“We live in a Māori culture where bravery is often called for. A people embattled by historical and current oppressions has a need to be brave.” Pictured, Te Whānau a Apanui, from Mātaatua, Te Matatini champions. (Photo supplied / Te Matatini)

Survival is an act of bravery, writes Tainui Stephens. Our personal survival, and that of our hapū and iwi, and the Māori nation, depends on many acts of courage. Some of those acts are in public. Most are in private.

As a third former in high school, I was a “turd,” the lowest of the low. But because we were the smallest kids, we got to stand at the front of the queue at the tuck shop. Alistair Anderson from the fourth form was the first bully I’d ever met. At lunchtime, he’d join the line behind us and then pick out two or three turds to torment. He’d grab a boy by the tie and haul him up hard, so he stood off balance. His other hand hovered as a fist, ready to punch. Then he’d snarl: “Give in?” They always did.

He was an ugly guy, and he knew it. He left me alone. I was too tall. I never got (or took) the chance to be brave.

We live in a Māori culture where bravery is often called for. A people embattled by historical and current oppressions has a need to be brave. We’ve long been a people who don’t give in. The iconic Ngāti Toa rangatira haka “Ka Mate” asks the existential question we all face every time we perform it: “Do we live, or do we die?”

I won’t give away the answer. Suffice it to say, a positive outcome only happens because of bravery. Effort and direction too, but bravery is the battery.

For me, the bravest of the brave have always been the soldiers. I got an insight into the cost of their courage many years ago when Aunty Mary Williams and I visited Ahipara whanaunga Dave Te Paa. He was fatally ill with cancer, weak but talkative. I noticed a framed photograph of him in his room. He was in uniform and in a war zone. I asked him if he was a Vietnam vet. As soon as he discovered I knew something about that war, he came alive, but it was with hatred for corrupt politicians and generals.

The disgust that Dave harboured alarmed me with its intensity. For a man so close to death, he was willing to exhaust his remaining energies on pure malice towards the merchants of war.

A year and half later, the community unveiled Dave’s headstone at the Hiruharama Hou cemetery in Ahipara. After the karakia, Mary and I joined the line to touch the stone. The words carved on the back grabbed me and wouldn’t let go. I’ve never forgotten them. They explained very clearly Dave’s outburst that day, and the cost of that ultimate bravery.

A man has not lived until he has almost died

For those who have fought

Life has a flavour the protected will never know

Soldiers, combatants and civilian victims of war know bravery at a level that is beyond my comprehension. But I can try and be brave in my world. Life is about myriad acts of survival. As human beings, we’re hardwired to thrive on peril or purpose. Either path is fraught and requires bravery for victory or success.

If I enter any whare tūpuna, I’m frequently greeted by walls that are plastered with row upon row of photographs of the marae’s past and recent ancestry. There is always some bravery behind the remembered stories of these individuals and couples. Family tragedy and terrible circumstances are unsettlingly common. Yet people overcome. What is it that makes us brave? What is it that we summon to help us carry on?

Moana Jackson, himself no stranger to courage, was fond of saying: “Being brave is just the deep breath you take before you start something difficult.”

Moana is right. Whatever the obstacle you have to overcome, you must start with a breath. My question is, what do you do with that breath? Is it just an intake of life-giving oxygen before you knock on the door, or start the hui, or shake a powerful person’s hand? A simple “Hā ki roto, hā ki waho?” Breathe in, breathe out.

If we wish, it can be more.

Tēnei mea te hā o ngā tūpuna. Every breath we take, according to measures of fact and belief, is the breath of our ancestors. It’s deeply life giving, and it fortifies.

It’s something I’m keenly aware of before I do difficult things. Before I need to do a mihi or deliver a presentation, my bladder gets a bit insistent. That breath is often taken up with a quiet karakia in a wharepaku somewhere.

We most need our courage when we face moments of crisis: as iwi dealing with trenchant politics of racism and self-regard, or as individuals with our own curated pains. If we’re lucky, we discover how to be brave.

A couple of weeks after my wife Wiha passed away in the bedroom of our Ngāruawāhia home, her daughters Nadine and Luana came to choose which of their mum’s clothes they would keep for themselves. We gathered sadly. The hospital bed had been taken away and the floor was clear.

As soon as they reached into the rack of my darling’s clothes and pulled something out, a lightning bolt thudded through me and tore me in two. I fell to the floor.

These were the clothes she had bought and worn with delight when we were together. The clothes she wore for work, for hui, for the garden, or somewhere special. They all still bore her fragrance. As the girls did what they had to do, the removal of each garment slashed away at my insides. I was a blubbing wreck, alone in the empty corner of our room. This was my life now, and it hurt like hell.

But the tikanga around death compel us to recall the words of our ancestors. In speech and song, they are a salve for pain. Wiha had now joined their ranks, and I held on to one of the phrases she had coined years before, words that keep me alive to possibility.

“Rā ana. Hou mai anō. Te kite ai.” A new day. Enter once more. Seek and discover.

As I worked through my own wailing, questing, denying and accepting stages of grief, those words helped me be brave enough to forge a new life with new love.

One of the things I’ve discovered about death is that, if you can cope with it when it strikes, and recover well, nothing else seems so bad. You’re left with various levels of difficult — and things that are merely difficult can be overcome.

Bounce is one of the bravest characters I know. He’s our dog. He was the runt of the litter, and came to us terrified of life. But he had courage. He’s now an elderly chap at 14 and no less brave for it, because as a small dog he lives in a world where every other bugger is bigger than him. He makes his presence known. In our family, our loving nickname for him is “Shut The F**k Up”.

The difficulty that requires the most bravery is to have something to say and to make yourself heard. Whether you have to assert or confess or justify a position, private courage helps carve out character.

And, sometimes, courage born of our habits in the quiet places may be consequential in the shaping of our nation. There is no power in the many unless there is the power of one.

There are times in your life when you’re expected to give in. Not necessarily to a bully or a boss or a baby. Sometimes you’re the one at fault, and you have to give in to yourself, in which case it’s more like letting go. Yet, sometimes, yours is truly the last voice.

When you face moments that require bravery, you may not know it until after the moment has passed. But as those moments accrue over a lifetime, you can often see them coming from a distance, and you can prepare for the time you’ll need to take that breath.

In that breath, I often think of Bub Wehi. Freeze-frames of our time together in te ao Māori would swirl around in my mind. I’d say the words he used to prepare us for anything that required special effort, on or off the kapa haka stage:

Ki te wātea te hinengaro, me te kaha o te rere o te wairua, ka taea ngā mea katoa.

If the mind is free, and the spirit is strong, you can do anything.

In that breath, I might think of my great-uncle George Kipa, a man utterly bereft with the passing of his darling Clare. So many decades of being together every single day, brutally halted. His immaculate lawns and his budding flowers gave him new purpose. I’d hear him say:

“All you can do is put one foot in front of the other. Ya gotta keep going, boy!”

Everybody has what it takes to be brave, for as long as you have a breath to take.

E-Tangata, 2024