzy, before their long-haul until about 55 per cent of their weight is fat. They then reduce the size of their gut, kidney and liver by up to 25 per cent to compensate for the added weight. Obese with fuel, freed from the baggage of a heavy gut, the godwit are ready for the air.

 

(Transcript of radio broadcast,
Radio New Zealand 15 April 1992)

“E rere te manu e rere, rere atu …e.”

“It’s predawn … It’s Sunday April 15  … morning here on the white sands of Parengarenga Harbour where I’m joined by three elders,  one a kuia, Sana Murray of Te Aupouri, our mission to witness a miracle of Nature, the start of the long haul of the fat godwit to Alaska.  Hekenukumai Tawhiti Busby is another, grounded by research and experienced in blue water navigation, at his request we are here to make a radio documentary of the bird’s pre-flight habits but more importantly for me anyway, to record some of the traditional knowledge around the prodigious journey of these tiny birds.  The other is kaumatua Simon Snowden. Amongst us rangatahi.”   

 

“It’s one of those exquisite, calm April days when, (as one of my companions tell me), ‘… one has to thank the universe, and God for just being here and alive’. We’ve been on these white sands now three nights, couldn’t sleep much as the noise is deafening.  Busby, Murray and Snowden and rangatahi are standing facing the pre-dawn now and speaking with the birds now poised to go. While Snowden is reciting karakia, Busby turns and speaks into a microphone, ‘I think they’re set to take off this morning, they are somehow calmer today than other mornings.’ These waders have flocked here from as far away as The Bluff, Hastings, Ohiwa Harbour, Ohope, The Manukau Harbour and Kaipara at the start of ‘Te Hoki – the return home’, as Busby put it.

 

The birds flap and squawk through the night as though impatient, it seems to get going, more intense than in other nights sensing as it were that something was imminent. We sense it too. The tension is endemic; the sheer pull of the call of Nature.  However, this morning it’s less frantic, more subdued, quieter somehow as though something is about to happen.”

 

“The keening call of karanga rises above sand and surf, kuia Sana Murray greets the pre-dawn and the flock, and as the yellow streaks of light lifts the darkness, one bird is already in the air, calling, circling, lifting, turning, tilting, and diving as though urging the flock to stand by.  The flock firmly grounded, wings flapping as the beacon bird seems to search the horizon, probing, looking for a sign from above or within that clears the way for the lift off.  ‘Look,’ yells Busby …’, and here before our eyes; the magic moment we came to witness.”

 

 “Swift and sweet, the solitary bird is gone.  And as one, the flock rise as one and within a few holy minutes, maybe seconds they are here no more.  An extraordinary site of courage and heart!

 

In thirteen days they start arriving on The Yellow Sea in China.”

 

“Gone …”.

”Gone. Now silence as kuia, Sana sobs, “…Haere!”

One godwit rises

Above the rest …

Others to follow

To take wing

And once in flight

To soar.

Singing, singing, singing

“Koroo!  Koroo!  Koroo!”

Ralph Hotere, a soaring spirit

 

Ruia ruia opea opea tahia tahia

Ki hemo ake Ko te kaka koakoa
Kia hemo ake Ko te kaka koakoa
Kia herea mai Te kawai koroki
Kia tatata mai
I roto i tama pukorokoro whaikoro
He kuaka he kuaka marangaranga
Kotahi manu i tau atu ki te tahuna
Tau atu tau atu
Kua tau mai

 

 

Scattering, gathering, forming a single unit
Exhaustion rises up
It is the rope koakoa (the cry of the bird)
Bringing you here to me
The chattering of the flock
Come close together
From inside its throat
A marauding party
A godwit that hovers
One bird has landed on the sand bank
It has settled there
They have settled here

 

“ … Now cracks the noble heart – good night sweet prince

And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.”

Horatio (body guard to Hamlet), William Shakespeare

 

 

Ralph Hotere, a soaring spirit now lifts off the white sands of Parengarenga to soar awhile and like kuaka, the brave godwits cut a trail across a vast ocean. 

I got to know Ralph Hotere while he was an Arts and Crafts Specialist Teacher working in Northland schools.  I was at Matauri Bay.  A quiet, unassuming man whose strength lay within.   His other strength was his spirit of generosity, he had a giving soul.

For three days of the Queens Birthday break 1973 at the inaugural hui of The New Zealand Maori Artists and Writers Association (later Nga Puna Waihanga), Hotere together with Hone Tuwhare, Para Matchitt, Arnold Wilson, Katerina Mataira, Buck Nin, Sandy Adsett, Witi Ihimaera, Harry Dansey, Pat Grace, Jim Moriarty, Barry Barclay, Ngapo Wehi, Tuini Ngawai, Ivan Wirepa (opera) … John Taiapa, Tuti Tukaokao, Pakariki Harrison, Lyonel Grant and about a hundred others inscribed a permanent stamp on the New Zealand Art landscape.  This was the start of a movement which quickly spread with an immediate impact culminating some years later in Te Maori going off shore to The Metropolitan Museum in New York and other international venues before returning home. 

One of the conditions of the Hui was for of us to submit some original work; visual, performance, literary, in music or song, dance or photographic.  There I was admiring works by artists and one a print by Hotere.    The whare kai, overnight had been transformed into a veritable gallery for the Hui.  Without knowing that Hotere was me, I made a casual remark to Rei Hamon, “… wouldn’t mind one of Ralph’s works.” Overhearing me, he  said, “… it’s yours.”

Some ten years later when I visited him at his Aramoana home I gave him a copy of my poem, ‘Jonathan Blue’ about a seagull with a broken wing.  He treated my offering as a taonga. 

Hotere leaves a rich and evocative legacy to a nation mourning his flight of no return.  And on the day of his funeral I stood before his eighteen meter long mural in The Auckland Art Gallery, a work of legendary length and strength to pay my respects.  I was joined in karakia by many others. 

It wasn’t always here.  Up to 1996 it sat rather clumsily at The Auckland International Airport without travelers knowing its deeper meaning so that year the work was deaccessioned and placed where it now hangs; the migratory godwits returning home from a long journey; sons and daughters coming home.

A tiny man, a big heart, a man who will be remembered as a giving man.  The outpouring of grief this week is understandable as we followed his flight from Dunedin to Mitimiti and beyond.  A Maori, a Maori New Zealander who straddled the worlds of the avante garde of international art yet kept the integrity of Te Ao Maori, the rich Maori dimension of wairua, literature and cosmology; a silent spirituality in this work.  He was able to fuse together the old and new worlds, Day and Night, Maori and Pakeha, young and old but he also evoked the passions of an international following.

What does it stand for; kuaka is a metaphor for the journey, endurance, courage and the fortitude of a tiny bird against the odds. 

Right now, thousands of these tiny birds are  gathering from around the country and in just a few days and nights at Parengarenga, they fly off as a flock making a prodigious journey with their little hearts and great spirit over some 18,000 kms nonstop to China and then on to Alaska.  Next November they return.

The mural is Hotere, it reminds me of a giant weaving with its never-ending warps each strand like the strings of a banjo, linking to the many dimensions of poetry, dance, ecology and cosmology; weaving darkness and light, above with below, things internal and external and the songs of home forever effervescent in our hearts of a ‘sweet prince and the flight of angels sing thee to thy rest,’ … ah, home.  We are left, not bereft but a nation richly blessed.

Haere Ralph …
Taku kuaka e rere atu nei

He kuaka marangaranga

Kotahi manu tau atu tau atu 

A lone bird appeared on the horizon

Others followed to form a flock

To take wing to circle

And once in flight … to soar

Goodbye Ralph.

Powhiri Explained

“Piki mai, kake mai, haere mai.”

Whenever I return to Turanganui-a-Kiwa (Gisborne) and walk onto our marae there, I am always overawed by a feeling of awe and reverence, something holy, something new each time linking me to my ancestors Kiwa, Mahaki, Rongowhakaata, Waioeka names that evoke thoughts of who and what I am.  Some, not all of you are strangers to the marae experience, so have asked why it is so special?

For a start it is something special to you because you are a part of the social, cultural and spiritual landscape that is Aotearoa New Zealand.  You need to accept that Maori are the first people of Aotearoa New Zealand.  The marae is waiting to call us so, here we go on the first leg of on our journey.  

Marae-a-Tea (marae) is the space directly in front of the principle house surrounded by a number of servicing builds such as wharekai (dining room), whare paku (ablutions and wash house), papa kainga (dwellings for elders), Kohanga Reo (early childhood centre) and other facilities including centre for the rehabilitation of inmates from prisons. Wharenui (meeting house) is a meeting place where important decisions are made in the presence of ancestors and whanau.  The Wharenui is symbolically the physical extension of an eponymous ancestor. 

The ‘home’ people are tangata whenua (people of the land), while guests are manuhiri (‘birds that have flocked here’).  The Wharenui (big house) is a place for learning, for worship, for extending hospitality, and for the rituals of weddings and (tangi) mourning.  As well, it is a place not unlike a courthouse.  Whare kai (dining room) enables tangata whenua to extend hospitality to groups however large or small. A hui (gathering) big or small invariably open with a karakia (blessing) and a mihi (a greeting to all present which includes God, the ancestors and those not present).

Manuhiri (guests) arrive at a given time, they assemble at the Waharoa (entranceway) and wait awhile to sort out speakers, a koha is collected, and kuia (elderly women) stand at the head flanked by other women and men at the rear. 

The keening of Karanga (call exclusive to women) signals manuhiri to walk across the threshold onto the space known as marae-a-tea (sacred space).  Manuhiri walk reverently, acknowledge the calls and move slowly stopping at least once, being a solemn moment to be at one with ancestors and all nature.  This is the actual Powhiri (welcome), predicated occasionally with a Powhiri chant and sometimes a wero (a challenge) by a taiaha (weapon) wielding warrior. Then, manuhiri are invited to “… step over the threshold and into the womb of the ancestor.” When the two sides are seated, hosts open with a short blessing followed by the first speaker;  Whai korero (orations delivered by men) offer salutations to: (1) the land (2) the buildings (3) the ancestors (4) the living, and (5) to the reason for the gathering. 

Then a pause when the opportunity is handed over to manuhiri to reply.  Each speech is followed by a waiata (song poems) which shows the support of women for their speakers.  The final speaker concludes with the placement of a koha (generosity from the heart) on the space between tangata whenua and manuhiri.  The handshake and hongi (sometimes a hug) brings the two groups together for the first time.  Kai (food sharing) finally seals a fresh relationship. The rules of the marae or protocols are governed by a set of principles known as Tikanga (doing what is right) as laid down by the ancestors.  These are guidelines rather than immutable laws, allowing openness that encourages flexibility and freedom of expression.   Tangihanga (mourning ceremonials) is one of surest ways to get whanau (families) back together regularly.  I haven’t been back to Gisborne for over a year and long to get back and feel the warmth of the fires of home and hear again the calls,

“Piki mai, kake mai, haere mai ...”.