kroad158 on Family Tree Circles

Thursday, 12 January 2012

OUR WHANAU

TAHURIWAKANUI RAUA KO PEATA MAKARAURI (MCLEOD)

Kia whai kororia kia Ihoa o nga mano Matua Tama Wairua Tapu me nga Anahera Pono me te Mangai huri noa ki nga tuakana wairua Arepa Omeka Piriwiritua Hamuera me te Mangai mo ake ake ake tonu atu ae
I?ve chosen this photo of my parents as a helpmate and guide in my research to write this journal about the lives and family history of my tupuna and how they are interwoven with our lives today. The picture was drawn up by my grandniece Reremoana Wall as a memorial to her great grandparents and how she saw their lives, their everyday living and their dedication to their Haahi. My wish to write this journal was bought on because some of our family members kept asking me about history or whakapapa or who was who, I didn?t mind answering all the questions where our family was concerned because they needed to know the truth. I would like to caution our whanau in regards to whakapapa. When you seek to do whakapapa please stick to your own, don?t try and do others because no matter what, you will make mistakes and are more liable to add a wrong name to a whakapapa belonging to another person or family, I will include an explanation about whakapapa in this journal. When she was alive, my whole life was centered around my beautiful grandmother Hautonga Farrell, I can still remember her clearly for all my learning came from watching and listening to everything that surrounded her life. Whenever I set out to do a project or was called upon to do a task for others a picture of her would come to my mind and off Id go. By thinking of her I knew I could do whatever was set before me, so I guess the first task for me would be to write about her and her life for our future upcoming generations. Another thing I would like to mention here is that when I (the only maori} worked on the research team for the Otepou School Re-union Committee I came across a lot of information concerning our tupuna and took a lot of notes down, although that was not what I was meant to do I still did it anyway, little did I know that 20 years on the notes I took were going to be of great significant in what I was going to do. No reira nga mihi ki te whanau, noho ora mai tatou I raro I te maru a Ihoa o nga mano me nga Anahera Pono me te mangai ae.





WHAKAPAPA
Whakapapa is the holistic comprehensiveness of being Maori, it gives one a sense of who and where we came from. Whakapapa in ?Te Ao Tawhito? was a list of names to record events of the times an example was one I came across in our koro Hikurangi?s books contained this whakapapa:
Te Pu
Te Weu
Te More
Te Aka
Te Rea
When our koro wrote this and there were quite a few of these list of events (that?s what Im calling it) I used to wonder what he was thinking of at the time he put pen to paper, for me, it opened up a whole new way on how I viewed whakapapa as opposed to geneaology. Don?t get me wrong, as I said whakapapa then was a list of names to record events, genealogy while having similarities was altogether different in how Maori recorded their whakapapa. The whakapapa I just wrote about is actually about the birth of a seed while it is in the ground before the shoot (Te Weu) comes out above the ground, in other words ?see the light? te ao marama. A great example of whakapapa maori is Ranginui and Papatuanuku and the birth of Taane and how Taane viewed the light and came into ?Te Ao Marama, so think hard whanau did old time maori view this the same way as the short whakapapa I saw in our koro?s books, the whakapapa of birth. If you have ever viewed whakapapa from other places in regards to famous people like, Te Atairangikaahu, Rauparaha, Te Waharoa Te Heuheu, Te Kooti or any other well known maori chief, you will see the one line list of names from the canoe they came off only because they were famous for who they were or the well recorded deeds they did. History and waiata is recorded when events surrounding the above people which, can include people, those people that crossed their lives and also included and added to in the ensuing whaikorero on the marae and passed on, additions to that history is added to when different speakers get up and speak about the same event regarding the same person and may include another person unknown to the listeners, suddenly another whakapapa is written in regards to the other unknown person whose similar deeds is spoken about. So over time, written whakapapa is recorded that way. But when it comes to genealogy that?s a whole different aspect of modern day whakapapa and includes your sisters and brothers and your mothers and fathers sisters, brothers and their families, they are simply in your genealogy because that?s what they are in relation to you, but does not record any great thing they may have done, it just means they are in your family tree. Whats happening today is people are writing down their whakapapa and in doing so, are going to check it out with another whakapapa from another area or region, by doing so, they are taking the matauranga from one area and checking it with another area. As far as matauranga maori is concerned this is a no no. There are always two sides to a story and each one is correct depending on the speaker.
I have come across a lot of people who have used whakapapa in different ways to: succeed to land: to unwisely put themselves above another or taurekareka another: use as a weapon against another simply because they have aquired the knowledge of ?whakapapa?: made themselves chief if they come from the eldest of the eldest etc. I came across another event which happened at a raupatu hui, I will not name where this hui was held suffice to say it happened. I was asked to do a whakapapa for the people running the hui and I arrived a bit late, when I got to the hui there was already two people there writing a whakapapa on the wall of the wharenui at a close glance I realised they were writing an ancient whakapapa to Toi-ki-rakau, I thought what the hell is going on here, I then thought to myself Ill have to change my tactics here, I did do a Ngati He whakapapa going to the 1880?s and explained that while it is the Ngati He whakapapa of that time, the whakapapa they should look at is to the people that the Crown took the land off under the ?Settlements Act? and if anyone knows any of the people on the list (1893) that?s who the whakapapa should go back to. Suffice to say the two genealogists in the background stopped what they were doing and the listeners were overjoyed because some knew their kuia or koroua on that list. I don?t know where anybody gets the idea they have to go back to some long forgotten historical figure is beyond me. Every Maori in New Zealand and beyond whakapapa back to the first man Taane never forget that. God made us from the earth, ?he kakano i ruia mai i rangiatea? the seed that was thrown from the sky. I think whanau you have got the gist of what Im trying to say here.