Ihāia and Te Moana Nui A Kiwa Ryan
interview with Philip McKibbin
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Ihāia and Te Moana Nui A Kiwa Ryan (Kāi Tahu, Ngāti Kahungunu, Ngāti Raukawa ki te Tonga, Tūwharetoa) are brothers from the hapū Kāti Huirapa ki Arowhenua. Both are artists and students of culture. Ihāia studied bone and stone carving in the eighth intake of Te Takapu o Rotowhio at Te Puia/New Zealand Māori Arts and Crafts Institute. Te Moana Nui A Kiwa's work focuses on sustainability and conservation.
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Philip: What have you two been up to recently?
Ihāia: I’ve been at Te Takapū o Rotowhio, the National Bone/Stone Carving School at Te Puia, Rotorua. It’s a Māori institution, so I’ve gone to try and really learn that art form. So yeah, for me it’s all been reo and study. We’ve both been going down to Aoraki Matatū wānaka with Kāi Tahu.
Tem: You should come! You should come, Philip!
Ihāia: Yeah, you should. (laughs) What it is - basically, we get a lot of us together. I say ‘we’; it’s run by Kotahi Mano Kāika - shout outs to Darren Solomon! Arowhenua! - so we get a group of people together and read through old Kāi Tahu writings, looking for the actual content in there, obviously, and looking also at what we can take forward from the reo of that time, maybe some things that have been lost that need re-introducing.
Philip: Rawe!
Ihāia: Mm, and it’s been a good opportunity to go home, too. That’s what I’m always asking from the iwi, if I can just get a flight home from time to time. (laughs)
There’s so much to carving, it’s changed the way I see everything. It’s a really interesting window into our tīpuna. Everything they made, they took the form from nature, and then they would decorate it, they’d beautify it, and that would also come from nature. And just learning the real underlying things - the actual matauraka. Like, anyone can read in a book why this mangōpare pattern is a shark, say, but then if you learn a little bit about it and you get to see a shark moving in the water, you can see where all of that connects. All the movement, that interplay between animal and environment is captured in 2D. So yeah, it’s just been mind-expanding.
It’s such a rare thing - a proper wānaka toi with proper tohuka. That’s Koro Clive (Fuggill) and Koro James (Rickard) officially; but the head of each of the institute’s schools is a tohunga in their own right as well as some of the others there. Stacy (Gordine of Ngāti Porou, tumu of Te Takapū) is locked into something really ancient, artistically. He carves things that seem so natural that they could’ve just grown up out of the ground and anyone can sort of sense it when they see the work - Māori mai, Pākehā mai, tauiwi mai. Even the foreigners get it! (It’s a very interesting phenomenon: google biophilia and soft focus.) He could make so much money from that. (laughs) But obviously it’s not about money and he teaches a new generation instead.
Philip: Tem, what have you been up to recently?
Tem: I dunno, a bit of this and that. I study - sometimes - at the Uni. Sovereignty and conservation, that’s the underlying mahi. That’s the mahi, but the kaupapa is whānau - that’s the reason. Continuation, the kōrero tuku iho, tikanga, ecology, our traditions and our and ecology and our tikanga that’s in between all that. I’m just looking into it, really - but, you know, looking further and further into it, and doing more and more of it. I spent a couple of weeks up at Arowhenua, and we planted a lot of trees, did a lot of natives in there and some fruit trees, brought some veggies, all for the kaupapa.
Ihāia: For whānau.
Tem: For the whānau, the whenua. Solutions, you know? It’s a little thing, but it’s got many implications, things to do with planting. Yeah, so I’ve just been getting into that. Sometimes I rant on Instagram.
Ihāia: Yeah, I do that, too.
Tem: I get concerned about the weather - extremes becoming normalised in the weather, in terms of heat and drought and flooding. And different tohu, things like flowers blooming in the winter in Dunedin. You know, there’s some species, obviously, that would do that, but different shit, you know? I live up on the hill. There’s lots of trees. It’s been good - there’s heaps of birds and that. We get kākā and that up there.
Ihāia: Nice. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what you were talking about, like extremes, and tohu. If you think about it in terms of tohu and the maramataka - you know, the maramataka doesn’t work from one side of the island to the other. So what does climate change do to our maramataka? That’s just a thought I’ve been having, without solutions. It’s observational science.
Tem: That’s the Māori thing that started way before time. People have always been looking at the sky and the land formations and geography and all of that stuff. So although we generally think of science as, like, a Pākehā thing - like, science is science and Indigenous concepts exist as a separate sort of thing - people don’t call them sciences, people call them traditions. But in those ways, knowledge is transferred in a lot of different ways, like song, chant, carving, kōrero, whakataukī.
Ihāia: Yeah. It’s like whakapapa science, you know? So you can follow it - whatever you want to talk about - all the way up into it’s very potential (te kore) and development (te pō) and all that.
All that cosmological stuff could be read as a big bang sort of thing too, depending on which tradition it’s coming from. I guess it’s a bit off topic, but some iwi traditions when translated literally come remarkably close to orthodox models of the universe from physics. Physics isn’t the be all and end all of knowledge, but it is by definition the most testable knowledge in the modern era - and it’s almost catching up to us!
Tem: All indigenous knowledge should be treated on the same platform as Pākehā knowledge. It’s just common sense. But all of science - all of that stuff - is rooted in white supremacy and human supremacy over the environment.
Tem: You should come! You should come, Philip!
Ihāia: Yeah, you should. (laughs) What it is - basically, we get a lot of us together. I say ‘we’; it’s run by Kotahi Mano Kāika - shout outs to Darren Solomon! Arowhenua! - so we get a group of people together and read through old Kāi Tahu writings, looking for the actual content in there, obviously, and looking also at what we can take forward from the reo of that time, maybe some things that have been lost that need re-introducing.
Philip: Rawe!
Ihāia: Mm, and it’s been a good opportunity to go home, too. That’s what I’m always asking from the iwi, if I can just get a flight home from time to time. (laughs)
There’s so much to carving, it’s changed the way I see everything. It’s a really interesting window into our tīpuna. Everything they made, they took the form from nature, and then they would decorate it, they’d beautify it, and that would also come from nature. And just learning the real underlying things - the actual matauraka. Like, anyone can read in a book why this mangōpare pattern is a shark, say, but then if you learn a little bit about it and you get to see a shark moving in the water, you can see where all of that connects. All the movement, that interplay between animal and environment is captured in 2D. So yeah, it’s just been mind-expanding.
It’s such a rare thing - a proper wānaka toi with proper tohuka. That’s Koro Clive (Fuggill) and Koro James (Rickard) officially; but the head of each of the institute’s schools is a tohunga in their own right as well as some of the others there. Stacy (Gordine of Ngāti Porou, tumu of Te Takapū) is locked into something really ancient, artistically. He carves things that seem so natural that they could’ve just grown up out of the ground and anyone can sort of sense it when they see the work - Māori mai, Pākehā mai, tauiwi mai. Even the foreigners get it! (It’s a very interesting phenomenon: google biophilia and soft focus.) He could make so much money from that. (laughs) But obviously it’s not about money and he teaches a new generation instead.
Philip: Tem, what have you been up to recently?
Tem: I dunno, a bit of this and that. I study - sometimes - at the Uni. Sovereignty and conservation, that’s the underlying mahi. That’s the mahi, but the kaupapa is whānau - that’s the reason. Continuation, the kōrero tuku iho, tikanga, ecology, our traditions and our and ecology and our tikanga that’s in between all that. I’m just looking into it, really - but, you know, looking further and further into it, and doing more and more of it. I spent a couple of weeks up at Arowhenua, and we planted a lot of trees, did a lot of natives in there and some fruit trees, brought some veggies, all for the kaupapa.
Ihāia: For whānau.
Tem: For the whānau, the whenua. Solutions, you know? It’s a little thing, but it’s got many implications, things to do with planting. Yeah, so I’ve just been getting into that. Sometimes I rant on Instagram.
Ihāia: Yeah, I do that, too.
Tem: I get concerned about the weather - extremes becoming normalised in the weather, in terms of heat and drought and flooding. And different tohu, things like flowers blooming in the winter in Dunedin. You know, there’s some species, obviously, that would do that, but different shit, you know? I live up on the hill. There’s lots of trees. It’s been good - there’s heaps of birds and that. We get kākā and that up there.
Ihāia: Nice. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what you were talking about, like extremes, and tohu. If you think about it in terms of tohu and the maramataka - you know, the maramataka doesn’t work from one side of the island to the other. So what does climate change do to our maramataka? That’s just a thought I’ve been having, without solutions. It’s observational science.
Tem: That’s the Māori thing that started way before time. People have always been looking at the sky and the land formations and geography and all of that stuff. So although we generally think of science as, like, a Pākehā thing - like, science is science and Indigenous concepts exist as a separate sort of thing - people don’t call them sciences, people call them traditions. But in those ways, knowledge is transferred in a lot of different ways, like song, chant, carving, kōrero, whakataukī.
Ihāia: Yeah. It’s like whakapapa science, you know? So you can follow it - whatever you want to talk about - all the way up into it’s very potential (te kore) and development (te pō) and all that.
All that cosmological stuff could be read as a big bang sort of thing too, depending on which tradition it’s coming from. I guess it’s a bit off topic, but some iwi traditions when translated literally come remarkably close to orthodox models of the universe from physics. Physics isn’t the be all and end all of knowledge, but it is by definition the most testable knowledge in the modern era - and it’s almost catching up to us!
Tem: All indigenous knowledge should be treated on the same platform as Pākehā knowledge. It’s just common sense. But all of science - all of that stuff - is rooted in white supremacy and human supremacy over the environment.
Philip: When we met at Te Kura Reo Kāi Tahu here at Arowhenua Marae last year, you showed me, Piripi, and Rauhina around the whenua, and you told us about some of the changes you've witnessed since you were tamariki. How have those changes influenced the way you think about kai?
Ihāia: We’ve just seen everything get worse, really.
Tem: The river is dirty.
Ihāia: Yeah, the river - Awarua stream - is dirty. It was already a bit dirty. No one’s swum in it since my grandmother was young. Right now, it’s visibly terrible.
Tem: Awarua nei.
Ihāia: And the bigger rivers we used to swim in, the Opihi and Te Umu Kaha.
Tem: Yeah, we used to swim in there. I can’t really remember swimming in that one, but we did that, I’m pretty sure.
Ihāia: I was maybe 8 the last time. You would have been 4. Opihi only after that, it was somewhat cleaner.
Tem: And the wai last time I swam there! I was 14, but by then, it was- We hopped in, and we hopped out, because we were all like, ‘Ew!’ It was disgusting.
Ihāia: And everyone came home and threw up everywhere.
Tem: It was gross. Obviously, that connects with food, cos you look at what’s the real reason why the rivers are all polluted, and it’s the overuse of fertilisers, nitrogen and phosphorous.
Ihāia: The intensification of land use.
Tem: Dairy farming.
Ihāia: More than what can be supported by the land itself, what can be carried by the rivers, what can be cleaned by the people, all that stuff.
Tem: People can only do so much - clean up the river so much, cut down so many willow trees, but at the end of the day, there’s still dairy farming pumping run-off and cow shit, not even mentioning the run-off from cities and that. It’s pretty ruthless. It’s very ruthless.
Ihāia: Yeah, so there’s that happening, and you can see how it tracks back to food. Another thing is that when we’re here, we’re with our whānau, who will constantly - and clearly and loudly - explain to you how all of that shit connects to food, and why you should be eating better for yourself and for the taiao.
Tem: And the kids!
Ihāia: And the kids. These kids all know. We grew up knowing. We don’t always live by our own principles very much now.
Tem: The river is dirty.
Ihāia: Yeah, the river - Awarua stream - is dirty. It was already a bit dirty. No one’s swum in it since my grandmother was young. Right now, it’s visibly terrible.
Tem: Awarua nei.
Ihāia: And the bigger rivers we used to swim in, the Opihi and Te Umu Kaha.
Tem: Yeah, we used to swim in there. I can’t really remember swimming in that one, but we did that, I’m pretty sure.
Ihāia: I was maybe 8 the last time. You would have been 4. Opihi only after that, it was somewhat cleaner.
Tem: And the wai last time I swam there! I was 14, but by then, it was- We hopped in, and we hopped out, because we were all like, ‘Ew!’ It was disgusting.
Ihāia: And everyone came home and threw up everywhere.
Tem: It was gross. Obviously, that connects with food, cos you look at what’s the real reason why the rivers are all polluted, and it’s the overuse of fertilisers, nitrogen and phosphorous.
Ihāia: The intensification of land use.
Tem: Dairy farming.
Ihāia: More than what can be supported by the land itself, what can be carried by the rivers, what can be cleaned by the people, all that stuff.
Tem: People can only do so much - clean up the river so much, cut down so many willow trees, but at the end of the day, there’s still dairy farming pumping run-off and cow shit, not even mentioning the run-off from cities and that. It’s pretty ruthless. It’s very ruthless.
Ihāia: Yeah, so there’s that happening, and you can see how it tracks back to food. Another thing is that when we’re here, we’re with our whānau, who will constantly - and clearly and loudly - explain to you how all of that shit connects to food, and why you should be eating better for yourself and for the taiao.
Tem: And the kids!
Ihāia: And the kids. These kids all know. We grew up knowing. We don’t always live by our own principles very much now.
Philip: As pakeke, what changes have you made around kai?
Ihāia: Well, in the first place, I got a lot worse. (laughs) I moved out of home, couldn’t rely on Mum’s or Taua’s good lentil stuff anymore, and I was too lazy to make it. So I just spent a long time being an unhealthy city person.
Yeah, honestly, it’s only since we started thinking about this interview that I thought about kai production as anything other than an abstract political issue. Like, maybe I should live by my own principles. (laughs) That’s a fairly recent development. It’s my own health as well. You’ve gotta look after yourself.
For me, and for a lot of other people, it’s probably easier to talk about things in the abstract - like, ‘industrial food production’ is bad, ‘the rivers’ are dirty, you know, ‘kai production’. These are things you campaign for and against. I’m decent at campaigning, I’m not that good at looking after myself. So it’s been easier for me to get up at any opportunity in a hui or whatever and complain about the river than it is to actually just live the life.
Tem: I’m sort of the same, but different. I’ve got to the point now where I’ve been trying to live by the principles and then at the end of it being like, ‘Yeah, but nothing I do makes a difference.’ Because of the scale of everything - like, the scale of the pollution.
Ihāia: That’s the thing. Thinking of things as political issues isn’t necessarily the problem. To actually make a difference for the country, or for the world, it has to be big. To actually make a difference to anything, it does have to be a political issue. And that’s true, but in the past that was, sort of, my little denial defence for myself - just living badly. It’s like, ‘Well, it doesn’t matter, cos I can’t do anything on my own.’ My lifestyle isn’t as important as the political things that are happening. I still believe that, but you’ve got to live your life for you, as well.
Tem: If I cook my own food, it’s usually good. It’s actually kind of depressing, once you know what good, proper soul food tastes like, and you’re eating not good soul food. (laughs) But I’m like that as well, if I’m travelling. I travel a lot, around the place, cos it’s what I like doing, and I don’t eat that well. Good soul food is stuff that doesn’t come in a plastic packet, bread from the bread maker, soups, curries, brown rice, fresh fruits, fresh veggies, raw greens - raw green smoothies - hemp milk, hemp seeds, that’s day one, day one, hemp seeds, everyone needs to be eating hemp seeds, full dietary requirements for the daily intake is in a hemp seed: zinc, magnesium, vitamin B12, hemp seed.
Ihāia: It’s sort of the same for me, I guess. I don’t buy meat. I often still eat meat if someone gives me meat, you know? There’s that image of vegans - the preachy vegan. I don’t want to be the preachy vegan. But I’m more the preachy vegan than the actual practising vegan - so I’ll eat the meat, and talk about, ‘Do you know where this comes from?’ Which I find makes people respond to me like less of a weirdo. I guess people feel judged if I just sit there and watch them smash back a steak.
Tem: Don’t lead by example, is the take-away there. Don’t lead by example. (laughs)
Ihāia: Well, you know, if you want to put it like that there is an element of hypocrisy. But I mean, it works for changing people’s minds about things. If I present myself as - not a hypocrite - but as aware of issues, and present it as an issue. This is the same thing I was talking about before: it’s easy when it’s a political issue. It’s easier to swing people towards political issues than it is to change their whole life right now over one meal.
But having said that, yeah, I’ve stopped buying meat, cut out dairy. You saw me accidentally eat ice cream yesterday, but generally I don’t buy meat, don’t eat dairy. When we go to hui and stuff, I usually put myself down as a vegan, cos it’s easier. It doesn’t necessarily work, because none of the labels quite work. They all have some association or philosophy that’s a bit wrong, misleading, or annoying, or not quite who we are. All that list of good foods that Tem said is good foods. I don’t really believe in superfoods, or whatever.
Tem: I don’t believe in superfoods either!
Ihāia: You sort of do. It’s okay. It’s fine.
Tem: I believe in a varied diet. A myriad - that’s the only way you should eat. But also, everyone should eat way more raw greens.
Ihāia: Yeah, I tautoko that. I don’t know how to say this without sounding like an asshole, but I don’t really care about animals’ feelings. I don’t stay awake at night thinking, ‘Oh, we’re killing animals.’ It’s more like, ‘We’re killing animals… in a way that’s killing ourselves,’ basically.
Well, that’s not fair - I don’t not care. It’s kind of - I don’t know what to call it, so I’m going to coin a new term: it’s natural realism. Things die, things eat each other, and that’s okay - but we don’t want to kill everything. That’s where I’m coming from. I don’t really think that’s the vegan philosophy, or the vegetarian philosophy, or the flexitarian philosophy, or any of the labels, but it’s sort of how it is. We’ve got to fit into the ecosystem somewhere.
Tem: We want to be good for the ecosystem.
Ihāia: Kaua e whakararu i te punaha hauropi.
Tem: There’s an elitism to veganism. Yeah, it’s definitely a white people’s thing. I support Indigenous food sovereignty all the way - you know, how they do their own things, and vegans are like, ‘No!’ But it’s like, they don’t understand the context.
Ihāia: Yeah, it’s like, we eat baby muttonbirds. I’m gonna do that as long as they’re – sustainably – available. (laughs)
Tem: Yeah, I love those nuclear birds. But I do get concerned about the islands, how small an amount there are nowadays, and how nuclear they are, and how plastic they are.
Ihāia: And this ties right in to what we were talking about - that’s a worldwide issue. They fly around the world, and it’s the other places they go to that are affecting the population on our islands, you know?
Tem: So the whole ecosystem’s fucked.
Ihāia: The whole ecosystem, worldwide. And they come back here, depleted, and consequently we don’t have the take that we used to, nor the size of bird.
Tem: Does anyone not know the ecosystem’s fucked? Everyone should know that.
Ihāia: You would think.
Yeah, honestly, it’s only since we started thinking about this interview that I thought about kai production as anything other than an abstract political issue. Like, maybe I should live by my own principles. (laughs) That’s a fairly recent development. It’s my own health as well. You’ve gotta look after yourself.
For me, and for a lot of other people, it’s probably easier to talk about things in the abstract - like, ‘industrial food production’ is bad, ‘the rivers’ are dirty, you know, ‘kai production’. These are things you campaign for and against. I’m decent at campaigning, I’m not that good at looking after myself. So it’s been easier for me to get up at any opportunity in a hui or whatever and complain about the river than it is to actually just live the life.
Tem: I’m sort of the same, but different. I’ve got to the point now where I’ve been trying to live by the principles and then at the end of it being like, ‘Yeah, but nothing I do makes a difference.’ Because of the scale of everything - like, the scale of the pollution.
Ihāia: That’s the thing. Thinking of things as political issues isn’t necessarily the problem. To actually make a difference for the country, or for the world, it has to be big. To actually make a difference to anything, it does have to be a political issue. And that’s true, but in the past that was, sort of, my little denial defence for myself - just living badly. It’s like, ‘Well, it doesn’t matter, cos I can’t do anything on my own.’ My lifestyle isn’t as important as the political things that are happening. I still believe that, but you’ve got to live your life for you, as well.
Tem: If I cook my own food, it’s usually good. It’s actually kind of depressing, once you know what good, proper soul food tastes like, and you’re eating not good soul food. (laughs) But I’m like that as well, if I’m travelling. I travel a lot, around the place, cos it’s what I like doing, and I don’t eat that well. Good soul food is stuff that doesn’t come in a plastic packet, bread from the bread maker, soups, curries, brown rice, fresh fruits, fresh veggies, raw greens - raw green smoothies - hemp milk, hemp seeds, that’s day one, day one, hemp seeds, everyone needs to be eating hemp seeds, full dietary requirements for the daily intake is in a hemp seed: zinc, magnesium, vitamin B12, hemp seed.
Ihāia: It’s sort of the same for me, I guess. I don’t buy meat. I often still eat meat if someone gives me meat, you know? There’s that image of vegans - the preachy vegan. I don’t want to be the preachy vegan. But I’m more the preachy vegan than the actual practising vegan - so I’ll eat the meat, and talk about, ‘Do you know where this comes from?’ Which I find makes people respond to me like less of a weirdo. I guess people feel judged if I just sit there and watch them smash back a steak.
Tem: Don’t lead by example, is the take-away there. Don’t lead by example. (laughs)
Ihāia: Well, you know, if you want to put it like that there is an element of hypocrisy. But I mean, it works for changing people’s minds about things. If I present myself as - not a hypocrite - but as aware of issues, and present it as an issue. This is the same thing I was talking about before: it’s easy when it’s a political issue. It’s easier to swing people towards political issues than it is to change their whole life right now over one meal.
But having said that, yeah, I’ve stopped buying meat, cut out dairy. You saw me accidentally eat ice cream yesterday, but generally I don’t buy meat, don’t eat dairy. When we go to hui and stuff, I usually put myself down as a vegan, cos it’s easier. It doesn’t necessarily work, because none of the labels quite work. They all have some association or philosophy that’s a bit wrong, misleading, or annoying, or not quite who we are. All that list of good foods that Tem said is good foods. I don’t really believe in superfoods, or whatever.
Tem: I don’t believe in superfoods either!
Ihāia: You sort of do. It’s okay. It’s fine.
Tem: I believe in a varied diet. A myriad - that’s the only way you should eat. But also, everyone should eat way more raw greens.
Ihāia: Yeah, I tautoko that. I don’t know how to say this without sounding like an asshole, but I don’t really care about animals’ feelings. I don’t stay awake at night thinking, ‘Oh, we’re killing animals.’ It’s more like, ‘We’re killing animals… in a way that’s killing ourselves,’ basically.
Well, that’s not fair - I don’t not care. It’s kind of - I don’t know what to call it, so I’m going to coin a new term: it’s natural realism. Things die, things eat each other, and that’s okay - but we don’t want to kill everything. That’s where I’m coming from. I don’t really think that’s the vegan philosophy, or the vegetarian philosophy, or the flexitarian philosophy, or any of the labels, but it’s sort of how it is. We’ve got to fit into the ecosystem somewhere.
Tem: We want to be good for the ecosystem.
Ihāia: Kaua e whakararu i te punaha hauropi.
Tem: There’s an elitism to veganism. Yeah, it’s definitely a white people’s thing. I support Indigenous food sovereignty all the way - you know, how they do their own things, and vegans are like, ‘No!’ But it’s like, they don’t understand the context.
Ihāia: Yeah, it’s like, we eat baby muttonbirds. I’m gonna do that as long as they’re – sustainably – available. (laughs)
Tem: Yeah, I love those nuclear birds. But I do get concerned about the islands, how small an amount there are nowadays, and how nuclear they are, and how plastic they are.
Ihāia: And this ties right in to what we were talking about - that’s a worldwide issue. They fly around the world, and it’s the other places they go to that are affecting the population on our islands, you know?
Tem: So the whole ecosystem’s fucked.
Ihāia: The whole ecosystem, worldwide. And they come back here, depleted, and consequently we don’t have the take that we used to, nor the size of bird.
Tem: Does anyone not know the ecosystem’s fucked? Everyone should know that.
Ihāia: You would think.
Philip: What do you think Kāi Tahu, and te ao Māori generally, could do differently, so that we are living in better relationship with Papatūānuku?
Tem: Put the people first. Put people and sustainability first - so, our communities, all our communities, small communities. Make sure that we’ve got sustainable industries, sustainable land use - everything’s gotta be sustainable, and not… unsustainable. (laughs) So put communities and the environment first.
Ihāia: For Kai Tahu, I think back to a recording in Moeraki of kaumātua in - was it the ‘30s? 1930s or 1920s anyway, and they did the whole thing in English, up till the end. The interviewer asked them for a message for their people, for the future people, and that’s when they switched to te reo - which I think is interesting in itself. But what they actually said was that, ‘He Pākehā i tēnei rā, he Māori tomoro.' Pākehā today, Māori tomorrow.
And I think that’s how Kāi Tahu needs to think about its land use, you know? Ka tū Fonterra i ruka i te whenua i tēnei rā, ki roto i kā awa, ki roto i tō ake tinana, huri hei āpōpō - hei tomoro - he Māori ki te whenua, he wai Māori ki te awa, he Māori anō kā tākata Māori. It’s all tied up together, and that’s how you’ve got to do it.
Tem: Permaculture and food forests. Boom! Native food forests!
Ihāia: Something that’s really good, that Kāi Tahu likes to do, that Te Rūnanga likes to do, is talk about our mahika kai, our traditional food gathering practices as Kāi Tahu people. The nomadic nature of southern people, through the history of the people on this island, and going to places where you get food. The thing is, those places are tied up in the whole big ecosystem, again, so we’ve gotta support the ecosystem, which means changing the land use. He Pākehā i tēnei rā, he Māori tomoro.
Tem: You can still do mahinga kai, but you’ll get arrested or in hospital.
Ihāia: There are still places, and we - as an iwi - like to talk about it and we like to encourage it, but with the amount of land that there is, the amount of ecosystem that exists, that continues to exist, actually everyone can’t. You know? There’s - what? - 50,000 of us, 60,000 of us, and 30,000 of us here. You can’t feed 30,000 people on what’s left of the traditional places in the traditional ways. Not even as a hobby. So sort out all of that land we now have so that it supports the possibility of mahika kai.
The other thing, too, is that getting people out there helps you to understand that, the land issues - this is why I like to see us at least talking about it. You know, getting eels out of this river, back when there were almost none - you could see it, y’know? There’s the one eel, you’re not gonna kill it. Some things have gotten better. Positively, there’s a few of the things we’ve done as a whānau, just on our little patch - we’ve cut out a lot of willow, cleaned up a bit of river.
Tem: Planted a bunch of natives, and some fruit trees - and a veggie garden, which is popping now.
Ihāia: Yeah, and all of that stuff’s been happening, too, on the rūnaka scale, but it hasn’t happened all the way up the river with the other landowners, so, you know, things are gonna keep sprouting back up.
Tem: Eel catchment - commercial eeling’s been taken out of the equation.
Ihāia: Yeah, that’s made things a bit better, just taking the commercial side out. Which is kind of what we’ve been talking about the whole interview: the commercial food.
Tem: The rāhui that’s been on at Puketeraki for the pāua that was there, because it’s been over-pāuaed at one stage, and now it’s rāhui, so their population’s been able to rejuvenate. That’s another good one. The OMV’s just east of Rakiura, so that’s really good. That’s great. Set up the drill - boom! Sweet as. (laughs) OMV - drilling, offshore, for oil, for cars, aeroplanes, and weapons, and plastic.
Ihāia: All bad stuff.
Tem: That’s not actually good.
Ihāia: Isn’t that at the root of all this? Industrial food production. If you’re industrially taking hundreds of eels out of the river every day, it’s gonna cause some problems in the river. If you’re industrially farming animals, it’s gonna cause some problems in the river and on the land. That’s basically it. I think the whole kōrero’s circled around that same idea.
Ihāia: For Kai Tahu, I think back to a recording in Moeraki of kaumātua in - was it the ‘30s? 1930s or 1920s anyway, and they did the whole thing in English, up till the end. The interviewer asked them for a message for their people, for the future people, and that’s when they switched to te reo - which I think is interesting in itself. But what they actually said was that, ‘He Pākehā i tēnei rā, he Māori tomoro.' Pākehā today, Māori tomorrow.
And I think that’s how Kāi Tahu needs to think about its land use, you know? Ka tū Fonterra i ruka i te whenua i tēnei rā, ki roto i kā awa, ki roto i tō ake tinana, huri hei āpōpō - hei tomoro - he Māori ki te whenua, he wai Māori ki te awa, he Māori anō kā tākata Māori. It’s all tied up together, and that’s how you’ve got to do it.
Tem: Permaculture and food forests. Boom! Native food forests!
Ihāia: Something that’s really good, that Kāi Tahu likes to do, that Te Rūnanga likes to do, is talk about our mahika kai, our traditional food gathering practices as Kāi Tahu people. The nomadic nature of southern people, through the history of the people on this island, and going to places where you get food. The thing is, those places are tied up in the whole big ecosystem, again, so we’ve gotta support the ecosystem, which means changing the land use. He Pākehā i tēnei rā, he Māori tomoro.
Tem: You can still do mahinga kai, but you’ll get arrested or in hospital.
Ihāia: There are still places, and we - as an iwi - like to talk about it and we like to encourage it, but with the amount of land that there is, the amount of ecosystem that exists, that continues to exist, actually everyone can’t. You know? There’s - what? - 50,000 of us, 60,000 of us, and 30,000 of us here. You can’t feed 30,000 people on what’s left of the traditional places in the traditional ways. Not even as a hobby. So sort out all of that land we now have so that it supports the possibility of mahika kai.
The other thing, too, is that getting people out there helps you to understand that, the land issues - this is why I like to see us at least talking about it. You know, getting eels out of this river, back when there were almost none - you could see it, y’know? There’s the one eel, you’re not gonna kill it. Some things have gotten better. Positively, there’s a few of the things we’ve done as a whānau, just on our little patch - we’ve cut out a lot of willow, cleaned up a bit of river.
Tem: Planted a bunch of natives, and some fruit trees - and a veggie garden, which is popping now.
Ihāia: Yeah, and all of that stuff’s been happening, too, on the rūnaka scale, but it hasn’t happened all the way up the river with the other landowners, so, you know, things are gonna keep sprouting back up.
Tem: Eel catchment - commercial eeling’s been taken out of the equation.
Ihāia: Yeah, that’s made things a bit better, just taking the commercial side out. Which is kind of what we’ve been talking about the whole interview: the commercial food.
Tem: The rāhui that’s been on at Puketeraki for the pāua that was there, because it’s been over-pāuaed at one stage, and now it’s rāhui, so their population’s been able to rejuvenate. That’s another good one. The OMV’s just east of Rakiura, so that’s really good. That’s great. Set up the drill - boom! Sweet as. (laughs) OMV - drilling, offshore, for oil, for cars, aeroplanes, and weapons, and plastic.
Ihāia: All bad stuff.
Tem: That’s not actually good.
Ihāia: Isn’t that at the root of all this? Industrial food production. If you’re industrially taking hundreds of eels out of the river every day, it’s gonna cause some problems in the river. If you’re industrially farming animals, it’s gonna cause some problems in the river and on the land. That’s basically it. I think the whole kōrero’s circled around that same idea.
Philip: Going forward, we face many challenges. Do you think we will succeed in securing a better future mō kā uri ā muri ake nei?
Tem: I’m pessimistic. I think we’ve gotta grow gills. We’ll probably end up with glowing skin, and we’ll probably live in cages - not cages, caves. If we avoid living in cages, and if we don’t get blown up. So, moving into caves. (laughs) Plant a permaculture forest right now. Buy a crossbow, hunt your own food if you want meat and shit. Shoot at the pests. Cut out the willow trees. Yup. I’m pessimistic as. (laughs) Nah, I’m not optimistic at all.
Ihāia: I’m a little bit more optimistic. I think it’s possible for us to get somewhere. I think things can get better. But also, you do what you can with what you have. Is approaching things for yourself better than approaching things politically? Because within a country, you can maybe do something politically - you can campaign something to the point where something happens. But when you go beyond that, it looks pretty bleak. So I think maybe we can protect ourselves a little bit.
Tem: Yeah.
Ihāia: But you can’t be relying on America or China to do the right thing.
Tem: Nah.
Ihāia: Consequently, that could be the end of my favourite food.
Tem: Probably.
Ihāia: I’m talking about tītī again.
Tem: Buy a gas mask. Keep planting trees.
Ihāia: As you can see, even with some of the closest and most emotional influences you can have, there’s still a struggle for us, like anyone. And whatever level you want to tackle it at, it’s probably a good idea. So that’s my last thing: do something.
Tem: Do something. Don’t give in to hopelessness or denial.
Ihāia: Mahia te mahi.
Tem: Mahia te mahi, do what you can with what you’ve got. Planting is gonna be a good start for anyone, and doing that consistently. Love your mum.
Ihāia: Yeah, look after your mum.
Tem: Papatūānuku.
Ihāia: Yeah, that mum, too. But also, literally, look after your mum. That’s enough. (laughs)
Ihāia: I’m a little bit more optimistic. I think it’s possible for us to get somewhere. I think things can get better. But also, you do what you can with what you have. Is approaching things for yourself better than approaching things politically? Because within a country, you can maybe do something politically - you can campaign something to the point where something happens. But when you go beyond that, it looks pretty bleak. So I think maybe we can protect ourselves a little bit.
Tem: Yeah.
Ihāia: But you can’t be relying on America or China to do the right thing.
Tem: Nah.
Ihāia: Consequently, that could be the end of my favourite food.
Tem: Probably.
Ihāia: I’m talking about tītī again.
Tem: Buy a gas mask. Keep planting trees.
Ihāia: As you can see, even with some of the closest and most emotional influences you can have, there’s still a struggle for us, like anyone. And whatever level you want to tackle it at, it’s probably a good idea. So that’s my last thing: do something.
Tem: Do something. Don’t give in to hopelessness or denial.
Ihāia: Mahia te mahi.
Tem: Mahia te mahi, do what you can with what you’ve got. Planting is gonna be a good start for anyone, and doing that consistently. Love your mum.
Ihāia: Yeah, look after your mum.
Tem: Papatūānuku.
Ihāia: Yeah, that mum, too. But also, literally, look after your mum. That’s enough. (laughs)
Interviewed: January, 2020
Published: September, 2020
Published: September, 2020