By Virginia Winder
When I was a baby reporter working at the Taranaki Daily
News back in 1984 I was sent to a job in Stratford.
The Taranaki Maori Trust Board and representatives of
mountain users, like trampers and ski folk - and others I can't remember,
probably DOC - were meeting about the name of the mountain.
Should it be Taranaki or Egmont?
On the way there I remember thinking "how ridiculous,
our mountain is Egmont".
Then I sat with notepad and pen in a meeting room, leaving
all my biases at the door, and I listened.
What I heard startled me - to the iwi spread around its
slopes the mountain was always known as Taranaki and was seen as an ancestor, a
living entity. There was a story about how Taranaki fought with Tongariro over
the beautiful Pihanga and, being injured, was forced to flee to his present
place, led by the rock Rahotu.
From a colonial point of view, the mountain was named by Captain Cook on January
11, 1770 after John
Perceval, 2nd Earl of Egmont, a former First Lord of
the Admiralty who had supported the voyage. In other words it was
named after a sponsor.
The impassioned words from these Maori elders touched me
deeply, changed me profoundly and from that day forth I never called the
mountain Egmont again.
Mt Taranaki from Fitzroy Beach |
But for years before that I had been quietly subversive,
always referring to the mounga (that's Te Reo o Taranaki's way of spelling it) as "Taranaki's mountain" in my
stories.
Nobody ever changed my wording.
Nobody ever changed my wording.
Next, was a marae visit. I don't know if it was my
first - I don't remember that moment; I've always felt at home on a marae. I love the powhiri (welcome), the hongi and the hugs, the waiata and listening to the beauty of te reo Maori even if I can't understand everything that is said. It has always been soothing to my soul being on a marae.
In the 1980s, I was sent out to cover an educational
programme at Owae Marae in Waitara.
A bunch of street kids had been brought down from Auckland and a man of mana called Sonny Waru was there to teach them about who they were and where they came from.
A bunch of street kids had been brought down from Auckland and a man of mana called Sonny Waru was there to teach them about who they were and where they came from.
On that first day, these teenagers, homeless and many tagged with the glue-sniffer label, were a bedraggled lot who stood with their heads down, mistrustful of the world.
I went back a week later and these kids were totally different. They stood tall. They looked proud and alert, strong and confident, all because they had learnt their whakapapa, had been immersed in their culture and knew who they were.
Again, I was profoundly moved by the importance of knowledge, of understanding one's own culture and of aroha.
Then it was my mother's turn to change.
It happened in the early 1990s when she and my husband, Warren Smart (of Ngati Porou
Warren Smart, my husband |
Mum, a stridently passionate woman, fell in love with Maori
language and the culture. She took to answering the phone in te reo, asking how
you were in Maori and expecting you to reply in the same language, correcting
your pronunciation if need be.
Mum - Florence (she hated Flo) - read avidly about Maori current affairs and would get furious at any injustices.
One day I visited to find her feeling frustrated and constrained.
"Oh, I wish was a Maori," she declared.
"Why mum?" I was perplexed.
"Because then I could protest at Moutoa Gardens," she said, of the 1995 occupation of the land by iwi in Whanganui.
She also used to practice writing in te reo by penning letters to her dear friend Gail in the US, who didn't understand Maori language at all. Mum thought she was hilarious.
Howard Winder, my dad |
Dad used to love telling that story, taking pride in his dark skin.
He also supported mum's passion for all things Maori. But dad was more of a detached observer than participant, until a weekend wananga at Parihaka, the place of passive resistance in coastal Taranaki.
My sister, husband and I were all there with mum and dad
that weekend, when the stories of Te Whiti o Rongomai and Tohu Kakahi, of the
plunder on November 5, 1881, of the imprisonments and also the meaning of the
mounga were shared by the mesmerising Te Ru Wharehoka.
At the end of the weekend, we all shared what we got from that weekend and dad said, with great emotion: "I'll never call the mountain anything but Taranaki again."
I teared up with pride.
My own journey continued with books like Ask That Mountain
by Dick Scott and Days of Darkness by Hazel Riseborough.
But then I had the privilege of being employed by Puke Ariki
to write stories about Taranaki. It was like being immersed in the past,
learning about the Parihaka prophets, and others, including Sir Maui Pomare and
Te Rangi Hiroa (Sir Peter Buck) and history like the land wars, the Peka Peka
Block and Te Atiawa chief Wiremu Kingi Te Rangitaake.
I learnt from the archives, from books, from historians and
best of all from the people, who passed down the knowledge - Te Miringa Hohaia,
Wharehoka Wano and Miria Pomare and many more.
I was unbelievably privileged to learn by doing what I love
best - telling stories.
But the point of this blog is to share with you about how
change takes place in a person.
Mum, meeting one her greatest heroines, Dame Whina Cooper. |
Like Mayor Andrew Judd, once there is understanding of the
past, acknowledgment of the gross injustices by our British colonial
forefathers, there is no going back.
You can't un-know what you now know.
You can't un-know what you now know.
I will always stand up for what I believe is right, opting
for equity before true equality can come.
I am my mother's daughter, one who stands with fierce love
in my heart for all people.