Whanau

Whanau

The direction that the kuia is indicating is not one primary direction,
but a slower indigenous healing of the whole

After you are sentenced
You stand in firm innocence
As about us, our whanau swallows
Shock and disappointment

While the judge asks, “Who are they?”
And our lawyer mutters, ‘The family, your honour’
Yet for Māori, whanau both transcends
And embraces pakeha family

Which you know full well and hold
In the dignity of your own thought
For the bones of my ancestors
Rest beside the bones of your ancestors

At Uawa, in the urupā by the sea
Where our kuia stands
Pointing towards the enduring
Indigenous healing of the whole

Which is the path of the kaumatua
And the earthen path of the natural world
And the nomadic flow of Sams Creek

 ~
‘You’ in the poem is ‘The Māori Jesus’ who teaches me through the words and experiences of Māori. In July 2026, I was shocked, saddened and outraged as I sat with whanau and watched a Māori friend found guilty in the Nelson Court of a crime I knew he did not commit.

‘At Uawa, in the urupā:’ The bones of my ancestors lie buried in the urupā (Māori cemetery) at Uawa (Tolaga Bay) on the East Coast (of the North Island). I visited the urupā in 2018 on SOS’s Water Protection Hikoi (sacred journey) around the North Island and spent time with the bones of my ancestors and the bones of my friends’ ancestors. We are whanau.

The Māori understanding of healing and whanau is far wider and deeper than that of non-Māori. It seeks the indigenous healing of the whole rather than that of a part.